In Canada and the US, minimum wage should be at least 15, if not 20 dollars an hour. I shouldn't have to work 40 hours a week, to make a living, we're too productive as a society. 90% of the things we produce, we don't need, nor really want to consume. Given the option, a lot of people would choose to work less, and that's a good thing, because excess production/consumption takes a tole on our physical/mental and environmental health.
Your basic economics is off here. You assume that a mandatory increase in wages will lead to a guaranteed increase in the amount of money the lower class has, which is simply and unfortunately not true. About 1.3 million people in America work for the federal minimum wage, currently $7.25/hour. A $15 minimum wage is over double that number. In the universe of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and others who want to raise the minimum wage, this would mean that doubling the minimum wage would double the amount that these people make, so 1.3 million people would be making double the money that they used to. Sounds pretty great right? Unfortunately, its not accurate to what would actually happen. If an employer was legally required to hire people at no less than $15/hour, they're not going to want to hire anyone that isn't worth $15/hour to their company. Currently minimum wage workers by and large make minimum wage because they are worth about $7.25/hour to their employer. If employers are federally required to pay those people $15/hour, that means that each hour they are employed, the employer loses $7.75 per employee. You can guess how long the employer will keep that employee. As one author put it, "Passing a law that would require janitors to be paid $100/hour will not make any janitors rich."
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You don't have the slightest understanding of economics. Why not make the wage $20,000/hr.? What would be wrong with that?
Can you see something that could be termed......"Artistic Value" in the fact that Yom Kippur 2016 may begin a Jubilee Year according to the law of Moshe/ Moses? http://www.politicalforum.com/polit...francis-donald-preparing-america-jubilee.html Pope Francis.... The Donald is preparing America for Jubilee! Dear Pope Francis........ Sir....... I am almost certain from my research that a JUBILEE year will begin on Yom Kippur 2016 and go to the day before Yom Kippur 2017. The Donald..... seems to be positioned perfectly to prepare Americans for their role in JUBILEE!? ........ Can you visualize The Donald...... as somebody who may not be in church or synagogue every time the door opens but.... perhaps the Donald is being guided..... to shake up USA politics and assist us to improve our economy....... especially in reference to our spiralling national debt? ...... Donald Trump can be a GREAT President because....... … of his deep level of empathy with the greatest forces that are keeping the average American down! I saw two documentaries about The Donald yesterday evening. When I saw the part about how he purchased the Taj Mahal through financing arranged by about twenty different banks. When I heard that he had agreed to pay them a high rate of interest. I knew that The Donald had been guided by G-d to have a deep empathy for the situation faced by President Abraham Lincoln. http://www.michaeljournal.org/lincolnkennedy.htm Melvin Sickler: ................ The Fed.......... is set up in such a way that it is extremely useful in causing significant boom and bust cycles..... which tend to break unions. To a segment of the population strong unions are one of the greatest evils in America and the whole world.
I think what the OP is saying is that he is entitled to only work 40 hours whether he earns it or not. Fantasy land thinking. You could just build a 10x10 cabin and eat beans n rice to work less. Most freedom loving Americans, on the road to prosperity, don't mind working more and growing their value in the market place to get where they want to be. Heck, many now days expect prosperity while sitting in a recliner punching a remote.
In Canada and the U.S. the minimum height should be 5 if not 6 feet tall. I shouldn't have to reach too high to access the Crisco from the top shelf of the grocery store. 90% of the things we put on shelves, we don't need, nor really want to place on the middle shelves so up to the top shelf they go. Given the option a lot of people would choose to not reach any shelf, and that's a good thing, because too much reaching is hard.
What you think that the OP is saying and what he or she is really getting at could be quite different....... The OP may be informed of how the existing situation...... is simply not the best that can be visualized. http://www.politicalforum.com/polit...-how-we-behaved-during-revolutionary-war.html We Canadians owe Americans an apology for how we behaved during Revolutionary War! .... ..... I would like to express my guilt/shame over the fact that my ancestors were gullible and obviously we bought into stories regarding the cause of the American Revolutionary War that were exaggerated and in many cases outright lies! Chapter 49 — The History of Banking Control in the United States http://www.michaeljournal.org/plenty49.htm Alain Pilote:
The most successful people whether truck drivers or hedge fund managers typically work well over 40 hours a week. The owner of the science fiction store near Disney World, Intergalactic Trading Company once told me he was working roughly 110 hours a week to push his business forward. Many NFL Head coaches have been known for during the football season for working more than 100 hours a week.
I can't even... Alright, here's the deal. You don't have to work 40 hours a week. Just do what you are talking about and cut back on 90% of the things you don't NEED and you can survive perfectly fine working about as much as you feel like it to pay rent and eat. In order to survive all a human being needs is food, water, and shelter. You can obtain all 3 of those things with very little money.
Why not make it $800/hour so you only have to work one hour a week? For that matter, why should anyone have to work at all? Just make a law that everyone has to pay each other $1000/week. If I'm paying you $1000/week and you're paying me $1000/week, then we're both making $52k/year, right?
If you have minimum education, skills, and work ethic, a minimum wage of $7.50 is just about right. Minimum wage jobs are not a lifes work.
Well, based on the above writing, you'd be lucky to make current American minimum wage..... (It's toll, not tole). The problem is that if your labor isn't worth $15 an hour, a $15 an hour minimum wage means you're unemployed.
Someone has to clean floors, windows, etcetera, and that someones likely going to want to be paid. Many, if not most companies need their minimum wage workers. As for the ones that don't, when they lay their employees off, put them on welfare (by the way, increase increase welfare) until they can find a job at or above minimum wage. Since many, if not most jobs are meaningless, and are largely excuses to give people money, this shouldn't be a problem. In less advanced times, 99% had to farm in order to feed 100% of people. Now 1% can feed 100%, due to technology. It's time working men and women see some of the benefits of the industrial and agricultural revolutions in terms of increased leisure. Either wages should keep up with advances in technology, or prices should, or both. The cost of living should at least be twice as cheap as it is, at the very least, with all the wild economic and technological growth that's taken place in the previous century or two, but ordinary people haven't really conferred the benefits of that growth, except in gadgets and gizmos. Our lives aren't any easier, because the rich hoard all the wealth.
Denmark has a 20 dollar minimum wage, and their economy didn't implode, it's stronger than the Canadian and American economy, per capita. Obviously 20000 dollars would send shock waves into the economy 15 or 20 dollars would not. 20000 an hour would mean we'd all have the same income, and could afford the same stuff, at least for a while, until things could be readjusted, assuming they could. I don't think everyone should be rich and everything should be redistributed equally, I'm not that much of an egalitarian, it's not that everyone should own everything in spite of obvious differences in work ethic and ability, it's that we easily can, and should lift the poorest members of our society out of poverty, in order to eliminate totally unfair and unnecessary suffering and hardship, especially considering wages have not kept up with technological advances and cost of living, when they obviously should have, in addition to decreasing our production/consumption levels. There's too much consumerism in our society, but 20000 dollars an hour wouldn't give anyone incentive to do anything, it'd be much to much. People need some incentive, but there's too much incentive, it's difficult to say with precision, how much less incentive there ought to be, but eliminating poverty for those who don't want to work much is a great start. Republicans and democrats both suck, because they both want economic growth, where as I, being more rational perhaps, would like to see stagnation, or decline. A society shouldn't be measured by economic growth, but by how free, healthy and safe its citizens are. Nothing in excess, runaway economic growth is a form of excess, a cancer, and much like a drug addict, we can't stop, it's too bad for our species, we may very well go extinct.
Yeah, I, and people like me, could build a cabin in the woods, or, we could just vote for the green party, I'm guess the latter would be easier, and probably less fantastical, given that I'm no hillbilly.
Comparing wanting to use government to lift people out of poverty, and wanting to give people the option not to be employed as much, to wanting to use government to lower the shelves by a foot or two in grocery stores, is absurd, obviously the issue I'm raising is immensely more relevant than this. Just because we want to use government to do some things, some times, does not mean we should use it for absolutely anything and everything we can think of. It's about moderation. Some challenges are good, some stretching at the supermarket is good, government intervening when it comes to small, trivial things, overstretching itself, is bad, but having to the option to work 20 hours a week instead of 40 hours, as well as lift people out of poverty, as I've argued in previous posts, is fair, feasible, and would make segments of society, probably society as a whole happier, and healthier, significantly so, in all likelihood.
That's not my definition of success. Success is not a number. Success is having some free time to take care of yourself, your health, your family, enjoy your life, and pursue your hobbies and interests. It isn't working as much as you can, making as much money as you can, it's contributing what really, truly needs to be contributed, and what we really feel like contributing, not being forced to contribute a lot of nothing, crap, garbage, waste, like most things in our consumerist society. For the average person, saying you can be a Walt Disney or a Bill Gates is silly, we're talking waitresses and janitors here, who'll probably only ever be that.
Unless you already make 20 dollars an hour, you have to work 40 hours a week to obtain the basics, and I don't think you should have to. You should be able to obtain the basics, and just work part time, or even 10 hours a week. Rich people seem to be doing just fine, they their families don't have to work at all. Common folk need to cut in on some of that action, nevermind this trickle down stuff, we need more like a downpour.
Because there have to be some challenges, incentives and rewards for doing a good job, the problem is people are struggling too much for reasons I've been going over. Necessity ought to be the mother of invention, the problem is the prices don't reflect reality, they're kept artificially high, things are made to seem artificially scarce, due to inflation caused by banking, unfair business practices, and the inability of the masses to organize themselves and form labor unions to counteract corporate greed. When society works too hard, in part because many of its members are struggling when they shouldn't have to, it produces too much trash, waste, and this takes a tole on our psychological, physical and environmental health. It's about balance, finding the right balance of work, incentives, and leisure, not eliminating them all together. I don't understand why everyone in my thread thinks it has to be all or nothing, it's like if we raise the minimum wage a little, and decrease economic growth, we might as well go all the way because that's how absurd everyone thinks it is. No, it's not absurd to improve things for everyone and especially for working people, within moderation. The black/white thinking needs to be dispensed with if we're going to get anywhere.
You actually havent countered a single one of my points. I agree that the agricultural and industrial revolutions were great for the economy. Your point? I'll take a hypothetical example that I heard from a WSJ article. Say I have an old car. It's not a very good car, and I've had it for a few years, but now i want to sell it. I put it on craigslist, and within a few days i get a reply from someone offering to give me $200 for it. This isn't exactly a great price, but its not exactly a great car either, so I agree to the transaction. All of a sudden, I get an email from the government saying that they would not allow me to make the deal, since there is a law saying that all cars have to be sold for at least $250, because anything less than that is "unfair" to me. All of a sudden I go from a place where I could potentially make $200 to making no money. It's the same with minimum wage. If two people voluntarily agree to a wage, why is it that the government can step in and say no? I agree that in a perfect world, wages would increase with technology (which, fyi, they already do). Wages should be constantly going up, and in a free market that's what happens naturally. What minimum wage does is it sets an artificial platform for wages. You create unemployment among low-skilled workers, and you cut off the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.
