hose Who Support the Minimum Wage Must Advocate for the Prohibition of Volunteering

I really think that the better argument would have been to talk about prisoner labor.
But actually the reality in prison labor these days is low paid work for for-profit companies which is arguably more exploitative than free labor for the public (since it's assumed prisoners are "paying back" the public).

 

Probably. But I'm still working on my first cup of coffee.

I really don't think we should have prisoner labor at all, actually. But that sounds like "coddling prisoners" to some people. It's not politically correct to be against prison labor.

 

It's not politically correct to suggest anything that actually stands a chance of reintegrating prisoners or getting the poor out of poverty.

For some reason the conventional wisdom is built around punitive measures in all areas.
It's amazing how that works.

The best way to get prisoners to work and reintegrate is to put them on probation and get them jobs.

 

Don't tell him that! Facts and common logic confuse him!

 

Yeah, basically it amounts to retirees having more time on their hands and flexibility, well-off people having more disposable income, and religious people spending regular time at churches that encourage donation and volunteerism for themselves and other causes.

Also I think people tend to give paid workers for non-profits a short stick (Randroids even consider them "moochers"). They do take salaries, but they make running non-profits possible and with the opportunity cross of way more money that could be earned doing the same work for a private company.
This kind of goes with the more sensible end of the OP's point (the all or nothing idea).

 

I would certainly be against "volunteers" working at for profit companies for free, even though many do. But I do not see how that is the same as someone donating time instead of money to charity organizations. After all, time is money.

The OP is making the assumption that there is no difference between for profit private employers who seek private gains and non-profit charity organizations whose seek to improve the public good. But there is a difference and it is quite signficant.

A minimum wage for private employment reduces the subsidy that private companies receive from public and private charity by underpaying their workers who then avail themselves of public and private charity to make ends meet. This is far different than charity volunteers who reduce the expense of providing charity.

Unlike a minimum wage for private workers, which reduces the need for public and private charity a minimum wage for charity volunteers will increase it.

It must be assumed that the OP is as anti-charity as pro business.

 

This Randroid doesn't.

 

I suppose all those sign waving political partisans will need to be paid too according to the OP.... Oh wait, they already are.

 

The minimum wage makes the rich feel better about themselves, and look better in the eyes of the poor; and it is harmless to the pocketbook. Sure you have to pay your employees slightly more, but because you are rich and they are poor, you probably own the house/apartment they live in, and/or the land where their food and energy is produced, so you can simply increase the rents you demand from them, and magically get your money back plus some.

So don’t complain or question about the minimum wage, just buy some rent-seeking privileges, and take that money back… it is simple. This same principle works for welfare, if you own the right rent-seeking privileges, you can pocket that money also…robbing from the middle to put money in the hands of the poor, where it is much easier to recapture, it is a great way to expand your income.

What you need to rail against is these bulk tax credit payments that many of the working poor get at tax time. These bulk payments are harder to recapture through rent… the buggers quickly spend it on luxuries before it can fully be reclaimed it in higher rents. We need to encourage that those payments be spread out over the year, because when the poor have a steady stream of income, it makes it much easier to recapture that money through increased rents… that means more luxuries for the rich and less for the poor workers … that is what we are really after, right?

...

 

I don't support minimum wage in an employee's market. Basically, where America was 10 to 15 years ago with jobs busting out the seems. But, even though I'm a capitalist, America and my countrymen come 1st, and if so many are going to argue the destruction of the American way of life so they can make a few extra bucks through outsourcing, I say "to hell with them". Make minimum wage 20 bucks an hour.

 

Hell, let's make it $250 an hour.

 

Hell, a 1000. War is war. Globalists started it, nationalists will finish it.

 

No, you see the free market globalists are going to win because they never approached this situation as a violent conflict.

 

LMAO. So because violence is the only way left, and everyone is programmed that violence is wrong, Americans just have to take it up the ass until the end of time? You have a stronger faith in programming than I.

 

Violence was the only way to start it.

You almost made me sneeze Safeway brand generic orange soda all over my keyboard. It is precisely because everyone has been programmed that violence is right that Americans are going to take it up the ass.

 

Please. 300 million people have been bread to be greedy pigs for 200 years because it suited the top's purpose, and now you are just going to cut them off, because "only those who can profit off globalization have a right to remain greedy"? Life simply does not work like that. Never has. Never will.

 

It is interesting that the poor in the US also have the most military training and many others are gangsters who know a lot about guns. Few middle class kids end up in the infantry, or in gangs, or ever see a gun.

If it comes to violence the poor are the best trained and the best armed population.

 

It would all come down to rural working class whites and gangsters being able to work together.

Cowboys, farmers, and ranchers. Would they fallow the programming of neocons, or go with what has been told across the dinner table, in the diners, at the bar, and in the secret meetings held in barns for a century?

Gangsters. Do they truly want a better life for their neighborhoods, or was it all an excuse to be savages?

Both are no doubt the pool to which the military draws water from. But can they work together? I think so. But only time will tell.

 

What an odd contortion of reality - though I suppose you're simply living up to your screen name.

There would be no battle lines drawn as you suggest. "The Poor" - as you qualify them - aren't the people you think they are. Those who may have been financially poor upon entry to the military don't leave in that condition, nor do they (if they ever did) possess the helpless victim mentality that you seem to lap up like a dog. These are people who understand the opportunity this country offers; they appreciate self-sufficience and have been rewarded for it...and they're hard workers.

They're quite unlike the people you hope them to be when it comes to drawing battle lines.

There will be no substantive revolution of the "put-upon" as you seem to relish. There will be lazy rabble-rousers and societal pondscum dependence addicts and criminals, vs. the rest of us.

And I can assure you that the rest of us will put that component of society down with extreme prejudice, should it ever come to that.

 

So if it came down to it Sub, you would fight for the people in charge? I really like your posts and perspectives. That would suck to think you would fight for the globalists.

 

I was giving a talk about some innovative programs involving volunteers and two men in the back of the room were so hostile and disruptive that others in the audience took them on. They were union representatives and voluteers reduced the number of paid employees which reduced the income of the union which is why the union exists.

I am personally amazed that unions haven't started demanded--backed by threats, of course--that volunteers pay union dues.

 

They have unions in Mexico?

 

I'm not talking about "globalists". I'm talking about Constitutionalists - and they are most certainly not "the poor". They are people of all cross-sections of life. I'll fight against any force which looks to remove the sovereignty of the traditional Constitutional American.

I do not appreciate posters who make it about one's asset class, because it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with character and substance.

 

Some of us aren't restricted by law from moving. Talk to your parole officer.

 

I see what you're saying.