Yeah which is why the economist in the OP's article suggested raising the minimum gradually wage to a target of $10.38. $10.38>$8.50 Check my work though. As you may have noticed in this thread I am capable of making errors from time to time. Link please to this fantastic claim... and I hope it isn't to the partisan hacks at the Heritage Foundation.
Hey man talk to your boy. I'm for a minimum wage. I don't think the nazi model is the way to go. You do have a point. When you eliminate minimum wage and use slave labor from concentration camps I suppose anything is possible. People really need to think about what they are suggesting on these threads.
From one perspective, simply raising the minimum wage does nothing to solve our war on poverty or the effects of a natural unemployment rate; why even bother to have a War on Poverty, if we only needed to raise the minimum wage to "solve" that social dilemma? In my opinion, we need a simple, but comprehensive solution to our problem, that can be accomplished with existing infrastructure and existing laws.
I wonder if the goal is to set a "living wage" as the bare minimum? And, if that is the goal as it seems to be for many liberals, what is a "living wage"? Is it enough to be single and share a 1 room apt wtih 2 roommates and have bus fare? Or, is it enough to support a wife and 2 kids, 2 cars, a 3 bedroom home in the burbs and dance lessons for the kids? I need more details about what is liberal utopia
I have no desire to replicate the Chinese wages or working conditions in this country. If you want to live like an animal you are perfectly free to move there... The Chinese are going to have big problems in the future. I remember as a small boy it was the Japanese that were going to take over. It was the Japanese that we were supposed to all copy. How are things going for our Japanese overlords these days?
American workers already make 10 times what Chinese workers make, and you wanna make it worse..... ****
In my opinion, we should be moral enough to bear true witness to our own laws. Why not solve for a natural unemployment and let the markets decided what the prevailing wage is, instead of the public sector? A simpler method, would be to simply subsidize the least efficient, to not provide labor input to the economy, for the equivalent to a minimum wage that may also solve for official poverty. Such a wage could be as easy to implement and administer as our current minimum wage laws are now.
This is zero-sum game gibberish. The economy doesn't work like that. There isn't a finite amount of wealth, and China getting some hurts the US. Such mercantilist thinking was discredited 200 years ago, and yet you seem to still cling to it.
I don't consider having a decent standard of living and making more than my Chinese counterpart "making it worse." I like our standard of living in this country. Like I said if you want to live in a polluted hell hole in squalor and abject poverty there are flights leaving for China multiple times a day. As for me, I love America. No race to the bottom for my America.
But raising the min. wage here means more goods will be produced by China and more jobs lost here. Its a very simple thing to see.
Yes just like it was simple to see that Japan was going to take over and we should hurry up and copy them. This has all happened before and it will all happen again. As the article I posted indicates there is no free lunch. If you want to drop wages and show a wanton disregard for the environment then you will have your workers dropping dead in their 40s and you will need a totalitarian regime in place to suppress food riots.
perhaps the market has determiend what is now natural unemployment I also question why you propose increased welfare when entitlements are crippling us?
Stalin had Gulags, Hitler had the Jews, and Mao had Chinese prisoners banging out Woks on a rock, that's what bigger government gets you.
What about the socialist countries of modern northern Europe? They have better education, longer life expectancy, and overall better satisfaction with life in general. You forgot them in your cherry picked list.
Yeah and all of a sudden Socialist European countries had a better education than the Asian Countries with a very little or no minimum wage. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001.pdf
Just like it was easy to see the Japanese were going to take over. Remeber this from the 80's? It was in every periodical. It was in People Magazine for crying out loud! How are our Japanese overlords doing now? Don't fall for the scare tactics of big business. They will do anything to get you to sell out the common American worker. China is a cesspool and they are going to have big problems in the future. I would not be too quick to follow them into the gutter.
Sure I've checked out socialist northern Europe. I wish we had an economy like some of those socialists... You should turn off the Rush Limbaugh and check them out too.
simply because we have been "wasting" our tax monies on a War on Poverty for over thirty years; at what point should it simply be considered a boondoggle and generational form of theft; that requires more national and more socialized public policies; rather than the "entitlement" of providing for the general welfare and common defense of the United States. how does your point of view account for corporate welfare, which has even paid bonuses; or our wars on abstractions, which can also be considered a form of entitlement for the military-industrial complex, if not the People.
What you don't understand is the union is failing. That is a larger problem and none of those northern European countries are powerhouses, they are small and generally insignificant, you don't see them bailing out their southern brethren do you? WE have to do it. If they were so (*)(*)(*)(*)ed great, they could do it. Looking to Europe for examples is never going to help the US, it never has in the past, just draws us deeper into their collective failures. Our history proves that over and over and over again.
Show where I claimed Norway was part of the EU? Show us all what Norway has done to help anyone, anywhere, at anytime. They are an insignificant country, incapable of being leaders in the world, much less being an example for those who are a part of the world around them. I think the last time Norway was used as an example it was to band together against the rape and pillage from the longboats casting off their shores.
The general government of our Union is specifically delegated the power to "bailout" the several States, yet, no one is claiming the same, even by analogy.