30 Dollar Minimum Wage

Don’t get me wrong, no system is perfect, far from it, and every system is going to have corruption, because humans can be greedy, selfish and violent animals, some more than others, often even contrary to their own interests.
Of course socialism can be corrupted too, some corruption is unavoidable.
I’m arguing that socialism, and some other schools of thought on the left, there’s more than one, is better than capitalism, or at least what we really need right now.

Capitalism and its propensity to generate enormous economic growth, and all the good/bad that comes with that, is obsolete at this stage of our development.
Because things aren’t good, and in all likelihood are going to get a hell of a lot worse: corruption/disparities are monstrous, our health is questionably diminishing, and nature is unquestionably diminishing.
Make no mistake, this is capitalism we’re under, fundamentally, with some corporatism and a pathetic amount of socialism tossed in.

I wholeheartedly believe we need to begin seriously examining alternatives as individuals and as a democracy, make preparations to change course during this brief calm, if our civilization is to weather the coming storms ahead.
So vote for a third party, the liberals/conservatives of Canada or the republicrats of the US are totally corrupt, but don’t vote libertarian, they might be a little bit better than republicans in some ways, but worse in others and basically more of the same.
Vote NDP, Green, some other party or independent.

We need a major min wage increase, or better yet, we need to take over food and housing, make them affordable, and save the environment.
The game is no longer about how much wealth we can generate if it ever should’ve been in the first place, now it’s about putting all that wealth to good use.
Presently we are squandering it on war and shopping malls while millions live in poverty and thousands of species are dying, it’s absolutely appalling.

Doesn’t matter, there are rooms for rent in the US at $200 per rent.

You, Wendy, and Reasonable are all wrong.

Obviously if you pay more, you get more.

You are. Liberal-leftist-socialists should be spending 50% of their own time and money on the poor, before asking anybody else to spend more. If you don’t then you’re just a hypocrite.

It’s not “an opinion”. For you to stick your hand into other people’s dealings, and then complain about fairness, is hypocrisy. Taxation is theft. You’re merely trying to justify your thievery, taking the profits and successes of others. Taking bites of a pie you had no part in making.

I’m against the momentum of the modern world going liberal-left and towards more socialism, towards more third-party meddling and entitlement.

Corporations have taken advantage of socialistic idealists, such as yourself, and raked in the profits of your mistakes.

Corporations have ways around laws such as $30 minimum, by cutting worker hours, less hiring, laying off workers, etc.

The larger corporations are relatively immune to socialistic-leftist meddling. They can afford to get around all social-government interventions. Small businesses, small corporations, small industries, will all be destroyed. Thus the world will be worse off by socialistic-leftist meddling. Socialists and leftists are not actually targeting or penalizing the ones they hope to, with inept understanding of economics. Liberal-leftists try to penalize the “top 1%” but end up hurting the middle class more. This is another reason why “economic equality” cannot be enforced, especially not through democracy and legislation. Corporations will pay politicians off anyway, who do you think sponsors election campaigns?

You’re the one claiming “everybody deserves” (a place to live).

Then you’re complaining that it’s not big enough. It’s a slippery-slope. Apparently you have no limit. You want everybody sitting on gold toilets with gold toilet paper?

You obviously don’t know China very well. They’re overpopulated. In Tokyo, it’s normal to be packed in like sardines. I don’t think you really care that much. Moot point.

It does work, which is mostly why minimum wage has climbed so high in the first place. Workers demand more pay with or without third-party intervention. Employers must compete against other employers.

Different societies and groups of humans want and decide upon different things.

US attitudes are for pro-capitalism, pro class mobility, and less socialistic interventions. What works in one place, does not work in another ($30 minimum wage).

Corporations are neither necessarily bad or necessarily good. As you said, they are an end-result. Is it bad that computers were monopolized at one point, with IBM, Microsoft, and Intel running the industry? No, they made computers cheap for everybody, for personal use, and led to the world as it is today. Apple competed out of survival. Eventually laws were passed to curtail and cut-up Microsoft. There were pros and cons to the Microsoft monopoly.

But the average wage of Microsoft employees rose, they did not fall. So your conjectures are simply wrong. Microsoft employees and other software/hardware engineers, have rose very high over the past 50 years. So your economic conjectures just do not paint the reality on the ground.

There are third-party intervention in all things. Parenting, as you mention, is a form of social intervention. But, according to my point, do you want the government intervening into the personal and private lives of families? It’s one thing for parents to dictate over children. It’s another for foreigners, moral crusaders, politicians, and the rest of society.

Here’s the deal, when somebody is successful, when two parents successfully raise a family, then others (Socialists) will want to intervene and take credit, or take advantage, of those successes. That’s what I’m against. I’m more for appropriating causes and responsibility, where they belong. By mob-rule, democrats, leftists, liberals, socialists, have all gained too much power, and have the gumption and gall to think they can go around claiming anybody and anything, even “the upbringing” of private families.

Sex. Economy. Do socialists-liberal-leftists have any limits of what they can’t or won’t stick their nose in?

There is already third-party intervention. I already admitted that. There is already taxation…25% or more, of your income, taken out of your pocket, in the “interests of general society”. Somebody is already profiting off your work and life.

Dead people can’t profit off their own labor, but I do agree with royalties and that families of inventor’s, or according to their wills and words, should get some royalties. Bill Gates, for example, if he wants to give away most of his fortune and success to whomever he wants, then that’s his business. Socialists would be the one try to tax it, by taxing death, inheritance, anything they can get their hands on.

Bullshit, I’ve worked my ass off in life. I deserve every cent I made, and possibly, the amounts taken by taxation. I’m not against all taxation. In the US it’s relatively fair. I agree with public roads and the military. That’s about it though. I’m against education spending. There should be more privatization and responsibility of parents to educate their own children.

There’s already too much socialistic interventions. And it’s pushing further left and socialistic. I’m against that.

Like you say, there is surplus. But that “surplus” comes from the third-party intervention. People don’t pay taxes out of charity. They pay because they have to, are forced to, by mob-rule. If a few people don’t pay taxes then the rest of society hunts them down, because they don’t want a few people cheating the system while the rest have to pay.

$275 is not $200. Try again, try to find an even hornier guy’s ad. Heck, place one yourself for $1.99 and prove us all way wrong. :laughing:

It hurts being wrong doesn’t it?

What’s even funnier is that you are actually serious when you ask me such. :laughing:

There are 3 bedrooms in arkansas for $700, that’s about $200 each room.

How many times would you like to be wrong??

How is a person with an allotted $200 for rent supposed to rent that $700 house? Where are they going to come up with the security deposit? Not to mention the other $500? Even if it was simple and safe to rent a room from some stranger soliciting on craiglist, it would have to be the $200 that you spoke of (not $275…you’re a stubborn boy), there’d have to be a keyed entry to your private quarters, and no security deposit. Then there’d be negotiations on utilities for you’d have very little $ to work with. I realize that you enjoy being the thorn in my side and others, but it’s not doable with $600 in a city or a rural area, even if you made use of social program freebies or reduced rate services.

Post the link.
Don’t get me wrong, you’re probably telling the truth, but I think you owe it to the thread to post it.

That being said, we shouldn’t be basing economic policy off of a few ads on craigslist, many of them are outright scams, and even the ones that aren’t, often don’t do things above board, they may not pay taxes, they may not follow building codes, they may not have working appliances and so on.
We should be basing economic policy on sound statistics, and 610 isn’t going to cut it anywhere in Canada, and whatever welfare a, b or c state is offering probably isn’t going to cut it either.
A few exceptions, a room here or there in some backwater redneck ghettos or rural slums don’t disprove the rule, and economic policy has to be based on the rule, we cannot micromanage, or plan for every detail.
People can’t just hightail it out of the city en masse, and that’s where the majority of people live in Canada and the states, in the city, and in apartments.

People, especially women and single moms, ought to be entitled to safer living quarters than this.

fayar.craigslist.org/apa/d/see- … 18061.html

You all should do your homework.

Your “$30 per hour wage” dreams are delusional and don’t apply across the country. Maybe in a densely populated city center but you’re discounting the reality. Dreams built on delusions.

Local economies dictate prices, wages, living standards, etc. Monopolies aren’t necessarily bad or evil. In fact you should thank monopolization for causing $500-$1000 personal computers, what you’re using right now. “Thank you Microsoft!”

Again, a few or even some exceptions don’t disprove the rule.
The rule is: for the last half a century, wages have been relatively stagnating and the price of essentials, which’re what really matter, are relatively rising, people are getting poorer and poorer.
If capitalism was working for the environment, or for the middle and lower classes, than fine, if statistically I made more this year than last year, and more last year than the year before, excellent, but that’s not the case, and that’s grounds for considering serious reforms, patching up a few holes here or there isn’t going to cut it, the system needs an overhaul.

Capitalism is probably one of, if not the greatest system we have for generating wealth or productivity, I think few people argue this, because people, especially or particularly the middle and working classes have to work really hard, but generating productivity isn’t the sole criterion of the good.
Are the people benefitting, is the environment, are we producing things people really need, or even truly want, or are we just producing shit to produce shit?
Some things I think most people think are great like computers (altho they have their drawbacks, which’s a whole other topic) have come out of the last half a century, so I’ll give you that, but a lot of stuff we really didn’t need has too, and the ecological time clock is ticking.
We need less productivity, for the sake of the environment, the poor shouldn’t be forced to work more than the economy needs them to in order to sustain itself.

Wrong, you are not being honest or realistic. You cannot rent a $650 home on a fixed income of $600. You have to find a place that is priced at $200 like you said. Not $225. Not $250. Not $275. $200 which is what you said exists.

This is blatantly false. Wages have increased and continue to increase. $10 an hour was unheard of in the 1970s. A gallon of gas used to be $0.50. Candy bars used to be dimes and nickles. Employee wages and inflation are strongly linked together. And usually employee wages dictate inflation, even more than loan rates. If the average member of any population gets a $1.00 wage bump, prices will go up for groceries, gas, rent, and other basics. So increasing wages doesn’t necessarily mean “better off”. As I mentioned, the best you can hope for, based on wage along, is class fluidity and moving between rich to poor, or poor to rich, easier.

This thread isn’t about the environment. It’s about the minimum wage.

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

It seems pretty obvious to me that what you think would happen, from $30 per hour wages, wouldn’t happen. Your knowledge of economics is all mixed up, beginning with the fact, that employers and employees dictate average wages, based on their own personal and private interests. Third-party meddling doesn’t necessarily “help” anybody. Especially when there is already a tax system and minimum wage laws were already raised, and continue to raise slowly.

It’s not “magic solution”. It would probably harm your own convictions more than help too, which is what I’ve pinpointed throughout this thread.

So in short, my conclusion is, even if you were to raise the minimum wage $30 per hour then it wouldn’t help in the ways you believe it would, and would probably do more harm in the long run than anything else.

I don’t believe in eternal economic growth. Western civilization is at a point of post-colonialistic progress. Capitalism is running out of areas and avenues to exploit, and henceforth, average people are turning to socialism to gouge more money out of society. But that hurts more than helps, and it’s at the cost of personal freedoms and individuality, which I support. Therefore I’m solidly against it. Average western people have already given up too many freedoms for security.

If people were actually ‘liberal’ then they would agree with me. Liberty is being stripped away by socialism. Economic liberalism is backward. Liberty means less taxation, third-party intervention, and “minimum wage” laws. Today’s liberals are backward, and the exact opposite of what they used to be.

You’re wrong. It’s in the $200 range, as in 200-299. And it’s close enough.

Neener neener neener.

Oh, now it’s a range. I see. A range of dishonesty.

I have a computer, that’s great, but so what?
We have a few more gadgets and gizmos now, but if in order to get that, it means I’ll have to struggle more and more to survive, until we’re back in the 19th century or China, then what difference does it make?
I’d rather not have my computer and not be a slave.
It’s the essentials that matter, them being artificially scarce is what keeps the hamsters running on the wheel producing mostly junk that largely not only does not benefit the diminishing middle and lower classes, but doesn’t really benefit anyone, even the rich.
We don’t need to produce all this junk, give people the option, and many will choose not to produce as much as they are now.

So average humans are able to travel 100x faster, communicate 100x faster, work 100x faster than a century ago.

Society almost always goes forward, not backward. It’s only going to get faster and more efficient the next 100 years, not less.

There will always be slaves, now with computers, and a millennium ago without computers. Having a computer or not, doesn’t really impact freedom versus slavery. If you want to be free then you should advocate personal freedoms and individuality, less taxation, and less third-party interventions.

Artificial scarcity is the product of monopolization, but it’s not as bad as you make it out to be. Socialists, such as yourself, have very much curtailed and compensated for corporate monopolization, with the counter-balance of social third-party intervention (government, taxes, policies, regulations). The (human) world is doing just fine.

Socialism used to be about an economic intervention - namely to usurp all the capitalists and carry on doing the same work that workers were doing anyway, but with all the business assets being owned socially instead of privately bought through the use of money as capital, y’know, like when it was first being created and defined and the terms meant what they were made to mean.

But now it’s used instead of the term “Authoritarianism”, basically its exact opposite, where government has authority over your personal life, and instead of the means to work being owned socially/publicly, they’re controlled by a state that’s composed of elites, not “the people”/workers.

Likewise Liberalism used to mean being liberal with regard to social issues, with minimal to no government intervention… but now it’s used instead of the term “Authoritarianism”, basically its exact opposite, where government has authority over your personal life.

Ask any actual leftist what they want, and they’ll usually support what Socialism used to mean for the economy, and what Liberalism used to mean for your personal life.
I’m not in favour of government intervening in the personal and private lives of families - which is how the two terms have been appropriated to mean by not-Liberal-not-Socialists.
I am in favour of them making up for where the “Classical Liberal” ideal of “perfect competition” routinely fails. The “hand of the market” is supposed to keep the economy in check, but Capitalist “success” today basically revolves around avoiding perfect competition scenarios as much as possible. Poor people don’t have the power to keep this in check, they have their iota of consumer influence, but only insofar as they can buy what they’re given or go without - and you can’t go without everything if you want to stay alive. So they elect a government to act on their collective wishes and keep the capitalists in check, but then the capitalists just buy their votes and those who are elected end up as corporate cronies who actually help make the whole situation worse. What ends up happening is more like a kind of Socialism for Capitalists! Any breaks the poor get are just to maintain their ability to carry on working and getting paid less than they earn their employer so they can profit off more people for longer - therefore getting even richer than they otherwise would.
I am against this kind of intervention.
I want intervention against this kind of intervention.

But back onto “taking advantage of the (economic) success of others”: be as productive as you like, whatever your politics. You will anyway - regardless of the financial reward, because internal satisfaction is what drives the productive anyway.
And if they produce or help produce physically way more in the way of goods and services than they need (as so very many do with all the technology, infrastructure and working methods that we now use), then is it immoral for that to be shared with those who don’t produce as much as they need or anything at all for whatever reason - given that the surplus of production is so vast that it’s easily possible to do so? Whenever I’ve had more money than I need, I’ve been quite happy for it to go towards others - and many other people think so too.

As is always the case, your issue will be with consent. Share the fruits of your labour, sure, but not because the government is forcing you to, right?
Well the problem is that not all people “think so too” - they are unhappy for the massive surplus that they’ve helped create to be shared with others.

Let’s not forget that the “art” of paying people less than they earn your company is NOT productivity - nor is the knack for finding the best ways to do this. It’s a redistribution technique like taxation, but with no accountability. “It’s the market, not me!” If it’s the market that “dictates” the wages of your employees such that they are less than what they earn you, then you don’t have to feel any responsibility (something of which you claimed to be in favour) for taking from people and giving to yourself: it’s “your” company. But somehow, if the distribution is visible and accountable, suddenly then it’s awful! It’s only “your” company because you were rich and connected enough in the first place to buy the stuff you needed to start and fund its operations, and it’s “others” who actually do the operations for you - it’s more theirs than it is yours, just because you happened to start off richer than them.

The particularly rich get and stay rich because they are unhappy for wealth to be distributed with accountability, which is exactly why they their charity is never enough, and it’s certainly insufficient to undo the distribution-without-accountability that is making and keep them rich. Bill Gates can give so much because he’s admitted he makes money faster than he can spend it - he genuinely doesn’t need it, but you don’t see him trying to undo the mechanism that channels so much money to him. And since none of them do, then we need a body that will: a government. Sorry, if the rich aren’t going to be socially (and environmentally) responsible, then they don’t “deserve” to be fully in charge. It’s the rich who are the entitled ones, choosing to pay themselves more than their employees (profit). They’re all engaged in these petty battles with their counterparts - trying to outdo each other materially in a pissing contest, when there are plenty of others who could be said to “deserve” it more. Honestly, I think beyond a certain monetary wealth, it should be become a points system - it’d serve the same purpose, but not at the expense of society and even the economy.

And who really makes this money anyway? Employers wouldn’t be rich if they didn’t have employees to profit from - they owe their ENTIRE income to them, because that is what their entire income is literally from. And the employer and employees wouldn’t be able to constitute a productive business if it weren’t for all their customers. And all this money has to circulate through all kinds of other businesses and other people too to get back to the money “made” by any particular employer - they owe the ENTIRE economy. Money isn’t made, it is attracted from an existing flow that travels through all people. Indirect causes are still causes.

I have no doubt. So many people of all incomes work their ass off. It’s almost as though there’s no correlation between how hard you work and how much money you get - in so many cases. People who work this hard have to convince themselves that their work was worth it, so of course they think they deserved every penny they made. Maybe you’d have made less if there was no education spending… I don’t know what education you had. Education is just another area that can’t be left to the risks of complete privatisation. It’s all very well taking a moral high ground and saying it’s the parents’ responsibilities to fund the education of their child and children, but since there are inevitably going to be economic losers if there are going to be economic winners, with all of the losers being unable to afford the education, just imagine the sheer degree of incompetence going around… Obviously with no hope, crime becomes tempting - maybe you’re saying you’d be happier to live in a country of even more unemployed criminal morons, but I can’t say I feel the same way.

You have to look beyond just your own needs and your own situation, you have to consider that tough love isn’t an optimal solution for everyone in all situations: for all the people in situations where it does help there are many where it does quite the opposite. In an economy and a society, what goes around quite literally comes around - you have to see ALL the system and know all the potential consequences just to give your own needs and situation any real meaningful context whatsoever. Otherwise you’re just imagining “what would it be like if social responsibility didn’t have to apply to me and others?” which is just fantasy.