Lets Raise Taxes on Big Corporations!

[pbfoot]

I agree to an extant but most manufacturing jobs are paid more then the service tasks that are paid lower wages.
If the employer is not willing to pay a living wage what do you think the chances are he's helping with health insurance?

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by pbfoot

I agree to an extant but most manufacturing jobs are paid more then the service tasks that are paid lower wages.
If the employer is not willing to pay a living wage what do you think the chances are he's helping with health insurance?

Here's something to think about.

Let's say I'm an entrepreneur. I run a business that makes little umbrellas that go into cocktails. Do you think I'm going to pay a "living wage?" Do you think I'm going to offer health benefits to my employees? At the same time this is a low skilled job - what kind of people would you expect to hire? My guess would be either a student or someone who just wants to make a few extra bucks on the side, but if you're looking at this position as a career, there are problems outside of this scenario that the individual better address.

So with that, a government who forces living wages and health benefits on small, unskilled businesses will eventually drive them out of business and yes jobs like this will wind up in 3rd world countries. An opportunity for at least a part time employment is gone. To me "a job" (even if it is a low paying unskilled position) is better than "no job."

There's nothing wrong with manufacturing offering a good benefit package and a good wage for skilled labor, but the problem is unions would want low skilled positions to make top dollar - look at what has happened to the automotive industry. For too many years folks with minimal post high school skills have relied on large companies who offer these modest blue collar wages for skills that have little or no use outside that company. When the economy goes in the crapper, these people are hit the hardest.

A case that I witnessed directly - I spent 10 years at Lockheed. Prior to getting hired there I got my A&P license. I learned a trade. There were people there who were hired through an apprentice program and eventually were working assembling airplanes. While making a decent salary, very few of these folks expanded their vocational or educational skills. When the business got slow, they were the first ones to get laid off and had little or no options with regards to staying in the aerospace industry. They also complained the loudest.

This scenario applies to the US - I know things are a little different in Canada or in parts or Europe but this is a typical cycle that have existed for a number of years and for the most part I cannot entirely blame big business for.

[Bluehawk]

Originally Posted by mkloby

Since when is it the government's responsibility to set wages that it believes are "fair?" Also, define "fair" please. If someone has a minimum wage job, they have the freedom to gain education and/or skills to make themselves more valuable in the job market and secure a better paying job. They don't, however, have the freedom to make others pay their higher wages because they will not...

Much the same might be said of the manner and frequency with which the government assumes unto itself the responsibility to set any number of thresholds, rates, and percentages... but nearly always ON BEHALF OF corporations and specific industries. Yet, that said, they steadfastly refuse to govern the hideously usurious interest rates of payday and vehicle title lenders, KNOWING that they should if there were a shred of morality in their bones.

Perfect example would be the prime lending rate! Why should that be the government's responsibility to alter according to industry pressures and favoritism?

And, it is in THOSE and other such gnarly unpleasant bean-counting details where the "consumer" will usually discover why it is that there is not a darn thing we can do to make more fair anything having to do with uncontrolled inflation.

Anyone who imagines otherwise is asleep or careless.

Why, then, would it not be AS positive a measure for something truly serious to be done to index minimum wages to the cost of living, or some other rational standard?

It was not pleasant, I'm sure, for retirees whose pitiful COLA % got MORE than eaten up by recent fuel cost rises. And, same for the tragedy for truly minimum wage workers whose pathetic little increase this year got poured into the first 10 or fewer gas tanks they had to fill. Such people end up splitting their medicine pills, or being unable to provide proper nutrition, or pay their heating costs. Corporations and government merely adjust their invoices, and we pay, and pay, and pay, and pay.

If the business world would make AS much noise when they see their other costs going up as they do when a few cents are added to a worker's hourly wages, then maybe there would eventually be equity in our society. Hiring and firing laws, and working conditions are such that the laborer most often has NO possible choice. That, is a governmental obligation to rectify.

The GOP goes berserk whenever minimum wage increases are proposed, as if that and that alone is going to "put employers out of business"... and THAT, dear friends, is a crock of stinking nonsense.

As for the supposed benefit of higher education, one must accept that not everyone is suited for it nor interested in it, and furthermore that those who DO achieve it are not guaranteed ANYTHING approaching better than minimum wage - indeed many find themselves working precisely in those conditions, being unable to find work in their field, being laid off, or a host of other necessities resulting entirely from the actions of others. You can educate yourself to the hilt and still become impoverished by forces over which nobody has control.

The notion that some people are not as motivated or reliable is doubtless. However, why then would the entire system find automatic justification in setting its norms at the LOWEST common denominator?

So, I would turn the question back - and say, "Why should the government take the position that employers are MORE deserving of cost and income protections than individuals?"

If Republicans were true to the essential tenets of their party, then it would be THEY who would be agitating for minimum wage protections with a fervor equal to that which they lavish upon themselves and corporate interests.

[pbfoot]

as the old analogy states you can give a man a fish or give him a fishing rod without fair pay he can't get the fishing rod

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by pbfoot

as the old analogy states you can give a man a fish or give him a fishing rod without fair pay he can't get the fishing rod

But that's the point - what warrants "fair pay?" $20 an hour for making toothpick umbrellas or $30 an hour for building electronic devices?

The laborer skilled enough to build electronic devices could probably write his or her ticket based on them having a trade or education. The umbrella builder better hope the company stays in business!

[Bluehawk]

Originally Posted by pbfoot

as the old analogy states you can give a man a fish or give him a fishing rod without fair pay he can't get the fishing rod

And, the first Republican who does what they should be doing will become a much beloved President on an opposite par with FDR...

I give zero support for "taxing big businesses or major corporations"... I'd be content if they just paid the taxes they owe without hiding their assets in tax exempt places, both physical and legal, start eating more of the costs they incur just like everybody else, and quit with criminally excessive rewarding of failed executives.

[Bluehawk]

Originally Posted by FLYBOYJ

But that's the point - what warrants "fair pay?" $20 an hour for making toothpick umbrellas or $30 an hour for building electronic devices?

The laborer skilled enough to build electronic devices could probably write his or her ticket based on them having a trade or education. The umbrella builder better hope the company stays in business!

And, of course, that is economic Darwinism doing its inexorable best and worst.

There WILL come a day, far from within our lifetimes, when that builder of electronic devices will be peddling HIS wares from a neglected storefront with water stained signs in a bad part of town... and the rain shall still fall upon the wicked and the just, all the same.

[pbfoot]

Its got to be more then 6.55 an hour and ours is nothing to be proud about at 8.75

[mkloby]

Bluehawk and PB - your arguements are based in ethics, not economics (not to say basing policy on ethics is bad, I just believe in this case it can be counterproductive). Much like those that support these policies - the intent is good... but the reality and outcome is usually not the same.

Bluehawk you mention payday loans - some of them are terrible indeed. But keep this in mind. They are willing to loan money in the form of unsecured loans to individuals that have very poor credit. Common sense tells you that they are going to have VERY HIGH default rates. To cover this risk, they charge high interest rates. If the government puts a cap on the interest rate they are able to charge, and it is below the rate necessary for them to stay in business, they will clearly stop making such loans. Now, you have effectively taken away the only short term source of loans away from a group that does not have the credit to secure a more favorable loan.

Now - this holds true to a point of reason. It does not cover those that charge 2,000% interest...

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by Bluehawk

And, of course, that is economic Darwinism doing its inexorable best and worst.

There WILL come a day, far from within our lifetimes, when that builder of electronic devices will be peddling HIS wares from a neglected storefront with water stained signs in a bad part of town... and the rain shall still fall upon the wicked and the just, all the same.

Perhaps;

My point begin the more education and the more professionally and vocationally diverse you are, the better you're going to be able to make it through these times.

Originally Posted by pbfoot

Its got to be more then 6.55 an hour and ours is nothing to be proud about at 8.75

The bottom line is if you're making that much money as a family breadwinner you better be doing a self assessment of why you're where you are.

[pbfoot]

Some people are just SOL in life and just have to make do on these type of jobs ,
At least he isn't on welfare

[Bluehawk]

Originally Posted by mkloby

Bluehawk and PB - your arguements are based in ethics, not economics (not to say basing policy on ethics is bad, I just believe in this case it can be counterproductive). Much like those that support these policies - the intent is good... but the reality and outcome is usually not the same.

Bluehawk you mention payday loans - some of them are terrible indeed. But keep this in mind. They are willing to loan money in the form of unsecured loans to individuals that have very poor credit. Common sense tells you that they are going to have VERY HIGH default rates. To cover this risk, they charge high interest rates. If the government puts a cap on the interest rate they are able to charge, and it is below the rate necessary for them to stay in business, they will clearly stop making such loans. Now, you have effectively taken away the only short term source of loans away from a group that does not have the credit to secure a more favorable loan.

Now - this holds true to a point of reason. It does not cover those that charge 2,000% interest...

We're not very far apart...

My view is perhaps a moral one, which I view as not being separable from sound economics.

We have laws, for example, which make it illegal but not impossible, for people to purchase substances which are guaranteed to rot their brains and bodies and souls - e.g. methadrine.

The fact that they can pay for it or manufacture it is irrelevant.

I regard payday and title lenders who charge criminal rates as being in that category of business. Just as I regard AIG taking the federal dole and then staging a half million dollar junket to be criminal... while paying their failed CEO roughly $350,000,000 for his trouble and a former executive $1,000,000 a month for being "available."

I don't need those type of lenders or CEOs coming to us with complaints about how tough things are in their damned "risky" businesses. They wanted in, and they are in. That doesn't give them a right to commit crimes... unless of course our government lets them.

And, what is just as bad, people with poor credit risk should not be ALLOWED to borrow any more money... just as we don't permit heroin pushers to set up bright yellow shops on major thoroughfares to sell junk to addicts. What kind of a sadistic enterprise is that, anyway. What kind of sick rationale allows it to exist...

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by pbfoot

Some people are just SOL in life and just have to make do on these type of jobs ,
At least he isn't on welfare

True but one can work their way out of it.

I grew up in NYC projects. My parents for a spell were on welfare and we did get food stamps. I know first hand what its like to be poor but I made damn sure I wasn't going to stay poor and I wasn't going to do anything illegal to raise my standard of living. Study, hard work and focus - it does work.

[Bluehawk]

Originally Posted by FLYBOYJ

My point begin the more education and the more professionally and vocationally diverse you are, the better you're going to be able to make it through these times.


The bottom line is if you're making that much money as a family breadwinner you better be doing a self assessment of why you're where you are.

Without any question whatsoever.

I learned in a quick hurry about it. My first two jobs just after discharge were minimum wage at $1.25/hour... with a pregnant wife to look after. I loaded Coca Cola trucks for a living (not easy), and taped cars in a body shop for that money.

Soon, if not immediately, I decided to do something about it... I did, and recently retired after almost 40 years in a profession.

My only point is that people are being sold a pig in a poke to think that "education" is THE answer... Higher Education is a highly controlled and marketed industry in many ways no different from Enron, and just as susceptible to corruption; criminally so.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by Bluehawk

My only point is that people are being sold a pig in a poke to think that "education" is THE answer... Higher Education is a highly controlled and marketed industry in many ways no different from Enron, and just as susceptible to corruption; criminally so.

Agree 100% - and like having an investment portfolio one should diversify their educational and vocational skills. I learned this from a former co-worker and its helped me dearly later in my life.