Then with all due respect, the GOP needs to change its name to the Troglodyte Party. Your reply is a perfect example of libertarian poisoning of conservatism.
First, social security and medicare: The United States is a real live country/nation, just like Sweden or England or China. Real live (and dead) western countries have always taken care of the poor. Eskimo tribes take care of their elderly. Indian tribes fed their elderly and sick. Real live human beings, apparently from the archaelogical record, including Neanderthals and further back to the “monkey people” took care of the members of their group. Now, here comes the GOP, in the latter part of the second millenia past Christ, and think that this is a bad thing. If that ain’t Ayn Rand’s dead nutjob hand reaching out of the grave, then I don’t know what is.
A society has choices in how it does this. Charging what amounts to a 16% tax on current labor to provide for post labor survival is not that bad an idea. Prior the the War of Northern Aggression, slaveholders in some states were prohibited from freeing their slaves when they reached old age. This is because even slaveholders recognized the injustice of working some poor SOB his whole life and then throwing him or her to wolves when they were no longer productive. You, and everybody who believes like you, should be utterly ashamed of yourselves for your lack of humanity.
You should also be ashamed of yourselves as alleged conservatives. Conservatism is at heart, COMMON SENSE. It is doing the things that help make your nation safe and strong and stable. Having people fall off the food chart and housing chart at a certain age don’t do none of that. Common sense is preparing for the inevitable. It is why we have an Air Force, for example. We know some SOB somewhere is going to start some sh*t with us and we want to encourage them to have second thoughts about getting creamed after they do it. It is the same with old age. We know it is inevitable no matter how much green tea we drink or how many vitamins we take. So, using our common sense, we prepare for it. We create a system whereby when a person reaches a certain age,, their income dryeth not up. We look at it as a cost of doing business. We lay something up for the future. Now the fact that gov’t has done spent it is pretty lousy, but the laying up is not wrong or unconstitutional.
Wage and hour-minwage laws: OMG! What a stretch. First Amendment? The Constitution provides for regulation of interstate commerce. what if one state was civilized, and conservative, and had a high standard of living and the neighboring state was a wahoo “libertarian” state that permitted one dollar an hour wages and no worker’s comp, etc. Lets just call the civilized state, Arkansas, for example, and the wahoo idiot state,let’s call Texas, for example. Products from Texas would undercut the price of products made in Arkansas in much the same way that Chicom products undercut American jobs. This would not be good, so Congress would have the right to set wage floors to prevent this from happening. That way the states could compete on a fairly even basis. Not unconstitutional.
Minwages: No, the cost of labor is not 100% of a product. If minwages workers get a dollar an hour more, their cost of living does not go up $1.00 per hour. Think about it. Have you ever turned down a raise because your cost of living would go up that much???? No. You would be committed to a mental institution if you said something like that, assuming your spouse did not kill you first. Imagine coming home and saying to wifey poo-”Darling, the boss offered me a $100 per week raise today but I turned him down. Ayn Rand and Von Mises tell me that increases in wages will be offset by an increase in prices so I thought it better to refuse that raise, and the bonus he wanted to give me.” This is where “libertarian theory” meets “How fast can you run from an angry woman with a skillet?”
Use your brains. Now as to the $100 per hour wage, there is a very simple answer to that. I will let you have some time to see if you can think of the answer. I hear this all the time, and it is pretty much an absurdist argument once one really thinks about it. If the answer don’t come to you, I will tell you.
Now this I find very disturbing: “Minimum wage jobs are not WORTHY of being paid “livable” wages as they do not produce enough to be worth that much.” BASED ON WHAT? You mean some poor schmuck ought to work 40 hours a week and not be able to survive? This is not “conservative” This is aristocratic thought. Peasants should just be content to stay peasants. Sorry, but regardless of our skills, we all have 168 hours in our week. If you work, you should be able to feed yourself, house yourself, and clothe yourself.
You have gone horribly astray in your thinking. Do you notice how the GOP candidates, who probably believe just as you do, do not come right out and say this during election campaigns? They have to hide it and not come right out say it. Do you know why? It is because it is an extremist, crazy view and most Americans would throw feces and rotten vegetables at said candidate, particularly when said candidate got to the part where abortion is wrong because every human life is special. Listeners would gag.
This is why I say libertarianism has poisoned the GOP and conservatism.
“Far better would be to stop forcing banks to lend money to those who cannot repay it.” -—Revisionist history. Poor widdle bankers were not forced to make loans which caused the meltdown. A comforting fairy tale for libertarians and misguided conservatives. Rather than face the “reality” of thieving bankers, you guys can pretend it was the poor folks and gov’t that caused all this. What a smug little fairy tale land you guys live in. Should you be interested in sliding down the magic beanpole to Planet Earth, you might try these two links for starts. One is very long but very worthwhile including the links within the article. If you are not afraid of learning new things and thinking new thoughts, it is fascinating:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/26/road-ruin-recession-individuals-economy
http://www.crashopedia.com/index.php/Main_Page
Finally:
“Why should groups of employees be allowed to blackmail and steal from their employer? Again this violates 1st ammendment. The assembling of an employer and his employees is no one’s business but theirs. (As long as they both honor any contract they both agree to at signing)Revise corporate laws to prevent executives from running big companies for their own benefit.This is impossible to do. Everyone does everything they do for their own benefit.”
The answer is, real life don’t work that way. When you are job hunting, you are over a barrel most of the time. The field is not even. Unions in America seem to go overboard and shoot themselves in the foot, but collective bargaining seems to work in Europe. Germany I read is the biggest exporter in world and their standard of living is high. Somehow, unions and management are getting the job done there. I wish I knew more about it.
The practical reason for many of these suggestions is to have a strong stable nation where everybody has a stake in the system. When you have huge inequality of wealth, your nation suffers and splinters into class struggles. There has already been a “redistribution” of wealth in this country from the poor and middle classes to the rich. We have not become stronger or more stable as a result of this. Quite the opposite.
Higher wages are a way to redistribute wealth away from corporate profits and the rich to wage earners. This means demand is paid for with cash not increases in credit which is what has happened over the last three decades. This is not communistic or socialistic, it is simply realistic. Read Karl Denniger over at Market Ticker, or Marc Faber. Start reading articles at Naked Capitalism, These people are not commies. But they realize what happens when a nation gets off balance.
FWIW, I think we are already over the edge and the debts will have to be monetized, and there will be hyperinflation and we will each get a monthly stipend for basics from gov’t and work if we want to for extras, which most of us will do. I will be in my late 50’s then, or early 60’s. I plan on becoming a wandering poet and balladeer with young 20-something girlfriends along the way.
parsy, the conservative thinker
I fully agree with that commment. And commom sense tells me that it is the very nature of governments and bureaucracies to grow their own power. Every government program, no matter how well intentioned, gives the government more oportunity to grow. Power is a finite resource and for the government to have more individuals must have less.
Labor is also a finite resource. Economics 101, which I passed, tells us that raising the price of any resource lowers it's demand. This is called 'the invisible hand of the market'. If you lower the cost of a resource, demand will increase. At certain times some states do not have anyone making minimum wage because jobs are plentiful and workers few. In times like these higher minimum wages mean employers cut jobs or hire less people.
And we have given control of this process to the government! Is the government rushing to lower the minimum wage while unemployment is high? Never. It is a populist tool to win votes. The founders, who were much wiser than I am, not only put severe limits on the government's interference in business, finance and our personnal lives, but many of them argued quite forcefully that the new government still had too much power. The anti-federalist papers are just as important to our history as the federalist papers.
The things you have brought up from social security to banking regulation are the rights of the states. The states that abuse their powers will find their businesses leave and population empoverished. The states that manage regulation and taxation well will find that businesses move in and their populations thrive. The massive amount of power that the federal government has stolen from the state governments since the passing of the 17th ammendment has skewed this to the point that only in extreme cases like Michigan and California can states suffer the consequences of their own foolishness.
That government is best which governs least. - Thomas Paine. Not a revisionist.
The government is a power hungry monster that must constantly be kept in fear of the population. The only way this can happen is if it is kept small enough to be drowned in a bathtub.
A society has choices in how it does this.
Exactly correct. The society can rely on the biblical conservative way and let people (the church) do so or they can force people to do so by stealing the results of their labor at the point of a gun.
People have always taken care of others. People. Not the government. It is not government's job it is the people's job as individuals
Charging what amounts to a 16% tax on current labor to provide for post labor survival is not that bad an idea.
...
You, and everybody who believes like you, should be utterly ashamed of yourselves for your lack of humanity.
Social security is a recent idea. It has always been each person's responsibility to provide for themselves. No where in the bible does it talk about retirement. We are to work until we can't anymore and then we are to live off what we have set aside for ourselves and our children's children. I don't see doing it God's way as being inhumane.
You should also be ashamed of yourselves as alleged conservatives. Conservatism is at heart, COMMON SENSE.
Exactly. Common sense tells me that if I subsidize people sitting on their butts and doing nothing I will get more people sitting on their butts and doing nothing. And what do you know, History proves it. We've been fighting the "war on poverty" for decades now by giving them free money and we have MORE poor now than we did back then. The democrat's social programs have destroyed the black family and robbed us of three generations of what could have been productive citizens. It is almost as big a crime as abortion (and it could be argued it's destroyed far more people)
It is doing the things that help make your nation safe and strong and stable.
Like instilling a work ethic in people.
Having people fall off the food chart and housing chart at a certain age don’t do none of that. Common sense is preparing for the inevitable.
I just realized you are arguing against a position that I have never taken. I am not proposing taking anyone off of SS. They signed up to that contract and we owe it to them. I do propose privatizing all future SS payments (starting with those 30 years old and less as they have plenty of time to provide for themselves) to get us out of people's retirement planning since we should not have been doing that in the first place.
Common sense is planning for the inevitable. Yet we prevent people from doing that by enslaving them to social security.
We create a system whereby when a person reaches a certain age,, their income dryeth not up. We look at it as a cost of doing business. We lay something up for the future. Now the fact that gov’t has done spent it is pretty lousy, but the laying up is not wrong or unconstitutional.
It is right for people to lay something up for the future for themselves.
It is wrong for the government to steal our money to provide for someone who we do not know. Someone who may not deserve our help. God entrusts our money to us to be good stewards of. Having that money stolen by the government prevents us from performing our God given duty.
Wage and hour-minwage laws: OMG! What a stretch. First Amendment? The Constitution provides for regulation of interstate commerce. what if one state was civilized, and conservative, and had a high standard of living and the neighboring state was a wahoo “libertarian” state that permitted one dollar an hour wages and no worker’s comp, etc.
Then the workers would exercise their right to freely assemble with the employers in the better paying state and move there. Just like the system is supposed to work. (We already see it happening now with welfare systems. Raise your welfare payments and the welfare junkies will come from states away just to get more free money)
Lets just call the civilized state, Arkansas, for example, and the wahoo idiot state,let’s call Texas, for example. Products from Texas would undercut the price of products made in Arkansas. This would not be good,
Why not? Does Arkansas need subsidies to compete? Are the workers there unable to out produce the Texas workers. After all they are being paid more they should produce more.
so Congress would have the right to set wage floors to prevent this from happening. That way the states could compete on a fairly even basis. Not unconstitutional.
US Constitution, Article I, Section 9 Paragraph 5 "No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State"
Wage laws are a tax on the products produced in that state. UNconstitutional
Minwages: No, the cost of labor is not 100% of a product. If minwages workers get a dollar an hour more, their cost of living does not go up $1.00 per hour. Think about it. Have you ever turned down a raise because your cost of living would go up that much????
You are comparing apples and oranges. My cost of living doesn't go up as I am now making $1.00 more than I made before but everyone else is still making what they were. No reason for everyone to raise prices. Raise the minimum wage by $1.00 and everyone will raise prices. Many union contracts are indexed to minimum wage so they get an automatic raise also and many non-union wages are also indexed via cost of living. Min wage goes up, everyone goes up. Net effect, the min wagers end exactly where they started but we are at a greater disadvantage vs the rest of the world
(For more see your post 75 and Pan_Yan's post 76)
Now as to the $100 per hour wage, there is a very simple answer to that. ... If the answer don’t come to you, I will tell you.
Go ahead, tell me.
“Minimum wage jobs are not WORTHY of being paid “livable” wages as they do not produce enough to be worth that much.” BASED ON WHAT? You mean some poor schmuck ought to work 40 hours a week and not be able to survive? This is not “conservative” This is aristocratic thought. Peasants should just be content to stay peasants.
NO. People with entry level minimum wage jobs should grow their skillset and move to better paying jobs. Flipping burgers at McDonalds was neevr meant to be a career.
Sorry, but regardless of our skills, we all have 168 hours in our week. If you work, you should be able to feed yourself, house yourself, and clothe yourself.
Not if you refuse to learn a skill that produces enough to make your time worth that much.
“Far better would be to stop forcing banks to lend money to those who cannot repay it.” -—Revisionist history. Poor widdle bankers were not forced to make loans which caused the meltdown.
Hmmm, Seems that before clinton had his "Everyone should own their own home" push and started forcing banks to loan to non-credit worthy people we didn't have a real estate problem (nor a real estate bubble to speak of).
Well, looky here. From your guardian link:
"Bill Clinton, former US president
Clinton shares at least some of the blame for the current financial chaos. He beefed up the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act to force mortgage lenders to relax their rules to allow more socially disadvantaged borrowers to qualify for home loans. "
(The other link was worthless. I don't have time to sort through page after page of leftist drivel)
The answer is, real life don’t work that way. When you are job hunting, you are over a barrel most of the time.
You develop skills that are marketable. You then market those skills to the best place you can find. It is not MY business to enforce someone hiring YOU. It is not anyone else's business to come between you and your employer. Don't like what he pays? You always have the freedom to look for better work. You are not a slave to the company. If your skills are up to snuff you will be paid for them. Germany I read is the biggest exporter in world and their standard of living is high. Somehow, unions and management are getting the job done there. I wish I knew more about it.
Move there.
When you have huge inequality of wealth, your nation suffers and splinters into class struggles.
There is ALWAYS a huge inequality of wealth in any system. Those who know how to gain wealth will always end up with it. The smart people win. Even in Communism some have plenty and some have none. But Capitalism is the only system where everyone has a shot at it. There has already been a “redistribution” of wealth in this country from the poor and middle classes to the rich.
Wealth was earned, not distributed. If the poor (for example) don't work, then they will not move up. The main problem we have is punitive tax rates that steal capital from the system and prevent the rich from creating jobs that pay well.
Higher wages are a way to redistribute wealth away from corporate profits and the rich to wage earners. This means demand is paid for with cash not increases in credit which is what has happened over the last three decades.
Exactly. And as people become worth more to their employers they will be paid more.