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Living wage=Marxism

Not always. Our economy has changed with womens' lib.

Get over it.

I'll never get over seeing the working poor struggle and remember broken promises to sell only American-made goods.

If people are too freaking stupid to make a good living in the greatest country on earth with all the opportunities, then to hell with them.

Not everybody has your IQ. The hell with them? Remember Lazarus and the rich man? Better watch thy attitude.

And define "living wage". Two cars, cellphones, cable, computer, internet access, etc? Geez, I guess next you'll argue these are god-given rights.

A living wage does not include two cars. It should include one dependable car, money to pay for insurance, modest housing, adequate food, a night out once in awhile, internet access and computer, can get by without cellphone and cable tv. You can take classes on the internet to get a college degree, if they have your IQ.

Some decent people just don't have the intelligence to quaify for the better jobs, or they have handicaps you don't know about. That does not make them lesser beings and they deserve a minimum quality of life. Anyone with an IQ above 100 can make a good living. Most don't even try.

"It should include one dependable car, money to pay for insurance, modest housing, adequate food, a night out once in awhile, internet access and computer"

If every employer were required to provide all of those things for everybody they employ... the unemployment rate in this country would be over 20%. You are sheltered and don't understaned economics.

My IQ may top out at 80...Hard work will get you ahead here in the USA...

Internet access is now a necessity ? bunk...

Cry me a river. Most people I went to school with didn't do the work, partied all the time, never cared to go to college, wanted the job they ended up in, popped out babies, etc.

There are no gurantees in life. Get over it. It doesn't take a high IQ or a great education to make a good living. But that doesn't mean you have the best, the nicest, the newest stuff. Anyone that thinks they SHOULD have it is a Marxist, pure and simple. They want to take from others because they can't do for themselves.

I came from a very poor family. I was in 8 different schools in two different states by the time I graduated from high school. My parents aren't the smartest on the block. I went to a state collge, the Univ of Arkansas, because I didn't get into the Air Force academy like I wanted.

Did I whine, cry, complain, demand fairness? No. I took classes, changed my major about five times and ended up with a useless degree in economics in 1982 when no one was hiring. We didn't have even one recruiter come to the business school.

The entire time I worked at minimum wage ($2.85 an hour) 40 hours a week or more (until overtime forced you into a larger FIT withholding bracket that left you with less take home pay than if you just worked 38 hours a week - thank you Ronald Reagan for indexing the brackets) and I still put a roof over my head, ate well enough (on campus cafeteria really good and I worked at food places), had a 1965 Pontiac I bought for $800 and still partied.

Was I flush with disposable income? No. Was I starving. Hell no. Was I expecting someone to give me what I haven't demonstrated I could earn? Not a chance. In every job I had I moved up because I did a fantastic job and bettered myself. I went from delivering pizza to assistant manager in weeks. I washed dishes at a steak house and in less than a year I was the head bartender making good money and lots of tips.

I started as a night auditor in a hotel and 20 years later I'm the Controller of a five star hotel making lots and lots of money with a staff of over 16 overall.

My wife never finished high school and runs the conversion department of the fourth largest payroll processing company in the country. And she makes more than I do.

At no time did we demand some "living wage" or some hand out or some government program or need some socialist jerk think I was getting exploited.

Here's some advice: drop the whiney "oh poor me" routine and just go out and do it for yourself.

Some decent people just don't have the intelligence to qualify for the better jobs, or they have handicaps you don't know about. That does not make them lesser beings and they deserve a minimum quality of life.

Freemarketeers see the society as a loose aggregation of individuals who pursue the individual gain. They see other people as a commodity. A nation, a family, a local community is seen by them as the superstitions of people less clever than them or at best as the tools to protect their assets.

In a sense they are similiar to the militant homosexuals who call people with normal families "the breeders".

Freemarketeers make socialism look good.

A living wage does not include two cars. It should include one dependable car, money to pay for insurance, modest housing, adequate food, a night out once in awhile, internet access and computer, can get by without cellphone and cable tv. You can take classes on the internet to get a college degree, if they have your IQ.

See this is the crux of the matter. There were times recently when I didn't feel I could afford cable TV. There were other choices that I made. During one of those times I heard a "poor person" complain that she couldn't afford cigarettes and cable.

When I was just out of college and stupid, I didn't have health insurance. It was a rational choice based on my health.

If I am working at that level, internet access and a computer is something I should get FREE at the local library (my (sales) taxes are already paying for that).

See, your living wage reflects your choices and you impose them on your imaginary low wage person. However, there are millions and millions of people on low wages that don't fit your socialized mental map.

When the government starts imposing their mental map on each person then YES THAT IS MARXISM. And the inevitable result is tolitarianism because each person's choices will have to be taken away from him or her to attain that "ideal". Its all there in the history books, we don't have to make that mistake.

A living wage does not include two cars. It should include one dependable car, money to pay for insurance, modest housing, adequate food, a night out once in awhile, internet access and computer, can get by without cellphone and cable tv. You can take classes on the internet to get a college degree, if they have your IQ.

Some decent people just don't have the intelligence to quaify for the better jobs, or they have handicaps you don't know about. That does not make them lesser beings and they deserve a minimum quality of life. Anyone with an IQ above 100 can make a good living. Most don't even try.

It's a shame that some even here would tell people "to go jump in the lake" if they can't make it on their own. I know there are times I have been humbled and it makes me show more humility and compassion. I know there are limits, I mean if someone just wants to sit there even with the help out there, well, even I can get angry at the lazy but if someone is trying to make a go at it but get nowhere, I can see giving them a helping hand.

I might get into trouble with this but I see myself as a social, moral and military conservative but an economic centrist. I think Just Third Way (website - Center of Economic and Social Justice) has a lot of good points to offer where it would open up more paths to ownership for the average working person. We have gone beyond the paradigms of pure socialism/communism and pure capitalism, we need to accept that and think outside the box. In short, concentration of political and/or economic power in too few hands is not good. In short, we need some form of "Capitalism with a human face."

I think if we keep going down the path we are on, we are just handing the socialists and libertines the ammo that will eventually hurt us. Welfare should be geared as a hand up to responsibility as well as accountibility, not a hand out that leads to no production and laziness.

I don't know, maybe it is me getting closer to a more Christian based outlook, perhaps it is my roots in being a working class "Pittsburgh Hunky" and seeing industry die here (although one of my friends has a similar take, he grew up in rural Indiana where a lot of family farms disappeared) and my willingness to ask questions and help to come up with ideas that will benefit the most here in America and a brighter future.

Lemme guess, you read "The Communist Manifesto".

You're an anti-business, anti-capitalist, Bolshevik.

And I have questions about your conservatism.

I love these holier then thou people who have never had to struggle or have never been unemployed, who think that just because it's going well for them, it should be for everyone.

I also love the excuse that supporting American made, you are putting the "working" class ahead of the customer, never mind that they are the customer.

When did it become anti-conservative to put American made first and not Chinese communist made first?