Posted on 06/06/2002 5:39:12 AM PDT by Rodney King
Nonsense. But let's try it. Let's see if people starve in the streets. C'mon, I'm calling your bluff, leftie.
They won't. Unless you're a retarded pinhead, or crippled, you can support yourself in the USA if you can support yourself anywhere. Period.
Abolish government subsidies of unions; let's see how long those goons would last - about 10 minutes given a competitive environment. Abolish the minimum wage; I have employees making minimum wage who aren't worth it - they almost needed retraining to tie their damn shoes! I'm just betting I can educate them to a profitable level sometime before we go broke. If not, they're out on their ass . . . maybe they'll starve to death in your world, huh?
I used to wonder where Perot found all those feebs to vote for him. I don't anymore.
Yes, the contraction of could not. Spelled correctly btw. My spellcheck isnt taking a day off, though I do make the occasional typo, I will admit tha, everyone does.
I just find it interesting that Mr. Boortz launches off on a self indulgent rant about others incompetence when he couldnt even do the most basic task taught to most amateur first year journalism students - Spellcheck your work before going to publish.
Necvada,
Ive heard of that state, I think its right next to Mane.
He who lives in glass houses...ah...nevermind.
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Unions exist to protect people with non-transferable job skills.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Jamais reculez á tyrannie un pouce!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! Never give an inch to tyranny!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
While not quite as socialist as France or Sweden, they are almost the equal of Britain.
My Australian wife "fled" Australia when we got married 22 years ago. At the time, I too thought (and had heard) the same thing .. that Australia was like America in the 50's .. and I had thought that we would live there. She quickly disabused me (or abused me, depending on how you look at it) of those notions and told me in no uncertain terms that Australia was right out.
First off, welcome to FR!
No one wants people starving to death.
That said, let's get on to the other stuff. The whole concept of a "living wage" is bogus. Does that mean the amount of money required to support one person living in a rooming house, buying second hand clothes, eating cheaply, abd getting their entertainment at the public library? Or is it someone staying at home, with 5 kids, in plush housing, with cable TV, buying $100 tennies, etc.?
The term "living wage" is meaningless.
So no, I don't want to support the poor through either unions or government regulation or the current ludicrous system of onerous taxation and wastrel agencies. I want to do it through families and neighbors helping each other, and then private charity.
This would put the (appropriate) stigma back into behaviors such as choosing not to work, having bastards you can't support, dropping out of school, etc.
Americans are the most generous people in the world. No one would starve except those who wanted to.
Although, I am happy to say, from talking to my brother-in-law who is a high mucky-muck in the miner's union, union membership is dropping fast.
I weep crocodile tears for him whenever he whines about it.
The image of gazillionaire union baseball players comes to mind.
I learned during undergraduate at a different university, where the unionized janitorial staff refused to go into the labs...
Do you honestly think before you write? Is it probable that you don't see the complete lack of logic in a statement such as this?
What is fair is what the market will bear. I know my talents, my strengths and my weaknesses, and what I need to provide for my family. If I am willing to take a job for $10 an hour and the boss is willing to pay me $10 an hour to do that job, then that should be the end of it. That $10 is fair to me, whether or not some legislator and union boss thinks that the pay should be $20/hour.
Right to work means just that ... my right is to be able to work for whatever I am willing to accept and the manager is willing to pay me.
"Living wage" indeed. If necessary, I will be the first to admit that I spend my money on myself and my family for a lot more than just basic food, clothing, and shelter ... and I am d@mn unapologetic for it.
Personally, I figure that people ought to have the right to strike if it suits them. I also figure that employers have the right to hire replacements and that poeple ought to have the right to represent themselves (as in 'right to work', or 'open shop'). I was in a union for 11 years and I will tell you that I don't like someone other than my employer telling me how much I should produce or whether I can show up to work or not. That's between me and the employer.
While in theory I believe the government should butt completely "out", I can see, pragmatically, that could lead to hard times for a lot of folks before the issue of "fair wage" is settled, so, why not just settle this pull-and-tug process through gov regulations which are fair to both sides?
Because government regulations won't be fair to both sides. If they make wages higher than the work is worth, the job will disappear. You're either going to hurt one side or the other and most likely, both when the business closes.
And, of course, when they decide that a burger flipper's wage needs to be what they now pay a foundry worker, the foundry workers are gonna be P.O.ed. I mean, it takes a little more skill to work in a foundry than it does to flip burgers (not to mention the added dangers of molten metal) so I would suspect that they will want a raise to keep them sufficiently paid vs. their skill level in comparison to the wages of the burger flipper. Otherwise, why work in a dirty, dangerous foundry?
Furthermore, all this upward wage adjustment will make products more expensive. Prices will rise and the "living wage" will no longer be adequate. So, we start the inflationary cycle over and over again until somebody finally decides that the living wage isn't such a good idea.
Lets take the local McDonalds for example. Profit margins are pretty tight in the fast food business, typically less than 2%. Wages are a large portion of the cost of a happy meal. If wages are raised from $6 to, say, $8, the price of food will rise accordingly. I don't know about you, but I am not really willing to pay an extra buck or two for some already over-priced lousy food.
The correct way to set wages is to let the market decide - the worker and the employer can agree to a set fee for service.
"What is a fair wage" would, IMHO, be an issue for our elected representatives to decide. Making an intelligent and workable decision would take a bit of study. And you have to provide protections for the companies as well, to avoid the kind of ludicrous horror stories that have been noted in this thread.
I don't beleive that our elected officials are capable of setting a fair wage, particularly since they seem to be clueless about the laws of supply and demand in the first place. I venture to say that they will simply try to set wages in such a way as to buy the most votes.
The immigrant and illegal alien issue has been raised a couple of times. I agree, that's a HUGE part of the problem. Other "liberal" nations have laws which unashamedly grant citizens "first pick" on jobs. You can't enter the country without a job, and you can't take a job for which a citizen of that country is qualified.
The problem with the illegal alien situation is that they often work at below minimum wages, under the table. Since they already aren't following the law, they are almost certain to avoid following any new laws. This is especially true if new legislation prices US jobs above the market value of these jobs.
In your glass house, you might want to do a bit of research on contractions.
Homer sees some film crew teamsters lounging about and (paraphrasing) says "ooh teamsters...so lazy and surly."
They Homer and the union bums engage in an unspoken contest to see who can lounge the most.
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