Reform or Revolution?

[TNRighty]

Medican,

Of course 72.1% of people who earn minimum wage are adults. DUH! That's because most people who work are adults!!!! However, only 2.8% of people over the age of 30 work for minimum wage.

www.epionline.org/mw_statistics.cfm

As I told you, the vast majority of people who work for minimum wage are under the age of 24, and as the above link proves, 97.2% of minimum wage workers are under the age of 30. You're making my argument for me. Thank you.

More than one fourth of the people who earn minimum wage are between the ages of 16 and 19. They are high school and college kids looking to earn some spending money. However, and I've said this a million times, if you are over the age of 25 and still earning minimum wage, then thats your fault. America hasn't made you poor, you've made yourself poor.

www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2002.htm

There is no such thing as a "fair wage". There is a market value for the products of your labor, and if the market value of your job skills won't support your lifestyle, then you need to develop for yourself a more marketable set of skills.

Some rich people do in fact inherit their wealth, and I don't doubt that George Bush inherited a lot of money. But so did Ted Kennedy. However, if you think the only way you can become wealthy is to be born into it, then you are dead ass wrong. To be wealthy you have to marry into wealth like John Kerry did, ha ha.

Medican, you are a sucker for class warfare. The great thing about America is that you don't have to be born into wealth to obtain wealth. We have class mobility. No country in the world has as many first generation millionaires as America does. We are not a caste society. There is social mobility here, and if you are educated and make good personal and financial decisions you can be wealthy, even on a middle class income. It is an injustice and in my book criminal to tell a kid born into poverty that he is doomed to that life as long as he lives. If you think it is cynical to believe that in America you can make of yourself what you want to then you can kiss my ass. Cynics never accomplished anything.

To end, poverty is relative. In America we define poverty relative to the American standard. What is considered poverty in America would be considered royalty in the rest of the world. We are spoiled for sure. You'd be surprised how many people come to America hoping just to live in what we call poverty.

[JOEBIALEK]

good points...

[midcan5]

Could a person under 25 have a family? And what is the market value of your labor? A CEO gets 100 million but a hard working 22 year old woman in the same company makes 5 dollars an hour? Fair? This has nothing to do with class warfare it has more to do with justice and sharing the wealth of society which belongs to society and not to a few. But you never understand that as you think you made all this all by yourself.

Your use of stats is deceptive.

www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2002.htm

Minimum wage workers tend to be young. About half of workers earning $5.15 or less were under age 25, and slightly more than one-fourth were age 16-19. Among teenagers, 10 percent earned $5.15 or less. About 2 percent of workers age 25 and over earned the minimum wage or less. However, among those age 65 and over, the proportion was about 5 percent. (See table 1 and table 7.)

About 4 percent of women paid hourly rates reported wages at or below the prevailing Federal minimum, compared with about 2 percent of men. (See table 1.)

[TNRighty]

Just because you are 25 and have a family does not mean you are thus entitled to earn higher wages. Your wage-earning capabilities are a function of the marketability of your job skills, not how many mouths you have to feed. Despite your admiration of Marxian philosophy, we don't live in a "to each according to his needs" society.

[Richard]

Going back to the commentary by Robert Reich, it seems to be a typical diatribe based on lower socio-economic class envy. The idea of economic downfalls based on a "disparity of wages and income" and a lack of "opportunity" (for the lower class) belongs in a book of fairy tales.

With regard to the idea of FDR and the New Deal, as well as LBJ's "Great Society" making society"more equal'..another farce.

The typical reasons for the Great Depression, coming from the usual indoctrination by institutions such as the public school system, frequently consists of "catchy" phrases such as:
"Uneven distribution of Wealth"
"Overspeculation in the Stock Market"
"Commodity Price Manipulation"
"Lack of government protective legislation"
"Unhampered Markets and Laissez Faire Capitalism"

I can even rememer being taught, in high school, the one of the major reasons for the Great Depression was excessive land speculation in Florida. I had to wonder, even back then.

Milton Friedman and Ana Schwartz, in their 1963 book, brought much more sound thinking into the argument as to what caused the Great Depression. Among other things:
Reckless credit expansion by the Federal Reserve, especially in the 1920's preceding the GD.
A government induced increase in prices and wages
A large increase in deficit spending for public work projects.
Protectionism and high tariffs.
The collapse of the gold standard, in Europe, and the impact on bond prices and the US small banks.
(and a host of others).
In short, Friedman and Schwartz cited pure monetary forces and monetary policy as the reason behind the Great Depression. The Great Depression was a classic failure of the Federal Reserve system and missadventure legislation by Hoover and FDR.

Classical economic theory does not have falling prices leading to a decreased demand for goods and services. Rather, a decrease in demand for goods and services SHOULD LEAD to a lower wages and prices, as a means for adjustment and for coming out of a recession. FDR did not create a great reduction in un-employment..in fact, unemployment remained high throughout 1930's, only coming down with the outbreak of WW2.
As for LBJ's Great Society ...I think we are still reeling from it. Unheard of deficit spending, an alarming increase in the national debt, new social programs which have done nothing to redress poverty or crime, while social decay has only increased. Now, federal government intrusion has ruined almost every aspect of our lives. Increased taxation has meant the loss of jobs and an inabiliy to prosper.
The only thing the Great Society has accomplished is a Great Inability of having limited government intrusion into all of our lives, as envisioned by our founding fathers.

[midcan5]

Richard,
Envy, Fairy tale, farce, interesting choice of words. I am always amazed at the effort of some to distort or to lessen the role of government in our economic lives. It is as if there is something dirty about it. One can find authors who have seen and verified Ufos or for that matter all sorts of economic nonsense, so why am I to believe Friedman? Do you? Funny that so many others do not. How is it you include FDR along with Hoover? Ah, but it is too obvious, you are not interested in what really happened only that it happened according to your view of things.

Deficits from LBJ are you lost? Reagan and now Dubya are doing real deficit damage. And FDR inherited a mess from years of laissez faire but he did great things and you live in a great country because of them. We can argue till the cows come in but there is a reality out there that gives a lie to your interpretation. It is the US, it is Europe, it is a liberal democratic society that takes care of its own. And while capitalism will still have it ups and down the more socialistic policies that have become a part of who we are as a nation prevented us from sliding into the madness that was Germany after WWI or the horror that Communism brought to Russia. Our society functions as it does because of FDR, and LBJ and a host of others who realized we are all in this together and society must function for its people or it ceases to have meaning. Live in your narrow world but recognize Unions, SS, Regualtion, and a host of other insitutions are what make us strong.

www.gusmorino.com/pag3/greatdepression/index.html
us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture19.html

this is good
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rails/timeline/

[Richard]

Well, Midcan, all I can say is I respectfully disagree. However, from Gusmorino in one camp, Rothbard and Freidman in another, and Libertarians in still another, it is no wonder there are major disagreements on the causes of the Great Depression, even among the most renown economists.
To tell you the truth, I had also believed that Hoover was "demonized", to an unfarily extent, in regard to his help in bringing on the Great Depression.
Monetarists and Libertarians criticize Hoover for, among other reasons:
The Smoot-Hawley Act if 1930. This raised tariffs to, in some cases, 100% levels. It literally closed the markets for foreign goods and ignited an international trade war.
Hooever doled out billions to wheat and cotton farmers even though huge tariffs wiped our their markets.
Hoover's some 2 billion in deficit spending caused him to sign the "Revene Act of 1932". This represented the greatest tax increase in US history, up to that point in time.

[midcan5]

Yes, I agree economics is a difficult topic to get consensus on. Libertarians are sort of interesting in the way Scientology is interesting. lol Check out Treanor he can make you think.

Paul Treanor
The values of libertarianism can not be rationally grounded. It is a system of belief, a 'worldview'. If you are a libertarian, then there is no point in reading any further. There is no attempt here to convert you: your belief is simply rejected. The rejection is comprehensive, meaning that all the starting points of libertarian argument (premises) are also rejected. There is no shared ground from which to conduct an argument.
The libertarian belief system includes the values listed in this section, which are affirmed by most libertarians. Certainly, no libertarian rejects them all...

web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/libertarian.html

[TNRighty]

Medican,

A couple of posts ago you said this:

"Could a person under 25 have a family? And what is the market value of your labor? A CEO gets 100 million but a hard working 22 year old woman in the same company makes 5 dollars an hour? Fair? This has nothing to do with class warfare it has more to do with justice and sharing the wealth of society which belongs to society and not to a few. But you never understand that as you think you made all this all by yourself."

Wealth DOES NOT belong to society. Wealth belongs to the individual who earned it. A society is strong only when it is made up of strong individuals...its the ground-up philosophy. You do not have the right to the wealth of another person. How can you talk about individual rights and not recognize the right of the individual to keep the fruits of his labor. That is the most basic individual right there is in America.

Your little theory about wealth belonging to society and not the individual has already been tried before (see USSR). We know how that story ended. A society collapses when the rights and wealth of individuals are not protected from the plunder of the masses.

A very prophetic philosopher (I can't remember his name) said basically that a free democratic society will cease to exist once its leaders allow the population to vote itself wealth from the public treasury. If anyone knows the person who said that, please let me know.

To expand on that, what you get is a socialist society with cradle-to-the-grave entitlements, a society that punishes achievement and excuses or rewards laziness. When you take away the incentive to achieve or punish achievers with excessive progressive taxation, there will be no more achievement. What you end up with is a society that depends on government for its well-being, a non-proactive group of people waiting for someone else to do the job for them.

A society or individual who eats from the spoon of government is NOT free. An individual who cannot (or CHOSES not) to sustain his basic needs through the fruits of his own labor thus relegating his life to one dependent on the policies of governmental tax codes is NOT free.

Except for the mentally ill and the physically handicapped, there is not an adult in this country who has an excuse outside of his own poor decisions for not being able to support himself. I should not have to pay for the poor decisions of other people, and you shouldn't either.

[midcan5]

TNR,

Ah, I see, you made the earth, its materials and you have figured out how to use each so that you have a place to live and work and grow old and then you have created the environmental structures, the technology, the science, and you did all this when? you sure have been busy.

You seem to miss the point that you exist in a social maybe I should call it economic world. You owe a great deal to your parents who in turn owe a great to their parents etc etc. And you exist in a particular social structure. Did you grow up poor in a ghetto and had nothing, no, oh why does that not surprise me. Did you create the knowledge you do to do your job, no hmmm, seems you didn't do a heck of lot on your own.

Did you get your job through a friend, did you learn your trade because of a friend, did you choose your occupation because of a friend. Hmmm, seems you have a lot of that bad thing society to thank for all you have.

You occupy for me a weird position from your posts, I come from a large family that was one step above poverty but we made it. I did very well, but that does not change in me a recognition that much of what we have is based on things we have nothing to do with. We did not pick our parents, we did not select our intelligence, we did select the culture we grew up in. we relied on others and on society, call it one big happy family - exclude Coulter, Savage, and Limabugh.

There is a statement similar to what you wrote in one of the founding fathers works but I cannot remember who it was.

Think I posted these before but for those with an open mind who have had more experience, they are interesting reads.

bostonreview.net/BR25.5/simon.html

"The usual argument for such a right is based on the assumption of perfectly competitive markets where factors of production are paid their marginal values and where there are no externalities. But this assumption does not hold to any reasonable degree of approximation in real societies. Access to the social capital–a major source of differences in income, between and within societies–is in large part the product of externalities: membership in a particular society, and interaction with other members of that society under practices that commonly give preferred access to particular members."

"How large are these externalities, which must be regarded as owned jointly by members of the whole society? When we compare the poorest with the richest nations, it is hard to conclude that social capital can produce less than about 90 percent of income in wealthy societies like those of the United States or Northwestern Europe. On moral grounds, then, we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent to return that wealth to its real owners. In the United States, even a flat tax of 70 percent would support all governmental programs (about half the total tax) and allow payment, with the remainder, of a patrimony of about $8,000 per annum per inhabitant, or $25,000 for a family of three."

and this:

"Finally, the inequality of income and wealth may become so great, with so much money in the hands of such a small proportion of the population, that the logic of electoral competition will impel the Democrats to play the redistribution card. That leaves open the question of the form redistribution might take, which is precisely why the pros and cons of basic income need to be argued during an unpromising period such as the present."

bostonreview.net/BR25.5/barry.html

weath tax some statistics
www.bostonreview.net/BR21.1/wolff.html

[TNRighty]

Your post reeks of the idea that the individual has no control over what he makes of his life. If you honestly believe that you are forever locked into the social structure (good or bad) into which you were born, then you are dead wrong.

Anyone who will suggest to a kid born in the ghetto that he is destined to a life of poverty is doing that person great harm. To tell a kid they can't succeed because of who their parents are only gives that person a built-in excuse to fail. If you are incessantly bombarding people with reasons why they have no chance to succeed, don't be surprised when they fail.

True, I did not create or discover the knowledge that I use at my job, but I have knowledge of subjects like math, science, and physics because I took the time to learn it. Everyone has the same opportunity, whether or not you take advantage of it is up to you. In order to add something to the human bank of knowledge, be it math, medicine, or anything else, you must first have a command of and be able to apply the knowledge that is already out there.

Don't expect me to feel sorry for you because you came from a family that was one step above poverty. That's no excuse. My mother is a first grade teacher and worked summers as a waitress until I was 16. My dad worked 6 days a week framing houses. When I was 12 I talked my dad into buying a John Deere lawnmower we couldn't afford because I promised him I would mow 10 yards a week in our neighboorhood if I had a lawnmower that would last. He still has it, and when I was 18 I put $4,000 in a Roth IRA, all of which came from mowing yards. It will be worth about $300,000 when I turn 50.

My point is, in America hard work pays off. That is what is so great about our country. Instead of telling kids they are doomed, we need to be educating them on the opportunities and optimism that our country was founded on. That's not a pipe dream. It is real.

[midcan5]

Ah, yes, the individual has control over his life, he can be a complete failure - drunk, addict, draft dodger, inside trader, poor student and still become president of the US if he has a cute smile. Would you say that the ghetto kid could do this too? Not likely and why, because of the social or class situation they are born into.

But don't get me wrong the individual has many responsibilities but whether poor or rich or in the middle they rely on their cultural mooring to survive. Dubya without his family money would be trailer park people. Disagree all you want. He is one person but he exemplifies my argument.

And individuals do need to work hard and study and read and be courteous and serve their country and themselves, we raised two fine men so I know something here.

You assume too much, I do not expect anything from you and I do not assume a ghetto child has to remain there but if minimum wage is nothing how can they hope to get anywhere, or to help their children. You understand enough to know that poverty breeds poverty and jobs are the way out. Funny I used a push mower, you may not remember them but it was a different time and even here the economics of being able to mow a lawn assume there is one to mow and that someone can pay.

It is real if you can get a decent job and if unemployment is high then it seems a bit difficult as these are people trying to find work. Barbara Ehrenreich covers some of this from a real world perspective not the narrow glasses most use.

It is a great country no reason we can't make it better for all.

[TNRighty]

Condoleeza Rice was born in the Ghetto.

You said, "And individuals do need to work hard and study and read and be courteous and serve their country and themselves, we raised two fine men so I know something here."

Well, if you are as good a parent as you claim to be, and if your boys worked as hard and are as courteous as you say, there's a good chance they are footing the bill for those who didn't work as hard as they did. As a father of two hard working boys, you moreso than anyone should be irate at the fact that their hard work is being punished while laziness is rewarded at their expense by our tax structure.

I volunteer as an 8th grade math tutor at a school near my house, and I have seen as many kids ruined by money as I've seen ruined by poverty. I had one kid, who was failing eighth grade tell me, "My daddy makes more money than you." I told him that a lot of people who's daddy's make less money than his have kids who are doing a lot better in math than he is, and unless he wanted to live in daddy's basement the rest of his life he better learn the skills that will allow him to make his own money. The kids who live in poverty are much more motivated than the kids who grew up with everything. They are the ones who want to be taught, want to "get out". They need someone to give them an optimistic outlook, not someone who preaches the doom and gloom of being born into poverty. The only thing I tell them is that regardless of what anybody says, they can make of themselves what they want to if they hit the books and set goals.

You also said, "It is real if you can get a decent job and if unemployment is high then it seems a bit difficult as these are people trying to find work."

Right now the unemployment rate is lower than it was when Clinton left office. Its about 5% as we speak. The day you open the newspaper and see not a single want-ad, then thats the day you can tell me that people who are looking for work can't find work. If you're looking for a job, then there are jobs out there. It may not be the job you want and it may not be the job you think you deserve, but you can't climb the ladder without getting on the first rung. That comes from personal experience.

[midcan5]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleeza_Rice

"Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the only child of Angelena Rice and the Reverend John Wesley Rice, Jr. Her father was a minister at Westminster Presbyterian Church and her mother was a music teacher. In an article for the New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, writes, "Birmingham had one notably rich black family, the Gastons, who were in the insurance business. Occupying the next rung down was Alma Powell's family; her father and her uncle were the principals of two black high schools in town. Rice's father, John Wesley Rice, Jr., worked for Alma Powell's uncle as a high-school guidance counsellor, and was an ordained minister who preached on weekends; Rice's mother, Angelena, was a teacher." [1] (Alma Powell is married to Colin Powell.) In 1967, the family moved to Denver when her father accepted an administrative position at the University of Denver."

TNR, Rice was not born in a ghetto whatever that means. She was a child of some privilege and a bright hard working one.

As far as unemployment, it does not seem to be a big issue right now but having lived through Reagan/Bush it is a similar time with deficits growing and not a strong positive sense of business which is curious given this administration kowtowing to business. I don't have a good handle on it, in my field the scary thing is all the jobs are going to India and other remote places. I never thought when I was a young worker that people from the Philippines or India would be IM'ing me about work. The old want ads baloney, sure there are jobs but you need to be qualified, be able to get there, raise a family etc. Your school experience is a good one it may open your eyes - a little more.

[TNRighty]

I got my first real job from a want-ad that required no experience whatsoever. It was a job as a maintenance man for a company that owned rental property. I spent the first 4 months tearing dog piss infested carpet out of rental apartments. From time to time I would help my foreman doing plumbing and electrical work. I learned how to perform diagnostics on air conditioning units, lay tile, and reinstall toilets. The next summer they gave me my own van and I began making house calls by myself.

Today I own rental property partly because I learned the business myself while I was earning $7 per hour.

As I've said a thousand times, you can't climb the ladder without getting on the first rung. A minimum wage job can be an opportunity if you want it to be.