[ralfy]

Because I find your debating position kind of autistic, monotonous & not engaging. Your assertion of 70 million controller humans is bullshit. Whoever said it first.

Again, you need to prove that there are no "controller humans," and the only way you can do that is to show that most of the corporate decisions made by the top corporations listed in the study were agreed upon by a majority of human beings. You have been asked more than once to prove your assertion and you have not been able to do that.

In addition, I addressed the other four points of your previous message. You did not address them, either.

Since you are now wasting my time, I don't see why I should respond further. Now adding you to my ignore list.

[SeaGypsy]

I don't need to prove anything. It is totally obvious there is no 1%, no 70 million. The concept is bullshit.

+ I'm starting to think communism is an affect of Aspergers.

[onlooker]

Ralphy, have you ever looked into the Rothchilds rise to power, their connection to the East Indie Co. their creating of the first Central Bank in England, their connection to the Vatican and the Illuminati. A conspiracy theory is not needed just follow the money trail. I leave you with a quote "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), founder of the House of Rothschild. Now fast forward to the present and the inordinate power of Banks and the whole debt and lending process which has immersed itself throughout the planet.

[Sixstrings]

Gov. Brown hails deal to raise minimum wage to $15 as 'matter of economic justice'

In a move catapulting California into uncharted national territory, Gov. Jerry Brown announced Monday a six-year plan to boost the statewide minimum wage to $15 an hour, promising that millions of low-wage workers would receive the help they desperately need.

"It's a matter of economic justice. It makes sense," Brown said at a news conference at the state Capitol, surrounded by Democratic leaders of the Legislature and those from some of the state's most prominent labor unions.

The agreement, first reported by The Times on Saturday, would reinforce California's position as having the highest minimum wage of any state. It also sets in motion a series of important political and policy changes. Most pressing, the brokered deal is expected to cancel two separate labor-sponsored efforts at placing a wage hike initiative on the November ballot.

"I'm hoping that what happens in California will not stay in California, but will spread all across the country," Brown said.

The plan, expected to be voted on by the Legislature before the end of the week, would raise the statewide minimum wage by 50 cents on Jan. 1 to $10.50 an hour. From there, it would rise to $11 in 2018 and subsequent dollar-a-year increases ending at $15 on Jan. 1, 2022.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-jerry-brown-minimum-wage-deal-20160328-story.html

And, New York state could be next:

New York could be the next to pass a $15 state minimum wage
http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/28/pf/new-york-state-minimum-wage-deal/

$15 stepped up over six years, is more than reasonable. It really ought to be four years.

Bottom line on the minimum wage issue is that at some point in the W. Bush admin, they just stopped raising it. So this is like potholes or any other thing government does (or does not do) and there gets to be a backlog and something wasn't handled for twelve years and then the next thing you know you've got record poverty all over the country, and a heroin crisis, and populist demagogues and globalism falling apart and all kinds of crazyness.

The answer all along, was to not let the middle and working class suffer so much and things get so bad to start with -- they needed to get the darn wages up years ago.

Government reacts slowly to problems, and it's always beyond bad before they finally do something.

So anyhow -- why is anyone against the min wage?

$15 an hour is the trend, so why fight it?

Politicans may as well get out in FRONT of it, and win on the issue.

Presidential politics wise:

-- Trump is AGAINST raising the minimum wage, so I don't like that part about him and never did.

-- Clinton is doing her usual thing she always does on issues, some kind of lukewarm sort of middle ground. She did this same thing on gay marriage. She transitioned from don't ask don't tell, to defense of marriage act, then to civil unions but no marriage, then finally wound up with marriage equality position.

On minimum wage, she's been saying $12 an hour but then she endorses the various states and cities going to $13 or $15.

Meanwhile, Obama campaigned on $12 eight darn years ago, yet never made it a priority. Would Clinton's word on this be any better?

Anyhow, this is some good progress California has made.

Of all the issues there are, the #1 top thing that should be done for middle and working class is that $15 minimum wage. 150 top economists all agree with Bernie Sanders on this. It would help out struggling middle class families already decimated from falling wages and rising costs, it would do something for the millenials, it would be REAL stimulus for the REAL economy. Which is why wall street is against it, of course. (they want to PROTECT the massive wealth transfer that occurred, from the 99% to the 1%, they don't want it going the other direction / they at least want to delay it as long as they can)

But once it finally gets done, it would be a major boost to the economy and would spruce the whole country up.

The ridiculous thing is that conservatives and corporatist Democrats are dragging their feet on it so much still, why put this off another ten years when it's the best thing to do to grow the economy.

[Cog]

Bring on the robots and the unemployment.

[Sixstrings]

Bring on the robots and the unemployment.

The robots are coming, anyway.

There will be an economy no matter what happens -- if it's robots (which will happen anyway) then Cog there will have to be more government distribution of consumer purchase credits (i.e., "money" for "consumers" to "buy robots" and buy the "stuff" the robots make so that the world of robots can be possible. )

So that's the thing I assume that you, and other conservatives, refuse to recognize.

But it's the reality.

That's why it was Republicans under W. Bush that did things like earned income credit on taxes (just free money from the government.. so why do you think they did that? It's because corporations are not paying their employees enough, so the government had to do something put money into paychecks).

We've got record tens of millions, on social security.

The robots are coming anyway, Cog. There will have to be some system devised to get money flowing in the middle class and under (which is 80% of the country), unless you really want to see the US turn into some kind of Bladerunner techno-poverty dystopia with a uber elite class of billionaires and trillionaires and then everyone else is eating noodles.





That map is from the 2000 census, it's probably 50% worse now. Things like student loan debts certainly keep going up and up.. $60,000, $80k, $100k.

It's the new norm, millennials with sixty or eighty grand in debt and then they go work for $12 an hour.

It didn't used to be like that Cog, not even as late as the 1990s.

[Sixstrings]

Anyway, I don't want to argue with ya Cog.

"Robots" and "unemployment" are diversionary. Republicans have been arguing against the minimum wage since literally 1962, with JFK.

May 8, 1962 - President John F. Kennedy's Address at the Convention of the United Auto Workers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNvqjn7z5h8

Labor issues, whether we have a guilded class of a top 1% or we have a more broad middle and working class, have been going back and forth since the 1800s. Things were bad before, in the days of John D. Rockefeller and Vanderbilt etc.

People formed unions in the 1800s.. they had to fight for every last little thing now taken for granted. Getting two days off per week, child labor laws, protections for workers in coalmines and factories, overtime pay past 40 hours.

Conservatives fought each and every one of these things, tooth and nail.

And once the working class had them, conservatives fight to take them away.. and they've succeeded to a large extent.

There's nothing I can say to convince you, I could talk about the 150 top economists etc. etc. but you'll just use the same arguments that Republicans were using in 1962, 1932 and in 1862.

I'll tell ya something though -- Trump is a Hugo Chavez type.

If things keep going how they are, that'll become more the norm.

Leftist populists will come along, too.

It would be far better for the country if they just did something to get wages up. Get some Canadian / Australian type policies in place -- low cost healthcare, free or very low cost college, and a basic living wage.

If a policy of increasing poverty is pursued, then that just turns the US into a 3rd world country and then you start getting Chavez like people winning (on the left, or right).

The establishment would do better for their own interests (and everyone's) to get wealth just a bit down from the top 1%, to the lower 99%.

Talking about robots, saying a minimum wage causes unemployment -- it's all diversionary and not even true. Raising the minimum wage back to where it used to be (taking inflation into account), simply means that the server that serves you pancakes at Denny's is not living in total dire poverty.

One dollar, two dollars.. it makes a big difference. I mean, we can have philosophical discussions all day long, but at the end of the day it makes a big difference to a lot of people when something so simple as the min wage difference for servers is changed. They did that in a couple states, and then the poverty rates among waitstaff were halved.

Those are real people Cog, usually younger women with children.

US is the richest country in the world and in the history of the world -- there's no good cause to have these rates of poverty there are now, it really could get turned around to something closer to the 90s at least.

[SeaGypsy]

I think you have a certain magical view of $15. In fact to be fair it needs to be enough to disqualify for food stamps & general assistance, benchmarked to the cost of living, poverty lines, average adult earning percentage. If that happens to be $15 now, so be it. But get too fixated on a number, without getting the setting mechanism right, inflation will creep in like a thief in the night & working poor will again be lining up for welfare.

[Sixstrings]

I think you have a certain magical view of $15. In fact to be fair it needs to be enough to disqualify for food stamps & general assistance, benchmarked to the cost of living, poverty lines, average adult earning percentage. If that happens to be $15 now, so be it. But get too fixated on a number, without getting the setting mechanism right, inflation will creep in like a thief in the night & working poor will again be lining up for welfare.

Oh you're definitely right SG, it really should be set *and then pegged to inflation* and then it's solved and not a fight back and forth every four years / conservatives winning out and don't raise it all for 16 years or whatever.

The state I live in has a slightly higher than federal min wage, and most importantly *they pegged it to inflation*. This was passed by voter initiative and referendum. It never would have passed through the legislature.

It's still not enough for the working class where I live, but it's a bit better situation than many of the red states that are just at the federal minimum of $7 and change.

As for that "magic" 15 number -- the point of that, the "fight for 15" movement, is just to be specific. So if they were just for "raising the min wage" then that could be anything, maybe just fifty cents. Rather, they're being specific, $15.

Also, economists say that if it had kept pace with inflation then it should be $15 right now.

So what winds up happening is like in California, they're now going to pass $15 min wage but it's stepped up over six years. Which is the nature of compromise and things that actually pass, so it's $15 but over six years and $15 won't be $15 anymore after six years of inflation.

50 cents per year for first two years, then a dollar a year after. I didn't read whether it's pegged to inflation thereafter, but I doubt it.

This minimum wage issue is not exciting at all, I grant that, and rarely discussed in politics.

Working class people, working at walmart, ought to be going to fight for 15 rallies rather than Trump rallies.

But people are just angry, and upset, and they don't know WHY the economy is bad and who to blame or what the answers are, they just know there's a problem.

[Sixstrings]

We (in the UK) can't go down this road much further without serious social unrest / trouble.

Mmmhm, it's an old story. The establishment won't give an inch until things get so bad that next thing you know, people are voting in a mussolini or some crazy person populist, or hardcore socialists.

Communism was never ushered in while there was a broad middle and working class that was happy.

Rather, it came in when a lot of people were too dirt poor and there were a few rich that didn't give a flip until the mob was at the gates of versailles.

The moral of the story is -- the bossman ought to just raise the wage and not let it get so bad, it's in the establishment's *interest* to not let it get bad.

I know in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn caused a lot of stir with how well he did. That's a sign of an unstable situation. And then in the US, we had Sanders and Trump. A socialist, and some say the latter is a fascist. (or "proto fascist.")

If the establishment is scared of Sanders and Trump, then they ought to raise wages.

I don't have any answers - the juggernaut of capitalism moves on, ever faster, ever more uncontrollable, now unstoppable, ever more at risk of a serious crash with unrepairable damage.

A primary thing going on in recent years, and this is the same in the UK (the city) as the US (wall street), is that the economy has gone so much toward financial-based.

Now to be FAIR -- yeah, socialism can go too far. And I don't know about the UK, but the left has not gone too far in the USA; it's the contrary, policies have gone too far right ever since Reagan (and Thatcher in UK, truth is the US needed some Reaganism and UK needed some thatcherism, but it just went too far thereafter).

Then HW Bush, then Clinton, then W Bush, then Obama.

Anyhow, there needn't be crazy populists elected.. more states should simply do what California has done. Just raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over four or six years, and problem solved for the next ten years and let's move on.

California is the size of many nations. If they can do it, the rest of the states could.

[C8]

The problem SixStrings (play guitar?) is that if $15 is good than why not give everybody $100 an hour? According to your theory it is all the same.

There is a fly in your ointment however- its called world trade. Other nations don't feel our labor is that valuable.

Another fly (horsefly in fact): massive idleness from wage induced unemployment leads to social disruption- always has, always will.

The real problem isn't raising wages- its lowering costs for the poor. Housing, in particular, is out of control. But liberals want their mass immigration but don't want to build mass cheap housing for immigrants. Democrats say: not in my back yard! I want my walk-able "green" neighborhood with few dark skinned people! (check out all the battles in blue states to stop the creation of mass low income housing).

Raising wages + mass immigration + restricted housing = madness and ruin

[Outcast_Searcher]

As a counterpoint to Six's endless prattle, which pretends like this nonsense has nothing but rainbows and unicorns as consequences, a Forbes article that actually considers real world economic consequences.

(And I know, Six will dismiss it, since anything the mean old right wing says or does is always wrong re economics. (After all, how could job providers who run successful companies possibly know anything about economics?))

http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdo ... d490483db3

Higher wages do not usually drive companies out of business. They help them attract talented employees and thrive, unless higher wages are part of a bunch of government mandates that raise business costs without raising productivity.

That was the case for Greece before the crisis, and may end up being the case in California which reached a $15 minimum wage deal today.

But let me guess -- in Six's world, unrealistic wages to buy votes in a political world gone mad had NOTHING to do with the economic fiasco in Greece. It was all some rich guys' fault, and of course, the conservatives).

Greece’s minimum wage dropped from 876 euros in 2012 to 684 in 2014, according to Eurostat. And with business closures and layoffs, and unemployment soaring, workers lost everything, learning a hard lesson: wages cannot be mandated; they must be earned.

To be fair, the generous minimum wage and other labor regulations and guarantees weren’t the only factors that drove business closures and dislocations. There were plenty of other factors, as we discussed in previous pieces here and in Barron’s. But the lesson is still valid.

The problem is that union activists and liberal politicians have yet to learn this lesson. Even in this country, where free enterprise rather than socialism is at the core of the prevailing economic system.

Once, as Cog pointed out, lots more robots take lots of low skill CA jobs in a few years as a consequence of this, more jobs are offshored, businesses shut down or leave, etc. and the effort is hailed a "success" from the left (since it will actually help for a small minority of the people), I'm sure Six will be blaming the remaining problem on Dubya, Ronald Reagan, or the GOP in general, business owners in particular, etc.

Maybe a $50 minimum wage next time will fix things. (They'll have already tried even higher taxes, of course).

[Outcast_Searcher]

Another example/reminder of why there are actually consequences to artificially inflating bottom tier wages. (Another thing the mean old right wing predicted actually happens in the real world. Looks like Six and his ilk will have to flail in full babble denial mode again).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidburkus ... 499670389a

Why A $70,000 Minimum Salary Isn't Enough For Gravity Payments

When Dan Price announced that he was raising the minimum salary in his company to $70,000, it made a lot of headlines. The story of the founder and CEO of the Seattle-based credit card processor Gravity Payments drastically cutting his own salary in order to raise the standard of living of even his lowest paid employees was written about just about everywhere, from liberal bloggers to conservative radio hosts.

Inside the company itself, the reaction was generally positive. “Everyone start[ed] screaming and cheering and just going crazy,” Price told Business Insider shortly after the announcement. That enthusiasm eventually settled down as Gravity Payments went about figuring out how to make the new plan work. The original plan immediately raised everyone’s minimum to $50,000 and then would increase by $10,000 until it reached $70,000 by December 2017.

What could be better? Full on liberal economic nirvana, right? Bernie Sanders would be ecstatic.

Price and Gravity Payments have made headlines again, after a New York Times article revealed that the company is struggling to deal with the implications of Price’s plan. The media coverage started a flood of emails, phone calls and social media posts about the company, which even when positive was an unneeded distraction. In addition, some customers, who saw the move as a political statement or feared a price increase, took their business elsewhere.

But the most damaging blow to the company is internal, as some of the most valuable employees at Gravity Payments have started to leave the company. The Times reported that two employees have left directly because of the policy. One told the paper she was initially excited about the new policy, but as she thought about the details she began to get dismayed. “He gave raises to people who have the least skills and are the least equipped to do the job, and the ones who were taking on the most didn’t get much of a bump.”

She said she presented the issue to Price along with an alternative way to raise salaries, but was met with an accusation of selfishness. So she decided to quit. Another employee, on the lower-end of the former pay range, also decided to quit after thinking through the policy. “Now the people who were just clocking in and out were making the same as me,” he told the Times. “It shackles high performers to less motivated team members.”

It's straight out of Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", almost 60 years later. The accusation of "selfishness" is all liberals have when pie in the sky policies meet economic reality. Sadly, such accusations produce NOTHING, but reflect the hate liberals love to accuse the GOP of.

So clearly $35.00 an hour isn't enough. But we know this from experience -- the liberals are NEVER satisfied when it comes to such policies.

[Sixstrings]

The problem SixStrings (play guitar?) is that if $15 is good than why not give everybody $100 an hour? According to your theory it is all the same.

I play a bit of classical guitar, I'm not really proficient but do enjoy what I can do with it.

Various economists arrived at that $15 figure, saying that if it had kept pace with inflation then it would be $15 now (and also if productivity gains had gone more equally to the working and middle class and not overly weighted to the financial sector rich).

To answer your question, why not $100 an hour?

Because quite simply, that is too much. $15 is just right, not too much and not too little.

After taxes and SS withholding, $15 an hour comes out to about $1920 ish a month net.

So let's do up a budget for a working class person (assuming they've got 40 hours a week work, which isn't assumed these days, a lot of it is 30 hours or under part time so $15 is even more important):

Electricity: $100
Cable tv: $100
Cellphone: $50
Car payment (that can be a range of figures, let's just say $250).
Vehicle insurance: $75
Rent: $600

So all that adds up to $1175, leaving $825 a month or $206 a week, for food and clothing and dental expenses and healthcare expenses. If they're on the ACA then what's that cost, $200 a month? $300? And then, prescriptions etc. etc.

And then all of life's emergencies.. vehicle repairs, new tires, etc.

Clothing. Some kind of entertainment / shopping.

Even $15 an hour, leaving $825 ish net a month for food and all of life's expenses, is not much money.

But it would be enough for the basics in life, so that things would be a bit more like they were back in the 90s.

All I know is that the minimum wage is something that used to get raised about every four years and it was sometime during the W. Bush administration that Republicans STOPPED raising it. And then, they blocked Obama from raising it too and O is also to blame because he didn't really fight for it or care.

This is something R's just used to do folks, I'm sorry. Guys like HW Bush and Bob Dole, Republicans used to complain a bit and delay it but they never totally blocked it for over twelve years like what we have now, they'd just delay a bit and then raise the minimum wage every x number of years.

I'm old enough to remember that government used to do a list of certain things and now government doesn't do it anymore (keeping college costs down, and raising minimum wage) and you all think it's normal or something but I'm sorry I don't think it is.

This minimum wage issue is not just "the poor."

I don't what billionaire world all of you all live in.

But in my world, of middle class and upper middle class people -- a lot of them have twentysomething kids still living at home, that have no hope of affording their own apartment at least and having a roommate. They simply do not make enough money. They need $15 an hour at least, like how it was when I was in my 20s and I had my first apartment starting out in life.

And other than 20 year olds, there's a *lot* of fifty and sixty year olds trying to work for under $15 an hour. Heck, government jobs used to be the good jobs.. in my area, a lot of those are paying less than $15 an hour.

There is a fly in your ointment however- its called world trade. Other nations don't feel our labor is that valuable.

I'm sorry I don't buy it; big box chain stores and other corporations could afford to pay at least $15 an hour. They've all got record profits and money sitting on their balance sheets, for many years now.

Another fly (horsefly in fact): massive idleness from wage induced unemployment leads to social disruption- always has, always will.

We've already got record unemployment. $15 minimum wage would be real economy stimulus, for main street. Working and middle class people with more money in their pocket could then afford to patronize more businesses, and then those would grow.

The real problem isn't raising wages- its lowering costs for the poor.

I think a living wage makes more sense, versus a myriad of government programs to send checks out. Just have corporations pay their workers enough to live a basic life, like old Henry Ford believed in back in the 1920s.

I'm sorry guys, I'm just a "small c conservative" on this issue and that means I don't like things to change. Republicans used to raise the minimum wage every seven years or so and then they stopped doing that, and I think they should start doing it again.

And they should start getting college costs way down, and they should do student debt relief.

And ACA needs to get fixed so that it's affordable.

These things need to get done, and Republicans just don't have any plan for it except the same old "let's do healthcare savings accounts" type stuff.

Trump's at least majorly different in that he wants to bring factory jobs back, but at the end of the day walmart is the #1 employer -- not everyone is gonna work in a oreo cookie factory, that's not the total answer.

The retail jobs, the construction jobs, the clerks and lower end healthcare, and city and county gov -- they all need to be at least $15 an hour, minimum.

[Sixstrings]

Another example/reminder of why there are actually consequences to artificially inflating bottom tier wages.

Why is it that you think the natural state of things should be that the 1% is artificially inflated? Like feudalism, or something?

Are you aware of American history and that we had guilded top 1% ages in the past (like the 1800s and Standard OIl and Rockefeller and JP Morgan and all the tycoons and barons), and then we had periods of correction where income disparity was reduced and we had times like the post war era where it was a more even distribution from the upper class, middle and working class?

The 1960s and 70s were better, than today. Heck, a man could just go out and get a working class job and make enough money for his wife to stay home and care for the kids. Then next thing you know, the women had to work too. Then next thing you know, neither the man or woman are getting forty hours a week from one job or any kind of good benefits.

And then, the family itself breaks down and there aren't many marriages anymore and there is no mom and dad. And heroin epidemic going on, and a rusting rust belt, and social dysfunction.. it's all related to poverty.

And now you all say the robots are gonna take what's left.

The 1990s weren't as good as the 70s, but the 90s were better than now.

This is just my opinion, but I like *balance* -- not artificial inflation, neither artificial inflation for the bottom 99% NOR the top 1%.

I don't want to dig up all the charts, but everybody knows the facts on it.. there was a MASSIVE transfer of wealth that went on over the last twenty years, from the working class mostly but the middle class too, all going to the top 1% and top 5%.

[Sixstrings]

So clearly $35.00 an hour isn't enough. But we know this from experience -- the liberals are NEVER satisfied when it comes to such policies.

So okay, let's just raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and get some Australian / Canadian type polices and then we can STILL have liberal vs. conservative arguments.

But your family would be better off for it (surely you have kids or nephews or nieces or extended family that are struggling).

I wonder what conservatives and liberals argue about, in Canada and New Zealand and Australia.

They don't have as much poverty as we do, I know that much.

So why can't we just raise all the boats just a bit, and then we can still have conservative vs. liberal arguments like they do in Canada, yet there wouldn't be so many poor people and things like diabetics going without insulin.

(In places like Canada and UK, the conservatives and liberals argue about little things like whether to privatize a bit of their healthcare or not.. but the arguments are not about whether people should have basic healthcare to start with, or basic things like overtime pay and minimum wage, their line of debate is further left than ours.. but yet they still have conservatives and their conservatives do just fine, and they still get to have arguments between liberals and conservatives.. all I'm saying is we ought to move our sliding scale a bit left, in the US.

I'd rather have conservatives like Stephen Harper, that don't think diabetics should just go without any kind of healthcare at all, etc. etc.)

P.S. Let me tell you the kind of think that influences my opinions. A lot of it is local. I saw this on my local tv station one day, it was a guy from Doctors Without Borders. A British volunteer doctor. And they did a free healthcare day in my county.

And the guy said that it's funny, they used to just go to places like Honduras and Guatamala etc. And the issue there is that often, there is no doctor or hospital at all, within a hundred miles.

But yet in the US, there are doctors and hospitals all over the place.. *but yet they may as well be a hundred miles away*, to the people that have no insurance or money to pay for it.

So isn't that kind of sad, no? That we have to have that kind of thing in this country, Doctors Without Borders camps?

2nd P.S. -- I'll admit to some hypocrisy though. Just to be fair and objective.

Me being so much into this issue is really LOCAL, for me. My state has one of the highest income disparity levels. And I've seen my area go downhill over the years, it used to be a lot nicer.

I get panhandled for spare change, just when I try to go out and about.

I have to drive out of my way, to get to a better part of town where there aren't so many poor folks.

I live in a Republican governed red state, and ALL the red states, are the worst as far as poverty goes, versus the blue states. You can just look at that poverty map I posted upthread, the red states are a sea of red. Brighter red on that map, is more poverty.

But anyhow having said all that -- I wouldn't vote to pay one penny more in property taxes, or raising the sales tax, or me paying a state income tax. So yeah, I've got some hypocrisy.

BUT JUST ON THE FACTS -- the top 1% and top 5% really could pay a bit more taxes, especially the top 1%. When you look at the wealth transfer that happened, it really did go from the working and middle on up to the very top. It wasn't the other way around.

Working and middle class is tapped out, the money is with the millionaires and billionaires.

I'm not all for socialism either, yes that can go too far, but it's just a balance. Things shouldn't be all far right OR all far left, and I guess we all just have a different definition of what that balance is.

ANYHOW this thread should be positive. This is a good thing California did, and you all will see in six years that things get a bit better in California. You'll see that business could pay that $15 minimum wage, after all, and nobody notices anything different except less poverty.

California has taken the first step, and New York state will probably be next, and then we all know how this goes -- congress will finally raise the federal to like $12 an hour.

And that extra one or two dollars really does help a lot of people out.

[vtsnowedin]

What is the minimum wage in Viet Nam? China, India , Indonesia?
Now if a robot that takes no breaks, works three shifts a day, Pays no income or social security taxes, needs no workman's comp or health insurance was worth buying at $10.50 an hour What is it's value at $15.00/hour?
And another thing. The one percent did not steal our wealth. We gave it to them one Starbucks's coffee , one burger with fries, one lap top, one cell phone, one Xbox, one loaded automobile, one gallon of gas etc,at a time.

[SeaGypsy]

Most ASEAN countries have 2 minimum award wages, one for each- rural & city. Roughly $3-8 a day, with a day being up to 12 working hours.

(That's the competition, just in case anyone forgot)

[C8]

I play a bit of classical guitar, I'm not really proficient but do enjoy what I can do with it.

To answer your question, why not $100 an hour?

Because quite simply, that is too much. $15 is just right, not too much and not too little.

SixStrings- I would give you a detailed rebuttal- but for every one word I type, you type one hundred, and I afraid you will just slump over and die on the keyboard! I did like you Goldilocks answer to the $15 question- took guts to do that on this website bro!

Listen, a much better evening would be to just pull out that guitar and play "American Pie" cause that's the theme of the day.