[Cog]

Instead of feeding the bloated federal government, we should be starving it into submission.

[wildbourgman]

Sixstrings, I never said it was simply a job killer (which it is) I'm saying that our companies don't have the wiggle room right now. This isn't the Kennedy years, these companies of today as well as our government has a dependency to unlimited growth the margins won't allow what your asking for.

In order to get what you are talking about would we would have to have a much better economic outlook. In my view we have some real pain coming and more regulation won't help that endeavor.

[Sixstrings]

Sixstrings, I never said it was simply a job killer (which it is) I'm saying that our companies don't have the wiggle room right now. This isn't the Kennedy years, these companies of today as well as our government has a dependency to unlimited growth the margins won't allow what your asking for.

I just disagree, $15 is reasonable, stepped up over several years. And that's Bernie's plan.

What people don't realize is just how MUCH gdp and wealth and income have become concentrated in just the financial sector, and wall street.

I disagree with you -- corporate America does in fact have "the wiggle room" for a $15 min wage. Corporate profits and balance sheets have been at historic record highs, for many years now.

In order to get what you are talking about would we would have to have a much better economic outlook. In my view we have some real pain coming and more regulation won't help that endeavor.

$15 min wage has already been done in some cities (can't remember if any states have).

It would be stepped up over several years. We don't have any inflation problem at the moment, in fact the reverse is the case -- oil is too low, and the dollar too strong. So economically, it's smart to raise the minimum wage. Get some more money flowing on main street. This is what most economists say.

Low energy costs is also a sort of stimulus, sort of a pay raise. And look what happened, the economy started moving again, a bit.

Anyways, I'm just saying what my position is as far as carbon taxes. No new carbon taxes, without wages having gone up enough first, and more economic growth first.

[Sixstrings]

Instead of feeding the bloated federal government, we should be starving it into submission.

Since wages haven't gone up for the working in middle class, then I do applaud house Republicans for squashing the gas tax idea.

[frankthetank]

Just let the roads crumble. Sooner or later, a day comes when there won't be the materials, money, energy to maintain the massive amts of roads in this country. In my city they want to build a road right through the marsh...although the roads we have are in piss poor condition. Madness.

The rich will move by helicopter or MRAP from their compounds to their airstrips/yachts.

[Sixstrings]

Just let the roads crumble. Sooner or later, a day comes when there won't be the materials, money, energy to maintain the massive amts of roads in this country. In my city they want to build a road right through the marsh...although the roads we have are in piss poor condition. Madness.

The rich will move by helicopter or MRAP from their compounds to their airstrips/yachts.

Here's the thing though.. there has not been a federal gas tax hike in 24 years. Last time was 1992, when prices were really low back then too. So it seems like they just want to slip a tax in there while prices are low.

Over the last 24 years, roads have been maintained and built, without a new gas tax.

We fought two wars -- trillions of dollars -- without any tax on working class.

The Pentagon has a new trillion dollar combat jet -- without any taxes on working class.

So why do they need this gas tax, for $300 billion in roads?

So that's all I'm sayin' here.

Also: there's not even a particular infastructure plan, it sounded very general, it's just "driverless cars and infrastructure" and then I guess green energy stuff. Devil's in the details, folks. What's that driverless car part? Is that updating the interstates to handle driverless cars, or is it taxpayer money to give to Google? If the latter, then Google has plenty of money already to complete their driverless cars.

It's almost absurd, drivers having to pay a new gas tax to pay for cars that have no drivers. (sorry, couldn't resist the joke)

[wildbourgman]

Sixstring's, first of all $15 is an arbitrary feel good number. Wage's are dictated by productivity of the worker, the labor market and the proposed jobs profit potential. No government fiat can change the fact that the real minimum wage is always zero in a free society. In countries that still have slave labor I guess you could go into a negative minimum wage territory.

I'm not for an arbitrary minimum wage at all, but since we have one it should always be less than prevailing wage in order not to have regulation price labor out of the market. Another idea would be to have the minimum wage tie directly to inflation but two things would have to happen. First workers and employers would have to be willing to adjust wages periodically which would suck if your getting paid less this month because of deflation results. Also the same folks in government that want the minimum wages to increase are the ones that hate to admit it when we have inflation due to their currency manipulation.

[Sixstrings]

Sixstring's, first of all $15 is an arbitrary feel good number. Wage's are dictated by productivity of the worker, the labor market and the proposed jobs profit potential. No government fiat can change the fact that the real minimum wage is always zero in a free society. In countries that still have slave labor I guess you could go into a negative minimum wage territory.

$15 is the number. Not a penny less, not a penny more. People come back and say "well why not just say $100 an hour, or a million dollars an hour?" As if that's a refutation.

The answer: because even $16 an hour is too much, for minimum. $15 is just right, for a minimum wage in 2020 (that's when it would be in effect, if passed today).

That would force walmart to pay their workers just enough so they wouldn't qualify for foodstamps and medicaid -- thereofre saving the GOVERNMENT, taxpayers, money.

This is a CONSERVATIVE idea. It's about BUSINESS paying its own labor cost, NOT government. It's about government cutting costs -- shifting that burden of paying labor, BACK onto business.

I'm not for an arbitrary minimum wage at all, but since we have one it should always be less than prevailing wage in order not to have regulation price labor out of the market. Another idea would be to have the minimum wage tie directly to inflation but two things would have to happen. First workers and employers would have to be willing to adjust wages periodically which would suck if your getting paid less this month because of deflation results. Also the same folks in government that want the minimum wages to increase are the ones that hate to admit it when we have inflation due to their currency manipulation.

This thing about Republicans not raising the minimum wage anymore, is relatively recent. Like the last 10-12 years ish. Before that, they'd always delay it a bit but they'd never make a huge fight over it, and never block it completely. They used to just raise this thing, every five or so years. That's how's been since the 1970s, up until like ten years ago.

This is my recollection, anyhow.

So that's just my opinion. I'm like a small c conservative. I like things to stay the same, how they always were, and if there's no good reason for it to change then don't change it.

They ought to get back to raising the min wage every so often.

It hasn't been raised in so long that $15 is the right number.

Wildbourgman, the inflationary arguments you're giving are not true -- dollar is strong right now, oil is so cheap. That's more deflation. The economy actually needs a bit of main street economic inflation of wages and economic activity. It needs growth.

The argument you're giving, is the same thing Republicans told John Kennedy back in the 1960s. "We can't pay a buck ten an hour, that's radical, that's inflationary." And finally it got raised, and it wasn't the end of the world.

Now.. inflation DID become a problem under Nixon, Ford, and Carter and the beginning of Reagan.. but that's not where we are at, today. Again, dollar is overly strong and oil looks like it's deflation or something.

Anyhow -- $15, stepped up over several years, it's not radical.

There's too much poverty in some parts of the country. Like that Bernie Sanders video. A "feel good" min wage of $15 would have helped that woman who worked 3 part time jobs at $7 an hour. She wouldn't have wound up on social security, maybe.

Raising the min wage fixes so many problems -- it's a conservative idea (I think, anyhow ), because it cuts government costs by shifting labor cost back onto business where it belongs.

That's savings in food stamps, medicaid, social security.

IT ALSO BOOSTS the tax rolls, which saves social security.

The way things are now -- big corps hardly pay any taxes, and then they pay their working class workers so little that the workers don't pay taxes either, and worse, on top of that they qualify for government benefits. Food stamps. Medicaid.
Earned income tax credits.

Lastly -- if the climate change group wants its carbon tax, then they have to do the living wage first.

P.S. about pegging to inflation -- that's the BEST idea to do, $15 then peg it to inflation then it's a problem solved, forever. That's what Australia did, they pegged theirs to inflation. That's smart government.

[SeaGypsy]

A few things you said about Australia are wrong. The free public health system runs in parallel with an extensive subsidised private system. Those earning over 50kpa must have some private health insurance, many medicines are copay & when you are old, aged care will bankrupt you if you become dependent on the government system. Our minimum wage system is award based & registered agreement based, depending what you are doing for who determines minimum wage, with the baseline 17.25 being only very low skilled jobs. There are still a lot of people working for free or for a safety net payment 30-50% less than minimum wage. The cities have large black market cash economies & major rorting of systems by unemployed, single parents & doctors. Last, the fuel tax I mentioned is not a carbon tax, it is a liquid fuels tax & has been around for near 40 years, indexed except for a few years, just like wages. The current government was elected with a mandate to scrap carbon taxes laid down by the previous government. We now don't have carbon taxes, but still pay 45 cents plus 10% tax per liter.

[tita]

FYI, in switzerland, we pay 0.85$ of taxes for 1 liter of gas. A gallon of gas costs actually 5.5$. It's the same in Europe in general. (it was around 6.4$ a gallon in 2013)

You may think it is stupid. But, think about it. We import much of our oil we use. When the first oil shock occurred, in 1973, we realized we were a little bit too much dependant on oil. Taxing it was a way to restrain the consumption of it. It boosted the design of lower consuming engines. Public transport stayed competitive, using electricity (which is domestic production). This helped maintaining our railroads, and the know-how of it. Our roads are not over-crowded, needing large extensions of them. AND the impact of the fluctuations of the price of oil is reduced.

The benefits are finally better. But this is 40 years of this policy. So, 10$ of taxes on imported barrels (6.3 cents per liter) looks like a joke tax to us.

[Cog]

Why do social engineers feel compelled to restrain their citizens from purchasing that which they can afford to purchase? Is it some inner urge to play mommy?

[wildbourgman]

That would force walmart to pay their workers just enough so they wouldn't qualify for foodstamps and medicaid -- thereofre saving the GOVERNMENT, taxpayers, money.

Sixstrings, I think you keep overlooking one major point of my debate. Our companies are on the edge and they are doing pretty severe things in order to keep the ship from sinking and that's with todays wages.

Walmart just closed how many stores? Your not going to force them into anything that won't help there bottom line. Our labor participation rate is growing as our unemployment rate shrinks, this is not the environment for this type of social work. I don't agree with it conceptually, but now is not the time for what your talking about, or the $10 dollar tax on oil. Our oil companies are falling faster than a young Mike Tyson opponent, so they certainly can't handle any more than what's on there plates. So Obama needs to re-think his strategy here too.

Furthermore with or without an increase in the minimum wage we are running towards automation to the point where business will simply tell the government where to stick the wage increase for many workers. The robots will come faster with higher mandated wages just as self check out and self serve gasoline pumping came many years before it. These things have hurt the folks you intend to help, it's just that you refuse to see it.

Another point you made about using this to get people off of welfare. This is exactly the sort of thing big government does, it causes a problem and then tries to fix it by causing more problems. If you look at the history of countries sliding towards socialism its constantly creating new laws to repair poor consequences of old laws.

If you want to fix welfare cost you start incrementally cutting welfare, that in itself would incrementally repair the immigration problem and then you would create highly productive workers that fight to keep available jobs. If we would have never had a robust comfortable welfare state you would have never had an immigration problem. Everywhere in the world those two go hand and hand. Government can't raise wages to slow welfare, it doesn't work like that, if so every country in the world would have fixed their fiscal problems by fiat. Think about that some more.

So it's time to just stop this nonsense because incremental socialism fails slowly just as revolutionary socialism has failed quickly. If we are not going to agree on stopping how about just not killing your host. Any parasite that kills it host doesn't have it's own long term wellbeing in mind. The host is dying now!

Please read all of that in a calm voice, except the last sentence. Later folks I have some more farm work to do, oh and it's not paying me minimum wage yet so now what?

[tita]

Why do social engineers feel compelled to restrain their citizens from purchasing that which they can afford to purchase?

Because when your wife spends more than what you earn, you can't afford anymore goods as you wanted. This apply also to the balance trade of a state, with the citizens in the role of the wife.

The idea is to export more, and import less to keep a strong money. This is an economic measure, used by both liberal and social governements. Of course, this is not a neo-liberal measure (they don't care if a country gets poor, as long as his few rich people get richer). This is what Obama has been doing all along his legislature, taking back production firms inside US, stimulating US economy. And it's a success, really. You may not see that with republicans and medias bashing continuously Obama, but he will be remember as the president who saved US from the 2008 crisis.

Of course, as a European, I would be very pleased to see Trump elected. Then we could see how an unregulated economy can fall in front of Chindia.

[C8]

With tons of unskilled, illiterate immigrants coming to the US daily a $15 min wage is very reckless

1. these workers aren't worth $15/hr in terms of what extra value they can produce- so companies automate
2. massive unemployment and welfare costs rise as a result
3. a sub-min wage black market results which brings in organized crime

the reality is that, given current US immigration policy (anybody can come in whatever numbers they choose), the min wag should actually be going down to absorb the new influx of low value workers

we are breeding a mass of idle people primed for violence and revolution

[Plantagenet]

With tons of unskilled, illiterate immigrants coming to the US daily a $15 min wage is very reckless

1. these workers aren't worth $15/hr in terms of what extra value they can produce- so companies automate
2. massive unemployment and welfare costs rise as a result
3. a sub-min wage black market results which brings in organized crime

the reality is that, given current US immigration policy (anybody can come in whatever numbers they choose), the min wag should actually be going down to absorb the new influx of low value workers

we are breeding a mass of idle people primed for violence and revolution

Yes, thats all true.

But try to look at this from Obama's perspective---Hispanic voters tend to vote for Ds at rates of 70-90%. If you are a D, then the more Hispanics who come to the USA the better.

[Newfie]

Just let the roads crumble. Sooner or later, a day comes when there won't be the materials, money, energy to maintain the massive amts of roads in this country. In my city they want to build a road right through the marsh...although the roads we have are in piss poor condition. Madness.

The rich will move by helicopter or MRAP from their compounds to their airstrips/yachts.

Agree, we should be looking to power down. Roads are big pat of the proble with our lack of sustainability.

[Newfie]

Why do social engineers feel compelled to restrain their citizens from purchasing that which they can afford to purchase? Is it some inner urge to play mommy?

Did you let your children eat all their Hallowene candy in one sitting? It's kind of like that.

[Subjectivist]

So basically this was all a noise and light show signifying no serious effort to accomplish anything.

[wildbourgman]

So basically this was all a noise and light show signifying no serious effort to accomplish anything.

Exactly, Obama knew when he said this that its not going to happen anywhere near form that he proposed if at all. It's not even a trial balloon.

Now the trial balloon that was floated about negative interest rates in the United states, that is for real. It was first proposed by people outside the realm of power and every few months the proposal got closer to people in the fed. Sometimes these things are just talk and sometimes they are checking the wind direction of the voting public.

[Cog]

Why do social engineers feel compelled to restrain their citizens from purchasing that which they can afford to purchase? Is it some inner urge to play mommy?

Did you let your children eat all their Hallowene candy in one sitting? It's kind of like that.

I do not consider other adults, not related to me, as my children. I would not attempt to stop you from gorging on candy corn if that is your wish. Should the government install surveillance cameras inside people's houses to keep children from over-eating candy? After all, its obvious there are bad parents out there, so I can't see why you would object to this. It takes a village to raise a child doesn't it?

Better yet, lets just ban candy and the only government approved Halloween snacks would be carrot sticks or tofu. That should make everyone healthy and happy.