Forum Post: $10.39 How much the federal minimum wage would be if it had kept up with inflation over the past 40 years. Instead, it’s $7.25.
Posted 12 years ago on March 8, 2012, 8:45 p.m. EST by richardkentgates
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It is entirely inhumane to have a system where people work for $10.39 per hour. Income should be allocated democratically instead of through the market and the minimum wage should be raised to $115,000 per year by limiting the top income to $460,000 per year (which is more than enough incentive for the economy to work as well as it does now) so that society works well for everyone.
What about a completely different approach?
No such thing as hourly employees?
If you work WITH somebody, you have a vested interest and get a piece of the pie only when something has been killed, dragged to the cave, skinned and on the table......
I'm not paying ANYONE 100K that doesn't make me money and I have to babysit just to make sure they can sweep the floor without fawking up..
Grow the hell up, plenty of small business owners never see 100K/year themselves.
You shouldn't be in charge of how much someone makes. Workers should get the same right to an income as everyone else. If you like to boss people around and tell them how much they can make, move to China.
If you want to continue making less than $100k as a small business owner, you can simply take less income or move to a country where they still have poverty.
But if you want to make at least $115k for working, then demand democracy.
I have no problem making less than 100K a year. I do quite well with what I have and do not find myself in any position to ask anyone for anything.
50% of Americans are in or near poverty. So you can continue to just care about yourself. I will continue to push for a better system for half the population.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/census-shows-1-2-people-103940568.html
Your argument is assuming people all believe they should make a higher wage in the workplace. People want to make enough to afford the cost of living (they can't anymore. Corporations have laid off all their workers and then wonder why their profit margins fall. Collectively if you pay employees enough for their positions, they'll be able to consume. - That's Capitalism If you don't have working people to consume and only products - who the heck is going to buy them? One percent of the population? (or people receiving welfare which I think is the current m.o. of corps to get their hands on that) The other thing we're asking for is the chance for upward mobility. It's been shown that people irregardless of intelligence typically do well only when their parents were wealthy. If there are no jobs, how can people afford school especially when it costs what it does. Oh yes that's where our subsidy comes in handy again (one percent pays for universities to have students? so they can continue to charge for profits beyond reason) Is that a fair system - perhaps it's time to re-evaluate the way that business is being run in this country which ultimately is unsustainable and will be run into the ground. Because eventually the one percent will be paying themselves through their own tax money. Then they have the nerve to complain about this? Who has caused it? Hire some people pay them enough to live, put some of those billions in ad dollars back into employees. Strange idea that Workers = Consumers + Profits?
But people don't like theft. So, if you'd just take what people earned, they earn it somewhere else outside of your grasp. So, in the end, you're still stuck with the same problem of having to earn it yourself. Kleptocracy, as you suggest, only works until the producers take their marbles and get out of your reach.
I don't advocate theft. Nowhere in my comment does it say anyone should steal anything.
Capitalism is based on theft. You steal the land by murdering the inhabitants and use violence to prevent anyone else from owning it. Then the thieving, murdering capitalists force the rest of society to work for the capitalists in exchange for a very, very, very small percentage of the wealth the land they stole creates.
The land belongs to everyone. And everyone who works is entitled to a fair share of the wealth it produces. A system that allocates $115k to $460k in income to every worker is a system that allocates the planet's wealth fairly.
Yeah, sure. No, the land doesn't belong to everyone. No, you're not entitled to a "fair share" just because you do "work". You're entitled to what you earn. If all we got was a share of what someone else created, and loons like you locked the door so we couldn't leave like the USSR had to do, we'd all just want to casually sweep the sidewalk.
Kleptocracy, as you suggest, only works until the producers take their marbles and get out of your reach. So, you better be prepared to make them stay and make them create.
Demand the good life? Try earning it instead.
If the land doesn't belong to everyone, who does it belong to? And did that person get a receipt from mother nature?
You have a weird obsession with immigration.
If you work 40 hours producing things people are buying, you have earned the same pay as everyone else working those same 40 hours.
But nobody is going to force you to get paid at least $115k. You will be free to continue earning far less than that.
All production comes from workers. And workers will be more likely to work in a country where the minimum wage is $115k. You think workers will start leaving? You think they prefer to make less? You have a bizarre understanding of the way people think.
I'm not obsessed with immigration, I'm simply not blinded like leftists to the simple fact that if you mass import poverty and education deficits, you get more poverty and a greater education deficit.
Great, we're all equal. So, gimme the simplest lazy-ass job possible, you know, one like yours. Why bother with anything else?
I want to eliminate poverty and pay people to get an education. I don't know who you think wants to mass import poverty.
You should have the freedom to be lazy. But some people want to make more than the minimum, so they won't be lazy. Some people don't want to waste their life doing the simplest lazy-ass job possible. So they will do something more meaningful with their life.
However, consumers dictate what jobs are available, not workers. If consumers are not buying the production of a lazy worker, you may be forced to be a harder worker who does something more than simple work in order to get a paycheck.
You would. That should tell you something, but it doesn't.
But surely a government that would enslave people as you suggest would also have no problem making people buy my product. All I'd be asking for is some compassion and fairness. LOL.
Look, your moonbat dreams will never come true, so why not just get started on Monday morning, use your freedom, and make a better life for yourself rather than wait on someone else to do it for you?
why do that, when we can use the coercive power of the government to shove a mandated pay raise for employees down the greedy employers neck. It seems to be a trend now a days, especially from the religious right to use gov't to force morality, and what is more moral than paying a living wage. I have seen the light; only way to get justice in America is to proactively take power from those greedy, no good, self righteous moneyed interests. It's a shame your generation was too indoctrinated to stand up to the moneyed interests, but don't worry unlike your greedy shame full self, we wont leave your ass hanging in the wind. Also, it is the employer who should be indicted with your ire for hiring illegals. We don't blame cops for addicts, so why would we blame government for greedy employers.
Spoken like a member of the well-trained sheeple.
And $10.39 would only be keeping up with inflation, not productivity (which is about 2%/year more). Before the 1970's workers kept up with both. That's why the lower middle class can't afford the advances since the 1970's - like internet, cell phones, etc.
This is great information. Thanks for the link.
Only keeping pace is not a raise.15 an hour is only 6 bills before taxes.Not much in the so called land of plenty.Real jobs with benefits are a thing of the past America has been cored out like an apple.
You have to understand that there is a relationship between minimum wage and all wage levels.
I understand that this country must have an underclass to serve and increase the wealth of a few.
So change it.
Honestly, who works at minimum wage? Give me a list, please.
Much of that underclass walked over our border to the cheers of liberals.
False, history proves that America has always had an underclass.while european and other nations have progressed past that kind of society.Stop blaming your so called liberals or conservatives for this country's income disparity.It is not a political ideology but an economic system that is the root of poverty in America.
Sure, wave it in. Don't worry about it. LOL.
Only white people deserve to work to feed their families, right?
How do you even get through the day being this stupid and incapable of reason?
If someone is brown, do the consequences of flooding a community with unskilled drops-outs disappear in your fucked-up lobotomized world?
Close the border and enforce our immigration laws, dry up this huge source of over-supply of no-skill people, and watch the price rise. But no, you leftist moonbats want the fire hose of supply left on, but then also want to cry about low wages as though you slept through that first week of Econ 101.
Occupy the Minimum Wage.... Enforce Immigration Laws and end the over-supply of no-skill labor.
I agree that open borders increases the supply of low wage earners and keeps wages low. But it is the mid and high wage earners who benefit from this policy. That is why there is always talk about immigration reform, but nothing very effective is done. I do disagree with the term unskilled worker. They are the bulk of our workforce and are essential. The mid and high wage earners do not possess the skills that low wage earners do. The main trait the high wage earners posess is selfishness.
You're partially right about who benefits. In an economic sense, you're right. But that doesn't stop plenty of others from advocating it too, even those too dumb to know they're being directly damaged. Businesses want the labor because they benefit, but the slum goes up across town. Liberals want it because they have trouble reasoning through cause and effect and consequences. Liberal leaders also cynically want more people in the dependent-class that need them.
But "reform" itself isn't an answer. Even on a legal basis, flooding the country with more unskilled labor keeps up the downward pressure on wages. It's supply and demand, simple as that.
Liberals think they can help cause the problem and then just price fix their way out of it with idiotic things like "living wages". But they can't; it's simple economics.
Occupy the Minimum Wage... End Mass Immigration of Unskilled Labor.
End mass immigration? The wealthy know where their profits come from. They want the borders open. Low wages equals high profits.
And liberals want more victims and more dependents. They also can't connect cause and affect. They're good at cheering immigration of unskilled people, but then wringing their hands about healthcare funding, schools, income skew, poverty, housing, and every other social metric we care about as though they're utterly unrelated. Of course, they aren't unrelated.
Occupy the Minimum Wage... End Mass Immigration of Unskilled Labor.
You keep blaming the liberals for immigration, but it's s the wealthy who really want it and control it. 50% of the American workforce makes $26,000 a year or less. About $13 an hour or less full-time. The average income for all Americans is about $50 an hour. The rich will fight immigration reform tooth and nail.
No, I'm simply providing some balance. Liberals support mass immigration of unskilled people. At least business interests support is knowing what it means. They get cheap labor or their lawns done, but the consequences are across town as that's where the slum gets built out. Liberals support it, but then spin around and bitch about it's obvious consequences as though they aren't connected.
What does "reform" mean? Anything that reduces the flood of no-skill people will be fought by corporate interests as well as liberals. Even bringing it up brings the reflexive "racist" smear from liberals.
You would think after 911 our southern border would have been closed tight, but it wasn't. Bush could have easily. What prevented him?
The same interests we've been talking about. Business interests would flip and liberals would smear him as a racist.
The same people that cry and whine about low wages for no-skill people also support creating the over-supply that's a big driver of the situation. Sure, they're too dense to understand the connection, but ignorance doesn't break the link.