Nader Says Kerry Getting Free Advice

May 16, 11:17 PM (ET)


(AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) - Memo to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry: Listen to your rival and unpaid consultant, Ralph Nader, and he just might help you get elected president.

Nader, interviewed Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition," said Kerry is "getting free consulting from this campaign. We are putting on his desk twice a week issues that could win if the Democrats are smart enough to pick them up."

The latest issue letter, which Nader distributes by e-mail, concerns a living wage. Nader, who is running as an independent in this year's presidential campaign, said 47 million people make less than $10 an hour - "Wal-Mart wages," he called them - and urged Democrats to make it an issue in the campaign.

"They've got to get to the level where they can sustain themselves and a minimum standard of living," said Nader, a longtime consumer advocate who sought the presidency under the Green Party banner in 2000. Democrats blame him for Al Gore's loss to Republican George W. Bush, but Nader says Gore is to blame for the defeat.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040517/D82K2TGO0.html

It's just not repeatable here. Like Kerry needs Ralph to tell him what the problems in America are.

Here's my advic to Ralph. You want to help defeat Bush? Stop running and lecture fulltime on the evils of Republicanism. The Democrats would be happy to finance your lecture tour because the Republican donations will stop the second you exit the race.

If I was a campaign advisor, I'd tell Kerry to continue to refuse his calls. Kerry's 30 year career in public service has fully equipped him to know winning issues, without any "help" from GWB's best buddy./political partner. I wouldn't trust any advice Nader gives-its just a set-up to kick Kerry in the balls later.

Yeah. That makes sense.----- NOT! :eyes:

And considering all the success Saint Ralph has had winning elections, I think we should all send him thank you notes every week for his sage "advice." Wutta guy.

Piece of advice for Ralph: DROP OUT.

Wanting things and bringing them into being are two very different things.

Or, we could just attack the messenger.

How many has he ran?

Nader, God love him, means well, but his execution is tragically flawed.

Take a flying f*ck at a rolling donut.

To me the term "Living Wage" implies that the wage would be different depending on your needs: how many children you have, your medical expenses, etc. Is this a correct assumption?

.

Considering how much wealth has flowed to the very top in the last few years, and how little good it has done for the economy, I think we could afford to create a national floor of $10 per hour. It would mean a little less corporate profit which benefits a few people at the top, and a little more for a lot of a lot of people below the middle.

Afterall, isn't the argument about tax cuts that it gives people more money to spend? Wouldn't paying people a decent wage for the work they do creating massive amounts of wealth which flows to the top achieve the same thing even more efficiently?

Its basically the minimum wage with a different name?

It's saying that we need a minimum wage that reflects the fact that we live in a society that is able to generate a great deal of wealth, but where people who work for a living at the bottom of the ladder have no bargaining power to get a reasonable wage, so the government should step in and treat them like they're a union and the politicans are the union representatives, and they need to strike a deal with capital that gives us wages that we can live on and which help grow the economy by planting the seeds of economic power down among the people at the bottom.

... where the extra money is going to come from. That large of an increase in minimum wage in these shaky economic times would be a very hard sell.

record profits for just about every major industry these days, notwithstanding the fact that we're seeing increased starvation, and record mortgage foreclosures, and decreased savings (in fact, the average "wealth" of the bottom quintile in America is NEGATIVE $10K, while the top quintile increases wealth by about 10% year over year, and many large corporations (like Disney) are reporting DOUBLED earnings this year, and oil and insurance companies have had record years the last few years.

The money is there. The question isn't where is it coming from. The question is where is it going.

...is to ask what impact this would have on unemployment. Bill Clinton correctly asserted that small, incremental increases in the minimum wage do not affect unemployment figures. However, there is little doubt that raising the minimum wage by 75% would result in massive unemployment among unskilled workers--the very people living wage advocates are trying to help.

made just by looking at the incredible growth in corporate profits that there's something artificial about the minimum wage. Clearly many corporations are making money hand over foot without doing much to earn it. If they had to spread a little bit of that profit down to employees currently making less than 10 bucks an hour, it's not clear to me that they would fire huge numbers of those people just to keep the easy profits roling.

I think they could tolerate a significant increase in wages for people at the bottom.

Also, I think it's pretty clear when you look at the negative economic repercussions of having a lot of people making minimum wage -- mortgage foreclosures up, savings rates way down, expensive debt way up (which is just guaranteed profit for banks and other lenders), and, significantly, the increase in the tax burden (a starting job at Walmart is so low that Walmart hands out info about getting public benefits with their employment packages) -- is bad bad bad for the economy.

So, I think it's clear that raising the minimum wage to a living wage might reduce profits for lenders who make money on midddle and working class debt, but it will have a lot of knock-on positive effects on the economy which will probably increase social wealth and employment a great deal. At least that was the lesson of the New Deal, and I think we can repeat it now, when it's needed again.

That's the problem. Sure, Walmart might be able to afford to double the wages of its minimum wage employees. But Walmart, despite being the largest employer in the country, employs only a small percentage of the country's minimum wage workers. Also effected would be the thousands of small mom and pop companies that can barely afford to pay their employees as it is. The net result then would be the further erosion of small businesses and greater dominance by large scale corporations. Hardly the effect I imagine you desire.

it's not clear to me that they would fire huge numbers of those people just to keep the easy profits roling.

I think this assumption is seriously naive. If I've learned anything in the past ten years, its that large corporations will indeed do almost anything to keeping the easy profits rolling.

The minimum wage is kept artificially low to protect the huge businesses which are having record profits.

And if you want to know the positive economic effects of raising wages, just look at Henry Ford (in addition to the new deal).

And nobody seriously disagrees that wages at the bottom have not kept pace with wages at the top. We're having a serious concentration of wealth which is part of the cause of the last great depression.

it's time for a big readjustment.

We can't even get the minimum wage up past $5.15!! It's fine to say what ought to be, but to get there we need to get more Democrats in office and/or persuade, cajole, bribe, threaten, and otherwise make deals with Republicans in Congress. Nader's outside-looking-in, judgmental whining doesn't do a damn thing.

Making it more expensive to hire people results in higher unemployment. Period. If you doubt that, consider the fact that Europe has much more generous provisions for workers than the US does, and it has consistently higher unemployment number than the US. This is not to say that we shouldn't go the European route. I'm merely saying we need to be honest with ourselves. A belief that there is a magic piece of legislation that will have only positive economic effects and no negative effects is naive. An economy is a complex system where everything is connected and interrelated. You cannot simply reach in and tweak one variable with expecting fluctuations to ripple though the entire system.

I'm tired of phony "facts" spoken with certainty and totally lacking in factual support

there is little doubt that raising the minimum wage by 75% would result in massive unemployment among unskilled workers

This "fact" is no different than the crap Repukes pull out of their asses.

Making it more expensive to hire people results in higher unemployment. Period

Unemployment has gone DOWN everytime the minimum wage was raised

consider the fact that Europe has much more generous provisions for workers than the US does, and it has consistently higher unemployment number than the US.

No, the US has higher unemployment. It only looks lower because we don't count people who have given up looking for work. The Europeans do count those people.

When they go on about how minimum wage affects unemployment, they're half right. Raising it suddenly does drag down employment. There are many pitfalls, so it has to be done with precision. Simply upping the rate will play hell with other measures.

way possible. Raising the minimum wage isn't going to be the straw that broke the camel's back. The camel's back broke a long time ago and she's in a full body cast.

Raising the minimum wage, as part of overall strategy of increasing the value of labor and flowing wealth down to people who work for a living, is going to be the way we get the economy working for everyone again.

... when you say that raising the minimum wage should be a part of the plan.

What I am saying is that we must see this in a macroeconomic scale. Labor costs are the No. 1 cost a business must face. Raising the labor costs at a such a high rate for almost every business in the country would almost certainly mean inflation. If prices rise right along side with wages, then we're right back where we started. What good is making twice as much money if everything cost twice as much? Real wages in the nation need to rise, not just nominal wages.

Unemployment has gone DOWN everytime the minimum wage was raised


Wrong on numerous accounts:


On Jan 1, 1979 the minimum wage was raised to $2.90 and in the following 12 months unemployment went from 5.9 to 6.3.

On Jan 1, 1980 the minimum wage was raised to $3.10 and in the following 12 months unemployment went from 6.3 to 7.5

On Jan 1, 1981 the minimum wage was raised to $3.35 and in the following 12 months unemployment went from 7.5 to 8.6

On Apr 1, 1990 the minimum wage was raised to $3.80 and in the following 12 months unemployment went from 5.4 to 6.7

On Apr 1, 1991 the minimum wage was raised to $4.25 and in the following 12 months unemployment went from 6.7 to 7.4



http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/feddal/ru

Assuming your figures are correct, I notice it was during mostly Republican years. I think Bush is further proving that when you continue going into the hole, it causes unemployment, just like Clinton proved that when you pay down the debt, you create jobs. Capital flows to building new business that was locked up into debt, world-wide, since we take money from all over the world to finance the tax-cuts for the wealthy that were recently laid out.

I do think there is a difference in "minimum," and "living" wage. If nothing else it is in the implication. A "living" wage tends to put forward the idea that it would at least get someone a place, utilities, and maybe a car payment, as well as put a food on the table. I hate the way the terms have been mixed up in this post, they are different.

I do support it, and I don't think short-term unemployment through a period of increasing debt in any way shows that it was specifically the raise in the pay of the most lowly paid that caused it. Personally, I think it'd stimulate not just the economy, but due to people making more money, they'd pay more in taxes too. This would include both "income" taxes, the one called income, and the other cleverly disguised as "FICA," perhaps the most regressive tax there is, even more so than sales-tax.

Now I've worked at many of these jobs, and I can tell you I managed in a burger joint where we paid minimum wage, and we never had enough workers as it was. What I'm saying is, the idea that employers have a bunch of extra people working, that ummm, aren't working, is ludicrous. If you paid $2 an hour, you still wouldn't have a bunch of extra folks. Businesses these days more than ever look at payroll not as a bunch of humans earning a living, but as an expense, and they keep it as low as possible.

The real upside is, by raising it substantially, indexing it to inflation, and perhaps creating some make-work jobs in the style of FDR, to fill the unemployment gap, you pump so much money into the "buy side" (we haven't heard much about this side lately, it's really suffering) that you gain this tremendous number of extra people who are immediately able to purchase more food, clothes, cars, stereos, televisions, PDA's, Computers, and myriad other items. Hell, if they are lucky, they may just be able to pay rent, so their families don't go homeless. Sometimes you choose to do something just because it's the right thing to do, and this is one of them.

As far as Kerry goes, he'd gain far more than he'd lose were he to take on this position. We need a floor, as it was put by someone. It will not only help those at the levels below $10, or whatever, it will cause increases in jobs at lower levels. If a few things go up, so be it. A lot more folks will have a piece of the rock, will be able to get things done, and for every person that suffers a bit, there will be two more who have a chance to pull themselves out of the hole enough to breath a bit of good old American air. And that, my friendly DUIers is a good thing.

No, the US has higher unemployment. It only looks lower because we don't count people who have given up looking for work. The Europeans do count those people.

European countries calculate their unemployment rates based upon the Eurostat definition. This definition is as follows:

The Eurostat definition of unemployed people are those aged 15 to 74 and who, following the International Labour Organisation (ILO) definition:

- are without work;

- are available to start work within the next two weeks;

- and have actively sought employment at some time during the previous four weeks.

http://europa.eu.int/comm/eurostat/Public/datashop/print-product/EN?catalogue=Eurostat&product=3-04052004-EN-AP-EN&mode=download


You aren't doing too well today with your facts sangh0...

On Jan 1, 1979 the minimum wage was raised to $2.90 and in the following 12 months unemployment went from 5.9 to 6.3.

On Jan 1, 1980 the minimum wage was raised to $3.10 and in the following 12 months unemployment went from 6.3 to 7.5

On Jan 1, 1981 the minimum wage was raised to $3.35 and in the following 12 months unemployment went from 7.5 to 8.6

On Apr 1, 1990 the minimum wage was raised to $3.80 and in the following 12 months unemployment went from 5.4 to 6.7

On Apr 1, 1991 the minimum wage was raised to $4.25 and in the following 12 months unemployment went from 6.7 to 7.4

I noticed your numbers only start in 1979 (note: the minimum wage came into effect LONG BEFORE 1979) which (just coincidentally, I'm sure) was after gas shortages had made stagflation (aka high inflation and high unemployment)

And for some odd reason, which I'm also certain is just coincidental, your numbers avoid 1982-1989 and pick up on 1990, during the Bush recession.

WRT to the European unemployment #'s, like us the Europeans use TWO methods, and you only cited the one you liked, while ignoring the other one, just as you ignored the years of unemployment when it went down.

Its called proving you wrong. You specifically said that "Unemployment has gone DOWN everytime the minimum wage was raised". By pointing out five instances in the last 25 years where this assertion was incorrect, I proved you wrong.

You were wrong. Get over it.

and the fraudulent manipulation of starting and end points is known as "Focus on the spike"

"Unemployment has gone DOWN everytime the minimum wage was raised".

I never said the effects were immediate.

I never said the effects were immediate.

What time period would you like to specify?

Even Carter deregulated for the benefit of the corporations.

Clinton stopped that (or slowed it down) in 91, temporarily.

I'm not surprised that from '79 to '91, not even increasing the minimum wage could reduce unemployment. Those were the years (as have been the years from 2000-04) when government was really doing everything it could to transfer wealth to the wealthiest Americans from the working class and the middle class.

I bet a good argument could be made that bigger increases in the minimum wage would have lowered unemployment in the years cited above (and I'm sure the increases noted were compromises which favored Repubicans (ie, corporations)).

Furthermore, I have no doubt that, notwithstanding moderate increases in the minimum wage, everything else the government did during those years was desigend to trasfer wealth to corporations (whether through tax policy, or deregulation or limitations on liability, etc.). The increases in the minimum wage were probably smoke the Republicans were blowing up the asses of poor people to make them feel like the Republicans were looking after them (while they twisted a knife in their backs).

It is kept artificially low, and it hasn't kept up with inflation in recent years at all.

The problem is that you can't just bump these numbers up like that and expect everything to work out. We're talking a ~40% raise in the mimimum wage here all at once. That would play hell with both unemployment and inflation rates.

If it is done gradually and more steadily, say 5-10% a year, businesses both large and small will have a better time adapting.

jumped in with very scholarly references arguing that inflation is not affected very much by the minimum wage and that's it's more employment at higher wages that influences inflation.

$10 per hour is't even 20K per year.

People who make less than that probably get federal benefits that are worth that much, so giving them $10 and hour just means that the private sector and not taxpayers will be looking after their financial interests, which is how captialism should work.

Hey, you know, I wouldn't mind them being on welfare if the corporations were bearing the tax burden that paid the welfare bills, but they're not. Other middle class and working class, underpaid people are carrying a disproportionate tax burden for these people, so corps benefit twice. They're having their low wages totally subsidized by the poor and middle class. It's outrageous.

I don't believe that ppl. making less than $10 per hour receive federal benefits. My daughter and s-i-l made a little over $12000 in 2002 and did not receive $1 in federal benefits for anything. I don't believe that they were eligible for any. If they were, I don't know what it would be.

This year, their income was a little over $17,000.00. No, no federal aid.

If they made 12k (or even 17k together) they almost definitely got the EIC, which is worth a lot.

I think the Fed and state govt's do a lot to help keep people's heads above water in the 12-20K range and they do it to guarantee big companies subsidized cheap labor, and it's subsidized by regressively accumulated taxes which barely burden the companies benefitting the most from cheap labor.

Maybe people can jump in here with examples.

What do you have to earn to get medicare?

What's the limit for food stamps (or cards or whatever they use now)?

Also there are many state and federal tax breaks beyond the EIC that everyone's entitled to up to an income limit, so the poor get those tax breaks. For example, there's the student interest credit, but that's reaching higher and higher every year.

BECAUSE you must either have a child or BE 25 years old to qualify. This past year, they ended up having a tax liability of about $274 (I think that is close). They did not have to pay in but they did not get all their money back.

I don't know a lot about medicare (or medicaid) except that I thought you had to be old or disabled to get them. The exception to that is, of course, minor children, who are eligible for ArKids First if the parents' income is low enough.

I don't know about food stamps either. Maybe that's b/c my very large family frequently eats together.

My daughter is in college. She DOES get money for that.
So, I guess I lied. I didn't mean to. I just forgot about the Pell Grant.

route into the middle class (out of wages lower than 20K/year). Which is my point: the gov't does give people benefits to people below 20K, and there is no reason a person working full time in America should be making less than 20K per year, regardless of their job, and it shouldn't be the business of other middle and working class consumers to subsidize people below 20k. It should be the job of your employer -- the person who is benefitting the most from your labor.

if those larger corporations would pay my company more, it would certainly help me to pay my people more. Somewhere up the line, the product from every facility we work on goes to some large agribusiness.

What I am saying is that many small businesses are directly affected by the same corporate profits as employees - thereby affecting the wages of those small business employees. Probably not all small businesses are that way - but many are.

Every business has their own ability to absorb the increased labor costs.

Supporting America’s Workers
http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/workers/

“I think it’s time we had a President who will provide the only real economic security: good jobs. A President who will provide middle class payroll tax relief to get money in the pockets of workers who will spend it, not more tax giveaways for those at the top to stimulate the economy in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. A President who will index the minimum wage to inflation and raise it from a 30 year low, not increase the tax burden on the middle class and those struggling to join it.”

- John Kerry, March 27, 2003

John Kerry has a 90 percent AFL-CIO voting record over an 18-year Senate career. He has fought to raise the minimum wage, cosponsored bills to outlaw striker replacement and provide workers with Family and Medical Leave to spend time with a new child or care for a family member. He has helped beat back Republican efforts to gut OSHA, weaken worker safety rules and cut funds from worker training and employment programs. And he has fought for workers’ right to organize in his home state of Massachusetts, including SEIU workers in Boston, and UFCW and CWA workers throughout the state. He’s also supporting UAW organizers seeking to organize in Worcester.

"The Massachusetts firefighters wanted to be the first to endorse John Kerry because he has been there for us. After the Worcester tragedy, John Kerry kept his promise to turn those lessons into real legislative action. He didn't just help heal our community-- he led the efforts to tell our story on a national level so that firefighters have updated technology, equipment and resources they need to keep us safe. John Kerry understands that homeland security starts with first responders and he has led the fight to make sure that the men and women who put their lives on the line everyday have a champion that understands that it takes resources, not just rhetoric to keep us safe."

- Bob McCarthy, President, Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts

If Kerry takes Nader's advice, maybe he can get 3% of the popular vote and 0% of the electoral vote, just like Nader got in 2000! Oh boy!

Monday, May 17, 2004

On the Job: Minimum wage as election year issue

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF AND NEWS SERVICES

Few proposals are more popular than raising the minimum wage. Public opinion polls are clear on this point. But what voters want rarely translates into a higher minimum, even though Congress does pay extra attention in presidential election years.

That happened in 2000, and it's happening again. The Republicans are dead set against raising the minimum wage. But in presidential election years, they give the appearance of favoring an increase. And, once in a while, they even join the Democrats in approving one. They did so in the run-up to Bill Clinton's second-term victory, in 1996. As a result, the minimum wage rose to a measly $5.15 an hour, where it is still stuck.

The catalyst in this game is Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. Between presidential elections, he regularly introduces minimum-wage bills that he tries to push through by attaching them as amendments to other bills. That never works. His latest proposal, introduced in the Senate on April 29 and in the House a week later, would raise the minimum to $7 an hour in three steps over 26 months.

"Only one thing stands in the way of a fairer minimum wage -- one thing -- and it's the Republican Party," Kennedy said on the day he introduced his latest bill, listing John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, as co-sponsor.

more... http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/173484_onthejob17.html


I heard this on the radio over the week-end, but haven't seen much written about it.

:-)

;)

Nader wants to be able to go around the country telling people that there isn't any meaningful difference between the two parties. Familiarizing himself with Kerry's positions on the issues would make this strategy impossible.

FAT CHANCE. he's too busy admiring his ownership of ideals and liberalism, don't you know? ;)

They'd rather go after right wing votes than after the ones they could actually get if they moved left instead of whimpering "me too" in support of bushCorp's policies.

At the time he got into the race, I was pissed at Nader. But now, Kerry has gone so far right on Iraq that I may not be able to vote for him. I hate Bush, but I what I hate the most is the war.

To the degree that Kerry has gone "right on Iraq," his reasoning is that it's our mess and we have to clean it up - you broke it, you bought it. You don't have to agree, and I don't entirely agree either, but here's a question for you - which of the two, Bush or Kerry, is more likely to start ANOTHER war like the one in Iraq? Because either Bush or Kerry is going to be President in 2005.

The thought that the US staying in Iraq longer--i.e. more roundups of Iraqis to be "interrogated" in Abu Ghraib, more cluster bombing of "suspected guerrilla postions," more killing at roadside checkpoints--will somehow "clean up our mess" is obscene. The first and most important step to cleaning up is to leave without delay. (The second is massive reparations.) The idea that we should stick around to "clean up our mess" is a bit like saying that the rapist is the ideal person to stick around and provide counseling to the victim.

and pulling out with no security for citizens in place is begging for ethnic cleansing.

We have a duty here. Not the various ones the Bushies forcefeed the press corps every weekend (I love their latest -- if we leave then the rest of the Middle East will become more dictatorial. Like that's possible, but hey what's a few inconvenient facts when you're arranging dominoes?). It is "you broke it, you bought it."