If they could arrange it, the Minimum Wage would be 1 Dollar an Hour.

Or less. The fact that there even is a minimum wage law is obscene.

The Mexican slave laborers, (guest workers), have undercut the minimum wage, and many people blame THEM, and not the lawmakers on the hill. They blame the poor, hard working least among us, then toss them out, and bring in the next batch, and we treat them as what they are, slaves.

Meanwhile, the mean, mean lawmakers whom we pay so very, very well who are living in mansions and riding in limos, refuse to raise the minimum wage for us serfs while regularly giving themselves midnight pay raises on the sly.

When will we ever learn our here in the king's kingdom?

and don't have to pay for it in most cases.

ever work as a bottom feeder in an executive office?

Most of the exec types I've met, and that's not many, are generous tippers, but some expect others to buy their dinners and stiff the waiters.

until mobs of angry peasants with torches and pitchforks show up at the gates of the castle, the self-styled lords will not relinquish anything.

They kill not only the malcontent, but rid the energy wasted by them. (in their eyes. It's more or less clear by now they have not a shred of care for their fellow Americans, otherwise they wouldn't be doing what they are. And they don't care, even with a destroyed dollar, they can still live comfortably - most of them have converted to other currencies already anyway. Including uber-altruistic and uber-patriotic Bill Gates. :eyes: Assuming the dollar really goes down...)

Because you cannot negotiatiate any sort of fairness with a capitalist greedhead. Sometimes you have to be a bit more...forceful.

If anything has been aptly demonstrated in the last 25 years, it's this. Sadly, Americans don't deserve what we won't earn. General strike? Not in "I got mine" America. Massive shutdowns due to protests? Not in "I got mine" America.

We imprison more of our fellow citizens than any other nation, but "soft on crime" is still a winning smear campaign.
We spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined, but "soft on defense" is still a winning smear campaign.

America is voting itself off Democracy Island.

And it would be so unseemly and there'd be such a mess to clean up afterwards.

Mr. President the people are revolting! W: "No shit, they stink on ice".

...just a little feed during the day and rudimentary shelter at night.

if they preferred. Giving a wage me4ans they don't need to accomodate their herd.

In an ownership society, we have to do the buying. That and we're owned...


Besides, with offshoring, they don't want us at all.

Yes, he was a crank and a horrid anti-semite, but Henry Ford did "get" the way that capitalism can work:

You, as a business owner, have to find the "sweet spot" where you're paying your workers enough, and also making your product cheap enough, that your workers can buy one of them.

The "outsource it" mentality isn't just about production -- it's migrated to consumption now to. Companies want to outsource paying people enough to buy their crap to other companies, or to the government.

Do you have any idea how much work goes into environmental documents? :o

So you been to school
For a year or two
And you know youve seen it all
In daddys car
Thinkin youll go far
Back east your type dont crawl

Play ethnicky jazz
To parade your snazz
On your five grand stereo
Braggin that you know
How the niggers feel cold
And the slums got so much soul

Its time to taste what you most fear
Right guard will not help you here
Brace yourself, my dear

Its a holiday in cambodia
Its tough, kid, but its life
Its a holiday in cambodia
Dont forget to pack a wife

Youre a star-belly sneech
You suck like a leach
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch
So you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you

Well youll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
Till you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake

Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son.

Is a holiday in cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in cambodia
Where youll kiss ass or crack

Pol pot, pol pot, pol pot, pol pot, etc.

And its a holiday in cambodia
Where youll do what youre told
A holiday in cambodia
Where the slums got so much soul

Working Class Hero
by John Lennon

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and class less and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me

I've been thinking of this song a lot lately:

Rage Against the Machine: Ashes of the Fall

A mass of hands press on the market window
Ghosts of progress
Dressed in slow death
Feeding on hunger
And glaring through the promise
Upon the food that rots slowly in the aisle
A mass of nameless at the oasis
That hides the graves beneath the master's hill
Are buried for drinking
The rivers water while
Shackled to the the line at the empty well

This is the new sound, just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound, over the new ground
This is the new sound, just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound, over new ground

Listen to the facist sing
"Take hope here
War is elsewhere
You were chosen
This is Gods land
Soon we'll be free
Of blot and mixture
Seeds planted by our Forefathers hand"
A mass of promises
Begin to rupture
Like the pockets Of the new world kings
Like swollen stomachs In Appalachia
Like the priest that fucked you As he whispered holy things
A mass of tears have transform the stones now
Sharpened on suffering
And woven into the slings
Hope lies in the rubble of this rich fortress
Taking today what tomorrow never brings

This is the new sound, just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound, over new ground
This is the new sound, just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound, over the new ground
This is the new sound, just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound, over the new ground
Ain't the new sound, just like the old sound
Look at the noose now, over the, over the, over the burning ground

Ain't it funny how the factory doors close
Round the time that the school doors close
Round the time that the doors of the jail cells
Open up to greet you like the reaper
Ain't its funny how the factory doors close
Round the time that the school doors close
Round the time that a hundred thousand jail cells
Open up to greet you like the reaper

Oh, oh
Oasis
This is no oasis

This is the new sound, just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound, over the new ground
This is the new sound, just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound, over the new ground

Like ashes in the fall
Like ashes in the fall
Like ashes in the fall
Like ashes in the fall
Like ashes in the fall
Like ashes in the fall
Like ashes in the fall

About 2 weeks ago there was a post that during Clinton's administration - something like 400 companies were fine/penalized because they hired illegal immigrants whereas now during the Bush administration only 3 were done. Clearly the Bush administration condones the use of hiring Illegal Immigrants because these people only improve the bottom line.

Because if I was a CEO of no moral values I would want Illegal Immigrants because I don't have to worry about minimum wage laws nor providing health care benefits (the state will take care of them). I could force them into horrible living condition and if these illegal immigrants complain - I'll ship them back to Mexico.

And the illegal immigrants provide the same service that the Slaves did in the south and Chinese provided building the railroad tracks - cheap sub-servient labor that allows me to get the job done with a minimal cost to myself.

It makes me want to puke

If the Irish won't do it, or you run out of them, hire the Chinese, they work like hell for next to nothing. The Irish and the Chinese and the Blacks and every other poor chump in the world busted their backs and died to build what we now take for granted.

They'd like to see it return to those golden years of yore.

people will realize who the victims are with 'illegal immigration' and who are the crooks.

Dems do not make that an issue?

Between illegal aliens (not immigrants), undocumented workers, ex-felons, and "guest workers," the lowest-paid end of the working class has been disenfranchised. Add to that the elimination of labor unions and you've got a Plantation ("ownership") Society - brought to you by the Banana Republicans.

If it could be arranged, they'd reinstitute slavery.

You have to feed and house slaves. It's cheaper to pay wages too low to live on.

For these exact reasons. They wander through the desert like the biblical Hebrews, seeking food and shelter in a hard world, yet rednecks want to build a wall to keep them out, and the president calls them 'guest workers' like they were our guests.

LOL :D

Bu**sh** wants to take us back to the good ol' days when that statement was literally true.

Right now we have neither a free market nor a safety net, and we have the disadvantages of both. If there is a minimum wage, it should allow two parents working full time to support a family somewhat above the poverty line. If there's no minimum wage, at least we won't have this artificial floor that businesses can race to the bottom to.

Seems like decades.

since '98, I think. I was a Congressional page when they raised it in '93. You'd never seen such howling from the poor, poor besieged businessmen having to sell one of their diamond-tipped canes to pay their monocle-polishers an extra $0.50 per hour. Dick Armey made up blatantly false manipulative stories about mentally challenged janitors getting laid off because they couldn't afford to keep them on with the new minimum wage (WTF? when was the last time a janitor was paid minimum wage? certainly not any I know -- it's one of the last few union jobs left most places).

And, rather than the collapse of the American economy, we experienced one of the greatest economic booms in our history. Surprise surprise, economies are driven by people *spending* money on goods and services, not on people trying to turn the money they have into more money by buying and reselling securities (our obsession with the stock market as an indication of the health of our economy is ludicrous -- the resale value of a security reflects close to nothing about the economic viability of the company, and except in certain situations has almost no effect on the company itself, except in the minds of the people running it).

The equivalent minimum wage from 1968 adjusted for inflation would be about $9 (an hour) in today's dollars.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage (see 'United States' section)

is it possible they are concerned about inflation?

does raising minimum wage doesn't actually accomplish much in the long run? prices go up and folks making minimum wage are right back where they started.

don't get me wrong, i'm not arguing against raising it exactly, base wages have to keep up with the rising cost of living. However it seems there are other changes that could be made that would actually benefit everyone much better. Universal health care, publicly funded universities, a social safety net of the sort they have in Denmark or Germany.

:rofl:

Where and how tax-cuts for the rich cause inflation can vary. However if a typical millionaire (like many) decided to spend his tax cut in the housing market as an investment in buy-to-let, it would drive up housing market inflation. If they're competing with low and middle-income families for housing stock it will drive up the costs of taking out a mortgage due to house price inflation and drive down ordinary families' real purchasing power.

Those ripples keep on rolling across the economic lake.

:)

seems to me that tax cuts for the rich depletes the treasury. and in turn guts social programs. that's not the same as inflation.

did you read my whole post, btw?