Hey I'll have you know I used poliwrath and nidoking and registeel in OU in BW and I got plenty of W's, and I am a firm Pokemon Capitalist!Being a socialist or communist to me is like playing with your favorite pokemon even though they're outclassed in OU. You're going to take a lot more L's but uhhh, hey - whatever makes you happy.
I agree with you but I find medical coverage far more necessary to life than television or even a car with insurance (depends whether you live somewhere with good public transport or not), and the state of medical care in the USA is an appalling manifestation of income inequality and the powerlessness and degradation of the poor.The biggest contributor to the wealth / income inequality in the United States is that we have allowed businesses to give shitty wages for lower end service jobs for far too long, and because of this, middle end income jobs are also suffering because all jobs are taken in context vs. minimum wage. "You should be glad I give you $15 an hour for your factory work! That's twice as much as minimum wage!!"
Simply put, minimum wage in this country is fucking laughable. When I think of what a minimum wage should be, I feel as though it should meet the following criteria in order to be valid.
One person working a 40 hour work week at a minimum wage job should be able to afford, by themselves with no outside assistance (meaning you shouldn't have to have a multi-person household), the ability to:
I don't think any of these things are a stretch to be said should be attainable working a 40 hour a week job, no matter what that job is.
- Have an apartment that is equipped with the following appliances - Stove / Refrigerator / Television / Washer & Dryer (Or have a laundromat within say a 5 mile radius (1 mile radius if you don't believe that having a car is something that should be afforded on minimum wage)
- Have a car (one that runs and can be maintained, not necessarily a new one)
- Have insurance for said car
- Have the ability to never go hungry (this means 3 meals a day 7 days a week)
- Have a cell phone
- Have a computer of some sort (even if it's a glorified facebook machine). With even the most basic internet access. You can't be a part of today's society without this.
But when you get down to it, these things... these basics of life are hardly within reach to a minimum wage worker.
I'll take my own expenses as an example:
I pay $500 a month in rent + ~$150 in electric + water + gas every month. I live in a one bedroom one bathroom apartment that is basically one step above "total shit hole".
I spend on average $6 for dinner for myself (it actually costs my girlfriend and I about $12 per meal to cook at home), and spend about $20 on lunch + breakfast foods for the week (I buy a bag of cereal a week, milk, some lunch meat and bread and some soda).
I'm probably one of the few people who know exactly how much they drive on a week to week basis but I actually keep track of that sort of thing, on average I drive around 200-250 miles per week splitting the difference let's go with 225. I drive a car that gets a hefty 34 MPG so I use approximately 7 gallons of gas per week, give or take 1 gallon. Gas has been pretty steadily $3.15 here so in a month that's $90 a month in gasoline.
I pay roughly $100 in car insurance for a car that I already own (thank god for not having car payments)
My phone bill is $33 a month
I pay $60 a month for 60 Mbps internet.
So, tallying all of that up, it comes to $995 for me to exist for 1 month.
Let's round that up to a clean $1000
What does a minimum wage worker make a month at 40 hours a week? Minimum wage is $7.35 here in Missouri, so $1176 pre-tax. My girlfriend actually has a 40 hour a week minimum wage job so I know exactly how much she gets taxed. She is consistently taxed at 16% (yes, I know that a good amount of this will be returned to her at the end of the year, but about 10% of that is social security which is not).
So after taxes, a minimum wage worker, working 40 hours a week, is paid $987 a month
NOT EVEN ENOUGH TO PAY FOR THE BARE MINIMUM MONTHLY EXPENSES. AND I LIVE FAR FROM AN EXTRAVAGANT LIFESTYLE.
Simply put a minimum wage worker can't even afford to live, let alone save anything, or you know HAVE ANY KIND OF A LIFE WHATSOEVER. It could be argued that maybe I'm "splurging" on internet + a cell phone... but really, it's fucking 2014... are those REALLY considered splurges?
And this is all compounded by the fact that many minimum wage businesses will avoid giving workers full time hours like the fucking plague.
I have had 6 minimum wage jobs in my life. A grand total of 1 routinely gave me 40 hours a week. The rest of the jobs all attempted to give me roughly 30-34 a week, depending on their needs specifically in order to gain the most out of me while still withholding full-time employee benefits.
And what was I supposed to do? In the so-called grand free market I'd be able to just not sell my services to these employers. But that only works when i'm not desperate to be able to feed myself. The employers have all of the power and I have no choice but to submit because otherwise I will be homeless.
Give businesses incentives to develop in lower income communities? FUCK businesses. They CREATE lower income communities. And those who are taken advantage of for their labor have no recourse because they can't not work. They'd fucking starve if they did. This is the minimum wage job culture in america. This is the problem. I thank the God I don't believe in every fucking day that i am lucky enough to be smart enough to avoid working for minimum wage.
But now we have ObamaCare!the state of medical care in the USA is an appalling manifestation of income inequality and the powerlessness and degradation of the poor.
I agree with this 100% and have literally 0 issue with having my taxes raised to sustain universal healthcare. I'm not sure that this rendition (more bastardization) of ObamaCare is the solution, but we'll have to wait and see I guess. Honestly, I straight up don't understand how people can justify any taxes and not justify a tax to take care of our fellow man. Yes, corruption will occur but not sure why fear of a negative ever overshadows the potential of the positive.I agree with you but I find medical coverage far more necessary to life than television or even a car with insurance (depends whether you live somewhere with good public transport or not), and the state of medical care in the USA is an appalling manifestation of income inequality and the powerlessness and degradation of the poor.
Here is where I don't understand your points. The "classist people" is a gross generalization (literally the same as "omfg all feministsts!!111 but hey) but ignoring that, why does this matter at all, or better yet, why is this even remotely relevant? I'll play along with this generalization for now and speak from the perspective of these "classist people." It doesn't matter if X, making 120k a year with 20k bonus, wouldn't find it acceptable to live on a 30k salary. This boils back a bit to the first point, in that I believe taxing is justifiable to sustain a citizen's welfare, but not necessarily provide for that citizen's happiness. I could sustain myself on a 30k salary and I would not be happy (probably), or maximally happy. I'm not sure why this is relevant though? My job as a salaryman in capitalism isn't to ensure you welfare queens's happiness, but I am more than willing to help make sure you can live. I can accept you asking me to be empathetic to your plight and asking for assistance to survive. You wanting to take free money for me to sustain your happiness is honestly you asking for too much...(note I'm using I, me and you generally here).As a welfare queen whose parents are unemployed and disabled: classist people have a particular way of expecting poor people to subsist in a way they would never find acceptable for their own standards of living
Again, why does this matter? If I earn my dollar myself, I can spend it however I wish, whether on travel, food, or heroin. If X works 10 hours and makes 80 dollars, I will never question how he spends that 80 dollars, whether or rent, food, or heroin. However, if X decides not to work and gets free money from my taxes and spends his 80 dollars on heroin, why shouldn't I question that....even if I spend my own money on heroin??and scrutinising/judging poor people for every choice they make while ignoring their own circumstances and generally hypocritical financial decisions.
I'm not going to argue the validity of this statement, only because I don't think it's necessary. I'm not sure what the impression poor people have of people in higher brackets is, but a lot of people in higher brackets don't have much of an issue with paying higher taxes to ensure the impovershed get healthcare, food, and shelter. The issue we have is when free money is given and spent on superfluous items (iphones or timberlands) instead of food and rent. And again, just because we buy iphones and Allen Edmonds dress shoes and Prada glass frames, this doesn't make us hypocritical because we are spending our earned money on these items, not freely given money.The myth of the welfare queen was exaggerated for political gain
Lol...no comment. Not sure why anyone would ever quote respectable when it is in front hard workers...and to frighten such 'respectable' hard workers,
Please explain this in depth...I'm really curious to know what you mean by expenditure control and how it is "paternalistic" and how poor people are deprived of autonomy?and poor people (in my country, especially PoC) are increasingly deprived of autonomy and adulthood through paternalistic expenditure control policies.
Again, can't speak for your country, but poor people have actual outs in the states. the 2 year cc -> 2 year state program is offered in nearly every state, and even if you can't afford 2 year cc initially, you can work for 1-3 years and save to be able to afford it. I won't say that a BS is a sure out but it is at least an improvement over complete poverty.Naturally this results in further financial dependence.
Being someone who has gone to the doctor a grand total of maybe five times since the age of 16 it's easy for me to forget the importance / relevance of healthcare. I would agree that access to health insurance should be on the list of required things a minimum wage should pay for.I agree with you but I find medical coverage far more necessary to life than television or even a car with insurance (depends whether you live somewhere with good public transport or not), and the state of medical care in the USA is an appalling manifestation of income inequality and the powerlessness and degradation of the poor.
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And who is going to pay for it? Didn't any of you guys take economics in high school? Don't you know what raising the minimum wage and passing mandatory regulations like that would do? Do you think that employers just make money appear on command? Are you aware that the majority of business owners (in America) are small business owners and that these types of laws hurt them the most?Being someone who has gone to the doctor a grand total of maybe five times since the age of 16 it's easy for me to forget the importance / relevance of healthcare. I would agree that access to health insurance should be on the list of required things a minimum wage should pay for.
(I forgot it mostly because, due to the affordable healthcare act, I can be on my parents healthcare for another 3 years.)
Aldaron I DO see a big difference here, and it does come down to just dollar amount. Even though a top CEO takes in hundreds or thousands of times more for themselves in bonuses, they cannot ever hope to spend that much money on consumables, where a small business CEO has a much higher chance of reintroducing that money back into the economy. Basically, CEOs cutting million-dollar-bonuses that wind up in offshore accounts just siphons money out of the country. This is horrible for everyone involved, obviously. An ideal market economy would keep all cash flowing through it, keeping the cycle going, but removing money from an economy is just bad. Putting more money back into an economy would require more money to be printed, which would lead to inflation.As for this topic, I will say whining about top company CEO salaries is so hilariously lacking in a basic understanding of not math but literal arithmetic that I want to cry. Let's say there is a small business owner and he is actually successful, with money exchanging hands from his business to and from his clients in the 50 - 200k level. Note I am specifically not mentioning gross or not profits because on a single year term, that doesn't matter. If this small business owner gives himself a 1k bonus for being able to handle this 50-200k money flow, there is literally no outcry. However, if say, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, which owns 2.3 trillion in assets and yearly has money exchange hands from business to customers on the level of 20+ billion dollars, gives himself a 30 million salary, there is a problem? 1k of 200k is .5%.... .5% of 20 billion dollars is 100 million dollars. That is merely the yearly money flow, not the overall assets owned and maintained.
Small business owners tend to, on relative terms, take bigger bonuses than the average CEO of the larger corporations (.5-5% bonuses of business costs + revenue, vs. much less for CEOs). You guys are aware that top level (executive level) management salaries as based on dollar value input, not simply "hey, your job is this" right? The actual outcry over CEO salaries is a politically motivated stunt if anything.
Again, if you cannot afford to pay your employees livable wages, then you don't deserve to be an employer. Your business model is a fucked one if it relies on the underpayment of workers in order to turn a profit.And who is going to pay for it? Didn't any of you guys take economics in high school? Don't you know what raising the minimum wage and passing mandatory regulations like that would do? Do you think that employers just make money appear on command? Are you aware that the majority of business owners (in America) are small business owners and that these types of laws hurt them the most?
I don't know how many CEOs actually store their bonuses in off shore accounts (with the recent "opening" of Swiss bank doors, I have to imagine it is less than normal), so can't really comment here.Aldaron I DO see a big difference here, and it does come down to just dollar amount. Even though a top CEO takes in hundreds or thousands of times more for themselves in bonuses, they cannot ever hope to spend that much money on consumables, where a small business CEO has a much higher chance of reintroducing that money back into the economy. Basically, CEOs cutting million-dollar-bonuses that wind up in offshore accounts just siphons money out of the country. This is horrible for everyone involved, obviously. An ideal market economy would keep all cash flowing through it, keeping the cycle going, but removing money from an economy is just bad. Putting more money back into an economy would require more money to be printed, which would lead to inflation.
Well there goes all your credibility when discussing business and/or economics.Again, if you cannot afford to pay your employees livable wages, then you don't deserve to be an employer. Your business model is a fucked one if it relies on the underpayment of workers in order to turn a profit.
You do realize this is exactly what the Soviet Union and Communist China did (and psuedo-Communist China does today,) don't you? This was (is) literally their form of government: Rich Party Apparatichiks controlling the demand that the proles will be forced to produce in order to enrich The Party under The Plan.Abra Kapocus said:I don't mind rich people, so long as they're not lobbying my government to gain special rights and privileges or polluting the only planet we have to the point where it can no longer sustain human life (while denying outright that it's even happening). It's just a shame that A&E cancelled "Hoarders," because I can think of 65 people on this planet that could each use an episode.
Yeah there should have never been an Industrial Revolution and we should never have moved to working for wages. I preferred it when humans had no form of social mobility and the leaders controlled all wealth. I preferred it when the majority of the world was shit eating peasants. We should have just stayed that way so we can all just be farmers, farming to get by and give any surplus to a local warlord.I don't actually believe any of that shit though, all wage labour is slavery.
It's funny how you think mandating government take more of my money under penalty of fine and imprisonment in order to redistribute it to other individuals is "compassion."Shockingly, most people in this thread are acquainted with history, something your comments on communism certainly raised questions about in your case.
What doesn't follow is that we have to be satisfied with the world in which we live. If the standard of improvement that you're willing to endorse is going from dying of starvation to just starving, then good on you buddy old pal. Most of the rest of us have a bit more compassion (aldaron and Deck Knight excepted) than that and think that people should be afforded the capacity to live a good life rather than just living a life, especially in the context of such vast income inequality.