Obama playing with fire...but early success duly noted

[Christians4LessGvt]

necessitate a similar agency to collect the same amount or more than the IRS collects now. The government cannot run on air.

Not really....a national sales tax....
(that by the way would expose how much the thieves in Washington are really taking)
would not necessitate an agency as large as the current IRS.
And it would not allow anyone to escape paying taxes that the current scheme allows.

[Plane]

actually I thought minimum wage has been extremely beneficial to the U.S. economy.

Oh no way.

because the primary complaint was it increase not decrease wages. increased wages always means increase spending and the type of spending. it`s a hard sell to believe an employer can`t pay higher wages because of minimum wages.  the fact we went through several waves of corporate layoffs of workers who were paid well above minimum wage proves jobs numbers not directly effected by the wage minimum. Any kinds of businesses who depends on such low cost labor should get questioned if it should continue.

That is a strange attitude. Do you believe that someone with low skill levels should not be allowed to have a job at all?

now on the issue of taxes. it`s not true the U.S. has existed without taxes. it`s the type of taxes that`s different, it`s did very well on alcohol tax but events changed to make it switch to income taxes then expenses grew to the point that incomes taxes will never go away. but if somebody proposes a viable income stream to lower taxes than maybe the burden to businesses will lessen. ex. national parks charge higher rates to pay for it`s maintenance. etc.

Consumption taxes encourage saving and investment, what behavior does an income tax encourage?

[kimba1]

I'm not sure  denial of work will the the end result. Less jobs at the beginning possible but the issue I'm focusing is the the economic benefits ,increased types of spending wll spur growth . Low wage pay will only increase growth in dollar stores types business.

Note the growth rate before and after minimum wage came into effect also notice how our economy started to slow around the time our minimum wage started to fall behind cost of living.


But you brought up denial to have a job. Thats actually happening now by employers who are demanding higher requirements for lower pay. But notice no outrage for that so why are we concern at all about anyone else who can't get a job?

[Xavier_Onassis]

The government does in fact rent land for pasture. From what I have read, they should be charging more. Mineral rights and radio/TV/ cellphone wavelength rental rights are also set too low.

The national parks belong to all Americans, and admission should not be prohibitively expensive. I don't have any idea whether the fees paid cover the cost of running the parks or not, nor do I have information on maintenance. Maybe they could raise fees a bit, maybe not. Some parks get a lot more visitors than others.

[Plane]

I'm not sure  denial of work will the the end result.

         Oh yes this happens early. Imagine you have a business with two employees , one more skilled than the other, the skilled worker works so well that he produces for your business more than $60  in product or service every hour, you can pay this guy $25 an hour and feel that the deal is worth it. The guy that you are paying minimum wage is much less skilled and produces for you about $16 dollars each hour with his work. When the minimum wage rises to $15 an hour will you keep him around just for decoration?  Right now a person must be able to create at least $16   each hour for his employer to justify his being employed , all persons able to create only less than that are entirely forbidden from working by the minimum wage law.     

Less jobs at the beginning possible but the issue I'm focusing is the the economic benefits ,increased types of spending wll spur growth . Low wage pay will only increase growth in dollar stores types business.

Note the growth rate before and after minimum wage came into effect also notice how our economy started to slow around the time our minimum wage started to fall behind cost of living.


But you brought up denial to have a job. Thats actually happening now by employers who are demanding higher requirements for lower pay. But notice no outrage for that so why are we concern at all about anyone else who can't get a job?

      Those low wage jobs evaporate in the US, but they condense in other countries where there is more willingness to work for very low wages, when I was young there were a lot of women sewing garments in Georgia, this work is happening at a distance now, and the economic benefit of these thousands of jobs is where?

[kimba1]

But if thats not whats going on if the business can't handle minimum wage. If a Business is cannot function from the eage increase tha. Thats mean it was not sustainable . Remember mimimum wage increase is a correction from it behind massively behind  present times. If anything the saving a business has made from underpaying it's should make it easier to pay for the increase.

The thing about those low wage jobs is i don't recall very many people complaining and till now connecting it minimum wage. If i remember that was a time people fear people willing to work for less pay . My mom did that but the pay was so low its not much of a hardship to not work for awhile. Were talking 1.25/hr. Here .

Today you 'll be hard press to get food

[Plane]

   So you think that people who produce for their employer about $5 per hour deserve a job that pays their mortgage?

     It is just so simple it is irreducible, supply and demand determine price.
        There is no more to the story except how it applies in particular to a person.

    If you can mine 16 tons of coal a day you really do deserve twice as much pay as the guy that loads 8 tons of coal a day.

       The minimum wage is exactly forbidding people who do not have highly profitable skills from work.  The guy that can load four tons of coal a day can't have any of this money at all.

       This includes kids who have no need for work except as a learning experience, You may not meet anyone who is getting paid $4 an hour for real and legal, but we see more unpaid interns than ever.

    For real and for ever, supply and demand determine price.
    This includes the price of an hour of my time, laws that try to repeal the law of supply and demand are in the nature of installing a pump that pumps from the deep end to the shallow end of the same pool hoping thereby to make the shallow end deeper.
     

[Xavier_Onassis]

No one who is paid $5 an hour is likely to have a mortgage or a house. It would be difficult for anyone earning so little to be able to afford to live indoors.

Unpaid interns are basically suckers, at least if they do not get on the payroll within several months.

Your comparisons are way off.  Being as I know what students paid in tuition to take my classes, I can say that I was never paid more than 20% of what students paid to sit in my classes.  The administrators made the big salaries and most of them were unnecessary, since they had no actual power or budget. The VP, the president and the Board of Trustees  made all the decisions.

Your ideal seems to be some sort of ghastly piecework system in which many people do not deserve to be paid even enough to afford to eat and live indoors, and anyone is subject to being thrown out the door if they do not produce what the boss has determined they should.

[kimba1]

What i'm  mainly talk about has nothing to do with the worker paying a mortgags or if can live with the pay. It's about the peoples ability to spend and what kind of spending. Our businesses is dependant on this factor. Making us a nation of walmart customers will not be very good. China itself is hurting that it's populous does not spend enough

[Xavier_Onassis]

If we have a nation of people who cannot earn enough to support themselves, we have a serious problem. In recent years, robots and computers have caused productivity to increase greatly, but in the system we have, wages have not increased as a result except for the few people at the top.

China would perhaps be better off if the people spent a greater share of their income, but the fact is that China has managed to maintain a growth rate far higher than any other large country. Basically, China is divided into a Third Word part, in which people earn very little and many are very close to subsistence agriculture, and a First World strip along they coast and the rivers where the growth rate is very high. Essentially, the people of the hinterlands are colonies of the people of the coast.

In the US, you could say that West Virginia is economically the colony of Pittsburgh and several other large cities that use its resources and its people as a source of cheap labor. Mississippi is a colony of Memphis, New Orleans and Chicago in the same way.

[Plane]

If we have a nation of people who cannot earn enough to support themselves, we have a serious problem.

    Yes. But is this serious problem solved by putting people who can't earn enough to meet an arbitrary standard on the dole?

      If we use this means to distribute the problem , and also reduce participation in the workforce this way , we are becoming dependent on an ever shrinking circle of productive people.

    Unpaid Interns are NOT suckers, they are just coping with the minimum wage the best way they can.
      After some months of unpaid labor they enter the paid workforce with a work history and experience, their alternative being a few months of unpaid idleness , or even worse, paid idleness to show a prospective employer .

[Xavier_Onassis]

I was once called into the college VP's office and asked if I would consider teaching two courses at an extension campus for free. The classes were held in  Baptist Church about 20 miles from my home. The College was paying a could of Cuban preachers, who resembled Mutt & Jeff, $4000 each to use the facility. They did not pay the Church, just the preachers. Their job was to stand around while the faculty taught the classes and act like they were in charge. My job was to teach English composition to Cubans who barely knew English. The college did not provide books, or even a place to buy the books, so I paid for the books and sold them to the students, some of whom never paid me. The salary mentioned to teach the course was $500. I had 30 students, and the college was getting $900 a head from them or perhaps the government for each one of them.

When I was asked to teach the course for free, I had already taught half the semester. So I told the VP, "If I work for free, that means that my work is of no value to you. But even if that is so, it is of value to me, so no, I won't work for free. "

Later, a colleague said that the rumor was that I was "uncooperative".

No one should be allowed to have unpaid interns.

[Plane]

  That is not you refusing to be an intern.

    That was you refusing to be cheated, and defending the worth of your profession.

      I salute your uncooperativeness , it seems fully warranted.

        All the professors of the world should thank you .

      An Unpaid intern is not in the situation of being offered less than his work is really worth.

       An Unpaid intern is obeying the minimum wage law , because what his work is really worth is less than the government allows him to collect, he works for free instead.

        I wonder if there was such a thing as an unpaid intern before the minimum wage got over $5 and hour?

[Plane]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/01/12/unpaid-internships-are-they-doomed/vi8MVMlqfeJQHlMY3vlBpJ/story.html
[/quote]“I think we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the unpaid internship in the for-profit sector,” says Ross Perlin, a New York City-based author who put a spotlight on the issue with his 2011 book Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy. “I think you’re beginning to see a culture change.” For now, Fox Searchlight is appealing the judge’s decision, while Conde Nast made a move that surprised the business world?—?simply shuttering its 2014 internship program, possibly a gloomy harbinger for many.

Humphrey, who graduates in June, sympathizes with her peers bringing suit?—?to a point. “Unpaid internships really devalue our work,” she says. “The fact that they won’t pay is like a slap in the face.” However, she fears these cases may end up blocking the professional path for those coming up behind her. “I knew going in it was going to be difficult financially, so I planned for that. It seems dishonest to knowingly go into an unpaid internship and then at the end decide it wasn’t fair.”

***[/quote]

[Plane]

http://business.time.com/2012/05/02/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-unpaid-internship-as-we-know-it/
Around the 1930s, education and business leaders started advocating for a more seamless transition from school to the workplace in areas other than medicine. Internships began spreading into other fields, first in public administration and later publishing, marketing and banking.

As more internships sprouted across the country, Congress passed a number of laws regulating them, including the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which specifically lays out a 6-point test, still in use today, for hiring unpaid interns:

1. The internship must be similar to training that would be given in an educational environment;
2. The internship must be for the benefit of the intern;
3. The intern does not displace regular employees;
4. The employer derives no immediate advantage from the intern;
5. The intern is not entitled to a job at the end of the internship; and
6. The intern understands that he or she is not entitled to wages.