Thus I am a communist, admire Chavez, Castro, and China as Heroes, worship Bill Clinton, and am brainwashed by the media. I dont just like China b/c I shop at Wal-Mart, I think their gov. is just swell. I wish Chavez could be our president.

I want to fix this, who can teach me how?

[Edited on November 14, 2005 at 8:56 PM. Reason : /]

11/14/2005 8:54:58 PM

why would a communist shop at wal-mart?

[Edited on November 14, 2005 at 9:07 PM. Reason : ]

11/14/2005 9:05:28 PM

b/c i am a "starbucks socialist". im a hypocrite. i cant live w/o wal-mart, yet i hate freedom.

11/14/2005 9:10:02 PM

I'm not a republican either but I don't think any of those things; just because someone isn't a Republican doesn't mean that they are necessarily liberal.

I don't really understand your point in this thread.

11/14/2005 9:34:34 PM

dont forget how much you hate freedom and love terrorism.

[Edited on November 14, 2005 at 9:37 PM. Reason : ^ i hope this guy isnt serious...wtf mate]

11/14/2005 9:36:52 PM

^^ Exactly. Most of the "republicans" are not really republicans, its just that the Dems are catering to the far left, and I dissagree with them almost 100% of the time.

[Edited on November 14, 2005 at 9:37 PM. Reason : .]

11/14/2005 9:37:45 PM

^wait, that makes it sound like you arent a republican or a democrat? that cant be, youre one or the other.

Republican: support war, morality, and freedom
Democrat: support peace, hedonism, and terrorists. also communist sympathizers.

11/14/2005 9:41:32 PM

^you are speaking of the far left democrats (like the ones on this board). Believe it or not, some dems voted republican in the last election mainly because of what you just mentioned.

[Edited on November 14, 2005 at 9:47 PM. Reason : .]

11/14/2005 9:45:01 PM

i dunno, i think my love of alter sacrifice, white supremacy, and oligarchy would alienate me from most parties.

11/14/2005 9:47:50 PM

The 1st step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem, so congrats on that.

11/14/2005 9:51:03 PM

^please send me some fair and balanced commentary from the john birch society. i want to start irrationally hating other countries, too.

11/14/2005 10:10:13 PM

I am a Republican and I approve of Bill Clinton, consider China's latest leaders as Heroes for expanding the reach of Capitalism to more people than any other group in human history.

Oh yea, and I love Wal-Mart.

11/14/2005 10:31:26 PM

^someone needs to teach you to hate Bill Clinton, we cant tolerate that.

11/14/2005 10:43:22 PM

i hate liberals

11/14/2005 10:58:38 PM

better drop out now and avoid them, then

11/14/2005 11:15:36 PM

Quote :

"I am a Republican and I approve of Bill Clinton"

11/14/2005 11:34:27 PM

Loneshark, what about the fact that Walmart forces the gov to pay out more in for medicare, housing, and welfare?


I do despise walmart; I do envy them.

11/14/2005 11:48:41 PM

If the government wants to "pay out more in for medicare, housing, and welfare" that is its business.

These workers are not working at WalMart for the wages they are by accident, their labor is only worth that much. Therefore, if Wal-Mart vanished tomorrow these workers would probably still have low wages and therefore remain on the government dole. Therefore, Wal-Mart is neither forcing nor causing these government expenses.

[Edited on November 15, 2005 at 12:20 AM. Reason : /./.]

11/15/2005 12:19:18 AM

how the gov. chooses or is forced to use tax revenue is your business.

However, your latter point is probably right on.

[Edited on November 15, 2005 at 12:22 AM. Reason : ]

11/15/2005 12:21:44 AM

we have a low min. wage for a developed country, and wal-mart is bringing that avg. down. why do so many people on the right hate the idea of raising the min. wage at all?

[Edited on November 15, 2005 at 12:24 AM. Reason : .]

11/15/2005 12:23:25 AM

because economics teaches you that raising the min wage doesn't do any good in the long run.

11/15/2005 12:25:40 AM

people on the right accept that we have an unusually low minimum wage for a developed country and reason that it might be a contributing factor to our unusually low unemployment rate.

We have nothing against high wages, per-se, but by artificially forcing wages higher we bankrupt marginal employers and incentivise the surviving companies to lay off or simply make do with existing employees.

For example, if a McDonalds cannot operate with fewer than 40 employees and is just barely breaking even at $6 an hour, then at $8 an hour the McDonalds will go bankrupt and lay off everyone. While the employees of the Burger King next door are marginally better off because of higher wages, you have done so by inflicting immense hardship on the employees of this McDonalds.

Also, in a factory in Texas employing 200 immigrants to make widgets you could have the same result, possibly rendering it no longer cost effective to operate in Texas so they close this factory and relocate to China, laying off 200 workers. Also possible, at $8 an hour it becomes cheaper to replace some of the workers with automation so the factory can now operate with only 140 workers. In this case, the 140 remaining workers are better off but only by inflicting immense hardship on the 60 that were layed off.

[Edited on November 15, 2005 at 12:43 AM. Reason : .,.]

11/15/2005 12:42:49 AM

nevermind that most CEOs are ridiculously overpaid, they deserve it all.

6.15 as opposed to 5.15 will bankrupt us all for sure!

[Edited on November 15, 2005 at 12:50 AM. Reason : .]

11/15/2005 12:48:47 AM

^^

And here's the proof of all of Lonesnark's hypothetical examples:

Quote :

"Wal-Mart Stores Inc. chief executive H. Lee Scott Jr. called on Congress to raise the country's minimum wage from $5.15 an hour, saying the company's customers are "struggling to get by.""

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/25/AR2005102501724.html

Yes, sir. I think it is definitive proof that American companies will go bankrupt when the minimum wage goes up; because as we can see, Wal-Mart -- the world's most high-margin business with plenty of fat to burn -- supports raising it.

Obviously this idea that the minimum wage will bankrupt employers is pretty stupid -- there are lots of factors involved in how the government imposes itself upon businesses. I would imagine that a rise in minimum wage could be brokered, for example, by lowering corporate taxation. If the net cost is zero, who cares?

The main arguments IMO against minimum wage are social in nature -- it does tend to create unnecessary competition between less-mobile, lower-end jobs and more-mobile, higher-end jobs -- and quite obviously the more people are in the former, the less they move up.

But it's a complex issue, like most things, and it does fall into that strange "why not do it?" category of government initiatives.

And I do think Mr. Scott has a point about using the minimum wage to subsidize consumerism; for it is in the short-term surely the growth engine of our economy.

[Edited on November 15, 2005 at 1:07 AM. Reason : foo]

11/15/2005 1:06:43 AM

if the minimum wage is raised $1.00, companies will just raise the price of their goods to make the same profits. Inflation will kick in and decrease the value of a dollar, which will cause the middle and upper level employees to eventually get higher pay as well.

The only way to control inflation and increase minimum wage is to set limits on company profits, which is SOCIALISM not CAPITALISM. Of course you could lower taxes as well but we dont like that idea do we?

11/15/2005 9:24:08 AM

or they'll sell more goods and make the same profit. When you inject money into the lower class (or middle class, but for different reasons) end of the economy it goes right back into the economy because they are spending it on necessities (and by necessities I mean mcdonald's food and I mean the cheap clothing and shit you might buy at walmart) and paying bills with it.

11/15/2005 10:28:33 AM

lower taxes, i like lower taxes. we dont need all that tax money anyway. i can think of a few programs that can be eliminated so that social programs could be funded and we could have a higher min. wage...

like SDI, why the fuck are we still putting money into SDI?

And like, oh, 2 less tanks? I'm all for defense at home, but come on, be practical.

I may be left, but I'm also a pragmatist.

[Edited on November 15, 2005 at 3:01 PM. Reason : .]

11/15/2005 3:00:23 PM

Quote :

"like SDI, why the fuck are we still putting money into SDI?"

Because, man. We gotta catch the anti-christ.

11/15/2005 3:05:27 PM

Dude.

The money spent on the War in Iraq could have rebuilt Louisianna or established a new technological infastructure in the US to give high broadband to almost everyone in the United States.

Instead, we shat it away in Iraq and not a god damn Republican can -coherently- argue why.

11/15/2005 4:06:29 PM

^i was gonna say that, but i wanted to avoid steering this topic even further off

11/15/2005 4:08:23 PM

^^Or fund a realistic, alternative energy program.

11/15/2005 4:20:02 PM

dont pretend we'd have actually used the money for any of those thigns. it'd probably been pissed away elsewehre.

11/15/2005 4:25:38 PM

Like $250 million bridges.

11/15/2005 4:26:08 PM

Quote :

"Obviously this idea that the minimum wage will bankrupt employers is pretty stupid"

You needed to say more here than just what you did. You need to realize that a percentage of businesses, particularly small ones, are already operating at a loss. They stay open only because the owners are willing to accept the loss to maintain the value of their initial capital investment. Logic dictates that they will be unwilling to continue if the loss is driven high enough.

Quote :

"if the minimum wage is raised $1.00, companies will just raise the price of their goods to make the same profits. Inflation will kick in and decrease the value of a dollar, which will cause the middle and upper level employees to eventually get higher pay as well."

This chain of thought is absolutely untrue. Only 1.8% of all US workers were receiving the minimum wage back in 2001, and even of these workers 60% were below the age of 25. Even if we assume that raising the minimum wage will double the percentage of workers earning the minimum wage it would still be only a small percentage of the US work force that would be affected. Not to mention that some of the increased wages will be offset by layoffs as firms shift to more capital intensive models.

Quote :

"Wal-Mart Stores Inc. chief executive H. Lee Scott Jr. called on Congress to raise the country's minimum wage from $5.15 an hour"

What you need to realize is that no one at Wal-Mart is earning $5.15 an hour because Wal-Mart has already raised its wages, now it wants to make sure that all of its competitors do so as well. The ultimate goal here is to make its competitors less profitable, or did you think it was speaking out of the goodness of its heart?

It seems not a single person here has grasped the concept of "marginal employers" vs "all employers er4r!" Obviously the idea that every single low-wage employer in the country is wildly profitable is pretty stupid. Not to mention the blatant misrepresentation about corporate taxation: If a business is losing money then it doesn't pay any corporate taxes at all, so a tax cut could never save the company from going under.

My point was not that every company would go under and everyone would be layed off, but that a small percentage of workers would be rendered unemployable because their labor would be priced out of the market. A business doesn't have to fold to stop employing as many workers as it did. Robots are only a phone call away, all it takes is to make someones salary higher than the perceived cost of automation. However, if the worker has no other job oportunities then he will price his labor just low enough to prevent automation. A higher minimum wage removes this option, mandating by law the economic hardship of being layed off.

[Edited on November 16, 2005 at 12:33 AM. Reason : ,.,]

11/16/2005 12:30:58 AM