"minioral", really? What does that even mean?

On the minimum wage, this is actually a pretty easy equation.

First, consider the jobs that frequently have minimum wages. These are the very lowest entry-level positions. Essentially they are the base of the economy.

Second, consider the interests of companies. One specific interest is to gain competitive advantage over other companies in your industry. One way to do this is to be able to produce more product with fewer people. This means new technology which costs money, so you need an incentive to seek the new technology. With no incentive to change, companies are apt to go with the status quo of people instead of technology.

Now add an increased minimum wage. All of a sudden the jobs at the base of the economy cost their companies more money. Now, you might have a happy accident for some companies that increases the pay increases production because employees are more motivated. Sure, that might happen, but it's not going to happen in all cases. In many cases, production is not going to increase with a higher minimum wage. Instead, the products are simply going to cost more money and a company will have to pass that cost onto customers (prices increase, countering the higher minimum wage). Companies are also going to have an incentive to seek technology that can produce just as much or more than employees for what has now become a lower cost. Some companies (at least) will find this technology and they will put it to use and they will layoff employees as a result.

So at the end of the day, you have fewer of the very lowest entry level positions. You have more people competing for those positions and companies will get to choose the absolute best people for the position. The people who will get the shaft in this situation are those who are at the very bottom and whom the minimum wage was theoretically raised to help.

Obama is not an idiot, so he knows that this will happen. Therefore, it is a conscious choice to fire the worst off Americans. Well, at least Obama will get a good talking point...unless the opposition can persuade the electorate to the facts of the situation. Raising the minimum wage is an emotional feel good measure that has significant real life negative consequences for the very people whom it is suppose to help. I'm not going to give Obama and the Democrats a pass saying that they mean well anymore. They don't mean well. They know the consequences of their agenda and the only thing they care about doing is getting emotional plays to help them get reelected and keep power.

Angel, the more people that depend on the government = more votes for his party.

That's the end game here.

My comment re: Cerberus was entirely based only on how he conducts himself on the forums and the hypocrisy of essentially calling others brainwashed when he seems to have Fox News talking points (and their lingo) pumped right into his frontal lobe whenever I see him on a political thread. It legitimately reminds me of Colbert.

This is especially true when he attacks someone like qz, who I know is well educated & versed in what he discusses. To that point, people like me (and most perceived "liberals" on the forums) know and understand both sides of the most discussions they engage in -- in my experience. Posts like Angel1's that talk down to others on here like they don't understand the issues they discuss, requiring a post educating them, are pointless. Especially when examples like "minimum wage will make companies invest in technology and create unemployment, which is bad for jobs and good for Obama!" actually show a key flaw in conservative thinking on this issue. The goal should be to get more people OUT of these jobs and into more skilled jobs that will expand the economy; not that there needs to be a glut of crappy, low paying jobs available in perpetuity. There's way better ways to poo-poo the minimum wage increase too. :-/

(PS. I'm very much socially liberal.... but fairly conservative economically. The two reconcile better than you may think! :p)

I would say that it's a fair argument that we need to focus more on what we can do lift more people through entry level positions and into better paying, more skilled workers. However, I would say that I'm not talking down to people in general but much more so to those that speak down to others in support of the minimum wage. I'm quite done with the conservatives are evil argument that we here out of the liberals in the US. It's time to identify and call the liberals (especially in the US) out on the harm that their agendas perpetrate on people. They need to not have a monopoly on calling people mean; it's time to turn that accusation on the people causing harm.

In so far as low paying entry-level positions are concerned, we do need them and we do need for them to stay around for people to have a starting point. However, it's just that. It is a starting point and not the end game for millions of workers. We need to expand access to technical schools, community colleges, and two-year degree programs that can efficiently move each person from entry-level position to skilled labor position and higher pay. We need to expand opportunities for entrepreneurial individuals to thrive, so that they can go very quickly from entry-level positions supporting their experiments to their experiments supporting their lives.

For the US, the best way to achieve this is by removing the tentacles of the federal government from every place where they lack constitutional justification for being. Remove, slash, burn the federal government. Then burn and rewrite the US tax code to supply the much reduced necessary tax revenue in an efficient and easy to file manner. The federal government also needs to streamline its regulations and work to seemlessly mesh their regulations with state regulations concerning the environment, etc. The EPA needs to be reigned in, overhauled, and then set to work on only the most important issues that cross state lines.

At the same time, US states need to very closely examine themselves. They need to eradicate anti-competitive, anti-start-up regulations; they need to simplify tax and regulatory laws. This would be very strongly encouraged by the stark differences that would emerge as the federal government withdrew its presence from the lives of Americans. Those states that more quickly and more ably made private (citizen/business), public (government) interaction simpler and more efficient would very quickly gain employment and population.

Wow, this is just great stuff, here. This is very nicely thought out and written. Someone should preserve this for posterity since we're not securing our liberty for posterity any more.

Pang, I get my news from the BBC, not Fox, Fox is just another of the main stream media that has been co-opted by one of the "parties", in this case the republicans.

I favor the elimination of the "party" system to return to what was in existence at the beginning of the republic.

George Washington did not support "parties" as he knew that they would co-opt the power of the government and use it for their own agenda outside of what the people actually want or need, and that's what is happening now.

The Democrips and the Rebloodlicans are two halves of the same coin.

They are merely gangs competing to "hold" the gun on the American people so they can more efficiently rob them.

I agree with all of the above except, perhaps, any notion that those opportunities don't already exist. I am involved with multiple startups and government hasn't impeded them at all.



Sigh... oh well, so much for the agreement. The above argument is what gets conservatives into so much trouble. Insulting the people who serve the country and advocating for anarchy as the path to salvation is pretty inane. How about proposing reforms and policy changes that make sense rather that "tear the motherfluffer down".



Again, I don't believe the "anti-start-up" exists anywhere near the scale at which popular talking points make it out. It is incredibly easy to start a company in the U.S., incredibly easy to secure investment, incredibly easy to manage away virtually all taxation for the start-up (in fact, rack up losses for future tax evasion (I mean avoidance)).

Then you go on to say that not only should the feds get out of regulation as you view it as outside the constitution, but that the states shouldn't step in and take that responsibility either. Again, advocacy for the anarchy-capitalism hybrid government which is idiotic. We have seen what unchecked corporations will do to our society even WITHIN the regulatory system we have today. You would do away with all such oversight so the next time there isn't anyone to storm their HQ, uncover their wrongdoings and force even a mediocre settlement out of them?

Have you been to China? Is that the air quality you want here? Without any regulation, that is just one example. You want the next BP oil spill to just be "business as usual"? You want the next 3-mile-island to be in your home state? You want the next outbreak of salmonella, e.coli or other to just run unchecked with nobody watching? You want a few more local species of animals/birds rendered extinct because it was in a corporation's commercial interest to generate some more jobs in your local community? You want to be on the receiving end of a massive water shortage because the next state over decided to let a commercial company damn up a river and hold the water for their new development? You want to watch kids in your community get choked or poisoned on the next "efficiently produced" toy that has great short-term market view profit margins?

Your complete dismissal of the role of public servants is at best ignorant and at worst insulting.

I applaud fiscal responsibility that calls for scrutiny of waste, more efficient systems, leveraging of technology to replace horribly outdated agency practices to save money and time, etc. But when someone comes out and declares government evil and calls to "slash and burn" it, destroying entire agencies without thought - it just shows a complete lack of respect for the realities of our complex and interdependent shared society.