Some one has to start it, Americas default.

oh have you ever not studied the Wallmart issue

lets do a little background work before going into the evil that is Walmart, cause if you think there doing anyone any favors except themselves your just not paying attention
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6AgKG-f4Tw

Walmart, Homedebot and a whole bunch of big box stores are basically just open veins bleeding the country dry and COSTING taxpayers millions in the process. Lowering property values, raising crime, driving the mom and pop places which USED TO buy american products to sell in american stores out of biz and replacing them with nearly 100% imported low quality crap

 

Bos --why do you think they import low quality crap, because it sells and it sells well. Maybe you don't but many do.

If it was'nt sold it would not be imported.

Its often the case that Americans blame china for an un level playing field and blames cheap labour etc etc , but if you made something you could export you may find people would buy it.

For instance 110 V appliances are not a bit of good to any country.

 

Frosty one of the main issues with China is that its pegged the value of its money to run at an artificially favorable trade rate with the US dollar. Hardly something that can be called fair trade. Combine that with a complete lack of worker safety standards, health benefits and a economy which allows for its workers to be paid $2 a day and still eat means that the playing field was never fair to begin with. What product you produce in such an environment is virtually irrelevant. Without some form of world standards there will never be fair and equitable trade. Essentially this so called "free trade" is another crock foisted off on the people by the corporate oligarchy. Works out great for them but you end up with marginally similar goods being produced at 1/10 the labor cost. By people who can't afford to buy them for people who are fast running out of money. So how does that benefit anyone but some few at the top? It actually means that not only have you shipped jobs overseas but you have eliminated an entire spending class of people and left them out in the cold telling them to go work at McDonalds when there simply aren't enough ultra low paying jobs to go around. So your solution is to lower wages even more? Thats nuts

The simply solution is to eliminate the free trade agreements, bring back import tariffs, decrease the size of gubment and reduce regulations to a manageable and enforceable level. Legalize and regulate all drugs and quit screwing around with foreign countries. Go in, beat the crap out of them, and leave em to clean up there own mess.

the solutions are pretty obvious, its just some few *******s are making billions off a failing system, and simply don't care about anyone but themselves

watch the video series and get back to me on the walmart thing

cheers
B

PS
china's version of a middle class is a lot like India's. Certainly a step above abject poverty but hardly something I would consider anything better than the working poor.

 

Or... even more simple would be that consumption tax, in the form of a VAT tax.

If you try to sell an American product in say, Europe, for instance, you have to pay an enormous VAT tax (19%?) before you take your product to market. If a European tries to sell a product in the states, they pay no such tax. Nearly every other country in the WTO has a VAT tax and these are balances to trade.

Because we do not have a VAT tax in the States, it is cheaper for other countries to sell their goods in here in the States than it is for us to sell them overseas. Why? Because we pay a VAT selling in their country, while they pay nothing to sell here.

You could kill two birds with one stone: A nice, fair tax in place of the income tax we have now, plus... as a bonus, a fair global/US trade environment which levels the playing field.

 

Not demonizing you; just identifying you. That's what would actually happen to the working poor if you had your way. They'd be getting squeezed from both ends: more taxes, less pay.

It wouldn't surprise me to hear you're 'pro-life' too, while at the same time being pro-death penalty. And I'll take another reasonable guess that you oppose welfare -- especially for the women you'd force to bear children they can't afford.

Begging your pardon, but that's an over-filled honey wagon you're pulling there. Careful you don't hit a bump, and start sloshing....

No One is "desperate" for a job that won't pay them enough to live on. And a full-time job at five dollars an hour wouldn't even cover rent and utilities for a cheap apartment in most housing markets today -- much less also put food on the table, and clothes on the children's backs.

I repeat: pure horse apples. When I was growing up most of my friend's dads were farm workers who made minimum wage, and they managed to support their families on minimum wage.

They didn't live fancy. But they provided their families with food, clothing and shelter, along with owning a car they could keep running. And they did it with their wives staying home to take care of the house and the kids (try doing that on today's minimum wages).

And you know what? Their employers got along just fine, and so did the economy. It was lobbyists for the McDonald's Corporation who suckered Richard Nixon into believing big corporations would be driven out of business, if they actually had to keep paying a living wage.

They convinced him and an ignorant Congress that only teenaged burger-flippers still living at home made minimum wage, anyway. Which wasn't true then, and isn't true now.

Don't try condescending to me, son; it won't work. I'm not some idealistic ignoramus who blindly resents people in charge. I spent more of my life hiring than I did hiring myself out -- up until ten years ago, when I decided I was getting too damned old and tired to keep surfing the ups and downs of the construction industry. So I sold out, and grabbed a stable job with a big corporation. But I didn't sell them my brain along with my soul....

I don't 'feel the need' to peg you as someone who wants the poor to make low wages; you've flat-out said that's what you want. You strongly advocate getting rid of the minimum wage, because apparently you believe that people are 'desperate' enough to want jobs that won't pay them enough to live on -- and that companies which can't make a profit after paying their workers a liveable wage have some sort of right to stay in business anyway.

If you think my shining a light on what you believe makes you look like some sort of demon, maybe it's time you did some soul-searching instead of shooting the messenger.

 

It's funny how the same ones who want to save killers favor abortion.

 

I didn't hear Troy taking a position on the mater, merely suggesting his suspicions

it is an interesting subject tho, cause I find that often those who are extremely strongly opinionated concerning the death penalty are often opposed to the right of free choice.

 

What's funnier is that the same folks who want to force a woman to have a child won't lift a finger to help her raise him, but are totally ready to fry his *** as soon as he's done growing up with no sense of community, no moral support, no education and no hope for the future.

Conservatives believe that from the standpoint of the federal government, life begins at conception and ends at birth.
--Barney Frank

 

That's a straight-out lie, Troy, and shame on you for saying it. If I were as dishonest as you I would say that you have flat-out said that you don't want the lowest-skilled peopled to be allowed to have jobs.

What I want is for everyone --rich, poor, and middle-class-- to make enough money to live a good life. In my ideal world there would be no poor people. There would also be no war or strife or envy. Medicines would all taste like honey and every thing that tastes good would be good for you. There would be chocolate mountains (which would be good for you) and everyone could just tap their heels and fly to wherever they want to go except that restaurants and concerts and sporting events would never get too crowded to enjoy. However, in the real world, not everyone who wants to work is worth minimum wage to anyone in the area where they want to work. Forcing employers to give minimum wage does not get these people higher wages, it prevents them from working at all. Sure, some people get higher wages as a result of the minimum wage, but lots of other people get moved from a lower-paying job to no job at all. Meanwhile, prices go up for everyone, including those making minimum wage and those who can't get a job because of the new minimum wage. The poorest people are hurt the most.

You seem to have this fantasy that if not for minimum wage, poor people would be slaving away 20 hours per day while slowly starving to death because the wages aren't enough to live on. Meanwhile, 97% of the poor people in the US own a refrigerator and 24% own a gaming console.

And what about people who don't want a "living wage" because they already have enough to live on? What about people who just want a bit of extra cash to buy some small luxuries? Can't do that --it's illegal in the US because our Congress knows better than we do what jobs are worthwhile for us to have.

 

Typical response, and exactly what I expected.

I'm sorry.... point out to me where the lie is. After stating that low-income people should have to pay income taxes, you said quite clearly that you'd like to get rid of minimum wage laws -- to fulfill your fantasy that minimum-wage laws are keeping employers from hiring people they need. Reality check: if they can't make a profit after paying their workers enough to live on, maybe they shouldn't be in business to begin with. Y'think?

Screwing the employees to make a profit isn't my idea of a viable business mode....

I repeat: why the !@#$ would anyone 'desperately' want a job that doesn't even pay them enough to live on? Hell... they can stay home and starve, instead of working 40 hours a week to do it.

Don't try to sidetrack the issue, by bringing up people who want to have their cake and eat it too. That would be the folks who are whining because the government won't let them supposedly 'retire' early and start collecting Social Security -- while in reality, they're still working and bringing home a paycheck.

Here's yet another reality check: it's called the 'Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Program,' not the 'Guaranteed Retirement Pension Program.' It was neither crafted nor intended as a universal replacement for other retirement plans.

 

There are lots of pro-life groups who give their own money to help poor women support their children rather than have abortions. But since you are a Democrat that doesn't count, right? To you "helping" poor people means taking tax money away from other people at gunpoint and giving it to the poor people. Giving your own money doesn't count because Democrats are afraid of either falling behind on the "keeping up with the Joneses" contest if they are giving more than their neighbors or looking bad if they are giving less. Better income redistribution at gunpoint than charity that requires tough personal decisions.

As to this supposed contradiction between being against abortion and for capital punishment, it is the same as the contradiction between being against Democrat-advocated plans to "draft" all young people into a public works project between the ages of 18 and 20 but being for requiring prisoners to work. Well, am I against forced labor or for it? Quite a contradiction there.

This may seem like a subtle distinction, but I have this old concept of innocent/guilty. I'm not going to go into a lot of details here, but I view this as a real and important distinction between people that effects how we should treat them. For example, we ought not to put innocent people in prison, but we ought to put guilty people in prison.

I apply this to a few other cases as well. For example, we ought not to force innocent people to pick up trash along the roads but in some cases we ought to force guilty people to pick up trash along the roads. The same thing applies to abortion: we ought not to kill innocent babies, but we ought to kill guilty serial killers.

I can understand why you think this stance is contradictory if you don't grasp the subtle difference between being innocent and being guilty.

 

(Except Japan, which is a subsidiary state of USA for many years post WW11).....?

 

One could point the same bony finger at USA for the similar manipulation in currency and other commodity values like Australian Oils are based on TAPIS which is $125 a barrel... WTC is not available internationally as it is a figment of USA's price fixing... as is most precious metals and a host of other commodities controlled by the NY / USA markets... Globally, that is a political fact - mainly for internal domestic political reasons....

 

No, I did not say that I want wages to be lower I said that if wages *are* lower then people should be able to decide for themselves if they want to take a job at those wages and the government should butt out.

Maybe you really are misunderstanding me because you are working from the false assumption that minimum wage laws can set wages. This is not true. Wages are based on economic laws and you can no more turn low wages into high wages with a law than you can nullify gravity with a law.

Wages are what they are. If there are natural wages that are below the legal minimum wage then this does not raise those natural wages. All it does is eliminate those jobs, which distorts the economy and may (or may not) produce more minimum-wage jobs by causing employers to raise prices. The employers can get away with raising prices because everyone in the industry has the minimum-wage laws so they all have to raise prices. But this doesn't give the consumers more money to pay the increased prices (since most consumers are already above minimum wage) so volume of sales will go down and the employers will not be able to employ as many people as they did before. The law can't create a many minimum-wage laws as the lower-wage jobs that it destroys.

Exactly! I'm glad that you are beginning to see the point. Obviously if someone chooses to work at a specific wage, then that wage must be enough for that person to live on or he wouldn't take the job. You don't need minimum-wage laws to prevent people from working at a wages that are too low for them to live on-- the laws of economics will prevent that.

It's not just retired people. It's also young people living with their parents, spouses of people who already make enough to live on, street people who only want to make enough money for food and wine for the day, anyone who doesn't need the money to pay rent and bills but wants to work anyway. Not allowed. Federal regulations say that if you don't have the qualifications or don't want to spend the time for a job good enough to support a family then you can't work at all.

It is amazing to me that anyone at all supports this assault on freedom.

 

Well, I can certainly understand your insistence that people living under the most democratic political system in the world have no moral obligation whatsoever to turn around and give anything in return.

I don't agree, mind you... I just understand.