Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

[mesyn191]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

How old are you, mesyn191? And what is your vocation and employment history?

I'm going to be intentionally vauge here since I like at least a semblance of privacy: I'm 30-40 yr old, currently unemployed (moved over the last 3-9 months and I'm looking for work) but work in the healthcare field. More specifically involving diagnostic and lab work and I made between $30-40k last year before taxes, no benefits. I've worked since I was 12, had a paper route then, not because I wanted to but because I had to. When my mother got divorced things were tight for quite a while and the paper route as well as trash picking for cans helped pay for food and utilities. Worked through most of highschool at various McJobs to buy my first car and pay for gas, insurance, etc. Then I worked at various hospitals starting off in the store room and then moved up to Central Supply and then transferred with the dept. when it became SPD over a period of 6-7 years. After that I switched careers to my current one and have been at it for well over 7 yr now. I have no college experience, only some vocational schooling and my high school diploma as well as a certification/license in my field. I've never been fired or even had a single write up and have only been late to work or had sick days around a day or 2 per year.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

I'm going to be intentionally vauge here since I like at least a semblance of privacy: I'm 30-40 yr old, currently unemployed (moved over the last 3-9 months and I'm looking for work) but work in the healthcare field. More specifically involving diagnostic and lab work and I made between $30-40k last year before taxes, no benefits. I've worked since I was 12, had a paper route then, not because I wanted to but because I had to. When my mother got divorced things were tight for quite a while and the paper route as well as trash picking for cans helped pay for food and utilities. Worked through most of highschool at various McJobs to buy my first car and pay for gas, insurance, etc. Then I worked at various hospitals starting off in the store room and then moved up to Central Supply and then transferred with the dept. when it became SPD over a period of 6-7 years. After that I switched careers to my current one and have been at it for well over 7 yr now. I have no college experience, only some vocational schooling and my high school diploma as well as a certification/license in my field. I've never been fired or even had a single write up and have only been late to work or had sick days around a day or 2 per year.

You sound to me to be a very hard working individual that has hit the wall; not because of your own failings, but simply because you are in the same position as millions of others.

There are always two sides to any story. Life can be a bummer sometimes.

Get hold of a copy of The Moody Blues, On the Threshold of a Dream.

"There you go man, face piles of trials with smiles; it riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave and keep on thinking free."

[mesyn191]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

Bingo. Chris gets to the root of the problem with the observation above.

Are you even trying to read or respond to what I post? Did you even try to read the linked article at least in my reply to Chris? Because neither what you or him are saying is really panning out when compared to real world data and evidence.

mesyn191 counters by saying that the $12/hour minumum wage is fair in his opinion and it is my moral duty to pay it.
,,,,
Reality wake-up call, buddy, I'm already shipping those jobs to Mexico with my market rate at $10/hour and if you raise my forced minimum rate to $12/hour then I'm shipping even more there.

Not quite right. I said approximately that amount is about what a living wage would be in the US, fair has got nothing to do with it since its the cost of living that effects that number I'm not setting that wage. BUT I also argued that a living wage is morally what people should be paid at a minimum. You and others seem to be arguing against both of those points and that last one in particular. Its when you guys argue that ethics and morals don't matter when it comes to the issue of paying people enough to live on, either personally or on a national/social scale, then I get particularly upset. Everyone understands you want to protect your bottom line, but we're talking about people's lives here, and if you're going to outsource US jobs to better your bottom line why should any fellow American care about your bottom line at all?

YOUR ARGUMENT DOESN'T HOLD UP TO REALITY AT $10/HOUR, SO IT SURE WON'T HOLD UP TO YOUR $12/HOUR IDEOLOGY!

You reeeally should try reading that article I linked up a ways for Chris, but I'll quote the really relevant stuff for you:

But unlike its neighbors in Spartanburg, Yuncheng is a Chinese company. It has come to South Carolina because by Chinese standards, America is darn cheap.Yes, you read that right. The land Yuncheng purchased in Spartanburg, at $350,000 for 6.5 acres, cost one-fourth the price of land back in Shanghai or Dongguan
,,,,,,
Electricity is cheaper too: Yungcheng pays up to 14¢ per kilowatt-hour in China at peak usage, and just 4¢ in South Carolina. And no brownouts either, a sporadic problem in China. It's true that American workers are much more expensive, of course, and the overall cost of making a widget in China remains lower, and perhaps always will.
,,,,,,,
But for hundreds of Chinese companies like Yuncheng, the U.S. has become a better, less expensive place to set up shop. It could be the biggest role reversal since, well ... when Nixon went to China. "The gap between manufacturing costs in the U.S. and China is shrinking," explains John Ling, a naturalized American from China who runs the South Carolina Department of Commerce's business recruitment office in Shanghai.
,,,,,,,
Skilled workers at American Yuncheng will earn $25 to $30 an hour, line operators $10 to $12. That's a lot more than the $2 an hour that unskilled labor costs in China, but the company can qualify for a state payroll tax credit of $1,500 per worker (for any company creating more than 10 jobs). And by being closer to companies like Coca-Cola, Yuncheng can respond more quickly when they need new labels designed to show that a product has reduced its fat content or added more flavor.,,,,

Again, I will not be responding, mesyn191, so you are free to have the last word (unless raz continues to tear you a new one that is).

Hey you want to take your ball and go home that is fine. Its not like I can make you post, that is your decision. I'd disagree with you about raz though, he states things that lots of people here agree with but doesn't really respond to what I say.

[mesyn191]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

"There you go man, face piles of trials with smiles; it riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave and keep on thinking free."

That is a wonderful sentiment and I do appreciate the rest of the post, I just wish we could agree on more things that weren't so frustrating.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

2.5 minutes.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5f2_1183680135

[aaron]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

IMHO you guys are both right. I see no problem with either "side". Reality is reality.

You should feel a moral obligation to help your fellow man/employee. But, if you cannot keep your business alive by providing a living wage, what do you do? I suspect most Americans would be happy to employ a lot of people and pay them enough to live the good life. I would be proud to build a company like that. Who wouldn't want to be known as the guy(or girl) who has improved the lives of families? Who aspires to be the sweatshop owner with sick employees who have to live in a paper box? But the hard truth is that it is very difficult in today's environment to accomplish that sort of thing, especially in America.

However, if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture... Yes, life has gotten quite tough for American workers. But, for 10 times as many people, life has gotten better. They just happen to have yellow skin and live far away.

There are many things that can be done to improve the quality of life here, but our leaders have failed us and continue to fail us.

[Raz]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

I'm going to be intentionally vauge here since I like at least a semblance of privacy: I'm 30-40 yr old, currently unemployed (moved over the last 3-9 months and I'm looking for work) but work in the healthcare field. More specifically involving diagnostic and lab work and I made between $30-40k last year before taxes, no benefits. I've worked since I was 12, had a paper route then, not because I wanted to but because I had to. When my mother got divorced things were tight for quite a while and the paper route as well as trash picking for cans helped pay for food and utilities. Worked through most of highschool at various McJobs to buy my first car and pay for gas, insurance, etc. Then I worked at various hospitals starting off in the store room and then moved up to Central Supply and then transferred with the dept. when it became SPD over a period of 6-7 years. After that I switched careers to my current one and have been at it for well over 7 yr now. I have no college experience, only some vocational schooling and my high school diploma as well as a certification/license in my field. I've never been fired or even had a single write up and have only been late to work or had sick days around a day or 2 per year.

I'm sorry that you're presently out of work. You sound like a hard-working young man who comes across on these forums as carrying quite a bit of anger. When I was thirtysomething I carried a lot of anger due to my screwed-up family and having very little money. I truly hope your situation changes for the better.

I'm not responsible for your difficulties and neither are other small businessmen. Most of us didn't start out with a pile of money but worked very long hours while saving 25% or more of what we earned, borrowing the rest of the seed capital we needed by pledging whatever we had.
We then took HUGE risks, worked longer hours than ANY of our employees, and had little or no social life for most of a decade.
I hope you'll forgive me if I don't feel guilty because I succeeded.

mesyn191wrote:

"I get that and I get what you're saying, the problem we're having here is that you're blaming the wrong people for the wrong things and your proposed solutions are at least as ideologically motivated as mine but bad for reasons already mentioned earlier in the thread and heck the article too. OSHA or FICA or isn't gonna put you out of business and getting rid of them would at very best only offer a minor boost to the economy and your business before other bigger problems cropped up.


Well its not a question of fair really, no one wants to work in an unsafe work place or have unrestrained white collar crime right? Even the workers in the 3rd world countries don't, they simply have no choice. Do you believe it is reasonable to further your profits by taking away that choice from anyone, much less US labor? Does a business that treats its workers like crap and pays them crap deserve to stay in business? Also didn't you say you made about double the avg. US wage earner last year or something in another thread? Sure, that might not be as much as you'd like to be paid but if that is the case then you're not really broke."


What in this world are you talking about? I'm blaming the CONgress and the Federal Government's trade policy for most of this. Small businesses don't have a multinational presence. They're having their throats cut by unfair competition from imports made in countries that have NONE of the things like minimum wage laws, OSHA, FICA, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Where in the world do you come off assuming I don't care about workplace safety? That I'm some greedy bastard who doesn't care if my employees starve? I'm not talking ideology here, mesyn - just dollars and cents, real-world business competition and the bottom line on an income statement. For many small businesses the cumulative effect of taxes, regulatory costs (it's not "free"), unfair competition from overseas, etc., doesn't just reduce profitability - it almost eliminates it!

I don't know anything about the healthcare workplace, diagnostic laboratories, phlebotomy, physical therapy, or hospital or clinical management, and for that good reason I don't pontificate about their business nor do I presume to tell them they make too much money or treat their employees unfairly.

You have absolutely NO experience operating any small business or trying to make a payroll while fending off the competition and a host of regulators at three levels who all want to bleed you.
You don't know beans about my business or any other small business and yet you decide to judge my financial situation and accuse rjwjr of shafting his employees.

Yes I did make at least twice the income of the average US wage earner before I sold my car washes, and as an investor and trader with more than thirty years experience I've done just fine since then by managing the capital I accumulated in the 35+ years I worked full-time. So what? I've worked my ass off, too, and I did it for myself and my family - not for every redistributionist scheme some politician can come up with. Or just so I could provide "good, high-paying jobs" for others.
I had close to nothing when I started my first business at the ripe old age of 37 and I was hoping to provide a high-paying job for myself! Do you really think I would have worked that hard and taken all that risk so I could earn the average US wage?

I didn't face Chinese competition in the car wash business, nor in the pastry business. So no, I didn't go broke then and I'm a long way from broke now. But I would never want to go back into business if I had to hire people who carried around as much anger and resentment as you show forth here.

If I can make 10%+ by investing and trading securities then why would I bust my ass again, risking it all in another illiquid small business, dealing with employees who really don't want a job but expect me to "adopt" them (yes, about a third of the people who worked for me absolutely sucked - they weren't hard workers like you), AND work 10-hour days so I could make 12% or 13%?

I hope things improve for you very soon; that you land a good job with fair employer so your anger will at least somewhat abate and your attitude and outlook improve.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

2.5 minutes.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5f2_1183680135

Not only absolutely correct; but he also targets the correct course out of the problem; the underlying agreements, the laws placed that have caused the overall problem; rather than ANY individual corporation or individual owning such a corporation.

All of us have to learn that shouting the odds only puts the other side's back up. They then "bristle" like a dog and the debate thereafter goes south with the jobs. So please, do stop aiming the debate personally, and open the debate up to the real target; the principle government agencies and the private financial institutions that created this mess in the first place.

For my sins, I once got invited to a meeting in 12 Downing Street with one of Margaret Thatcher's economic advisors, a senior partner in what was then Price Waterhouse. He impressed me with a very simple argument:

"Don't come to me with your problems; come to me with potential solutions"

As I see it, the minimum wage is a smoke and mirror solution as it does not bring any answer to the underlying problem of what I believe to be the main problem; a lack of ANY working mechanism, solution, to the delivery of free enterprise equity capital into new business creation. Not just in the US or as here, the UK; but right across the entire planet. So how am I going about that? Well here are a few of my recent comments, over this last week, made as comments on The Times, London, web site. (It has a paywall so I am copying them here for all to read).

Days of the past haunt Chancellor’s future

Ian King: Business Editor's Commentary

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/busine...cle3320429.ece



Chris Coles

February 15, 2012 9:17 AM

Perhaps it would be better to suggest to George Osborne my favourite Moody Blues title: On the threshold of a dream:

“There you go man, face piles of trials with smiles; it riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave; and keep on thinking free”

We are only on a negative outlook because we lack positive, private sector income growth and, on the subject of the BBC interview; I was surprised to hear GB keep repeating that we need to attract outside investment. To me, he gave the clear impression that he believes that the only way out of our dilemma is to “sell more of the family silver”.

While on the other hand; we have the banking system, internally, desperately, (that is surely not an unkind description?), trying to write off billions of debt instruments that have, as they say, need of a haircut; while at the same time, they need to recapitalise the foundations of their lending books; particularly to the small business sector.

Yes, standard practice is to make a bonfire of the rubbish and try and pretend it never existed. However, surely, it is not impossible to believe that, instead of a bonfire, the rubbish is instead handed to the Bank of England to be converted into “Vanishing Bonds” an instrument that will both serve as new equity capital investment into new job creation; which in turn again; will serve to recapitalise the retail banking sectors books, through the equity capital being deposited into the new small business bank accounts?

That in turn will present another conundrum; the BoE has an inflation target; yet substantial growth will, inevitably, be initially inflationary as incomes increase with additional prosperity so generated. In which case, surely the BoE remit should thus also be revised to target increased private sector prosperity through the investment of equity capital into new job creation; rather than target inflation?

We will not turn the ship around and back into the wind, until everyone is pulling in the same direction; towards increased private sector prosperity. In turn, that will only stem from investment; right down at the grass roots of the nation, where its effect will be entirely positive to the government’s aim of reducing borrowing.



What will these bright ideas do to inflation?

Ian King Business Editor’s Commentary

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/busine...cle3321551.ece


Chris Coles

February 16, 2012 8:54 AM

It is time for Sir Mervyn King to show his metal.

BBC Newsnight last week broadcast an edition showing that almost all of the near 1 million supermarket employees were unable to pay their way on their meagre incomes at minimum wage and that the State was subsidising their incomes with welfare while the supermarkets were still earning £2 Billion pa profits.

In normal times, wages are a product of the competition between employers for the use of employees. No employees, no mechanism to create new turnover and thus income for the business.

However, today, there is such a large discontinuity and lack of employment opportunity, wages inevitably follow the market for their use down to the minimum. The question becomes; is it advantageous for the NATION, to have a large proportion of the citizens earning insufficient to pay their way and thus having their income supplemented with welfare that again, inevitably, adds to the tax cost of running the nation?

Surely, the best solution is to ensure sufficient investment into new employment, new private sector businesses; to ensure that the level of competition for the employee reaches such; to enable the majority to live full lives and prosper?

We also recently had another report of homeless people in the USA living in tent cities all over the nation.

Surely the role of business is more than pure survival for the business owner, (Not disregarded when times are harsh as now), and that there is a need for recognition of the need for new leadership that will recognise a wider role for private business than heretofore?

Without prosperous customers, no one makes a profit.

Where this has all gone wrong is that it is unreasonable to expect the ordinary, (not that they are in any way "ordinary"), small or medium business to have to care for the quality of the whole nation's prosperity. My point being; we do not have any PRIVATE investment institutions that are taking that remit to heart.

What is missing is the overall structure and agreed ethos of the private financial institutions, (supposedly there to lead the nation; indeed, any nation), towards the prosperity we must have embedded into place; to permit the majority of the citizens to prosper and live full and successful lives.

We must accept that we need to create a new infrastructure of private financial institutions that have, as their underlying ethos; the greater prosperity of the wider nation.

It is simply the lack of that structure, that accepted ethos, a higher ethic if you like, that is causing most, if not all of our problems.

Sir Mervyn King has one year left to put that right.


Chris Coles


February 16, 2012 9:48 AM

“Sir Mervyn King was asked yesterday should not the Bank of England be buying assets other than gilts to stimulate the economy.

The Governor’s answer is no. That, he argues, would be asking the Bank to buy something that nobody else in the economy wants to buy — in other words, a subsidy. Such a decision, he argues, is one for the Government“.

It is surely not unreasonable to believe that my comment yesterday, (regarding the Bank of England convert questionable banking system paper assets into vanishing bonds for use as new equity capital investment into new, very small private businesses); might well have prompted the question asked above.

May I suggest that if so, that question, and his answer; shows a misunderstanding of the basic principle embedded into my thinking?

What I propose is that the “questionable” paper assets are not bought at all. They are, after all, exactly that, questionable and thus their present value is moot. However, in so far as they are listed in the accounts of these financial institutions; they have a notional “book” value of whatever is shown on the face of the original paper document.

What I am proposing is that they are passed to the Bank of England, not bought; that they are to be seen as a gift. Even a charitable gift if that suits. That their purpose is to be used as a transfer of existing “notional” prosperity, from the existing accounts of the banking and other financial institutions, into a fund comprised of a new financial instrument that I have described as a vanishing bond.

That the role of the Bank of England is simply to make that conversion; within their own jurisdiction; as the leading financial institution here in the UK, and then act as the responsible depositary for the fund of vanishing bonds for use as I have already laid out in detail elsewhere..

There is no subsidy; it is a transfer of value from one part of the system right down into the grass roots of the nation.

In turn, the gifting institutions, receive the value back as reinvested equity capital, initially into the retail banking system as new business deposits; and thereafter as increased prosperity for the wider nation.

For those of you unfamiliar with the underlying concept of the vanishing bond; please look at The Capital Spillway Trust response to the Green Paper, Financing a private sector recovery.

---------------------

[mesyn191]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

I suspect most Americans would be happy to employ a lot of people and pay them enough to live the good life.

I'd like to think this too and at one time did but most business owners, big and small, generally favor anti labor policies quite a bit. The effects of this are more apparent abroad then here in the US...for now, but things just keep getting worse for labor here in the US and have been for over 30 years with no end in sight. I see no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt.

However, if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture... Yes, life has gotten quite tough for American workers. But, for 10 times as many people, life has gotten better. They just happen to have yellow skin and live far away.

You may not know it but this is the neoliberal economists' justification for what has been happening here and abroad. It certainly sounds somewhat reasonable at first, but when you examine the situation closely I'd think you'd agree its BS. Sure, lots of 3rd world sustenance farmers now have employment that can offer a more reliable food source and somewhat better lodgings than a make shift hovel. The problem is they're pretty much stuck at that standard of living now and have been for a very long time.

Meanwhile a very select few of their countrymen have been getting mind blowingly rich. The wealth disparity in many of these countries is even worse than here in the US, and the people at the top there want to keep it that way. And they'll likely be able to do just that too since many of the governments of these countries are even more corrupt and incompetent than ours, and thoroughly in their pocket.

There are many things that can be done to improve the quality of life here, but our leaders have failed us and continue to fail us.

Its not just our political leaders that have failed us. Our economists, many of our educators in our colleges, and the wealthy too. No they aren't all colluding in some grand mustachio twirling evil plot, but they all sure seem to be following the same neoliberal/chicago school play book.

[aaron]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

It is surely true that the wealth disparity between the very rich ("elite") and the rest of us has grown to excessive levels. We could distribute their wealth and probably improve things a bit and increase demand. But, do you think that is going to happen without revolution?

Other countries have the same problem. Nevertheless, life HAS improved for hundreds of millions of people. A "reliable food source and somewhat better lodgings" is a really big deal when you do not have those things.

This is cold comfort for those of us who have lost jobs, do not get paid a wage that will support a family, have lost our homes, etc. However, your anger is really misplaced. It seems you are grouping small business owners with the wealthy elite. There is a world of difference between a business owner who must make payroll while competing with slave labor in China versus a wall street f**** who effectively pushes money around and runs the system.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

The wealth disparity in many of these countries is even worse than here in the US

This is untrue, believe it or not. There are not a whole lot of good measures for wealth inequality by nation, but there are some decent numbers from the University of Western Ontario. If you look at the right-most column on page 39 (partially posted as a picture below), you'll see that no nation competes with the U.S. in terms of wealth disparity (much as no nation competes with the U.S. in terms of total wealth).





This is actually surprisingly also untrue for current income (not wealth), according to the CIA's numbers. Of the 134 nations for which there is Lorenz Curve data:

(-) There are only 43 nations with income disparities greater than the U.S.
(-) There are only 22 nations with income disparities greater than the State of New York.

Mexico is more equal than NY state now. The largest of the countries with more income inequality are Brazil and South Africa. No other big players compete.

Sorry for the off-topic interjection. I just find these data interesting.

[oddlots]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

their "outrage" expressed to rjwjr

I don't feel any outrage at rjwjr at all. His perspective is entirely valid and I can sense the frustration of being caught in a vice of competing against low-wage (actually, low-everything - enviro law etc.) competitors. Compared to this my point may seem academic, but I also think rjwjr's perspective is not the last word and I don't see this as being critical of him. Why? Because I think his view is completely compatible with a view that recognises that falling wages and employment are not compatible at the extreme end of the trend with a healthy level of economic activity.

[mesyn191]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

I'm sorry that you're presently out of work.,,,I truly hope your situation changes for the better.

Thanks

I'm not responsible for your difficulties and neither are other small businessmen.

You individually are certainly not, I'm not blaming anyone here for my personal difficulties or for what is going on a national or state level in our country. I am however very thoroughly disagreeing with some of the ideas and politics expressed by you and others.

I hope you'll forgive me if I don't feel guilty because I succeeded.

I'm not interested in making people feel guilty for succeeding or anything really. I do actually hope to get people to think if not change their minds.

What in this world are you talking about? I'm blaming the CONgress and the Federal Government's trade policy for most of this. Small businesses don't have a multinational presence. They're having their throats cut by unfair competition from imports made in countries that have NONE of the things like minimum wage laws, OSHA, FICA, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

OK then I misunderstood what you were saying there, sorry. I took what you're were saying as government in general and not just policy.

For many small businesses the cumulative effect of taxes, regulatory costs (it's not "free"), unfair competition from overseas, etc., doesn't just reduce profitability - it almost eliminates it!

I'd agree that the government's "free trade" policies over at least the last 20 yr have played a role in reducing profits or at least just making it difficult to compete at all for some small businesses. I'd point out however that most of these policies have been heavily lobbied for by big business and that the cost of regulation is well worth it even if it seems to hurt your bottom line some.

I don't know anything about the healthcare workplace,,,, I don't pontificate about their business nor do I presume to tell them they make too much money or treat their employees unfairly.

Have you ever heard the expression, "I don't have to eat crap to know it tastes bad"? You don't need any expertise in the medical field to know injecting someone with arsenic is bad for instance. Or in the credit markets to know that insuring something you don't own in part or wholly is bad too. Likewise reducing income or jobs for workers when they're already starved for cash and the economy is stalling while unemployment and underemployment is high is also obviously bad, I hope anyways. And it does no good to say, "well at least they'd still have some jobs if the business keeps running" if the jobs that are left don't pay them enough to live on. Its a Catch-22 situation at best.

Driving down wages and/or outsourcing in order to make money or just stay in business seems sensible to rj and many other business owners, but what I keep trying to point out is that this doesn't really work on a large scale. Its actually harmful in the end to them since it creates, or participates from the small business perspective, in a race to the bottom to drive down wages and reduce jobs. Your customers will have less money to spend on you so all you'll end up with is a temporary boost to your profits or a brief reprieve before things go sour again or you go bankrupt anyways! Its a race in which in the end most business owners have no hope of winning since the big businesses who do have the political muscle and contacts and will see them squeezed out in the end. That is probably a cold comfort to any small business owner to say the least. But then most everyone is getting screwed right now who isn't rich, and that includes me too.

Yes I did make at least twice the income of the average US wage earner before I sold my car washes... So what? I've worked my ass off, too, and I did it for myself and my family - not for every redistributionist scheme some politician can come up with.

"So what" is exactly it. Most everyone is working their asses off to provide for themselves or their families. That is one of the reasons why I keep posting that wage vs productivity chart and yammering on about wealth disparity. It is one of the more obvious problems that has come along with having a FIRE economy; you can work your butt off and go nowhere or even slowly slide into poverty while the rich get richer. That is in fact what most have been doing for a very long time now and that goes hand in hand with the shrinking middle class and wealth disparity.

But I would never want to go back into business if I had to hire people who carried around as much anger and resentment as you show forth here.

There are lots of younger people then me who are even more pissed off and even further left in their thinking than I am. I'm tame compared to them, which isn't all that unreasonable considering many of them are even more screwed than me.

[mesyn191]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

This is untrue, believe it or not. ,,,,Sorry for the off-topic interjection. I just find these data interesting.

No that is fine and thanks for correcting me, I did state that point after all. I had seen different charts for China and some SE Asian countries from 2009 that had them as worse than the US but your data is better. What I wonder is has the wealth disparity gotten that much worse in the US recently skewing the numbers the other way or what?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Galbraith proposes 12 dollar minimum wage

No that is fine and thanks for correcting me, I did state that point after all. I had seen different charts for China and some SE Asian countries from 2009 that had them as worse than the US but your data is better. What I wonder is has the wealth disparity gotten that much worse in the US recently skewing the numbers the other way or what?

The data I presented are from 2000. Different countries gather econometric and census data at different times, so it's hard to get fresh data that's comparable across the board. In 2009 some Asian countries may well have been worse, but I'd doubt it. The simple matter in regard to wealth disparity is that the 'old-money' families of the U.S., Japan, and Western Europe have had a lot longer to amass wealth under prosperous times than the other Asian nations - particularly those that were redistributionist/Communist.