by Terra Incognita 141 Replies latest members politics
If Walmart Paid its 1.4 Million U.S. Workers a Living Wage, it Would Result in Almost No Pain for the Average Customer
TWO QUESTIONS you won't answer:
1.Why is working for Walmart compulsory for workers who want to earn more money? (Hint: maybe it isn't compulsory)
2.Why is learning skills which are worth higher pay the responsibility of Customers rather than the workers? (Hint: maybe it isn't.)
The problem with all these justifications for human misery is that you can make the EXACT SAME ARGUMENTS to justify de facto slavery. Once you have sunk us to that level you will be quoting your facts and figures in order to justify how it would be detrimental to the economy for slaves to be freed.
It becomes intuitively obvious that people who think like this believe in such slavery. They're just too cowardly to admit it.
TWO QUESTIONS you won't answer:
1.Since a slave has NO CHOICE where they work and receives no wages how is choosing to work for an employer at low wages the same?
2.Are you familiar with the fallacy of the False Analogy? If so, how is it you compare freedom to work and choose to slavery.
(Hint: those two questions reflect on your lack of reasoning and logic in making the above animadversions.)
Old Joke:
A man walks into a Doctors office and rotates his arm.
"What is your problem?" the Doctor asks.
The man rotates his arm around his head and winces in pain.
"It hurts when I do this, Doc."
The Doctor nods and says, "So, STOP DOING THAT."
(Badda bing).
Each person in society is responsible for their own skillset and education or else they are irresponsible.
When I was a good little Jehovah's Witness I worked as a janitor and made crappy wages.
When I stopped being a JW and went to college I started earning more money.
If any person whines and complains they are a LOW WAGE EARNER they can walk out of the door of that business.
If any person feels a business treats them unfairly they can BOYCOTT them.
But, expecting customers to pay higher prices just so an under-educated, unskilled worker can receive more money on their paycheck
is bass-ackwards.
WHERE IS THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY in your Philosophy of life???
I now work for a company that pays me for eight hours work but only requires that I work seven hours. My lunch is paid by the company.
Every month I recieve a floating day off and am paid for it. Every month I bank a vacation day I take whenever I choose.
My basic insurance is paid for by the company. I get an IRA and the company matches my contribution up to seven per cent.
I get two sick days a month and one "personal" day.
Every three months each employee receives a quarterly bonus which is profit-based. Every employee receives the SAME amount.
Last bonus was over one thousand dollars after taxes.
I can check out any book, magazine, Lp, CD, DVD in the store for thirty days without charge as long as I return it.
If I needed an emergency loan my company would instantly cut me a check for One thousand dollars WITHOUT INTEREST as long as I agree to pay it back (through payroll deductions) in six months. I have free "mental health" counseling if I need it. I have dental insurance, insurance for eyewear, etc.
I CHOSE to work for this company instead of working for Taco Cabana.
The Taco Cabana job offered forty thousand dollars a year but I'd have to work 6 days a week and drive 120 miles round trip.
We make choices and we reap the benefits. I do NOT have a college degree but I'm smart enough to get hired by my skillset and personality through
my own effort.
The more people who earn too little to live on - the more people we have using government assistance in the form of housing, healthcare, food and transportation. The government subsidizes low wages and in the cases of large corporations who make billions in profit, there should be no reason for this. Walmart corporate profits of 500 Billion dollars should mean that nobody working in these stores has to rely on food stamps to survive - when people scream about higher taxes, they should understand that they are paying a portion of their own wage in order to prop up the wages of the large corporation.
As for the Randites/Randians, I agree Terra. sammies.
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The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand's beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation -- Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street -- on him.
What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"
This echoes almost word for word Rand's later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: "He was born without the ability to consider others." (The Fountainhead is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' favorite book -- he even requires his clerks to read it.)
The more people who earn too little to live on - the more people we have using government assistance in the form of housing, healthcare, food and transportation. The government subsidizes low wages and in the cases of large corporations who make billions in profit, there should be no reason for this.
The government should stay out of it. Business subsidy is meddling in the free market. Paying farmers to NOT plant crops is ridiculous and is an effort
to keep food prices high on the part of the government. Subsidy to oil companies is wrong too.
Small government equals small meddling.
If you understood half the time what you criticize you'd be more qualified to make an informed contribution to the conversations you provoke.
Oh, by the way, did you notice those TWO QUESTIONS (above)?
Terry:
TWO QUESTIONS you won't answer:
"1.Why is working for Walmart compulsory for workers who want to earn more money? (Hint: maybe it isn't compulsory)"
The old, "you have the freedom to choose your own master" excuse. Bottom line there are no real choices out there and there cannot be due to the pyramid shaped distribution of wealth. There's no room at the top or even the middle for those at the bottom regardless of what they do.
Let's say that EVERYONE were to wake up tomorrow morning and be magically given the same intelligence, motivation, stamina and knowledge. They would all strive to do whatever you think they have to do to rise from their current position. Who would be the janitors, low wage supermarket/retail workers, make believe security guards, etc.?
It's obvious that the majority of such equally qualified people would not be able improve their position for the simple reason that there are only a limited number of positions available.
"2.Why is learning skills which are worth higher pay the responsibility of Customers rather than the workers? (Hint: maybe it isn't.)"
The issue is whether those who hire them have the responsibility to pay them for what they're worth; then they can acquire their skills.
Also, you make an artificial dichotomy between "workers" and "customers". Have you noticed that workers are customers and vice a versa? This argument is based on the "divide and conquer" maxim; except that those who are being divided and conquered are the one and same persons in two different roles. Here is a condensed version of the absurdity:
Small government equals small meddling.
Why is politics so important these days? The government meddles in EVERYTHING!
We have always known that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. It’s worse now, because capture of government is so much more important than it once was. There was a time when there was enough freedom that it hardly mattered which brand of crooks ran government. That has not been true for a long time — not during most of your lifetimes, and for much of mine — and it will probably never be true again.
http://jerrypournelle.com/view/2008/Q4/view544.html#Wednesday
Bottom line there are no real choices out there and there cannot be due to the pyramid shaped distribution of wealth. There's no room at the top or even the middle for those at the bottom regardless of what they do.
That is false. People can and do change their relative position on the pyramid in both directions--and it is extremely common. There is high economic mobility in the US economy.
http://www.treasury.gov/press/releases/reports/incomemobilitystudyfinal.pdf
ncome mobility, the opportunity for lower income individuals to move up in the income distribution over time, is another important dimension of the distribution of income. Indeed, the opportunity for upward income mobility as a result of individual effort has sometimes been seen as a defining characteristic of the U.S. economy. (2) A recent survey (Pew Economic Mobility Survey, 2009, for example, showed that Americans view hard work (92 percent), having ambition (89 percent), and a quality K-12 education and staying healthy (tied at 83 percent) as essential or very important factors in contributing to a person's economic mobility. Economic historian Joseph Schumpeter compared income distribution and mobility to a hotel where some rooms are luxurious while others are small and shabby. The rooms are always occupied, but the occupants change over time. (3) Mobility means that over time people have opportunities to move between rooms. Fairness requires that those in the small rooms have an opportunity to move to a better one, and that the most luxurious rooms are not always occupied by the same people.
Others have likened income mobility to an escalator where the opportunity for mobility means that no matter which step a person starts on, he or she can move up. (4) With an escalator, while one can move ahead faster by walking up the steps, the movement of the escalator itself will carry the rider upward. That is, the real incomes of households can increase over time with the growth of the overall economy. (5) The extent to which households' incomes have risen over time with economic growth is another important dimension of income distribution....
* There was considerable income mobility of individuals in the U.S. economy over the 1996-2005 period. More than half of taxpayers (57.5 percent by one measure and 55 percent by another measure) moved to a different income quintile over this period. About half (56 percent by one measure and 42 percent by another) of those in the bottom income quintile in 1996 moved to ahigher income group by 2005.
* Median incomes of taxpayers in the sample increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation. The real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period. Furthermore, the median incomes of those initially in the lowest income groups increased more in percentage terms than the median incomes of those in the higher income groups. In contrast, the real median incomes of taxpayers who were in the highest income groups in 1996 declined by 2005.
* The composition of the very top income groups changed dramatically over time. Less than half (39 percent or 42 percent depending on the measure) of those in the top 1 percent in 1996 were still in the top 1 percent in 2005. Less than one-fourth of the individuals in the top 1/100th percent in 1996 remained in that group in 2005.
* The degree of relative income mobility among income groups over the 1996-2005 period was very similar to that over the prior decade (19871996). To the extent that increasing income inequality widened income gaps, this was offset by increased absolute income mobility so that relative income mobility neither increased nor decreased over the past 20 years.
* Upward and downward mobility is affected by many factors. Based on a regression analysis, we find that initial position in the income distribution and changes in marital status are among the more important factors associated with changing positions in the income distribution.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/206340741.html
Terra you need to stick around, you and I are going to have some fun. I'll start a thread one of these days.
-Sab