i think this is a election time issue that is being trumped up by a party who has not been in power in a long time and give less than a fuck about the american people, but all the fuck about getting power again

The question is, why do you think you are justified in forcing companies to only employ people for a certain price? Can't the people just not take the job if they don't like the price?

the only time i have ever agreed with you

One factor I have not seen mentioned here is the devastating effects of the American buying habits. When it comes to purchasing products - we are terribly hypocritical.
One one hand, as demonstrated here - we want higher wages, we bitch about people not getting decent benefits, we sit and sip our beers and moan about how you can't find a job paying decent wages...well I say "too f*cking bad"!!

I don't want to hear it, we line up to go to Wal-Mart and Cosco, or Target or K-Mart and buy the cheapest products we can find - all manufactured by people making pennies on the hour!! - What fools we are.

It is idiocy to ask for higher wages. How about changing our buying habits? You want to help American laborers? You want better benefits? You want to earn a decent living? - Then stop shopping at these places and demand higher quality goods - if not, then STFU.

agreed completely. I don't send my money to another country when I could keep it closer to home.
Though, most of the people that line up to buy the absolute cheapest new clothing money can buy, are poor. It doesn't help that some of those people might be poor because their manufacturing job moved overseas or their local hardware store was pushed out by a home depot 3 towns over. Globalization hurts everyone but the shareholder

I don't agree - everyone here shops at Wal-Mart.

If not for clothes, than for toys. Or coffee. Or school supplies. Or new tires.

And many are middleclass.

Could someone name a chain department store that produces most of it's products in America?

__________________
Is our children learning? -George W. Bush

"I think—tide turning—see, as I remember—I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of—it's easy to see a tide turn—did I say those words?"—Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006

"[T]he illiteracy level of our children are appalling."—Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004

Just about all textiles (clothing) are produced outside of the united states, even when you shop at nice stores.

__________________
"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end - Liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition - The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. - Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." - Lord Action

So I've heard. Something like 97%. If I weren't a poor student, I wouldn't shop at Wal*Mart.

__________________
Is our children learning? -George W. Bush

"I think—tide turning—see, as I remember—I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of—it's easy to see a tide turn—did I say those words?"—Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006

"[T]he illiteracy level of our children are appalling."—Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004

Something changed around 1975 or so.
Prior to that date service and quality meant something. Today it is a very distant 3rd place to the importance of cheap price and availability.

Another sacrifice Americans readily accept is poor quality and poor craftsmenship. 30 years ago if someone bought a coffee maker and it stopped working after a couple years they would never buy that brand again - today almost all small appliances are considered disposable.

But the biggest sacrifice Americans made is their children. In the 1980's when people started buying cheap and VERY inferior foriegn products - the ones who paid deeply is the current generation.

Here is an interesting little post on minimum wage.

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blo...tudies_on.html

__________________
"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end - Liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition - The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. - Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." - Lord Action

[quote=bebop;821250]This is dishonest. Min wage increases *do* cause extra job cuts, but they can at the same time do the good things mentioned.

There is no need to pretend the bad side doesn't exist and the good side does. Just be honest about it, minimum wage increases are bad in a lot of simple ways but can also be helpful for the economy in complex ways.

Is that a challenge for me to find 651 right-leaning economists who disagree? You don't have a link to the list of economists by any chance do you?

Minimum wage in Australia is 16 dollars per hour in most industries.

Unemployment is low.

Go figure.

I'm sure most small businesses can afford to pay much higher wages than what they are. Funny to see, even with a $ 2.13 per hour wage for servers Business owners still find room to complain.

Scary, sickening and sadening. Very scared.

Not bragging just stating that the min is about 16 per hour.

The reason for that is because, adjusted for inflation, and as a percentage of our disposable income, most small appliances have become cheaper than anyone in the 1970s ever dreamed.

While not a small appliance, consider the example of gasoline. In inflation adjusted dollars, due to restrictions on exploration, production, and refining capacity, as well as formulation regulatiosn the price of gas at the pump is about what it was at its historic peak in the late-1970s/early-1980s, and yet as a percentage of disposable income it is still substantially below what it was then (evidence that people who believe income has been stagnate or declined since then are fools, and the reason the price of gas still hasn't had a substantial impact on our economy as it did 25-30 years ago)

I can buy a coffee pot for under $20. Care to figure out what that is in 1975 constant dollars, and whether you could have found any small appliance for that price back then?

I agree with you on this, but not for the reason you presume. When measured as a factor of price, foreign products were not "very" inferior, they were of lower quality, they were of lower price. To compare the quality to that of substantially more expensive products is to compare apples and oranges. In fact, it was a great thing for society that these lower quality, lower cost items expanded market choices (you could still spend more and get higher quality, just like I could go into Walmart today and buy a dress shirt of low cost, low quality, or I can go to Brooks Brothers and buy a higher cost, higher quality shirt). This expanded consumer choice, and resulted in bringing down the costs of even higher quality goods due to the competition, and also gave access to goods to lower-income people that they were priced out of the market for when the only option was the higher quality.

It used to be that the ONLY way you could get a book, was to pay what in today's dollars would be a king's ransom for a hand written, hand bound volume. Even today you can get hand-bound books which are of substantially higher quality and craftsmanship than commerically printed and bound publications, but it is hardly a bad thing that lower quality, lower cost machine printed and bound books made such products available to the masses.

Now, I do agree that this has been to the detriment of the younger generations, but not because of any decline in quality, no it is because they have been spoiled rotten and have a rather pathetic sense of entitlement. But that is a result of poor parenting, not of the poor manufacturing.

Because television sets became relatively cheap, they started to become something no longer confined to one room of the house, children started having televisions, phones, stereos, computers, etc. etc. in there own rooms.

Hell, compare the percentage of teenagers today who have cars that are for their primary use compared to 10, 20, 30 years ago.

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

Some people favour opportunities for interesting jobs over having cheap electronic goods.