« Moonbat Assaults Girl in Wheelchair | Main | Thomas Friedman Pied by Eco-Commies »

I saw on the news this morning, because "Rice Futures" hit an all time high, bulk buyers of Rice are only being allowed to by five (5), five pound bags at a time. They apparently see the rice going up in price enough in the future that the Asian Resturanteurs may be trying to "hoard it"!!! Now they get hit with increased minimum wage and not enough Rice... Oh my GOSH!!!! I bet this somehow relates to the bio-fuel boondoggle!!!

That is "buy", not by! doh!

Forgot to mention... there is no "shortage" of rice... just someone trying to prevent someone buying enough bulk to avoid paying too much for rice in the future!!! Kinda "Big Controlling Brother" if you ask me.

They can have all the rice. I'll take my hops and barley smmothie over rice anytime.

Hey, there's no shortage of gasoline or oil production either. It's just traders hedging against even higher prices.

I do question how fast food workers making $5.85 per hour can afford $4 gas and 50% higher food prices.

And why would fast food places be laying people off now? The minimum wage doesn't go up until July.

And then, it goes to only $6.55 -- a whopping increase of 70 cents per hour.

Hell, add that to the cost of my burger, and the 400 other burgers sold in an hour -- you could profit from this.

This argument just doesn't make sense.

Taco Bell has the worst excuse for food. But...I understand their starting pay is $8.00.That was a few years ago yet! Even labor jobs don't pay that much in many cases. They can well afford it I guess because their portions are the skimpiest I have ever seen anywhere.

I agree with Who's yer Army Dad?. It's all about greed. Always was.

People need to learn what real food is anyway. And they need to make it themselves. Doesn't anybody ever pack a lunch anymore?

I think that would require effort rosie! LOL!!! I pack my lunch about 98% of the time and I cook at home about that percentage. I do know my groceries are costing more and I think it's getting to the point of ridiculousness. It doesn't make sense to me either Who's your.

Taco Bells in my area pay less than $6 per hour.

I used to work in a cafeteria for more than minimum, but every time minimum wage was raised, the company started cutting raises, benefits and raising costs.

Listen people, FDR got the minimum wage law passed in the thirties because people were working for tips ONLY, for piece work, for room and board, for crops to sell or eat and many people weren't getting paid ANYTHING, because all they made was going to pay debts to the COMPANY for goods and services that were sometimes never rendered! The minimum wage law WAS a good law, but now it's a political football, tossed around every election year and traded for votes.

KHarn,

The key here is to pay people enough that they can make a living -- you don't want to give people an incentive to go on welfare.

It looks to me like it's not an election cycle thing -- the last raise before the current round were in 1997 and 1998.

More to the point, the current buying power of the minimum wage is less than it was in 1950 in the post-FDR era.

I worked for $1.65/hr in the 1970s, and let me tell you, that was crap wage. It also had the highest buying power (adjusted for inflation) than the minimum wage has ever had.

But it was not a living wage. These poor schlubs working for minimum deserve our support.

Why should the minimum wage be a living wage? Many workers are seniors supplementing retirement income (or working for the social aspect or to have somewhere to go everyday; the need to work affects many retirees!) or students. Not all workers are supporting anyone, not even themselves. I think a minimum wage is a good thing to reduce opportunity for exploitation. The amount of that wage will always be a matter of controversy; and personally I think aiming for a "living wage" is aiming too high and doing more harm than good.

Fine, let's make the minimum wage TWENTY DOLLARS an hour! How about THIRTY? Where's the limit? YOU tell us how much is enough, "Who's yer..."

Read what I wrote about FDR. Read it and THINK. The minimum wage is NOT paid by the government, it's paid by EMPLOYERS who have their own families to feed.

Heck, why not just set the minimum at $100 an hour, so we could all be rich.

The reason people are paid the minimum wage is because their labor is only worth the minimum wage. When you improve your skills or demonstrate more ability, you *earn* more money by proving your value to your employers.

The minimum wage shouldn't be a living wage, it should be an incentive to work harder and improve your own lot, instead of demanding that the government rob someone else to pay you more than you're worth.

Minimum wage is not a bad thing. I agree "living wage" is stupid but I know most decent hard workers should be able to pay rent. I know some will mock me, but I have seen where people have to rely on tips, which again is not bad, but come on, you want beggars, or to be pc begros, lol.

Noted economist Thomas Sowell has a lot to say about minimum wage. Here are a few links to get you started:

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4472
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4591
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell080101.asp
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell110503.asp

"The minimum wage shouldn't be a living wage, it should be an incentive to work harder and improve your own lot, instead of demanding that the government rob someone else to pay you more than you're worth."

Posted by: V the K at April 24, 2008 7:27 PM

V, that is just such an awesome... says it all comment. Ditto... and Bravo!!!

Once again, we TRUE CONSERVATIVES have landed on ABSOLUTE TRUTH.

The minimum wage should be abolished. Taco Bell should only have to pay what they think taco making is worth. Tomatoe pickers should be paid in tomatoes.

If American workers don't like what they're being paid, fine. We'll send their jobs overseas to people who don't mind working for 80 cents an hour. Believe me, there's millions of them.

And we'll get our tomatoes from Chile, where they know how manage labor costs.

This might throw a few million people out of jobs, but that will INCETIVIZE them to work harder to better their lot.

Some of them, anyway. Some others will turn to criminal activty. But that's what prisions are for.

And the price of our burgers will go down. Illegal immigrants will migrate to Chile. Lots of new jobs for prision guards.

We all win.

WRITE IN QUAYLE '08 -- ABOLISH THE MINIMUM WAGE

"Parker at April 24, 2008 7:46 PM"

I'm sorry, I think I came down too hard on you. I have no objection to the minimum wage, I'm just angry that a good idea has become a political tactic. As I said, it seems that every year some politico (and a few "feel good" activists in ALL partys) demand a raise in the minimum wage.

People have to remember that 100% of the profits do not go into the boss' pocket, some goes toward maintaining the company, the building, improvements, stock holders, company debts, new equipment and buying extra materials to produce more product. That's also why the boss makes 10-15 times what peons like us make, he (or she) is doing SEVERAL jobs and has to make these decisions.

I'm sure you know this Parker, I'm just pointing it out as general information.

"I'm sorry, I think I came down too hard on you." KHarn at April 25, 2008 2:08 PM

I just highlight this as the first instance of KHarn admitting he might be wrong about something. This is Step One of Twelve Step Program. There is hope.

As for the boss making 10-15 times as much as the employee, hmmm. If minimum goes to $6.55 per hour, that puts the President of PepsiCo, owner of Taco Bell, in a range of $136,000 to around $204,000 per year. Yeah, I guess that's reasonable.

If true.

The Big Squeeze
Tough Times for the American Worker
By Steven Greenhouse
Knopf; 365 pages; $25.95

We like to believe America is a place so full of opportunity anyone can climb the economic ladder with a little elbow grease. We tell ourselves ours is an exceptional country, where the American dream means immigrants become governors and the sons of farmers become president. So we might be surprised to learn that more than half of an American child's long-term income prospects are determined by the income of his or her parents. Or that a white child born poor has a 27 percent chance of staying poor, while a black child born poor has a 61 percent chance. Perhaps we would be most surprised to learn there is more economic mobility in Canada, France and Sweden than in the United States.

It was not always this way. Fifty years ago, Vice President Richard Nixon boasted to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, "The United States comes closest to the ideal of prosperity for all in a classless society." It was a time when the divide between the country's rich and poor was the smallest it would be in the 20th century. In 1976, a typical American CEO earned 36 times as much as the average worker; today that ratio is 369. From 1979 to 2004, income for the top fifth of American households grew by 63 percent, while income for the middle fifth grew only 15 percent.

How we got here is part of the story New York Times correspondent Steven Greenhouse tells in his new book on the tough issues facing American workers. In "The Big Squeeze," Greenhouse notes that the '80s and '90s witnessed a major shift in corporate America: "The hugely greater importance of the shareholder over the worker represented a sea change in American capitalism." As a result, star CEOs were lauded for trimming costs, laying off "redundant" workers and amplifying share prices. Corporate profits soared and worker productivity grew apace, while wages stagnated. In the economic expansion that began in November 2001, corporate profits doubled, but average wages increased only 2 percent. As Greenhouse notes, "this may be the first time in American history that the typical working household goes through an economic expansion without any increase in income whatsoever."

But the change in mentality was not limited to corporate executives and investors. Beginning with the Carter and Reagan administrations, the public focus on deregulation and cuts in social spending has eaten away at the safety net once supporting American workers. Deregulation destroyed unionized companies in airlines, trucking and telecommunications. The federal minimum wage remained stagnant for much of the past three decades; after inflation, the $5.15 minimum wage in 2007 was 33 percent below its 1979 level. And federal Pell grants to help poor students go to college are more limited than before, covering only about 32 percent of average tuition.

As a result of the changes in both the public and private sectors, American workers today face a variety of threats. Aggressive managers desperate to trim costs use tactics reminiscent of the sweatshops of a century ago: locking workers inside shop floors or not allowing them to take bathroom breaks, harassing workers who attempt to unionize, refusing to pay overtime for additional hours or, even more egregiously, altering workers' time sheets. Then, of course, there is the threat that many jobs will be outsourced to countries like India or China, where companies can pay lower wages. There are companies that replace salaried workers with temps or contractors to avoid paying benefits and those that hire immigrants - particularly illegal ones - as they are less likely to file official complaints.

Recounting these threats through the touching stories of individual workers across the country, Greenhouse paints a sobering picture of the state of the American dream. Though he reports the experiences of his subjects with journalistic distance, his tone is sympathetic and urgent. In the final chapter, he makes a plea "[t]o insert the American worker back into the national conversation."

The one thing this empathetic focus on workers may obscure is that at least part of the blame for the "big squeeze" rests with American consumers. It is the relentless drive to lower prices that leads Wal-Mart managers to underpay their workers and software companies to outsource to India. And while some companies have forged successful reputations as responsible employers, a great many continue to cater to our thirst for a bargain.

Greenhouse surely recognizes the role our consumer society played in the difficulties facing American workers. A broader book might have explored the contradictions inherent in this: One wonders, for instance, how many of Greenhouse's outsourced workers shop at Wal-Mart. But that should not diminish Greenhouse's accomplishment. The past few decades have seen some of the greatest economic and technological advances in U.S. history. But, as he shows, these gains have come at a cost, not only to workers but also to those ideals once defining America: opportunity and equality.