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>Bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) So you want to put a bunch of poor people in labor camps. Inflation adjusted wages of the CCC works out to a

>Bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) So you want to put a bunch of poor people in labor camps. Inflation adjusted wages of the CCC works out to about $550/mo. If they get injured on the job they will be sent home with nothing. >over-pay the employees In a country with a minimum wage, how do you know they're not already being overpaid? >on the condition half goes into savings accounts for family use or to pay down debts of some sort. Because "poor people" are too stupid to determine how they should best spend their own money that we should infantilize them and take away their personal autonomy. >able bodied with Bachelors and $8/hr job It's nice to know that a person's pedigree determines their market value, rather than their productivity. >Yes it will cost a fuck-ton of money but because these low-level employees will have money to spend, the wheels of US Consumerist economy will be able to pick up. US unemployment is already at 4%. Those US consumers are going to be buying products made in Mexico or China because US labor costs more and comes saddled with more health, safety, and environmental regulations. I'm not necessarily opposed to those things, but make no mistake, that money is getting shipped overseas very quickly. And your new CCC workers will be right back where they started.

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
>on the condition half goes into savings accounts for family use or to pay down debts of some sort. >> Because "poor people" are too stupid to determine how they should best spend their own money that we should infantilize them and take away their personal autonomy. That is so ridiculously unfair. 1) You expect someone making minimum wage to have the time and energy to put together a sound investment strategy. 2) Humans LIKE to spend their money the second they have access to it. Among families giving million dollar trust funds to their children, parents commonly don't allow trustees to have access to their funds until they are in their mid thirties. These are children who go to Ivy League schools, and their parents don't let them have access to their savings. It's not because they are stupid, its because they are human.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  >1) You expect someone making minimum wage to have the time and energy to put together a sound investment strategy. I suspect that most people will not do what I think would be best for them to do. The difference is that I don't want to usurp their personal freedoms. >These are children who go to Ivy League schools, and their parents don't let them have access to their savings. It's not because they are stupid, its because they are human. I agree that the people who have earned money should get to do with it whatever they want, including withholding it from their adult children. Let's apply this universally. You are more than welcome to take some of your money to hire and over-pay minimum wage workers and create these grossly paternalistic contracts with them where you dictate how they're allowed to spend their pay. Just don't try to do it with my money.
darkerside 9y ago
Labor camps? >>> Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren't anything like machines. They weren't dependable. They weren't efficient. They weren't predictable. They weren't durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others. These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame. And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn't high enough. So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too. And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn't really be said to have any purpose at all. The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. And they discovered that they weren't even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, "Tralfamadore."
6stringmerc 9y ago
If you connected the first two points, you'd realize the whole "Living Wage" hate by Ayn Rand acolytes who say stuff like "How do you know people on minimum wage aren't already overpaid?" means that the inflation adjusted number doesn't mean shit. The CPI is corrupt. The 4% unemployment rate is contingent on fudging the numbers so the Eligible Workforce is at 39 year lows, comparable to the early 1980s. None of this math adds up, and you've only just poked at a few things with a stick. Not once did you offer an alternative or a better idea. Show me what you have in mind that can get people back to work. Explain to me how the wealth gap in the United States can be solved with your philosophical outlook, and I'll be really interested to see what you come up with. I'm not saying I have confidence in your ability to actually answer this challenge, but I'm not above waiting to watch logic flounder.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  80% of the world's population lives on less than $10/day. In a more globalized economy American workers are increasingly going to be competing with those people for jobs. This is true even if you're not directly competing. Let's say you have a job as a waiter at a restaurant. Clearly a person in India can't take that job. But the fact that other low income positions have been transferred to India/China/Mexico means that the labor pool competing for the wait staff position has increased, which should push down wages. Let's not show our hubris by lamenting the woes of the American poor who are often in fact in the global 1%. >Not once did you offer an alternative or a better idea. Show me what you have in mind that can get people back to work. Get rid of the minimum wage. Replace the corporate and income tax with a VAT sales tax. Don't charge the VAT on exports. If you can't do that, at least get rid of regressive taxes like Social Security that transfer wealth from the lower classes to the upper middle class. Open free trade with any country on the planet, even countries we hate, and even if they put tariffs on our goods. End the government monopoly on education by using a voucher system. Over time, reduce total government (federal + local) spending down to 15% of GPD max, preferably more like 10%. Transition regulations from things that specify a solution to taxes on a problem. For example, instead of regulating every car needs a catalytic converter, tax the pollution that a car produces. Maybe someone will invent something even better than a catalytic converter. >Explain to me how the wealth gap in the United States can be solved with your philosophical outlook, and I'll be really interested to see what you come up with. I don't care one iota about how much money a wealthy person has because in macro-economics, wealth is not a zero sum game. Not to mention, the premise you're working under just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I buy an iPad from Tim Cook because I value an iPad more than I value the $400 I've got in my pocket. Tim Cook sells me the iPad because he values my $400 more than he values the iPad he's got. But now, because a bunch of other people also bought iPads from Tim Cook I feel like I deserve some sort of rebate in the form of forcibly taking some of Tim Cook's money? How does that make any sense at all? Instead of being concerned about some people having more than me, I am interested in my personal moral responsibility to help my fellow man. So far as poverty is concerned, there has never been a more effective machine for eliminating poverty than the free enterprise system and the free market. Socializing what you might call solutions to problems with poverty may temporarily help the people you're looking at in the now, but you're robbing from the future by stifling the rising tide of innovation that brings up the standard of living for everyone. I won't say it's easy but avoiding poverty is fairly simple: graduate high school, maintain employment, and don't have children out of wedlock. That's obviously not a 100% guarantee, but those 3 things, by far, have the strongest correlations with poverty of anything else you'll find. Our social welfare systems incentivize people not to maintain employment, to keep pumping out children they can't afford, and to get easy divorces which breaks up families and increases poverty. If you do nothing else but get rid of those things, you'll reduce poverty significantly in a generation.

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago

>on the condition half goes into savings accounts for family use or to pay down debts of some sort. >> Because "poor people" are too stupid to determine how they should best spend their own money that we should infantilize them and take away their personal autonomy. That is so ridiculously unfair. 1) You expect someone making minimum wage to have the time and energy to put together a sound investment strategy. 2) Humans LIKE to spend their money the second they have access to it. Among families giving million dollar trust funds to their children, parents commonly don't allow trustees to have access to their funds until they are in their mid thirties. These are children who go to Ivy League schools, and their parents don't let them have access to their savings. It's not because they are stupid, its because they are human.

Consultant32452 9y ago
>1) You expect someone making minimum wage to have the time and energy to put together a sound investment strategy. I suspect that most people will not do what I think would be best for them to do. The difference is that I don't want to usurp their personal freedoms. >These are children who go to Ivy League schools, and their parents don't let them have access to their savings. It's not because they are stupid, its because they are human. I agree that the people who have earned money should get to do with it whatever they want, including withholding it from their adult children. Let's apply this universally. You are more than welcome to take some of your money to hire and over-pay minimum wage workers and create these grossly paternalistic contracts with them where you dictate how they're allowed to spend their pay. Just don't try to do it with my money.

darkerside 9y ago

Labor camps? >>> Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren't anything like machines. They weren't dependable. They weren't efficient. They weren't predictable. They weren't durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others. These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame. And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn't high enough. So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too. And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn't really be said to have any purpose at all. The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. And they discovered that they weren't even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, "Tralfamadore."

6stringmerc 9y ago

If you connected the first two points, you'd realize the whole "Living Wage" hate by Ayn Rand acolytes who say stuff like "How do you know people on minimum wage aren't already overpaid?" means that the inflation adjusted number doesn't mean shit. The CPI is corrupt. The 4% unemployment rate is contingent on fudging the numbers so the Eligible Workforce is at 39 year lows, comparable to the early 1980s. None of this math adds up, and you've only just poked at a few things with a stick. Not once did you offer an alternative or a better idea. Show me what you have in mind that can get people back to work. Explain to me how the wealth gap in the United States can be solved with your philosophical outlook, and I'll be really interested to see what you come up with. I'm not saying I have confidence in your ability to actually answer this challenge, but I'm not above waiting to watch logic flounder.

Consultant32452 9y ago
80% of the world's population lives on less than $10/day. In a more globalized economy American workers are increasingly going to be competing with those people for jobs. This is true even if you're not directly competing. Let's say you have a job as a waiter at a restaurant. Clearly a person in India can't take that job. But the fact that other low income positions have been transferred to India/China/Mexico means that the labor pool competing for the wait staff position has increased, which should push down wages. Let's not show our hubris by lamenting the woes of the American poor who are often in fact in the global 1%. >Not once did you offer an alternative or a better idea. Show me what you have in mind that can get people back to work. Get rid of the minimum wage. Replace the corporate and income tax with a VAT sales tax. Don't charge the VAT on exports. If you can't do that, at least get rid of regressive taxes like Social Security that transfer wealth from the lower classes to the upper middle class. Open free trade with any country on the planet, even countries we hate, and even if they put tariffs on our goods. End the government monopoly on education by using a voucher system. Over time, reduce total government (federal + local) spending down to 15% of GPD max, preferably more like 10%. Transition regulations from things that specify a solution to taxes on a problem. For example, instead of regulating every car needs a catalytic converter, tax the pollution that a car produces. Maybe someone will invent something even better than a catalytic converter. >Explain to me how the wealth gap in the United States can be solved with your philosophical outlook, and I'll be really interested to see what you come up with. I don't care one iota about how much money a wealthy person has because in macro-economics, wealth is not a zero sum game. Not to mention, the premise you're working under just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I buy an iPad from Tim Cook because I value an iPad more than I value the $400 I've got in my pocket. Tim Cook sells me the iPad because he values my $400 more than he values the iPad he's got. But now, because a bunch of other people also bought iPads from Tim Cook I feel like I deserve some sort of rebate in the form of forcibly taking some of Tim Cook's money? How does that make any sense at all? Instead of being concerned about some people having more than me, I am interested in my personal moral responsibility to help my fellow man. So far as poverty is concerned, there has never been a more effective machine for eliminating poverty than the free enterprise system and the free market. Socializing what you might call solutions to problems with poverty may temporarily help the people you're looking at in the now, but you're robbing from the future by stifling the rising tide of innovation that brings up the standard of living for everyone. I won't say it's easy but avoiding poverty is fairly simple: graduate high school, maintain employment, and don't have children out of wedlock. That's obviously not a 100% guarantee, but those 3 things, by far, have the strongest correlations with poverty of anything else you'll find. Our social welfare systems incentivize people not to maintain employment, to keep pumping out children they can't afford, and to get easy divorces which breaks up families and increases poverty. If you do nothing else but get rid of those things, you'll reduce poverty significantly in a generation.