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It's ironic that this report was put out by the AFL-CIO, an organization who has done as much as anyone to preclude the movement of younger workers into the wor
by tc 17y ago
It's ironic that this report was put out by the AFL-CIO, an organization who has done as much as anyone to preclude the movement of younger workers into the workforce (via union seniority policies, minimum wage laws, etc.).
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- _pius 17y agoI'm not sure how this makes HN different from anywhere else. I can think of many sites where someone responds to a story quickly with a well-written, politically charged opinion. What's so special about that?
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- tc 17y agoI personally delineate between politically-charged statements that are designed to promote clear thinking and those that are designed to sow muddled thinking through clever semantic games or misplaced emotion.
- _pius 17y agoFair enough, but into which category does your statement fall? You presented your opinion as fact and with minimal proof or argument for your assertions. That's nothing special. Not to say I'm above doing the same thing, but it's nothing special. :)
- tc 17y agoThere are times when it is enough to simply point in the right direction. Surely you've had an experience where you realized the truth in something simply by seeing it pointed out in clear terms. In any case, passing by pointers is more time efficient than argument copying.
- _pius 17y agoSure, but the point is that with this particular opinion, it's not prima facie obvious. As a matter of fact, it's not even clear that you're correct. Reasonable people can (and do) disagree on the net impact of minimum wage laws when considering it as a thought exercise. Again, I'm not bashing you for this. But the idea that someone with the same political leaning as you comes up and says, "Yes! This person says what I believe succinctly, therefore HN is greater than other sites!!!!1!" is not sound.
- timr 17y agoI think you meant to use the word "opinion" where you mistakenly used the word "fact". Personally, I don't see how the comment is thoughtful enough to merit the number of votes it is getting. It's just an assertion of truth by someone on the internet with a conservative opinion. I can find the same level of discourse on any newspaper website that allows anonymous comments.
- hristov 17y agoLet's think logically about this for a second. If the presence of minimum wage laws prevents a young person from moving out, then a young person should be able to move out on a salary less than the present day minimum wage. Is that true? Not in my hood.
- tc 17y agoYou're not going back far enough. The problem with minimum wage laws is that they precludes marginal young workers from getting job experience that would help them build the skills and references needed to get better jobs. There is plenty of research showing that every time the minimum wage goes up, teenage unemployment goes up disproportionately.
- teeja 17y agoOnly because,of course, employers would rather build their $300,000 homes than give a young person a break in life. Which wasn't always the case. Greed only took over about 25-30 years ago. Ever since, real wages have stagnated or fallen for the great majority of Americans. You're blaming the victim.
- jerf 17y ago"Greed only took over about 25-30 years ago." To which my only response can be, "bwuh?" What, was there some sort of virus that ran through the population and rewrote all our genomes so that we're suddenly selfish? Greed predates humanity. I mean that literally. For any definition of "humanity". All life forms are greedy. They have to be, to survive competition with all the other greedy life forms. If something changed 25-30 years ago, it wasn't the amount of greed in the world.
- teeja 17y agoBy "took over" of course, I meant "assimilated", not "came into existance." Those of us old enough to remember what this country was like 40 years ago know what I mean. Unless they're in denial about the stagnation of wages and the huge concentration of wealth at the top
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- olefoo 17y agoAre you absolutely confident of that assertion? The AFL-CIO and unions in general have been severely and structurally limited in their impact on industrial policy since the 1980's at least. The impacts of globalisation, deskilling, outsourcing, and the deliberate policy of deindustrialising the american economy have more to do with it. Your comment comes off as somewhat Dickensian, blaming a man being savaged by thugs for not feeding the starving orphan at the curb.
- tc 17y agoI don't dismiss that there are other large forces at work; I simply mean that the AFL-CIO, through the policies they've promoted and their massive lobbying, has done as much as any one other person or group. And while the impact of private sector unions may have waned a bit after 1980, the growing impact of public employee unions has more than covered the difference.