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Start a business in Long Beach with the economics situation as you have described and come back to me after five years and tell me what happened?
Is this the whole I am too naive to understand because I do not own my own business line?
Look, clearly you're not original but that's ok, I half expected this argument to come up. The current economic situation in Long Beach or any other hard hit area is due to multiple factors but no matter what the economic climate the crux of the matter always falls on major private business in the area.
In Argentina, the economic climate was much much much worse. I mean really really bad with several businesses closing one after the other. These factories and hotels were all closed up, boarded up and were scheduled for condemnation. That is until the workers of these enterprises took them over and brought them back from the dead and to full profit. They raised enough capital to buy these enterprises back from the owner and run them today as successful co-ops. In this situation, the problem was never the laws making it too hard to run a business, or pesky unions, or even corruption...it was the bosses did not want to make less then their richer counterparts. They did not want to shrink the ratio of pay from 200 to 1 to 100 to 1. To guys like them and to guys like you that is denying "liberty" and a smack to free enterprise.
The problem is the owner and the shareholders, the owners of wealth. That's it.
My best friend just recently opened up a hotel in DC. He had this bold brilliant business strategy...you want to hear it? He makes way less than the other hotel owners in town and charges rock bottom prices for a super nice room. He is raking it in. He is not making millions but enough to live really comfortable, pay his workers well and get all the perks of being a businessman. Most of his money goes back to the hotel and his staff. And guess what? He is opening two more hotels soon!
There is no excuse. You guys have no room to continue flapping your big mouths about the perils of doing business in this climate. It's a shame so many believe in this free enterprise drivel and apologize for business owners who feel victimized. Gimme a break.
NDXUFan writes:
Your friend Krugman is a liberal, let us be very honest. I was in the Teamsters Union, some of the biggest hypocrites on the face of the earth.
I bet they were. I wouldn't doubt it. Many of them cozy up to management and just become another extension of the system.
I agree. But I would never dispense of the union for the market's answer to wages.
And what about Krugman? I know he's a liberal. What's your point?
All the posts in here talking about how the "laws of economics" would dictate this or that would happen if Warren were to increase the minimum to 22 an hour are really just libertarian talking points. First off the scenarios that they’re describing are just the response to what business would do if such a thing would happen. Everything from passing the cost to the consumer, more automation, and outsourcing is just the results of a society in which a lot of economic, social and political power rests in the few who own the means of production.
Their “razor” logic as they love to paint it is just the business logic of an owner of business. It’s not some unbiased scientific analysis of economic factors. When a politician says, “do not raise taxes on business in X town, because that will hurt jobs”, what he is really saying is, “do not raise taxes on the businesses that own this town or they will pack up, move and decimate it”. The power to do that is in essence their idea of "liberty".
Wages have remained stagnant and have not risen since the late 70s. Americans have financed their way into the middle class since then to cover up for the drop in purchasing power. Where have the gains of rising production gone to? Yes, the one percent. Not back into their factories which remains a constant expense but they’ve cut down on the only variable in their costs; labor.
The mental gymnastics that libertarians and conservatives do to cover this up is hilarious. Everything from workers are too dumb to be paid more than 8 bucks an hour to do cashier work, even though you could pay the guy double and McDonalds would still make a killing. What else? Another one is if you raise the minimum wage to keep up with inflation, i.e. give people a livable wage, then they will not want to become doctors but janitors instead!! LOL!! The logic is that you give people a livable wage, then that will kill their incentive to better themselves. So in essence the fear of starvation is tough love from the people at the top who control the economy. Isn’t that lovely?
There is no intellect too high to justify a CEOs strategy of laying off half the work staff, making the remaining half work for less, and outsourcing the rest of production, while making the stock price shoot up to merit the pay (plus a hefty piece of that rising stock).
When they do this it is innovation, genius, top talent, etc. When we complain, it’s “class warfare”.
The audacity of Miss Warren to suggest that workers get a bigger piece of the gains. Shame on her for just wanting wages to rise back to the levels of its peak in 1968! She should know by now that the market corrects all things.
NDXUFan writes:
When Ms. Warren is ready to pay $22.00 per hour to a workforce, I will be willing to listen. You might want to look up how much your liberal pals have donated to charity? To be honest, it is a major joke.
By the way, look, oh look, which family made the most in income, why, it is the Clintons! They must be greedy and selfish. The second highest income was the Obama family and after that, it was Cheney, Bush, and McCain. Hmmm, I wonder, who is the party of the rich, again?
"Barack, it is amazing we can paint the Republicans as the party of the rich, while you and the Clintons are making tons of money per year and I am not paying my fair share to charity, Is This a Wonderful Country or What?"
NDXUFan writes:
You have a serious need to read some of the University of Michigan income studies. I am an Econ grad, also. Michigan, is not exactly another conservative institution. By the way, why is it your business or Obama's, what a company pays to their employees, entry level or executive??? If you dislike what the company pays the CEO, do not shop at the store in question.
How many employees will work overtime, if the government will take 50% of the overtime pay??? In the real world, not in your fantasy world, the vast majority of employees will NOT accept overtime on those terms. YES, I have worked in the real world and had a difficult time getting people to work overtime, because the government was going to take 50% of the employee's overtime check.
Why do you feel the need to force your world view on everyone else?
Again, more market logic drivel. Do you people not even think for yourselves? You complain that leftists and liberals do not think for themselves but many go through a process of understanding economics through a systemic analysis, as in analyzing it's mechanism from a holistic sense, not some surface level observations and reiterating that point ad nauseum and calling it common sense or econ 101 like you guys do.
Why is it the markets interest to dictate most people's lives? And yes it does dictate people's lives. It is the driving force which determines a lot of people's decisions and interactions in life. Income restricts or can better gain someone access to things they were denied before. The only thing that is a fantasy is that in your little world, you think the market is this abstract entity that doesn't consist of actual direct decisions made by people who control vast amounts of wealth.
Study the presuppositions that you and your ilk spew daily. Nearly all the bureaucratic mess and government crap you whine about is mostly due to the massive headache big businesses create because they will not tolerate regulations and pass on the buck to consumers and workers, which in turn chess game between the state and private enterprise hurting workers the most. Instead the question should be put on the table that if we even need this parasitic class that keeps on sucking so much of the world's wealth and claiming they "created it".
Get over yourself. What you call "liberty" is really just letting major players in the world economy get away with what ever they want. Restricting their insatiable greed is "tyranny" to you whiners, and then you play the Red card attacking anyone that doesn't agree with you as a Bolshevik.
And this whole nonsense about "don't shop there" if you do not like something is just laughable. We live in a market society and thus our choices are limited to market choices. We cannot not choose them. This whole absurd libertarian notion that we can voluntarily stop shopping at Wal Mart or choose not to work here or there is just another canard.
My god, you people are just absurd. Simply absurd. I am so glad younger generations are not believing your drivel anymore.
I bet they were. I wouldn't doubt it. Many of them cozy up to management and just become another extension of the system.
I agree. But I would never dispense of the union for the market's answer to wages.
And what about Krugman? I know he's a liberal. What's your point?
It is interesting when Krugman is mentioned, he is painted as mainstream. Yet, when another economist who disagrees with him or his pals, they are an "extremist." I would agree that Unions were necessary years ago. Honestly, at Hamilton County, Unions were worthless. If the Union had been smart, they would have hired a tough attorney to negotiate for them. Many in the Union shop at your favorite store, Wal-Mart.
Most minimum wage American workers aren't worth $22 an hour.
But if you insist, why not be generous and pay them $50 an hour? I mean, since it would be clear that higher wages like those would have nothing to do with silly things like merit, and skill, and justice.
Shoot - go for broke and legislate a $95 an hour minimum wage!
All the posts in here talking about how the "laws of economics" would dictate this or that would happen if Warren were to increase the minimum to 22 an hour are really just libertarian talking points. First off the scenarios that they’re describing are just the response to what business would do if such a thing would happen. Everything from passing the cost to the consumer, more automation, and outsourcing is just the results of a society in which a lot of economic, social and political power rests in the few who own the means of production.
Their “razor” logic as they love to paint it is just the business logic of an owner of business. It’s not some unbiased scientific analysis of economic factors. When a politician says, “do not raise taxes on business in X town, because that will hurt jobs”, what he is really saying is, “do not raise taxes on the businesses that own this town or they will pack up, move and decimate it”. The power to do that is in essence their idea of "liberty".
Wages have remained stagnant and have not risen since the late 70s. Americans have financed their way into the middle class since then to cover up for the drop in purchasing power. Where have the gains of rising production gone to? Yes, the one percent. Not back into their factories which remains a constant expense but they’ve cut down on the only variable in their costs; labor.
The mental gymnastics that libertarians and conservatives do to cover this up is hilarious. Everything from workers are too dumb to be paid more than 8 bucks an hour to do cashier work, even though you could pay the guy double and McDonalds would still make a killing. What else? Another one is if you raise the minimum wage to keep up with inflation, i.e. give people a livable wage, then they will not want to become doctors but janitors instead!! LOL!! The logic is that you give people a livable wage, then that will kill their incentive to better themselves. So in essence the fear of starvation is tough love from the people at the top who control the economy. Isn’t that lovely?
There is no intellect too high to justify a CEOs strategy of laying off half the work staff, making the remaining half work for less, and outsourcing the rest of production, while making the stock price shoot up to merit the pay (plus a hefty piece of that rising stock).
When they do this it is innovation, genius, top talent, etc. When we complain, it’s “class warfare”.
The audacity of Miss Warren to suggest that workers get a bigger piece of the gains. Shame on her for just wanting wages to rise back to the levels of its peak in 1968! She should know by now that the market corrects all things.
so go open a business if it's so easy and you'll be rich in no time
after all so many people who are so valueable are willing to work for minimum wage
surely by underpaying these highly valued employees you can easily open any business and make piles of money
I love posts from people like you who have less than zero clue how economics work or how to actually run a business
Enjoy your magic fairy tail land where everyone makes 22 dollars an hour no matter what value they add to a business and there are no consequences whatsoever to prices or employment when wages drastically increase by force.
The dumbest part of all of this is the people who would be hurt the most by nonsense like this are those making min wage now
You're allowed to complain all you want about your lousy wage it's a free country- and while you're complaining someone smarter and more creative than you is out there bettering themselves so they can make a better living for themselves instead of whining about how exploited they are.The people complaining think it's so easy to make money hand over fist because they can't do basic math.If it's so easy why work for 8 bucks an hour- just open a business and poof problem solved.After all any business can just afford to double- triple it's workers wages overnight since they do nothing but print money all day long.
It's nice of Elizibeth Warren to look at a small fraction of what 1968 was. This economy wasn't world wide the way it is now,the country wasnt in nearly as much debt as it is now, it wasnt priniting money like crazy, the government wasn't busy driving up up the cost of higher education (after all we are all such smart special snowflakes all deserving a college education lmao.) I mean it's nice of her to pick of a small patch of this countries history and not even mention that many of the things those people enjoyed then are being paid for now. I also don't see her opening up a Burger King and paying people 22 dollars an hour. I wonder why that is.
Last edited by bxlefty23; 03-25-2013 at 11:10 PM..
When Ms. Warren is ready to pay $22.00 per hour to a workforce, I will be willing to listen. You might want to look up how much your liberal pals have donated to charity? To be honest, it is a major joke.
By the way, look, oh look, which family made the most in income, why, it is the Clintons! They must be greedy and selfish. The second highest income was the Obama family and after that, it was Cheney, Bush, and McCain. Hmmm, I wonder, who is the party of the rich, again?
"Barack, it is amazing we can paint the Republicans as the party of the rich, while you and the Clintons are making tons of money per year and I am not paying my fair share to charity, Is This a Wonderful Country or What?"
This is another reason why YOU guys are the real brainwashed idiots who cannot think outside the manufactured right/left dichotomy in the US. If you haven't noticed this by now, I am a leftist and do not think Obama and any Democrat actually represents my interests anymore than a Republican would.
The fact that you debate in such news speak punditry is a testament to how we lack any viable choices and alternatives in this country. You jumped right into assuming that I was a Democrat because it was so easy and you knew no other way of debating.
The fact that third parties and real viable alternative viewpoints have been so marginalized shows me that anyone who thinks outside the current framework is deemed as strange. That to me says that the political climate is not that much far off from the USSR which we loved to denounce as having no choices.
How could you think that Obama best represents my interests? He is a middle of the road Clinton re-tread New Democrat. Have you ever heard of the New Dems? They're moderate reformers who have shifted the Democratic party to the center right.
In the US we have no real left wing party. We have only center and extremely rabid beyond idiotic right wing that thinks anything slightly to the left of them is a Marxist Commie Fascist Muslim liberty hater!
And who gives a crap about charity. That means nothing to me but everything to you libertarian right wing conservative nut jobs. I think charities especially ones funded by major millionaires are a big joke. I know they do good work and help people but in reality they're a tear drop in the ocean in comparison to how our current economic system just overrides any charity. It's like putting a band aid on a gunshot wound.
Instead of charities, which are REAL handouts from the rich, why not let us in a democracy vote on where we want our tax dollars to go and if we wish for them to go back to us in the form of social welfare programs then so be it! That is our right as Americans. Instead of relying on a X Rich Man Foundation, we should focus on using the tools of this government to house, feed, clothe, cure and educate people. It can easily be done, it's not a pipe utopian dream or whatever else you right wingers say it is. We are not broke, tax the rich, nationalize an industry and rebuild this country. If rich people want to leave as a result, then let them go but there is one thing that they cannot take with them; their factories. Buy them up and put people to work. If you do believe in free enterprise then you wouldn't mind local towns and municipalities buying up any abandoned enterprises and giving it to the community.
All this may seem dreamy to you but the only reason it does to you is because you cannot think outside the framework you've boxed yourself in.
Again, more market logic drivel. Do you people not even think for yourselves? You complain that leftists and liberals do not think for themselves but many go through a process of understanding economics through a systemic analysis, as in analyzing it's mechanism from a holistic sense, not some surface level observations and reiterating that point ad nauseum and calling it common sense or econ 101 like you guys do.
Why is it the markets interest to dictate most people's lives? And yes it does dictate people's lives. It is the driving force which determines a lot of people's decisions and interactions in life. Income restricts or can better gain someone access to things they were denied before. The only thing that is a fantasy is that in your little world, you think the market is this abstract entity that doesn't consist of actual direct decisions made by people who control vast amounts of wealth.
Study the presuppositions that you and your ilk spew daily. Nearly all the bureaucratic mess and government crap you whine about is mostly due to the massive headache big businesses create because they will not tolerate regulations and pass on the buck to consumers and workers, which in turn chess game between the state and private enterprise hurting workers the most. Instead the question should be put on the table that if we even need this parasitic class that keeps on sucking so much of the world's wealth and claiming they "created it".
Get over yourself. What you call "liberty" is really just letting major players in the world economy get away with what ever they want. Restricting their insatiable greed is "tyranny" to you whiners, and then you play the Red card attacking anyone that doesn't agree with you as a Bolshevik.
And this whole nonsense about "don't shop there" if you do not like something is just laughable. We live in a market society and thus our choices are limited to market choices. We cannot not choose them. This whole absurd libertarian notion that we can voluntarily stop shopping at Wal Mart or choose not to work here or there is just another canard.
My god, you people are just absurd. Simply absurd. I am so glad younger generations are not believing your drivel anymore.
You think your pal Obama is not going to be running the public's life with ObamaCare??? I am on dialysis and I hate to inform you that this version of socialized healthcare has not made any progress since the early 1970's. I do not shop with your friends at Wal-Mart. I use Farmer's Markets, a local store called Country Fresh, very good produce and Deli section, very friendly people, and Krogers, along with using a local meat store. Those are MY choices, did I call you a "Communist?" If you want to go to Wal-Mart, have a blast. I think their fruit and veggie section is disgusting. Any store or company that mistreats workers, come and see my very large pocketbook slam shut in their faces. I am curious, how does someone's greed earn income? How does Wal-Mart force me not to shop at a Farmer's Market or the local meat store??? How does an executive force someone to buy their products, if the consumer does not want to purchase them??? How does an executive's greed increase income, if the other stores see a price increase, they will undercut that greedy executive??? How does Toyota increase car prices, if Honda and Ford are going to clean their clocks??? If you are curious, I worked for the government. Markets do not have the force of law as does mandates or edicts from the government.
By way, thanks to the socialized care system of dialysis, the dialysis clinics are overcrowded, ask anyone in the dialysis field, take your pick. I left the control freaks of In-Center Dialysis and I am on Home Nocturnal Dialysis, 6 days per week, 6 hour treatments while I sleep. I eat and drink what I want, when I want. The average individual only gets 12 hours per week of dialysis, in a dialysis clinic. I would like you to try to be a diabetic and be dying of thirst all day, only being allowed to drink 32 oz of fluid per day, more "Do as I Say, Not as I Do." By government edict, again, your friends, dialysis patients have to have Medicare as the primary payer after 30 months of Employer Group Policy insurance paying for dialysis, otherwise, known as private health insurance, ask any dialysis social worker, if you do not believe it.
Most minimum wage American workers aren't worth $22 an hour.
But if you insist, why not be generous and pay them $50 an hour? I mean, since it would be clear that higher wages like those would have nothing to do with silly things like merit, and skill, and justice.
Shoot - go for broke and legislate a $95 an hour minimum wage!
I'd go for it, just to die laughing.
Another canard. Thank you guys for letting them all out. Workers across this country making millions while taking a slice that's not even comparable to the same slice workers were getting forty years ago are not worth more money?
Get over yourself, seriously. Guys like you might as well return to the days of eugenics and sterilizing working poor people because that is how you really think of them.
As if we should all be so deserving of your graciousness for eight bucks an hour. If I work at a McDonalds register and make over 300 bucks in an hour in sales, that is more than my weekly salary, and I just worked the rest of my seven hours for free, making money for the company. A part of it goes back into the store and the rest is pure profit for the owner. What a scam!
And when workers say how about a little bit more of that billion dollar a year pie, we get verbal abuse from middle aged baby boomer middle managers who listen to too much Milton Friedman or read too much Ayn Rand and think they're self made! LOL.
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