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No it doesn't look at the European countries that have much better programs than the US. They even have higher social mobility rates than we do. Just goes to show treating people like human beings is more effective. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.2557610b0c07
No it doesn't look at the European countries that have much better programs than the US. They even have higher social mobility rates than we do. Just goes to show treating people like human beings is more effective. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.2557610b0c07
A phrase often repeated by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, sums up the difficulty: Europe, she claims, has seven percent of the world’s population, twenty-five percent of its GDP yet accounts for as much as fifty percent of the world’s social protection spending.
Her message is that this is unsustainable
Some critics go further by arguing that the underlying reason for the crises affecting so many European countries is that public debt had been pushed upwards by the inexorable demands of the welfare state.
not everything is sunshine, unicorns, and rainbows
I believe the root of this thinking is that the person flipping your Big Mac is no less deserving of a comfortable lifestyle than a teacher or a surgeon. When you want a Big Mac, instead of an appendectomy, he is more important than the surgeon. When your garbage is at the curb, stinking, your trash collector is more important than your surgeon too.
Where this falls apart is what everyone has said already...since prices will go up, the burger flipper will be in the same boat as before.
Yea yea I get it the poor are just stupid and lazy and we need to get rid of the minimum wage because the holy job creators will take care of us.
Nowhere did I say any of this strawman argument you are trying to attribute to me. I said what job you work and for how much compensation is completely within the control of the individual. If from that you extract out that "the poor are just stupid and lazy" well I suggest you have some personal theories on why one is poor?
Quote:
Originally Posted by BornintheSprings
In the real world what you advocate will lead to more exploitation and inequality.
How? In a free market, competition exists as part of the extender stakeholder model. Exploitation of workers is bad for business and helps the competition by providing an incentive for the workers of BadCompany_A to seek work at GoodCompany_B. On the individual level, every person is free to negotiate employment and the terms thereof as they see fit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BornintheSprings
Not everyone is a big tough guy like you who can negotiate for themselves protections need to be in place for the vulnerable citizens.
This has nothing to do with anything I posted, but is more of your attempt to tear down a strawman that you built. A "vulnerable citizen" means what? Physically and/or mentally incapable of work is what I consider vulnerable, and by "incapable" I mean legitimately unable to perform even the simplest of tasks, not the "according to welfare" rules for disability, where phantom "chronic pain" and other symptoms of malingering are sources of profit. We have things in place for such people, and before we had the largess of government, private charity in the community handled it just fine. What we do not have, nor should we, is a system to care for and support bad, self-destructive and foolish choices made by the individual. Supply ad demand are again the master here. If I have demand for Job A and there is a supply of workers for that job who all choose to compete, I will take the competitor who does best in the competition. Resume, background check, interview skills, deportment, etc...all part of the competition. Winner gets job. If one or more of those competitors dragged down their resume, skills and/or background check with bad, self-destructive and foolish choices...well, they decided with those actions to be less capable of winning competitions. That is not society's fault, nor its responsibility.
You see, jobs do not belong to society. They are the property of the business. That's the first ting you need to come to grips with, because you seem to see work and compensation as inherent properties of existence, and they are not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BornintheSprings
If you treat the poor like dirt your whole society will become unstable like in a third world country. Its interesting to note that the countries with the highest standards of living all have generous welfare programs. Treat the poor like human beings.
Where did I advocate treating the poor like dirt? I don't advocate treating anyone like dirt, unless they violated my rights or harmed me in some way, and then sure, I'd be cool treating them badly. All part of your ridiculous strawman. Saying we each do what it is we choose to do, minus of course those who are physically and/or mentally incapable of work, is not being cruel. It's liberating. By putting the choice in the individual's hands, I free them from the trap of thinking their entire woeful existence was preordained and unchangeable. Giving them the choice does indeed burden them with the responsibility and accountability for their own lot in life, but it also dictates that they CAN choose for themselves how things will go. There's a beautiful freedom in that thinking, even if a bit scary.
Methinks your many rants on how all must be helped because only a very few can possibly survive on their own speaks more to voices in your own head than any valid social or economic theory.
Hasn't anyone else ever noticed that every time the minimum wage is raised the cost of items and or services of those business's are raised? It's the consumer who pays for the increase.
Not just consumers... the business has to pay, they invested a lot into their business... if they can't pay minimum wage at $15, they go out of business and lose all the money they have invested in that business.. thats a bigger price to pay than any consumer... last time I check, no liberal was willing to step in and help that business...
I believe the root of this thinking is that the person flipping your Big Mac is no less deserving of a comfortable lifestyle than a teacher or a surgeon. When you want a Big Mac, instead of an appendectomy, he is more important than the surgeon. When your garbage is at the curb, stinking, your trash collector is more important than your surgeon too.
Where this falls apart is what everyone has said already...since prices will go up, the burger flipper will be in the same boat as before.
This line of thinking falls apart in a whole lot of ways beyond that.
Not the least of which is the fact that you can train a surgeon to be a burger flipper a lot faster than you can train a burger flipper to be a surgeon.
And a burger flipper is a poor substitute for when you need a surgeon.
A major part of the liberal movement now is demanding a $15 minimum wage. So they believe the cashier at Taco Bell deserves minimum wage. Does the current manager or shift lead at Taco Bell who currently makes $13 or $15 also just make $15. What about a nursing assistant who takes care of the elderly who is now paid $15. Does she deserve to be making the same as a Walmart cashier???
So do liberals advocate increasing the minimum at $15 so everyone just makes at least 15 regardless of experience and training? Would that be fair in the liberal mind? Or should the employees currently making $15 get a raise too? Should everyone get a raise? How will companies stay in business then?????
A true liberal utopia has everything nationalized. Everyone makes the same pay and everyone gets the same raise. "Everyone is a winner". But I'd wager that everyone would be living a hand to mouth existence.
I believe the root of this thinking is that the person flipping your Big Mac is no less deserving of a comfortable lifestyle than a teacher or a surgeon. When you want a Big Mac, instead of an appendectomy, he is more important than the surgeon. When your garbage is at the curb, stinking, your trash collector is more important than your surgeon too.
Where this falls apart is what everyone has said already...since prices will go up, the burger flipper will be in the same boat as before.
"More deserving" has nothing to do with wages. Demand for that job to be done versus the supply of people willing and capable of doing that job properly is what determines wages. "Deserving" is totally irrelevant.
In your flawed analogy, the job of flipping a burger is low demand. Why? Because I can flip a burger on my stove/grill. Anyone can. But now and again, the convenience of getting one in a couple minutes at McDonalds makes it worth it to pay someone else to do it, assuming the price makes sense. Raise prices by $1-2 per burger because you implement "more deserving" wages, and I'll flip my own burger, tyvm. That is what is known as "decrease in demand based on price." When your revenue falls because I chose to decrease my demand for your product at the price you sell it, you have a profitability problem which you can solve one of two ways (or some combo of both): you can raise revenue by finding ways to increase my demand for your product (which given the known quantity that is the Big Mac, means lower price) or you can cut your costs. Now, I challenge you as the business owner of a retail outlet working at ~5-6% margins...your market share and monthly revenue has dropped off since this new price increase, and you want to save that operation. Tell me, in this "more deserving" model of yours, what do you do?
Same goes for garbage collection. I can take my own garbage to a dump, but I pay property taxes that fund (in part) the garbage collection from my tree lawn. If my town council decided that the wages of the garbage collectors should go up because they are" more deserving" then they have to find the money to pay for that. If they take from other needed services in the budget or raise taxes to cover it, they have angered the people who VOTE, thus decreasing the demand for them to stay in office. See how it goes?
Surgeons are a product of 10-14 years of post-secondary education where they are almost always at the top of every class they take. That means very very low supply. They do a job that literally saves lives, meaning very very high demand. Deserving has nothing to do with their wage, but super low supply and super high demand explains a ton.
Seriously, everyone should read Thomas Sowell's "Applied Economics." A lot of these ridiculous "more fair/deserving" arguments would just go away.
not everything is sunshine, unicorns, and rainbows
Not everything is a steaming pile of doom and gloom either.
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