meh, i say let the whole works collapse, not just the auto industry, all of it. I'll be sitting on my porch with popcorn watching the fireworks, being thankful for a long driveway.

I don't fault them for doing what they do, of course they should be looking for higher wages and benefits. I especially don't fault individuals who join a union because that is how they will make better wages. I do find fault with any system that rewards mediocrity and stifles competition (the worst of this in my opinion is tenure for teachers), and the mentality that accountability is a bad thing. Go back and read Lecter's post where he points out the wages vs. qualifications. Forcing a company to pay more than is reasonable for labor makes labor scarce. This is my argument against minimum wage as well (I only had one minimum wage job: McDonald's right out of high school). I'll take a job at $3/hr over no job at all. Labor is a commodity, and the market would set its value naturally if the government would stop interfering.

You have skewed my argument, Snax. I do not believe in "me and mine before all else." I voluntarily donate 10% of all I earn to my church (yes, voluntarily, whatever you may think) before even paying rent. Socialism would steal that money from me, I donate it. I believe wholeheartedly in charity and putting others ahead of yourself, but I also believe in personal accountability. If I don't keep my affairs in order, what good am I to others? I would be a burden. I believe in helping people after they have done all in their power to help themselves. This is what is wrong with the welfare system: it is self-perpetuating. It was never to be the government's responsibility to provide for people, only to defend their rights. Socialism has failed every time it has been tried, and this bailout is pure socialism. Another advantage to capitalism is that it spreads the economic burden rather than putting ultimate power in the hands of a handful of politicians who are corrupt at worst and have no private sector experience at best.

"The problem with central planning is that it only takes a few people being wrong to ruin an economy." - Rush Limbaugh

PC:

You have a problem with regulated minimum wage? Really?! The only reason minimum wage exists is to ensure that members of the workforce can lead a half decent (although all too often it's still very close to the poverty line) life in relation to the cost of living. Would you really work for $3/hr, if and when that wage wouldn't even cover your rent? What would be the point? People would stop working and start looking for alternative means of survival.

And honestly PC, I can sum up the main difference between you and I in one sentence (albeit a long one). My best friend is a conservative (although a Canadian Conservative, which tends to be quite a different animal than your breed), and this is something we've come to terms with long ago:

I believe that society should be built on a regulated system of helping those who can't help themselves, erring on the side of being susceptible to leeches and losers sapping tax dollars, to ensure no-one falls through the cracks (or as few as possible), as opposed to erring on the side of ensuring those leeches don't get to suckle at the public tit and in the process losing some of those who really need help.

And for the record, I'm not a Socialist. I consider myself a Social-Capitalist.

Visitor:

Good points, but instead of corporation I might suggest Democracy. Corporations do not have a voting system, whereas most unions do. And while we're on analogies, instead of predator, they're more like a fungus. Move too slow in the lane of social change, and they'll hop on you like Mario. And good luck scraping them off...

...the trick is to balance opposing forces so that neither faction is truly dominant.

The problem here is that, given our respective democratic systems, this balance (or inbalance) is reflected in our political moodiness. It would take a level of bipartisan cooperation not seen before or a dictator (hopefully benevolent) to bring this balance into place.

Imagine:

You run a small business making.. widgets. You hire 4 people to make those widgets. Between the 4 of them, they can make 20 or so a day if they work their hardest.

Now, the thing is, one of them is really good at it, and is making 6 a day, 2 can make 5 a day, and one can only make 4 a day, working as hard as he can.

Now, under union rules, they should all get paid the same amount, they have the exact same job requirements, they've all been working for you for the same length of time.

Now, the better worker sees the two average workers only making 5 a day, he is getting paid the same amount as them, and so he slacks off, reducing his workload to 5 a day.

The average workers see this, and see the slow worker only making 4 a day, and so they reduce their output to only 4 a day, and the faster one sees it and does the same thing.

Now. How do you correct this? Well, you could impose a quota.. lessee, 4 people, make 20 a day. quota is 5 each.

Uh oh.. the slow guy can't -make- 5 a day, no matter how hard he tries. So the quota won't work.

You could pay them based on the number of widgets they make. But wait, the union won't let you, says it's unfair to the slow worker..

Productivity suffers, while labor costs go up.

Snax said it would be a mute point.

AAAAUUUGGGHHHH!!! It's moot! M-O-O-T! Not MUTE!

Snax also said: Would you really work for $3/hr, if and when that wage wouldn't even cover your rent? What would be the point? People would stop working and start looking for alternative means of survival.
And then businesses, realizing that they were paying too low a wage to attract workers, would raise their benefits/salaries in order to attract workers again. Duh. Your limited-thoughtline arguments betray your socialistic political leanings.

Snax also said:I believe that society should be built on a regulated system of helping those who can't help themselves, erring on the side of being susceptible to leeches and losers sapping tax dollars, to ensure no-one falls through the cracks (or as few as possible)
Well, that's possibly the most naive thing I've ever heard said regarding government. If we followed your advice, everyone would stop working and expect government to provide everything for them. But if no one is working, then the government has no tax revenue, and the government can't do anything for you, either.

It is natural for all humans to want more than their neighbor, it is natural for humankind to want to better their situation. Capitalism harnesses this basic desire and builds a powerful economic framework with it. It's not perfect, but it is leaps abd bounds better than any alternative. Plus, it makes sure people WORK.

I'm glad the bailout has failed so far. If the White House uses ANY of the $850,000,000,000 financial bailout money to bailout the automakers, I'll be first in line to support any criminal charges to the Executive branch.

Nicely said, break and Leber. I'll preemptively defend Leber's typo abd=and before Snax thinks such a typo covers his "mute" point. You also missed a mistake of Snax's, Leber. "... the main difference between you and I" should be "... the main difference between you and me." Almost everyone overcorrects "you and me" to "you and I," though.

Snax, you are describing the first steps of Socialism. Your plan leads right to it. Capitalism is a natural law, not a system, and imposing a system such as socialism (sorry, Social-Capitalism, whatever in Hell that is), can only make people equal by pulling down those at the top. Socialism inevitably spreads misery and poverty equally, except for a few government guys who always profit off everyone else. Leber is exactly right about why capitalism is the only thing that can work. If there really were no greed and no laziness, socialism would happen naturally. Instead, there has to be incentive and accountability, or it all falls down.

As far as minimum wage, first I will remind you that I have only had one job at minimum wage, and I was living at home and had no real expenses. I'll also say again that I will take 3/hr over no money at all. But as Leber pointed out, if another job available to me pays $11/hr, goodbye lower wage job! Supply and demand apply to every commodity, including labor. Left to its own devices, capitalism will naturally set every price where it is sustainable. If no one applies for crappy janitor jobs, demand for those jobs brings up the wages. Minimum wage jobs were never intended to (and rarely do) support a large family. They are entry-level jobs, and the lower the wages the easier it is to get a start in the workforce.

Lets see if I can expand on break's excellent scenario to explain how damaging minimum wage is:

Your company has a budget for $400/day on labor (totally fictional numbers here). The budget is really tight, the company is only barely making any profit at all.

You hire ten workers at $5/hr for 8 hr shifts: 10 x 5 x 8 = $400. We'll assume all workers are equally productive except one, who is less productive.

Minimum wage goes up to $6/hr. Suddenly your company is in the red, because 10 x 6 x 8 = $480, more than you can afford. You have three options: cut back on hours, lay off an employee, or close the business since it's no longer profitable.

Cutting back on hours means all 10 employees make just as much money as before, but your company no longer produces as much and is less profitable.

Laying someone off sucks for that person, but everyone else makes more but you still have fewer total man-hours at your disposal. Plus, who do you lay off? It would have to be the least productive employee, and that's just not fair! He's doing the best he can!

Now he has to find a new job, and no one's hiring because labor is more expensive than before. Companies compensate for higher labor costs by raising prices and cutting benefits. Nobody wins.

How high should minimum wage be, Snax? It starts with making minimum wage be enough to barely live on, where does it end? Doesn't everyone, regardless of their job, deserve to live comfortably? $50,000 is a good salary, let's make minimum wage equivalent to that. But CEOs make much more, and they don't do this hard work manual labor stuff, so let's make everyone equal. Every job in America pays $100,000/year. Where would ambition be then? For that matter, does it hurt me that people like Trump make so much? No. I don't even want that much money, it's too much to keep track of. Plus, where does that money go? Right back into the economy. Rich people employ everyone else, not the other way around. There are very few real Ebenezer Scrooges in the world, hoarding all their money away and not using it.

Answer me this question, please, Snax: Where should minimum wage reasonably stop, and why?

It has been my experience that most minimum wage jobs are for tasks that only remove an inconvenience for someone else. Were the minimum wage to be removed, they would drop in pay accordingly, almost nobody would take them, and the rest of us would be.... mildly inconvenienced. Chaos has the numbers right as to why the minimum is bad.

Filling jobs, again from my experience, is a far greater problem. Wages had to be revised upwards, to a considerable extent, to fill open positions where I work. That's changed recently with the downturn, but we still can't get enough good people. It's more a parade of mildly competent takers, many of which will skip out for no reason (doesn't bother me much. I get more overtime pay when they do :D).

As for economic stimulus, Obama surprised me by actually proposing a good move in that regard- infrastructure improvement. It's one of the few things that really is win-win. It pays off once when the work required to do it is contracted out, providing employment and creating demand for materials. Then it pays off again as high quality transportation systems, reliable power supplies, and plentiful clean water create business opportunities. Opportunity is the key word. Create that, and people will follow to take advantage of it- Capitalism in a nutshell.

Awesome, thanks for the real-world example, IRS. Supply and demand for labor at work.

I mildly disagree about most minimum-wage jobs only removing an inconvenience, and all can be done away with. Where would I go buy a cheeseburger if no one filled minimum-wage jobs? I appreciate those people (as long as they're competent) who fill those jobs, especially since that was my first job. Besides, even there good workers don't stay at minimum very long. Having a low-wage job like that that requires little education is a very good thing for the economy and society, since it allows young people to gain real-world work experience before they even go to college. Even in college, a low-wage job is still worth a lot to supplement trying to live on student loans. Forcing those wages upward when those positions are in high demand hurts everyone, since it artificially lowers the supply of jobs.

I'm glad you mentioned overtime, IRS. I hate the time-and-a-half requirement, because it means I never get overtime. For awhile I worked overnight at Target, and since it's so expensive to pay people overtime you can actually get "written up" if you go over 40 hours in a week, and your manager gets in even more trouble (this is typical of retail, actually). I was making $8/hr, 40 hours a week, and had no other obligations. That's $320/week, and overtime laws capped it at that. If I'd worked 20 more hours at time-and-a-half I would have made $560/week, which would have been awesome, but Target can't afford to pay that. 60 hours/week at just $8/hr would have been $480/week. Because the government insists companies pay extra for overtime, I missed out on $160/week. I consider that money the government stole from me by taking that opportunity from me. Taxes are also stealing, but that's another discussion entirely.

Where should minimum wage reasonably stop, and why?

Minimum wage should be tied to the cost of living index and inflation, no more, no less. I'm not suggesting people should be able to live the high life, I'm talking about basic sustenance: a roof, food, warmth.

The argument that wages will self regulate themselves across the board is bullshit. Sure, in some sectors they will and in some sectors the minimum wage will likely never even be an issue (highly skilled positions for instance). But I find it ironic that I'm being accused of naiveness (naivety?) when you believe businesses won't abuse a lack of minimum wage to the point where poor people will be forced to work 80 hours a week just to ensure they can cover rent.

The only point I agree on with you PC, and I'm not sure you meant to make it, is that any minimum wage system needs to be predictable, hence tying it to the cost of living index and inflation. Many aren't. The minimum wage where I live has been stuck at $8/hr for almost a decade. Everyone knows it's going to go up at some point, but right now that is going to be some random decision made by a politician when it's in said politician's interest. Businesses will not have much warning, and as such, it will be a problem. Yes, it sucks for your $400 company to have to deal with an unpredictable jump in minimum wages, but if it's something they can foresee and work into their business plan, then I don't see a problem.

Well, that's possibly the most naive thing I've ever heard said regarding government.

No it's not. It's an oversimplified ideological stance to make a point. For instance, I'm talking about helping those who can't help themselves. Those who take advantage of a system like that are really only going to gain a basic level of sustenance/support; the basics of life in our society; essentially the building blocks needed to become an engaged and productive member of society. Preferably I would like a system of checks and balances that ensures that any such programs are not abused by those who don't really need them, but, and here's the point Lebes, I would hope that if there were errors to be made, that they're made on the side of allowing the system to be slightly vulnerable as opposed to making it harder for people who really need the help to get it. To suggest that this is the slippery slope to socialism is just silly.

It's still an oversimplified idea, but in light of the fact that I'm not interested in writing a policy paper on the topic, it'll have to do.

And sorry about the spelling errors... multiple gin & tonics are no good for the grammar (but they do bring out the oversimplified ideology!)

Snax said when you believe businesses won't abuse a lack of minimum wage to the point where poor people will be forced to work 80 hours a week just to ensure they can cover rent.
Of course they will! Just like anything, wage scales are subject to supply & demand. If the workers don't want to work for minimum wage to do your job, they won't. They'll go get any other job to which they are qualified to perform. If they leave, these companies will be forced to either hire less-qualified people and deal with the reduced productivity, or raise the wages to attract better people to fill that position.

If they do their job well, they get a raise, since it's in the best interest of the company to keep good employees around. If they don't do as good a job as others, they stay at the salary they're at.

Things will always shake out to a stable, sustainable situation, but it takes time.

See, you're coming at the entire problem as if businesses exist to keep the workers under their boot, and that's wrong. Businesses exist to make money. Usually, hiring good/promising new employees, training them, and investing in their success leads to FAR more profit than hiring schmucks off the street with no skills for minimum wage, and firing them willy-nilly. It's simply NOT in the best interest of any business owner to simply go for the lowest-common denominator.

Snax also said I would hope that if there were errors to be made, that they're made on the side of allowing the system to be slightly vulnerable as opposed to making it harder for people who really need the help to get it.

You assume wrong. Here's an example from our very-own VO:
Dr. Lecter revels in killing off new players as soon as they poke their heads out the station for the first time. There are others like him, and the developers have recently invested literally HUNDREDS of man-hours in defeating the ability of mean-spirited players to do this. That has set back game development by... maybe 3 months. All to save some vocal minority of players.

So there was a heroic effort to prevent what was, in effect, a very small problem for most players. There will always be people like Dr. Lecter, who game the system. Or, use the Arolte example which led to other sweeping game changes. In any society, there will be people who test the limits, and instead of dealing with these incidents as edge cases, there is a political and social overreaction to the problem.

The game is changed, new limits enforced, all so that "the people who really need the help [can] get it." Nevermind the consequences, Won't someone Please Think of the n00bs?!?

Once you go down this path, it becomes the default response: "Mother Government" will save us from all problems. Lose your job? Don't worry, the government will give you money, no matter how much of a horrible employee you were. Lose your house? Don't worry, The Nanny State will give you money to get a new house at an incredible interest rate. Lose someone you loved? Go ahead and sue the hospital for forgetting to tape down the I.V., even though the hospital was doing everything in its power to help.

This is what is wrong with society. Instead of training the masses to be self-reliant, we're training them to rely on (and hand over more and more power to) the "government." Instead of letting them learn hard lessons firsthand about risk and consequence, we're bailing them out. Instead of pushing them to achieve and excel, we're teaching them that "good try" and "almost right" is good enough, because the government will help make up the difference. Instead of playing little league sports to WIN, we're playing non-decisive games without scores so we don't hurt anyone's self-esteem. The consequences of this insidious "Mediocrity Meme" will be far more damaging than anything that has ever befell the human race, because the natural world does not reward mediocrity. If this kind of squishy, touchy-feely, no-fault, no-consequence, repeated-failure-is-okay style of thinking continues, sooner or later it will be the end of all of us.

Damn right. It is a huge investment to train an employee, even at places like McDonalds. First-hand experience here:

Tomorrow morning I am flying down to New Orleans for a week to attend a week-long "camp" hosted by Shell Oil. They have invited geology students from many schools, and will be teaching us the basics from start to finish of oil exploration, production and distribution, including offshore exploration. How much does it cost me to attend this? I have to get myself there, that's all. They're even picking me up from Louis Armstrong International Airport at their expense. They're paying their staff, paying for equipment, food and housing, and no one is obligated to pursue a job at Shell at all. It's very likely people companies like Chevron will see this on people's resumés, and be impressed and hire them. Why so much cost? Because geologists make lots of money for oil companies, which is why they get paid so much (I think starting average salary with an M.S. is around $105K these days). If they didn't treat us so well, we wouldn't work for them. Supply and demand, and big investments.

Also, if you feel your company is abusing lack of minimum wage, you can look for a better job. Companies have to be competitive with salaries, too, not just with prices.

You're both speaking of skilled jobs. I already conceded the fact that these sectors will self regulate. I'm not talking about these sectors. I'm talking about the sectors that have historically employed the vulnerable members of society. If you're a single mother for example, working two or three jobs to make ends meet, you are extremely vulnerable to abuse at the hands of your employer. They know you can't just quit and go find another job. These types of situations are ripe for abuse.

In the end I just don't buy into your blind faith in anarcho-capitalism. I think it's probably one of the worst possible ideologies, and would create a brutal divide between rich and poor not seen before. Your belief in the idea that an unregulated free market would provide stability and wealth to everyone who does their part is completely bewildering to me, and in my opinion, is brutally selfish.

Anyway, silly me thinking the possibility of finding common ground between a left wing Canadian and right wing Americans was at all possible. Enjoy the next few years as I'm sure one way or another, things will be quite different on the other side.

Yea, but Snax, you're forgetting something..

Skills can be TAUGHT. You just need to have the drive to LEARN. Nothing creates that drive more than "OMG I'm gonna starve to death if I don't get off my lazy ass and go to school"

And nothing kills that drive faster than "OMG! I won't ever starve because the government will take care of me"

Problem, however, is that you lose independance when you become dependant on someone else.

Oh, and Snax.. the main difference between liberals and conservatives? Neither one want people to starve to death. One uses his -own- money to help others, the other uses his NEIGHBORS money to do it.

But I find it ironic that I'm being accused of naiveness (naivety?) when you believe businesses won't abuse a lack of minimum wage to the point where poor people will be forced to work 80 hours a week just to ensure they can cover rent.

Why shouldn't they have to work 80 hours a week to cover the rent? What you're really advocating, Gav, is not "a roof, food, and warmth"--you're advocating "a roof, food, and warmth, for only 40 hours a week with time and a half for any overtime, so they have lots of free time to live their lives."

Fuck them. They want to survive, they can work their asses off for it. The rest of us do. Supporting yourself on a mere 40 hours a week is a luxury wage, not a minimum wage.

Alternatively, they can be taxed for their excessive free time, at the same brutal rates that I'm taxed for my "excessive" income--that I earn only in exchange for all of my free time. Is your lazy ass able to see yet why those of us who choose to work a lot might be "brutally selfish"?

But why would we tax their excessive free time when they're not producing anything? 80% of nothing is still nothing :p

Silliness aside, Lecter's getting right down to the core of the issue, which is a simple question- How much time do we need to invest to provide for ourselves? We have 24 hours per day to work with. Large chunks go to required use of resources (eating and sleeping), moving (commutes), and obtaining resources (work). Hopefully, we'll be able to do all that and have some time left over to do the things we'd like to do, though it's not guaranteed.

Taxes are a deduction from our obtained resources. The only difference between taxes and theft is that taxes occasionally go to provide us with a useful product or service (fire departments, national defense, and so on) with greater efficiency than we could do on our own, resulting in a net gain for us. A welfare program funded by taxes can thus be described as stealing from one person to give to another. This is a very bad thing in most circumstances.

An extremely important point in all of this is that we're assuming that a person can provide for themselves. If a person doesn't have ability to obtain and use the resources they require, they die. Every person, without exception, has been in this category at some point. We all start as a single cell, so weak and vulnerable that a fairly slight change in temperature could have killed us. For the next nine months or so, we do nothing but mooch off mom as we're provided with everything. After that, we continue to be a net drain for years. The better among us will recognize this and be thankful for the immense generosity that we have received.

Now we get to the rationale for good welfare programs- assistance for those who have suffered a hardship that leaves them unable to provide for themselves, even with all 24 hours of the day devoted. The key here is that the assistance can eventually be paid back once the hardship has passed. These programs don't even need to be provided by the government. Religious institutions are notable in this regard, as Chaos referred to in passing. Many companies also step in, with voluntarily provided sick leave and health insurance. There are a multitude of non-profit organizations dedicated to providing food, warmth, and/or shelter, nearly all of which can do it far more efficiently than the government can, since they're not tied down by excessive rules. I especially like the dedicated nonprofits, since I can pick and choose exactly which causes get my hard-earned money or excess time.

But why would we tax their excessive free time when they're not producing anything? 80% of nothing is still nothing :p

You're not thinking about that one too hard, are you? Income and free time are different sides of the same coin--one comes from choosing to work a given unit of your life, the other from choosing not to work that unit. It doesn't matter that free time doesn't result in a monetary benefit to you--you still get a benefit from it, and people should be taxed on that benefit. To do otherwise is both a perverse incentive vis-a-vis productive activity, and an immoral slap in the face to those who work hard only to give ~40-50% of their income to Fed/State/Local govenrments to help pay for . . . those who choose to only work a little (40 hours/week), who work easier, lower paying jobs, and who don't work at all.

We could value free time the same way "progressive" tax policymakers value income: as something that has a declining marginal utility (i.e., everyone values that first $30,000 a lot, because without it you can't live--but even if you worked really hard for it, the millionth dollar you earned has less marginal utility for you, so you don't care about it as much), and we charge you for the privilege of having it, just like income. Everyone could have, say, 20 hours a week of non-work time, and pay $5, $10, $20 dollars per hour hour for every 10 hour block spent not working.

Sound silly? Ask yourself why those who earn more money by working harder, rather than choosing to be idle, have to pay more to the common fisc. There's an added cost to working harder than average, but no added cost to being lazier than average--that's a broken policy right there.

I had pointed out that statement had no thought at all with the ":p" at the end, and the "Silliness aside" once I took up the real points.

Time is always valuable, and a commodity like anything else. If what I gain from working in an hour is worth less than what I deem my time to be worth, I won't work for that hour. Likewise, if I feel that my time is worth less than what I can gain by working, then I'll work. This is a matter of individual preference, and if anyone thinks they can dictate to me what I should value my time at, I know several lakes that they can go jump in. It naturally follows from this that minimum and maximum wages are bad, as they dictate what companies can value their work at. Of course, if I value my time too much, I wind up starving, and companies that value it too little wind up having to look harder to find a person willing to work.

"Progressive" taxes act as a limiter on how many hours I can choose to work before the time invested becomes worth less than I value it, and are quite unfair to the higher paying jobs because that point is hit far earlier. In jobs such as legal and medical work, where hourly pay is high and long hours are often necessary to do the job well, "progressive" taxes only serve to encourage doing shoddy work. Flip around the tax rates, and it becomes unfair to the lower end of the wage scale. A flat rate across all incomes is the most fair way of taxing income (which, itself, is another big issue).

Fuck them. They want to survive, they can work their asses off for it. The rest of us do. Supporting yourself on a mere 40 hours a week is a luxury wage, not a minimum wage.

Like I said, it's a matter of a fundamental disagreement on the direction society should be organized/driven. I don't believe we should actively seek to undo a century of progressive workplace developments: increased productivity, better working conditions, more free time for people to pursue personal and cultural activities. You seem to believe we should be doing everything we can to get back to our hunter-gatherer roots.

I'm also not a proponent of overtime. I never said I was, and while I understand it's easy to assume things based on the limited scope of identities presented in this forum (I do it), it's by far one of the biggest drawbacks to this form of debate. I don't make overtime (contract worker), and I don't necessarily think others should. If the demand is there, then sure, go for it.

End of story for me. Peace.

"There's an added cost to working harder than average, but no added cost to being lazier than average--that's a broken policy right there."

Their is an added cost to being lazier than average, provided we let them starve to death, or freeze to death, etc.

As of now, we don't.