DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Social Justice- We need to face some facts

I've been mostly Republican my whole life-- and I thought Social Justice- who's complaining now.....and that applys in some cases. Here is my political bitch for the day. How long will the current old generation screw the young generation concerning a just wage- the great state of Wyoming has a minimum wage of $5.15....lots of states are at the FEDERAL MIN WAGE of $7.25 . Why and how are we hosing the young. Here is one MAJOR example- a dollar in 1960 had buying power of $10.60 cents-- I remember one of my first jobs I got $1.25.....bottomline-- lots of our wonderful country isn't facing facts and they- older citizens- are still thinking it is the 60s or 70s---- the cowboys out west are really hosing the young- how absurd is $5.15 cents......it is criminal and check your state at $7.25 the CURRENT MIN is also criminal in my opinion. Prices have gone up and we/ the older generation are hosing our young.....PS Social Security and all the entitlements the 60/70 year olds and plus is just another HUGE Social Justice issue. Fix the minimum wage as a start.

When you raise the minimum wage inflation also goes up and who really gets screwed??? Us folks on social security. You know us guys who worked 60 to 110 hour work weeks for years.

GM,
you are really going to be on here railing about the increases when the tariffs kick in, correct?

the entities that don't want to raise the minimum wage are the same entities that ALSO want to screw with your social security.

Hitt,
Maybe I will address my early 20 year olds and how they address this...my lunch is about over

But another social justice, the ability for our youth to go to school without active shooter drills and the threat of not coming home...about an hour ago, there was another school shooting at Abundant Life Christian school in Madison, Wisc
All I heard is 8 vics transported and 2-no transport.

the have 3 doa's at this time including they think the shooter

As well as tens of thousands of dollars in debt when starting out in life after college. I've heard the arguments..... "Well I had to pay for my college when I went."

And while that's true depending on how long ago it was when they went to college is was much more affordable. A fraction of the cost it is today even with inflation being accounted for.

I'm not so woke I think it should be free. But the cost of a college education today has gone well beyond the price of being anything realistic or reasonable.

I'm not saying YOU didn't work......and I doubt many had 110 hr work week....but, the young aren't getting your equivalent in pay AND there is no way they'll have Social Security when they are our ages-----WHY, because we old folks will drain SS and because we think every old person should have free hips, knees, shoulders all paid by Medicare-- we, the Free Love generation are destroying our grandchildren. Who had better opportunity to SAVE- you or the current underpaid youth.

Yep, we are a gun culture society- lots of Americans have AR-15s, guns left and right...all justified by 2 Amendment whose drafters never thought firearms would evolve to todays madness- look at the most popular "games"- all based on killing, shooting, get high score-- we've been making America great by leading the world in suicides because guns are so available. Very sad.

Raise the minimum wage- $7.25 is criminal neglect. And, yes, prices will go up.

Sure as hell will.

I know as I keep saying both sides suck, and we get screwed by both of them.

At this point I think the only actual disagreement is about who people think should get screwed the most. As of now they're trying to screw both the young and the old. And pretty much everyone in between.

Sadly it seems people in each group thinks the attacks are only against their group. That's why we keep hearing about "Christianity is under attack!" And people keep buying into how others who think or believe differently than they do are "The enemy of the people!"

Both sides play with people like a kitten playing with a ball of string. Neither one cares about "we the people"

That's why I made sure not to point the finger of guilt at either side. I've said for a very long time now the only legitimate choices we have is the lesser of two evils.

Sad truth is we keep losing "decent" politicians who once they serve a couple years see how screwed up the system is and they go back to their lives-- and we are left with the Greenes of Congress to "lead".

"Marjorie Taylor Greene has also believed: Sandy Hook was staged, the 2018 California wildfires were set by Rothschild associates from outer space; The 2024 eclipse was “God telling us to repent," he wrote while providing links documenting the statements. Pray for Georgia and our country.

An inflation adjusted federal minimum wage would make sense, numerous States have raised the minimum wage to reflect cost of living differences with each state.

California is not the same as Ohio.

The challenge is that some of the lower cost (generally red) states do not have a state based minimum wage, and it loses value as time goes on.

2009 was the last time the federal minimum wage was raised.

GOPers have always hated the minimum wage, and typically vote against any changes. Be careful what you ask for, at some point it becomes a problem.

Don’t worry Hitt, Trump’s got this Smfh.

Here’s the thing. If you’ve been around long enough and had the bad fortune of being born into the lower end of the 99%, struggle is no stranger. And that skillset is about to be in HUGE demand. This is how things work out when the stupid are taken seriously.

Just speaking for myself, I never thought about minimum wage. My goals were set at what was the maximum wage I could make?

Just like the last time, minimum wage gets chewed up by price increases in a year. I also believe that minimum wage hurts the hourly worker who makes above minimum wage, they don't see increases.

Minimum wage is just a communist idea to have everybody making the same amount.

I actually half agree. It’s not commie, obviously, but it is classism. You see, we all expect highly educated professionals to make upper end incomes. We expect the same for the corporate hierarchy; those on top make more. But on the opposite end of the spectrum is a class of citizen that NOBODY expects to see thriving. All sorts of things can earn you a spot here. Poor education, poor health, being born poor, being a minority, being an immigrant, etc etc. But some break away from those labels and find success… the few. The rest languish from dead end opportunity to dead end opportunity, living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to keep the very basics with little to no way out.

You ever meet somebody living in squaller most of their lives and ask them why they never boot-strapped-out? Probably not because that would make you a morally bankrupt a-hole. But if you had, you might of found out that some don’t catch breaks and get the better outcome on a regular basis. Some have so many obstacles to success stacked against them that the absolute best they can do is to desperately try to maintain employment regardless of how little it pays. They live on a steady diet of life kicking their ass, with that minimum wage set by those on the opposite side of financial status being why, no matter what, that they will always be low value employees. They can do just like you and climb the wealth ladder by getting a raise or promotion. But socioeconomically (classism), they will always be low value PEOPLE, even making 3 to 5 times minimum wage.

And the saddest part is that we all know they need more to live decent without all the damn stress, but we can be tricked by elitists to punch down, instead of helping lead the fight for greater financial equality across the board. Yep, a long time ago, people you trusted told you that those OTHER people were why you struggled and why you’re paying more in taxes… And since you know THAT’S NOT YOU, even if you’re still “waiting for my ship to come in” and struggling like hell yourself, your mind will translate good for them to mean bad for you. Meanwhile hopes and dreams of our ships coming in, everything being alright, things getting better, struggling less, finally having a little, etc all reinforce punching down and $$$ lusting up.

Oh, I know all of this is woke of me to point out, but you were right about how corporate price gouging scrapes back any gains made by legally increasing the minimum wage. That’s one thing we agree on. But you are wrong to blame or look down. You are wrong to think you are more akin to a billionaires than to somebody trapped nearer the bottom. The elites and corporations don’t give a crap if you’re worth tens of millions. You are only a slightly bigger pissant to crush if they can ever decide to make a buck from your pain. Even elites like Elon and Trump seem to have forgotten that they too are just little cogs on a big wheel of corpocracy. And that wheel will grind anything it wants into oblivion.

You and other financially secure boomers also fail to realize is that this isn’t the 1950s or 60s anymore. The dollar is not the same. Opportunity is not the same. None of the tools you navigated life with back then even remotely apply today. It’s a drastically different world. And this isn’t a knock on you, it’s just s disconnect you are unaware of. I see it all the time in my 90 year old mother-in-law. Anything outside of an episode of 50s sitcom is pearl-clutchingly-gastly.

There is no easy answer here. I was all for the fight for fifteen pre-covid. But since? I saw exactly the same as everyone else. They were never going to let us keep it and we are still getting road dragged for trying. And this is why I say EAT THE RICH. We just saw what thoughts of people similar to them getting whacked for being a souless shill did. They’ll be looking for more control now. And we already know how America views the oligarchic corporatocracy.

I (respectfully) disagree with this opinion/premise on a fundamental level.

I've always seen the minimum wage as a hedge against employer exploitation.

Without that hedge, bosses/owners would be unrestrained from paying their workers pennies and nickels for jobs that should be paid in dollars. Consider it to be in line with worker protection statutes and child labor laws. Unconstrained capitalism is just as dangerous to the common worker as Communism is to The Worker's Voice. If there is no floor to what workers can be paid, workers will perform as virtual slaves.

I believe that a guaranteed minimum wage for anyone with a W2 is essential to the maintenance of a first-world society. That min wage may vary from state-to-state, adjusted for regional conditions, but I believe that we, as a nation, prosper when poor people stop being poor. A minimum wage sets the floor from which all can start their climb. No minimum wage? Quicksand.

A modern system that is based upon slave wage labor has rot at its foundation.
A civilized society finds a way for all its citizens to live at a level that elevates everyday life for all. It's hard work. And we fail- a lot. But we must keep trying.


I'm also a union man.

Have been since I was 16.
4 different unions over time, depending upon current job title.
I believe in collective bargaining. If the company does well, the workers who helped the company get there should share in the company's good fortune. Details to be hashed out in negotiations.

At one time, all the jobs I've worked were minimum wage. None of them are any more.
That's the kind of 'from the ground-up economics' that actually means something in a society's infrastructure.

I repeat: A modern capitalist system that is based upon slave wage labor at the bottom has rot at its foundation.


Look at how hard I'm actually working to educate you about something that should be second-nature to you... if you'd lived the second class-to-middle class life I lived-
...when your status allows you to toss off something as vacuous an tone-deaf as:


History has shown us, time and again: The Top always topple when the poor give out- or revolt.

We are fast approaching that time again. Right here in America.
And I'm making this prediction- right here, right now: the very same people who stormed the Capitol on Jan6 will be the very same people who storm the Capitol again... possibly, during 47's term.



None of this has anything to do with communism.
America exploits it's workers until it's forced to stop.
Always has been/prob always will be.


.02,
clem.

You're trying to make sense to someone who doesn't. What he was really saying is to hell with those at the bottom of the social ladder. Same as it ever was.

This is one of the dumber things I've read in this sub-forum, and that's saying something.


You either have to have basic labor laws doing their job of preventing corporations taking advantage of the working class, or you're going to have unions making a raging comeback and expanding their influence. Corporations have shown, time and time again and with increasing regularity, that nothing is off the table when it comes to the bottom line and taking care of shareholders. The days of the company giving any sort of priority to the workers has long passed.

J/C

I think minimum wage is a bit of a distraction. We need equitable/"fair" wages. And prices (mainly thinking healthcare.) That works at both ends of the scale. Focusing on the very bottom loses sight of how everything relates. Pushing the bottom higher and everything going up with it doesn't really address the real issues.

There is something inherently flawed in a system where having a lot of money makes it easier to get more, while having no money makes it harder to get any. The rich inevitably get richer. If it were an open limitless system, that would be one thing. But, we live in a limited, finite system. What one "takes" isn't available for someone else to earn, even if they put in the work. It can be made available, but almost always to the advantage of the one that has "hoarded" and is setting the terms. The desperation of the "have nots" makes them exploitable.

This begs the question how much is enough and it's often avoided cousin how much is more than enough. Too many people in charge are chasing more than their already more than enough. Despite the "Clarion call" of the American dream, not everyone can actually be obscenely wealthy.

Hitt, I walked into a Macdonald in west palm beach today to get lunch. I went to the counter and waited expectantly for a polite Macdonald employee to take my order. After a minute of waiting I noticed a sign on the wall. “Place your order on the kiosk”. So I went to one of the kiosks , ordered and paid, all with no human contact. When they called my number I stepped up and got my phone.

I asked the employee if a manager was available. The assistant manager came up. I asked why the kiosks. Her words, to reduce labor costs. If you increase labor costs you will accelerate that process.

You cannot change this economic fact. When the cost of an employee exceeds the economic value of that employee a business begins to search for alternatives.

Teenagers benefit from having a job, learning good work habits, bringing home a check. That is one of the triad of avoiding long term poverty. We need to make getting that job as easy as possible, not build barriers to it.

And I don't disagree with you for the most part.

As i said, minimum wage cuts in to the other hourly workers who have earned higher wages. The just don't get a $1.00 or more hourly increase. All you are doing is moving them back close to a starting point wage. I expect and welcome them making more money. You do have to remember I said I focused on the maximum wage i could earn. All jobs have a ceiling cap on wages. People have to understand that. I don't care if it is the kid hired to the shop floor at minimum wage or the recent engineer graduate, there is going to be a cap on your earnings.

As for wage stagnation, i agree, it did stagnate but lets don't get delusional that $1.75 got you very far back in 69, but I agree it got you further, but not by much.

j/c.

First, how many people make only minimum wage? And I'm not talking kids. My guess is not many at all. And if an adult is making minimum wage, it shows they have no skills, whatsoever. You can't walk into a McDonald's, or a gas station, and find people making minimum wage. Period.

When you start raising wages for people with no skill or ability, you're saying people with skill or ability need a raise. Inflation anyone?

You do not need a college education to make good money. You need a work ethic. Period.

May I remind you of the move to $20 per hour for fast food workers? Where'd that get them? As Keith said: Kiosks. And it still costs us more, should we choose to do business at those places.

What so many idiots on here don't understand is when you raise the cost of doing business, the business raises the costs of their product. It affects everyone, and doesn't help the people they think it will help.

Not many in this country earn "only" minimum wage. If they do, it's their fault. For kids getting a first time job, for adults looking to make a few extra bucks..............I know of NO ONE making minimum wage. If you know an adult that is working full time, and making minimum wage - you know a failure at life. Sound brutal? Nah.

2 nephews. Went to a vocational school. Don't get me wrong, they went in to the mechanical program. They knew more when they started than most adults do. Each of them, with no college education, are making well over $50 grand a year. Less than 1 year out of high school.

Opportunities are there for those that choose to look. For those that can do more than scan a bar code.

And there in lies the problem. "Well you're working but you don't have any skills. Therefore even though you work you don't deserve to be able to make a living."

Minimum wage was set as a starting point to provide a living wage......


People argue that the minimum wage should not be a living wage but that is the very reason it was established in the first place.

if corporations raise their prices due to cost, shouldn't the minimum wage also go up based on cost? the corporations are the ones raising the prices in the first place.

In response but not directed at you.

Focusing on the most vulnerable, keep the ire directed there instead of being directed at the wealth inequality created by the elite. Only cure is EAT THE RICH. And no potato heads, that doesn’t mean cannibalism. It means it’s time to address the wealth gap and tax the hell out of them. In the 50s there was a 94% tax on all money over a certain dollar value, insuring you could build wealth, but prolonging the inevitable creation of a Billionaire Oligarchy.

A Brief History of the Top Tax Rate

Both the individual and corporate income tax began with modest top rates of 7 percent and 1 percent, respectively. The top individual rate reached a high of 94 percent in 1944-45, and the top corporate rate reached a high of 53 percent in 1968-69.

That was the economic BOOM that MAGA so desperately wants to restore… by lowering taxes for billionaires. But it was those high rates that leveled the playing field. I’d be good with a return to those rates, to fix where we are now. MAGA should be too.

My dad taught me a valuable lesson decades ago. If the wealthy can keep the poor fighting against each other the rich won't be held accountable and the poor will never have any power to fix anything.

The goal is to keep the working class and the poor blaming each other for the problems that face us rather than the small minority that hold the vast majority of the wealth. Simple divide and conquer. And it continues to work well for them. Actually even more so now than ever before.

This is only the beginning of the automation coming too. Open AIs CEO just said the other day, “it’s time to replace people.” They are pitching 2K a month replacement AI agents to do the work one or more humans. Suddenly, 24K a year is the rate to replace higher paid workers. They’ll kill the desk jobs, customer service jobs, order takers, order processors, HR, CRM specialist, receptionist, and every other job they can replace. Much of that could be replaced in small companies for pennies a day… not dollars. That’s all gonna start rolling out late January 25. And NOBODY is prepared. NOBOPDY. Not the government, not the work force, none of them. At least it will solve the food worker shortage Trump is going to implement with mass deportations. Between killing or seriously cutting VA, EDU, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, ADC, and other social safety-net programs on top of automation kicking off hard… the chaces of Trump looking like Hoover by the time he’s out of office are pretty damn high.

And why we’re all distracted with the politics of the day, in late 25 the fleets of robots will start showing up for factories, warehouses, and most likely delivery jobs. They are already running massive warehouses for select compaines at over 90% automation. Those trials are for tweaks, the robots are ready to produce or already being produced for replacement workers.

And AI with voice can now handle any phone job, drive thru window, or take payments at all levels of industry. Somebody tell me what people are going to do? Bootstrap? Belt tighten? Or revolt?

Tell me something I don’t know. When Bush crashed the economy and costs me damn near everything I’d spent a lifetime building, the only advice I got from fellow republicans was sorry, better bootstrap, you should have prepared… BS. I did everything right and only lost it all because of wall street and big finance. How do you prepare for idiocy like that? We would have been this bad off after 08 if not for Obama, and I saw that. Same with Biden after the pandemic. I know dems don’t have all the answers and they , mostly the centrist dems, still serve the corporate overlords. But they damn sure haven’t sold us out like Republicans since 12-16 when all this hate driven racists crap started pouring out like it was natural and expected. Duped, is exactly what it was. Duped by the elite to install an oligarchy and crush common people. We’re all in FAFO Nation now.

Yes. And no.

When costs go up, so do prices, obviously.

What we do see, as well, is when unions demand higher wages, the cost of the products they make go up.

However, let's start at ground zero: Who is making minimum wage? Not many people. Maybe for a few months, as long as they show up for the job. Not even fast food workers start at minimum. Not even the cashier at a gas station is making minimum wage.

Businesses are invested in making money. Training an employee can take a lot of time, or a little amount of time - depends on the job. Businesses are not interested in paying, and getting nothing in return. Businesses are invested in their employees, so just canning them willy nilly is not something they want to do.



Think of a circle: My costs go up, my price goes up. But then the cost of what I charge the customer goes up, so the customer ups the prices on what they do. Round and round we go.

I still say not many people are making minimum wage - not at a full time job.

In an equitable world it would. Like it did back in the day. Back when we had thee 90%+ top tax brackets, business owners/corps had a certain amount they could add to their wealth annually and the rest would be taxed away if they didi not treat employees right with higher wages and pensions. And Americans were happy because econoomic mobility was real. From the late 60s to 87 the elite and corps wittled away those safe gaurds the same way they have any regulations to keep them in check. The protect the job creators scam Reagan pulled off accelerated the decline of the middle class and has led us to the verge of oligarchic rule. We need an FDR type that’s not afraid to level the playing field.

There were lots of other issues back then mostly racial and social injustice, poor being stigmatized for bankruptcies because that was only for the elite to protect their fortunes with… all kinds of crazy ass BS was fed to the working class to hate on the other working class folks. I’d also like to point out the drug epidemics throughout American history all started with the elite. All of them, after prohibition, I should clarify. The earlier addictions to things sold otc in pharmacies like laudanum was due mostly to lack of science and study.

https://checkyourfact.com/2019/01/09/fact-check-90-percent-taxes-eisenhower-1950s/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...s-tax-rates-under-eisenhower/9588111002/



There's a whole lot more info for you out there, if you choose to educate yourself.

I think what you’re citing in those articles subtly contains the point, though. Nobody effectively paying those tax rates resulted from a few different things, but mainly the fact that very few people fell within that margin, either organically or by using the money that would have crossed that margin to invest in corporations, employees, etc.

It seems pretty plain to see that since the higher tax rates have lowered that we have seen an explosion of billionaires and a widening of the wealth gap. Additionally, the deficit has also exploded. Eisenhower was NOT in favor of lowering taxes while a deficit was in place. That would put him at toe-to-toe odds with modern Republicans, Trump included.

This article actually has a good synopsis with quotes from him:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidm...hower-on-tax-cuts-and-a-balanced-budget/

So anyhow, we did see a lot more investment by corporations in employees, public works, etc. during Eisenhower because it also predated the Jack Welch “Value for shareholders over all else” mantra.

The simplest way to reduce debt and the deficit is a decrease in spending and an increase in revenue. The incoming administration has only discussed the former, by utilizing a clear-cut deleterious approach while wholly ignoring and/or moving in the opposite direction of increasing revenue, which would line up very well with the plethora of billionaires who have their hands in formulating the incoming administration’s plans.

If there was an increase to top marginal income, I think the biggest problem would be figuring out the non-income question where billionaires are leveraging stock to obtain billions in loans which never actually registers as income.

Do you think there is a chance in hell the U.S. reduces its deficit, let alone its debt? Please tell me you don't believe that.

First, cuts in spending? Who's going to go for that?????????????

Second, we can't raise taxes enough to erase the deficit OR the debt. Period.

X posts, and meme chat aside, I know it’s not a fix all, but when 97% of money is controlled by less than half the population, some major shake ups need to happen because the next cycle of shifting money to billionaires will probably mean the end of the American middle class living decent. And I get you’re not trying to protect the Billionaire class, but quite frankly, they hold too much control. You either take it back legislatively or one day soon,k the pitchforks come out and it’ll be UCH CEO treatment for the lot, or as many as the mobs can get to. Tell me I’m wrong?

Spend ten minutes on tiktok looking at people talking about that CEO. Chilling is an understatement if you are one of them. People wouldn’t be like that in an equitable scenario. It’s KARMA they said, because the CEO killed way more people with his denials. Do you really think 10 nor 20 million starving people will just lay down for Super Don when he pulls all of his agenda off? Hell no. And anybody openly supporting the man that did it… whew. But hey, it is FAFO season, back the billionaires if you think that’s the side your bread gets buttered on. We’ll compare notes in 5 years.

Oh, and Elon wants to dominate AI, so you can bet that the automation being fear mongered the last few years is here.

The top 10% of adults in the world own 85% of the world's total wealth, while the bottom 90% own the remaining 15%. The top 1% own half of the world's net wealth. [1]
The average person in the top 10% owns nearly 3,000 times the wealth of the average person in the bottom 10%. [2]
The bottom half of the world's population is almost entirely deprived of wealth. [3]

Generative AI is experimental.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth

[2] https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/global-distribution-household-wealth

[3] https://wid.world/news-article/whats-new-about-wealth-inequality-in-the-world/

All number are different, but the bottom line is the same, people like you and me will never be able to compete in a full oligarchic corporatocracy. And dreams of doing so are mostly fruitless wishing for opportunities that no longer exists. Soon anything less than 200K a year will mean you live in dire poverty. Is this the world we pass on to our kids?

What the middle class needs is an economy of their own, disconnected from corporate America and the government. A way to trade and barter for goods that doesn’t transfer all new wealth to the top. A fair playing field. And I have bo idea how. But something needs to give.

You can if you do it over time. Immediately, no of course it won’t happen but we have to reverse course. Those are the only two ways to do so.

As far as cuts in spending, that’s what Trump via DOGE has committed to doing. I am personally living the fallout of their supposed rhetoric to accomplish that.