[BrodiKennedy]

Or it just needs a tune

up.Capitalism doesnt have to be a ravenous beast bent on devouring everything it comes in contact with.It doesnt

need to function like a cancer or a deadly virus that infects its host only to lead to the death of the host and by

default its own demise.One of the resons we came up with labor laws in this country was to curb its apetite for

human misery.Thats another reson we came up with the minimum wage.Why does OSHA exist?All these things come together

to help direct and control the beast that is capitalism.

[BrodiKennedy]

Pancho,the reason that "the rich"

pay such high taxes is that "the rich" are comprised mostly of business owners.there are very few people in this

country theat qualify as "rich" that dont own thier own business.And by taxing "the rich," we are in fact taxing our

employers.Many of the complaints that come about the rich is the individuals that serve as CEO's and so forth that

have tax shelters to avoid paying high taxes inspite of seven and eight figure incomes.

This is actualy a big

part of my argument.The taxes that I refer to as increasing are the taxes on employers.Eighty percent of the jobs in

the united states are created in companies that have fewer than two hundred employees.Those businesses are called

"small businesses."When we tax those folks,we are in fact taxing our own ability to make a living and handing it to

a government so that they can dole it back to us alittle at a time.After paying for the enormous buracracy and the

millitary industrial complex and so forth.

[DoctorDulitlBest]

Or it just needs

a tune up.Capitalism doesnt have to be a ravenous beast bent on devouring everything it comes in contact with.It

doesnt need to function like a cancer or a deadly virus that infects its host only to lead to the death of the host

and by default its own demise.One of the resons we came up with labor laws in this country was to curb its apetite

for human misery.Thats another reson we came up with the minimum wage.Why does OSHA exist?All these things come

together to help direct and control the beast that is capitalism.

What is interesting about all these is that

they are external laws. You let the beast run wild, then try to damage control. (Reminds me of western medicine.)

Are there more "internal" things we could do to add some soul back to the machine? Wouldn't that be maximally

efficient?

The idea of radically revising the chartering process, and hence the very nature of corporations, was

my fundamental attempt to address this issue. But in no way do I regard that idea, at least in the way I sketched

it, as adequate.

[DoctorDulitlBest]

The taxes that

I refer to as increasing are the taxes on employers.Eighty percent of the jobs in the united states are created in

companies that have fewer than two hundred employees.Those businesses are called "small businesses."When we tax

those folks,we are in fact taxing our own ability to make a living and handing it to a government so that they can

dole it back to us alittle at a time.After paying for the enormous buracracy and the millitary industrial complex

and so forth.

There is some insight here. It's not taxes per se, but a particular facet and effect of taxes.



That is important, because you want to be able to act collectively as a society to do things, and doing so

requires, at least, something like government and taxes. You end up needing a different principle than

either "small government" or "low taxes" for that reason. Those principles translate into "no cooperative societal

projects", which would be self defeating for society.

But if you say you just have to make "exceptions" to the

small government/low taxes "rule", like people usually do, then you are left without a real, usable concept. So that

is not a solution.

Do you see we need a new way of thinking about it? A concept with a bunch of necessary

exceptions is sign of a need for a better concept. It's OK when you say government is too big, or taxes are too

high. But these are complaints and not solutions. A solution requires clear, optimal concepts that people can

organize around, whereas complaints do not. It doesn't even work to say minimal taxes/govt, because minimizing

something is like a complaint, not a solution. In other words, there have to be positive concepts, not negative

ones, if you want to create something with a meaningful purpose.

[BrodiKennedy]

Our government was initialy

created to include local,county,state and federal governments.Many of the things that we see being handled at the

federal level were orriginaly intended to be dealt with at the local or county or state level.Unfortunatly,many

local,county and state governments lacked the recources to handle some of them so as a result,the feds were asked to

step in.Corruption at the state level meant that your county got short changed while the neighboring county got the

lions share of the state funding.Cities or towns were neglected because the county seat had ties to some other

town,and they got the lions share.

The existance of an equitable method of tax spending required federal

intervention.Unfortunatly,in this day and age we see ass h*les like Ted Kennedy being re-elcted time and time again

simply for thier ability to "bring home the bacon." The pork you can secure for your state will dictate weather or

not you get a second term or get kicked to the curb.Thats one of the resons that we have Naval instalations in

Wyoming.

[BrodiKennedy]

One of the resons we live here as

opposed to any of the various overpopulated arab,african or asian countries is that A) The fruits of your labors

result in freedom B)You are not expected to live in squalor and die of dysentary at the age of thirty and C) There

is a sense of fairness built into our way of thinking and living,hence its illeagal to kick puppies,enslave children

and sell women into sexual bondage.(not sure about that last one but Im checking.)

the conditions you describe

above are in fact reasonable for any fresh faced twenty two year old college graduate to endure for a while,until

they get thier professional feet underneath themselves and start getting traction economicaly.But in many

states,occupancy laws prohibit living more than one and a half families per single family dwelling.Exceeding those

restraints can result in all manner of unpleasantness,including seeing your children shuffled off to live in a state

sponsored concentration camp(foster home.)

In response to your baisic economic model...you are absolutly

right.Simply raising wages wont realy fix anything.We have forty years of backsliding to try and repair,so alot of

very difficult changes need to be made gradualy.But dont make the mistake of thinking that those changes dont need

to be made.The middle class is struggling more and more each year in what used to be a fairly comfortable

existance.And once the middle class begins feeling ANYTHING,the solution will be just as painful as the problem

itself.Rome went thru similar things many times.Once poverty begins to effect the middle classes,things are getting

bad.

A wonderful book entitled The Nazi Seizure of Power details how it was the middle class in Germany that

ultimately enabled the Nazis to gain control because thier standard of living was being threatend.The middle classes

in Germany didnt realy feel the pinch of the German recession as baddly as the poor and working classes,but the fear

that it was comming was enough to motivate them to seek answers to a potential problem.The answers they came up

with,at the time...seemed to make sense.They unfortunatly found out otherwise.

We no longer have the luxury of

time to figure out what needs to change.Our economic structure in this country is built largely on debt,foreign

trade,risky investments,overheated realestate and so forth.Its the working class that forms the backbone of the way

our economy works.Thier paychecks are what feed the middle class.Once those paychecks start suffering,the eventual

fall out can be extremely painful for everyone.

Something to note is the snails pace with which things like the

Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NASDAQ have been "recovering."The loss of money at the low end has effected the

spending habbits of everyone.Throw in high energy costs and you get a stalled economy(dont get me started on the war

on terror and its "actual" cost.)Wage earners create jobs by spending,analists on Wall Street get paid to paint a

pretty picture to encourage the herd to spend more.But if the wage earners dont have the money to spend,they simply

dont.

And whatever you do,dont think that the low minimum wage only effects the lowest paid workers.Remember

that someone who earns $25.00 an hour has his pay scale calculated based on the minimum wage.It isnt just some

arbatrary number that someone pulled out of his ass one day while doing a crossword puzle.All of these things are

intimately interconnected.When one suffers,we all suffer eventualy.France is beggining to understand that leaving

the muzlim population with a forty percent unemployment rate doesnt realy work out too well.Generous government

handouts arennt enough.These people want the freedom that comes from being able to earn a living.

[zabiqapara]

Speaking of

wages:

Workers face paycheck pinch



After inflation, American workers earned 2.3 percent less

than they did a year ago.



Oh! and welcome back Panch! Where ya

been?

Seems like old home week, Jambat just showed up again!!

[evennyNiz]

in our neck of the woods,

$10 seems to be about the de facto minimum wage. I asked a woman at McDonald's at the drive thru window and they

start at $9, not sure what Walmart pays around here. About the cheapest apartments available are $1000 per month,

most go for $1200 or more. So, let's say you are making $10, that equals $1600 a month - $1100 for rent - Fed

taxes, Soc Sec taxes, leaves one about $250 a month for gas - what does one eat???

I've read that if the

minimum wage were fair, it would need to be about $16 an hour for unskilled labor. Sounds about right to me.

[BrodiKennedy]

Okay...that assumes that the cost

of living goes up a meer 5% over the corse of ten years...cost of living doubles every eleven years....do the math

again...

[DoctorDulitlBest]

Out here in Oregon the living

wage has been calculated by the experts to be about 11.00 per hour. According to my own calculations, I think a

person needs about 25K to meet basic expenses, unless "going without", in this economy. That is comparable to your

figures.

The cost of living here is not terrible, relatively speaking. But it is stunning how many get by on

less than that. People go without insurance, cars, new clothes, healthy food, health care; and do what they have to.

They also soak off their parents, grantparents, and other elder family members. When the baby boomers die, a lot

more people are going to be hurting. They also put a greater burden on emergency rooms, debt collection, prisons,

lawyers, and other expensive systems that poor people become involved in. (Banks do make a huge amount of money off

penalties from bounced $5 checks/debits, so that's good for them ).

Ultimately it's more efficient for

someone to get their money by earning it than from, say, "government handouts", to use a simplistic term. It's a

hell of a lot cheaper for us to give it to them that way than via a bloated system. And there is a big cost to

society to being filled with "poor people", or people who don't earn a living wage, by whatever reasonable

standards you want to use. Poor people are expensive; they have to use their own energy and resources for things

other than contributing to society; and they more often get stuck, with fewer opportunities in general to rise to a

greater level of contribution.

Politicians of both parties have been lying to us since the sixties; telling us

about how "the economy" keeps getting better. The shrinking middle class rarely gets to define what that

term, "the economy" means. The amount of poor people has particularly increased during the past four years or so,

while the wealth of wealthy individuals, as well as numbers of the very wealthiest, has increased

dramatically.

There are many complexities and sides to the picture, but the bottom line is that, since the

sixties, the ability of a family to get by on the earnings of one breadwinner has disappeared, for all except

the wealthiest. Real wages, and by "real" I mean accounting for everything, not just inflation, have done

nothing but go down steadily since that time.

In general, we have to unravel the big picture, and not just look

at minimum wage increases (see Pancho's #2 -- BTW, the figures in #3 might be controversial). I think they need to

play a part, ultimately; but not in isolation.

When you have people working their asses off full time doing

important work, they "deserve" to be paid a wage that enables them to live without creating more problems, for

themselves and society. By deserve I mean that it is not only their right, it is better for all of us.

For a

society to be doing any good at all, I believe you have to get everyone you possibly can to a certain quality of

living.

[BrodiKennedy]

Pancho,my finantial advisor (a

panhandler named Bob who lives under an overpass) tells me that if your investments are earning less than 8%,you not

breaking even.Factored into that are not only inflation,but the taxes that you wil invariably pay on your capital

gains.Some of those taxes can be deffered,but you pay them in the end anyway.Most investors,fund managers and so

forth shoot for ten percent.But 8% to 8.2% is about break even.

[BrodiKennedy]

Understand that "cost of living"

and "inflation" represent two completely different aspects of our economy.In 1938,most working class adults walked

to work.There was no need for a car or gas money.Electricity was less commonly used for esentials like cooling

food.(Ever seen a 1920's-30's vintage appartment? They still have ice boxes.)The number of things in our scociety

that require money to aquire or maintain has grown quite alot.And Im not talking about cable TV either.Just the

baisics assigned to having a "standard of living" have grown.

Telephones were an uncommon item in many housholds

as late as the 1960's.Try to get along without one now.Or even more fun,get a party line for you AND your

neighbors.It would be perfectly reasonable to expect people to live without health insurance...but for the fact that

in 1965 you could hand the doctor a five dollar bill and get a prescription and the prescription you picked up at

the pharmacy might cost you an hour or two worth of wages.My last prescription cost me three days wages and it was

considered CHEAP.Never mind what the doctor wanted for his services.

Inflation typicaly refers to the increase

in the cost of staple items.Housing,milk,fuel and so forth.Cost of living is a relative term applied to a region or

area where the "cost" is higher or lower than average,or an increase in the esentials required to have a standard of

living.The cost of living here on beautiful Bainbridge Island for example,puts an inexpensive,single family home in

the $380,000 to $400,000 price range.And those prices are considered good.I have seen similar homes in other areas

priced below $100,000. The difference? In an area with $100,000 homes you can expect to max your wages out in the

high $25,000 range.

The unfortunate problem with a metropolitan area with high wages is that the number of high

wage jobs is limited.Housing costs go up regardless of peoples ability to pay them.With the influx of highly paid

software types,our areas housing market exploded.But it left huge numbers of people lining up at food banks.Sure,you

could cast your thoughts of maybe landing a good job asside and move to a more reasonably priced area...Wal Mart

here I come!Or you could move just far enough outside the area that you could still commute...at three dollars a

gallon for fuel.Been there,done that.And done it with thousands and thousands of others every morning.

The sad

part of that is that it has been going on in or around almost every major city in the united states for years.So you

have a choice of paying for higher housing costs,or paying all the associated expenses involved with longer and

longer commutes.The whole point behind the creation of the minimum wage in the first place was to insure that if you

were working at a job,helping your employer to become disgustingly wealthy,your labors should at the very least

gaurantee you a standard of living fit for a human being whos efforts are productive.

Understand something...I

do not berate or belittle employers for not paying enough.Most of the employers I have worked for would have loved

to be able to afford higher wages.Higher wages mean lower turnover,happier and more productive employees and a

better work environment.What has changed over time is the relationship between tax burdens and wages.Ask any

employer with a couple dozen people working for them and find out how drastic those taxes can be.That translates

into less money for employees,employee bennefits and so forth.It also translates into increased prices for

consumers.And that hurts everybody.

Now go back and look at tax rates in 1960,65,70,75,80,85...and so forth.The

sharp climb in those taxes being paid by buisinesses and corperations correspond to the decline of wages.A former

coworker of mine who is now retired,started a family on his minimum wage job and his wifes part time minimum wage

job in 1967.They even managed to scrape together a down payment on a house.I would like to see someone do that

now.

Okay...Im gonna stop now...my meds are starting to kick in

[BrodiKennedy]

I was reading along after I

logged onto the internet when I bumped into an article that realy made my day.Im sure one or two of you have heard

my rants and raves in the past regarding the sinking wages in the U.S. And I am reasonable sure that many of you

have either glossed over my rantings or rejected them out of hand.But Im used to that.When I rant to people about it

on the street or at coffee the whole toppic seems to fly right over thier heads.This link leads right into it.



http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/

SavingandDebt/P134742.asp?GT1=7392

In 1938,Congress passed the Federal Minimum Wage Act.They established

that .25 cents per hour was the MINIMUM REASONABLE LIVING WAGE.That would provide an individual with

food,shelter,clothing and baisic expenses.Adjusted for cost of living and inflation over the last 67 years,would put

the Federal Minimum Wage at nearly $16.00 an hour.Its interesting that "prevailing wage" is calculated in exactly

that fasion.Companies that perform contract work for the government are required by law to pay "prevailing

wages."The hard numbers fluctuate up and down slightly,but in point of fact,federal jobs and contract jobs typicly

start in that neck of the woods.

The usual method of calculating wages has been a very simple formula for

years.Unskilled labor starts at...minimum wage.Semi-skilled labor typicaly gets minimum wage plus 50% and works its

way up to skilled labor,which begins around minimum wage x 2 and goes up from there...to max out around 4x minimum

wage.The government contractors get around paying more that double by putting people on salery and calling it

good.But with a minimum wage that isnt even half of what it should be,whats a family to do?

The big seperation

began in the mid 1960's.All at once it was being discovered that there were alot of very expensive Government

programs that were going to need funding.There was a nice little war going on in South East Asia and a whole pile of

expensive toys being purchased to ward off the Soviet menace.The war on poverty began in earnest.And that is a war

that we are now,ultimatly loosing because jobs dont pay living wages anymore.All of these neat things cost alot of

money.And there are only two people in the United States who pay taxes.Consumers pay it in higher prices and

emloyees pay it in lower wages.After that its just a question of who writes the actual check.

The article above

indicates that families at or below $57,343 anual income are in trouble.Whats that work out to based on what the

minimum wage should be and its effect on the wages above it over the course of a forty hour work week?

[SinyugiN]

I have a few critiques:

1.

That number for what the minimum wage should be is way off. If you took that 25 cents and adjusted for an average

inflation rate of 5% over 67 years, the minimum wage would be $6.57. Discounting the huge inflation in parts of the

80's, I don't think inflation has been that high for 67 years, meaning that I think the number should be a little

lower.

2. You can make the minimum wage argument all you want, but the fact is that the minimum wage exists

because the supply for people is higher than the demand for people, meaning that companies would have to pay

less than the minimum wage in order to have a 0% unemployment rate and still have all businesses remain

profitable. The question is, do you want a high unemployment rate or a low minimum wage? The higher the minimum wage

is, the less jobs will be available, thus increasing the unemployment rate. It's a tradeoffs between the number of

jobs and the pay of jobs.

3. That $57K number is one of those amounts that is probably for a high number of

family members. My mom was a single parent raising two children, and she made a lot less than that. We were

poor, but we were able to survive. In college, I calculated that I could live on $7K per year by myself on the dirt

cheap rent I was paying and living on the cheapest food available (after all, we are talking about being able to

live, not being able to live comfortably) with no car (you could walk or take the metro to work) and almost no

additional expenses (Good Will, anyone?). Adding additional family members does not increase rent (unless you want

to add more bedrooms, but I am still going on the basis of being able to live, not live well - please don't say you

can't because I still practically live like this with the occasional perk here and there...probably an extra $2K

(housing not included because I live in an expensive city rather than my cheap college room - I could live in a

worse neighborhood) than my estimate last year...one day I'll learn not to be cheap). That is still below the

minimum yearly wage of $5.45 per hour (Is that what it is now? It was $5.15 when I worked at that rate.), which is

over $11,000 per year. This is not including the fact that you could live with someone else who also works and save

money on rent by living together.


It would be nice to have a higher minimum wage (anyone who has worked for

minimum wage would know that), but I believe in taking personal responsibility and doing whatever it takes so that

you can earn a job that makes more than that if you are so worried (or work in one place long enough to earn

seniority and make more than that amount). You can also get a second job (again, I practice what I preach - I have

worked two jobs before, and I may begin again soon for extra $$$ if I can suck up the courage to go back to a

low-paying job to supplement my nice-paying job).

It's not a life of luxury, but I think a person can make it

in this country if he or she puts their mind to it. It is a lot better than raising unemployment. Feel free to

refute my facts/opinions, but I was just doing as you asked and fighting the good fight.

[SinyugiN]

That assumes that the cost of

living goes up 5% every year...you are assuming the value is 6.5%. In fact, the average inflation rate from

1938-2002 was 4.01% (source: Economic History Services,

http://eh.net/hmit/inflation/inflationq.php). Using that

figure, the minimum wage today should be, according to your argument, less than $4 per hour (I have $3.48,

but it could be 4% more or less than that depending on what year you are calculating it for). The minimum wage is

much higher than that today.

[DoctorDulitlBest]

Is inflation the only real

component in cost of living changes?

[Unonounaple]

You are preaching something

I've been on about for a long time. Taxes hurt the middle class and poor people no matter who the tax is levied on.

Over the years there have been innumerable measures to shift the tax burden to the wealthy with no mention or maybe

no realization that the burden is just going to take money away from the working people. I wonder if it isn't done

that way on purpose, most people don't see beyond the end of their noses. I wonder how many realize what you and I

both are harping about, that the tax dollars always come from the consumer and we are the consumer? The solution,

the only real solution is to cut taxes, period! The only way to do that is to cut government. The alternative is an

ever increasing tax burden on each and every person in the US. Sooner or later something has to give as tax dollars

are not a bottomless well to draw from.

On another related subject, today I gave two presentations to high

school freshman classes on the subject of educational goals. One of the topics covered was earning a living and how

much it takes to live in today's world. The figures for expenses were deflated about 30% yet it clearly

demonstrated that you cannot live in any reasonable fashion on minimum wage, not and pay taxes, have health

insurance and a decent car. Why do we have a minimum wage if you cannot afford to eat and keep a roof over your head

while working?

[SinyugiN]

I like your addition of the

"living wage", DST.

By the way: #3 figures are personal (I don't think the word "controversial" should describe

personal experience, but you might have been taking it as my expression of a fact rather than an anecdote...I don't

think there is such thing as a "fact" that a person can live on $x amount or not because everyone's definition of

"living" is going to be different...it's not completely black and white).

If you would like my math on it, I

was paying less than $300 per month while sharing the most disgusting house you have ever seen in college and paying

less than $200 per month in groceries. We will round up and say I spent $350 per month on rent and $250 on

food/toiletries/other necessities. That is $7,200 per year. Since I rounded up, you can buy clothing, furniture,

etc. at the Good Will for $.25 per shirt and practically nothing for furniture, etc. Also, I had the benefit of

being young and healthy, so although I did not visit the doctor or dentist for the year or so that I was calculating

my expenses (but I went before college, so you can call me out on it), it does not include healthcare. However, I

am still calculating the basics to live, not to live comfortably. Also, if your employer had benefits, you could

probably be covered that way (albeit not very well for a minimum wage job). I'm not saying it's pretty. I'm

saying it's possible. I did it for a whole year...I could have kept going had the need been there.

[DoctorDulitlBest]

The

timeless insight that wisdom results from considering the bigger picture can be applied to any field of endeavor,

including economics. Whenever a problem is unsolvable within a context, you have to enlarge the context. In a bigger

picture paradox ceases to be paradoxical.

To expand, the classic tradeoff in Pancho's #2 points to the need to

look at a bigger picture than just the wage/employment tradeoff, which seems like an unsolvable paradox.

So

let's try to enlarge the picture Pancho painted in #2.

In order for there to be a demand for people, there have

to be people with disposable income they can choose to put toward different goods and services provided by people.

The more free the spending choices people have, the greater the variety of goods and services that will be

needed.

In order for that to happen to the max, the most people possible have to be making free choices about

spending, and then spending; rather than being trapped in poverty; having their expenditures predetermined; or over-

saving/investing, which is less efficient for creating a demand for people.

In general, this all points toward

creating a bigger middle class, which is the opposite of what's been happening. I am defining "middle class" here

by what I said in the last paragraph.

In nurturing and building a larger middle class, you increase wages

without decreasing employment, and transcend the paradox.

A large middle class is key to a lot of factors in a

successful society.

Another factor in the bigger picture is that in order for there to be employment, people have

to need help. In order for people to need help they have to be involved in projects that become more successful over

time. In order to do this, they have to be using their talents in a maximal way to meet maximal needs. This also

increase both wages and employment.

This points toward helping people achieve their potential in the context of

human needs.

To do this we first have to have the biggest possible picture of what humans need; e.g., as Maslow

did; versus wants, which are less efficient to fill, since filling them does not contribute to potential as

powerfully or necessarily. Needs are also more stable and reliable than wants.

Humans need more than

food/clothing/shelter. "Fulfillment" is a state of thoroughly met needs.

So second, we need to support people to

meet the full spectrum of human needs, through education, etc.

By logical necessity, this all implies an

economics of fulfillment as opposed to wealth. "Wealth economics" create rich and poor people without a

middle class, where no one is fulfilled except by accident.

Virtually no economists talk about it this way. Our

economy is built on a wrongheaded notion of economics, an economics isolated off from the interconnected, big

picture of life.