George Will and the abolishment of the minimum wage

January 4, 2007

The political timing is certainly advantageous for congressional Democrats — just as the new 110th Congress is slated to pass a long-overdue increase in the federal minimum wage, George Will, one of the nation’s most prominent conservative political columnists, comes out against having a minimum wage altogether.

A federal minimum wage is an idea whose time came in 1938, when public confidence in markets was at a nadir and the federal government’s confidence in itself was at an apogee. This, in spite of the fact that with 19 percent unemployment and the economy contracting by 6.2 percent in 1938, the New Deal’s frenetic attempts had failed to end, and perhaps had prolonged, the Depression.

Today, raising the federal minimum wage is a bad idea whose time has come….

[T]he minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities’ prices. Washington, which has its hands full delivering the mail and defending the shores, should let the market do well what Washington does poorly. But that is a good idea whose time will never come again.

This will gain traction with … absolutely no one. Bush is afraid to veto an increase, giving Dems the upper hand. Congressional Republicans will be afraid to vote against an idea with 80% support nationwide. Indeed, how many GOP officials are prepared to stand up and say, “Democrats want a $7.25 minimum wage, but I prefer we eliminate the federal guarantee altogether”?

Will also has impeccable timing with regards to headlines. This week, we learned that Home Depot’s beleaguered CEO, who led a company that lost value and market share under his watch, was rewarded with a $210 million severance package. The next day, Americans pick up their newspapers to see George Will say that raising the hourly minimum from $5.15 to $7.25 is foolish and unnecessary.

Yeah, that ought to go over well.

As for the substance of Will’s argument, I think Oliver Willis summarized reality quite well.

George Will speaks the gospel of the GOP elite and libertarians with his argument that the minimum wage should be $0. Trust the market, he says, and wages will be set to a decent level. Of course, that’s what got us here in the first place. Blindly trusting the market to do what’s right without any policing inevitably leads to the market’s participants doing everything within their power to line their pockets and bollocks to everyone else.

The whole reason we’ve got minimum wage law and other labor laws is that left to their own designs businesses colluded with each other, fixed their prices, and paid their workers next to nothing in horrible life-threatening conditions (and some of those laborers were children).

Capitalism is great and it works, but without policing, rules, and enforcement it is the playground of devils – devoid of morality and a pariah on our society. We learned that lesson collectively already, we won’t repeat it. America’s past that.

Well, some of America is past that.

I find George Will’s columns a commodity, too. I could get the same pompous asshole for 1/100th the price elsewhere (like a local bar or even listening to some dispeptic RW blowhard.)

If you could buy George Will for what he’s actually worth and sell George Will for what he thinks he’s worth then we could all retire rich.

  • I agree that the minimum wage should be abolished- It is, after all, ridiculous that someone can work 40 hours or more every week, yet still not make enough money to get out of poverty.

    So, George Will, let’s get rid of that minimum wage, and replace it with a Living Wage, indexed to market rates for housing/ food/ etc. Someone who works their ass off shouldn’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.

  • George will is right. Also, there should be no rules against shooting poor people and taking the gold in their teeth for one’s self. And after an industrious go-getter kills a vagrant and takes the fillings in his teeth, it should be his right to eat the bum’s flesh raw. That is just the free market at work.

    ***

    “The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed works. Greed cuts through, captures and clarifies the essence of the evolutionary spirit.” -Gordon Gecko from Wall Street

  • Let’s have George live on a low wage for about 6 months (or make it open ended), and see if he changes his tune. Give him 2 kids to care for, set him up in whatever housing he thinks he can afford on the low wage (not even minimum, just what’s paid in fast food or janitorial services).
    My point is that elete assholes like Will are so far removed from reality that they need it shoved into their faces for a prolonged period of time.

  • What Castor said.

    The minimum wage should be indexed to the cost of living for the area, it’s silly to think a single number could be fair no matter where you are located.

  • Has anyone seen any proposals on capping executive pay? There are quite a few comments from Buffett and Munger about the executive pay becoming too high, but I’ve never seen any discussion on what mechanisms could be set in place to limit it. It seems the obvious answer of BoD oversight is not working.

  • people like will confuse the models that are taught in econ 101 with reality. if that were the case, economics wouldn’t need upper-level courses, but it does, because we don’t live in a free market economy.

    we live in an economy dominated by oligopolies who do their best to retain their entrenched positions.

    in that economy, a minimum wage is a vital necessity.

    as for Former Dan’s comment, i’m no blog triumphalist, but sooner or later, some intelligent publisher is going to realize precisely this point: the entrenched op-ed pundit class is overpaid and underproductive compared to the blogging class, and they’re collecively dumber, too!

    it’s an open question what form newspapers will take in the future, but it’s not an open question that highly paid op-ed pundits will go the way of the betamax and VHS recorder.

    as it happens, donald graham is not smart enough to be that publisher, so george will may make it to retirement – you can’t have everything….

  • You know, every time I read/hear/see some arrogant, upper-class shitbag like Will trying to find new ways to screw most of us, I get pissed.

    Look … my family makes around $75,000 a year. We don’t have cable, long distance, or a cell phone. We don’t go out to eat. Hell, I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie at a theater.

    But thanks to medical bills, end-of-year property taxes, a car that needs $800 worth of work, and an employer who only gave management raises because there wasn’t enough money to give the rest of us any bump in pay, we may have to file for bankruptcy.

    While Will and other rich, primarily old white guys write their asinine op-eds — most of which turn out to be spectacularly wrong, and all for six-figure salaries — the rest of us are trying to find ways to pay our goddamn electric bill (which just went up 30%, natch).

    So you know what, George Will? Fuck you. Fuck you to hell. The world would be a much better place if you, and others like you (including the CEOs who keep getting richer while their employees find second jobs) would die. Seriously … do us all a favor and hang yourself.

    (Okay … sorry about the rant. But I feel a little better now.)

  • Here’s a proposal: let’s return to the Sumptuary Laws (aka Sumptive Laws) of Tudor England. In our terms, these laws fixed MAXIMUM wages for each social rank by specifying the values of goods which could be worn, number of dishes served at meals, etc.. Let’s begin with this one: No one in the United States can receive more annual income (from any source) than the officially designated Presidential salary ($400,000). Or, even better, the Vice-President’s official salary ($186,300).

    picky side note: it annoyed me during the Vietnam era that people called for “abolishment” of the draft when we already had a pefectly useable word, namely, “abolition”. They both have the same number of syllables, but the latter is easier to say and has a much nobler tradition behind it.

  • Everyone knows that the minimum wage could hurt “small business”. You know like Kellogg’s and those other small businesses that Bush meets with.

  • …the New Deal’s frenetic attempts had failed to end, and perhaps had prolonged, the Depression

    The idea that the New Deal failed to end the depression is an old canard of the right. While it does have an element of truth to it, it misses the point. The structural changes made Roosevelt such as Social Security and regulation of markets has provide more stability to our economy and helped to prevent further catastrophic economic collapses.

    You can read an account of the conditions which resulted in the Great Depression here.. These are conditions which we have to some degree returned to and to which Will and his cohort would have fully return to.

  • “This will gain traction with … absolutely no one.”

    Except anyone with an understanding of elementary economics.

    Which obviously does not include you.

  • Hey! It’s great to see that the Post has decided to give George the ‘Art Buchwald slot’ writing the Capital humor column. It’s a novice mistake to do the easy Swiftian modest proposal schtick of course, but George hasn’t been writing humor (intentionally) for that long. Maybe he’ll get funnier.

  • Haik

    get pissed

    former CEO of Home Depot got 211 million to go away; um how many families could that feed?

  • Haik–
    Yeah … I know. One would think that earning that much — in Kansas City, no less — wouldn’t be an issue.

    But considering I’ve had two back surgeries and countless other medical issues (my body’s warranty expired in early 2003, apparently), we’re now $20K in debt, which is spread out over pretty much every hospital in the metro area.

    Add in child care ($700/month), a 60% increase in insurance premiums (to $400/month), and nickel and dime bills, and all of sudden you’re like, “WTF happened?!”

    It’s a good thing I write financial education articles — otherwise, I wouldn’t have the knowledge necessary and we wouldn’t have made it this far.

  • Except anyone with an understanding of elementary economics.

    So you see no issues in treating human resources as a commodity? I’m by no means an economist, but it seems that theory hasn’t worked to well for fuel prices.

    And what about proven history — namely, that companies very, very, very rarely do what’s best for their employees and instead find new and innovative ways to line the pockets of upper management?

  • George F. Will is just trying to rally opposition to raising the minimum wage by suggesting that having a minimum wage is anti-conservative (un-American?).

    I doubt it will gain many advocates and it does make Will look (even more) the fool.

  • “[T]he minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0” … And slavery should be legal again. Think of how positively the markets would respond to that news!

    But maybe Will is onto something … a federally mandated minimum wage may not be as necessary as a federally imposed maximum wage. After the news of Home Depot’s ex-CEO Nardelli stealing $210 million dollars earned by the company’s employees but not by himself, a cap on such corporate criminal excess might be a necessary adjunct to slave labor wages. (Good idea Ed! I just noticed your post above.)

    If the right has so much faith in markets, why do they fight so hard to abolish the markets for street drugs and prostitution? Isn’t that the market just doing what society finds so necessary? Or can they admit sometimes the markets can be wrong.

  • One note for post #20 —

    While treating fuel as a commodity has led to higher prices (and thus more profit), I don’t see how treating workers as such would lead to higher salaries since that would cut profits.

    There’s a reason that companies outsource their work — so they can pay some poor schlub in China $1 a day and make more money. If we removed the mimum wage, what’s to stop companies from doing that here?

  • I wonder if Will likes to dress up as the millionaire from the cover of the Monopoly board game, burning a $100 with his cigar while reading passages from The Gospel of Wealth.

  • Dee #18 I know the Home Despot guy got a huge severnce, but wealth doesn’t bother me as much as poverty. The pathetic school nutrition programs in this country upset me more.

    Unholy #19 I’m sorry about your back problems. That sucks. However 20K is not much debt. I have twice that in school loans alone. Still, I’d rather be broke with my good back, than rich with a bad back like you. Good luck.

    KipEsquire #16 Perhaps you have an understanding of “elementary economics” but no understanding of anything beyond that. We all get the theories of supply and demand you are referring to. Do you get that business can’t exist without regulation, rule of law and the governments that create social stability on which all ventures are built. Minimum wage laws are part and parcel of the larger body of regulation without which business would not be able to operate. Don’t be such a dufus
    .

  • A few facts without comment.
    From KipEsquire’s blog:

    I’ve lived in New York City since 1993 — in Bay Ridge and Kensington in Brooklyn and Yorkville and Murray Hill in Manhattan before buying my current apartment on the Upper East Side three years ago.

    From the Wikipedia entry on the Upper East Side:

    The two square-mile (5 km²) neighborhood, with elegant rows of landmark townhouses, once known as the ‘Silk Stocking District’, has some of the most expensive real estate in the United States, and is believed to be the greatest concentration of individual wealth in the nation.

    And lastly KipEsquire’s comment at #16

    “This will gain traction with … absolutely no one.”

    Except anyone with an understanding of elementary economics.

    Which obviously does not include you.

  • What Will and the rest of the Libertarian morons fail to understand is that “traffic laws” are not written for the 95% of us who do the right thing anyway. They’re for the moron weaving through traffic at 90mph on a rainy day yakking on his cellphone and leaving disaster in his wake. They’re for the Ignoranuses (morons who are simultaneously assholes) who can’t see beyond the end of their nose and think the rules don’t apply to them. You can’t “voluntarily” adhere to civilized behavior with a barbarian around who refuses to recognize the “rules” unless there is a penalty for his failing to do so.

    That’s what regulation is all about.

  • $0 is about 10 bucks more than the value of Will’s drivel.

    A few facts things on a blog without comment.
    From KipEsquire’s blog:

    I’ve lived in New York City since 1993 — in Bay Ridge and Kensington in Brooklyn and Yorkville and Murray Hill in Manhattan, my parent’s basement in Yonkers. [B]efore buying my current apartment on the Upper East Side three years ago. moving into the basement of the parents of this girl I met through MySpace.

    Trolls, incredible in more ways than one.

  • I’d love to see a 100% tax on all income (from any source) over $1 million/year. That one thing would do more to kick the economy back to where it should be than anything else.

    Here in my business, paying movie stars $20 million didn’t have any “trickle down” effect – it had a “trickle up” effect as everyone else was required to take a pay cut (well-known character actors without whom a movie doesn’t work being told they only get SAG daily scale, writers being told they only get scale, etc.) to “keep costs down”, and that pay cut would have been steeper had there not been union-backed “minimum wage” agreements. The same thing has been true in the rest of the economy as the pay raises people should have gotten in a rising economy over the past 30 years were “sucked up” for executive/CEO pay. Under the “free market” – at least in my experience in Hollywood – the end result is the only people who get to work are the sons and daughters of the upper middle class (and above) who can afford to “intern” for a “$0” wage.

    What happened to Unholy Moses – unfortunately – doesn’t surprise me a bit. We’re all one instant away from the disaster of someone else doing something terribly wrong right in front of us(or our body doing it) while we’re doing everything right – having had that happen six months ago when I was nearly killed in a car accident when the bozo pulled out of a blocked driveway without looking, close enough in front I couldn’t say “oh shit!” before the impact. I then lost the writing gig I had just gotten because for about two months I couldn’t “think straight” for the constriction of blood to my brain from being thrown around. All of a sudden you go from “hanging in there” to going over the cliff – you’re out of work, no insurance, and the ER exam from the accident discovers the fact you have prostate cancer.

  • Actually, folks, I’ve read Kip’s blog off and on for a while now, and he’s never come across as a horrible guy (and, for the record, I didn’t direct him to this site).

    The fact he has yet to respond here is surprising, since I never thought he’d do the drive-by post thing. Of course, I don’t know him personally, so maybe he is actually a ginormous Libertarian asshat.

    **shrugs shoulders**

  • “Do you get that business can’t exist without regulation, rule of law and the governments that create social stability on which all ventures are built”.

    I thought that’s why businesses pay taxes in order to maintain a government that employs regulation, rule of law which in turn breeds social stability. But you also argue businesses must be required to pay unskilled laborers higher wages as well?

    (And People, please stop with the references to Home Depot CEO, this economy is largely built on the unkown small and medium sized business — which this new proposal will hit the hardest).

    Bottom line: In a free market, those with higher skill sets which are more demanded will typically get paid higher wages. If you work on the line of a manufacturing plant and do something any other perosn in this world can do, then the fact is you’re not going to get paid a lot. Answer me this: When the unemployment numbers start to go up as a result of higher wage demands on businesses, will it be management’s fault in your eyes?

    All this is law is going to do is create more employers/employees to enter the black market and pay/earn wages off the books, thus reducing benefits for more workers in this country (like healthcare, social security, etc.), damage the tax base and provide more incentive of illegal alliens to hop the borders!

  • Damn, Tom … that’s gotta suck.

    But it’s true — just a year The Mrs. and I were enjoying our new house, had all of our bills lined up neatly and well, and even though things were tight, we had a few extra bucks here and there.

    Then the student loan forbearance ended, adding another several hundred bucks … and daycare went up … and a few other medical issues occurred … and energy prices spiked … and health care premiums went up … and … well, just one fucking thing after another.

    We budget, track every penny, and do what we can to pay down bills as fast possible, then roll that monthly payment to the next bill, and so on. But last night it all fell apart and we’re like, “Um … we’re, like, totally screwed.” And that’s after the smallest Xmas we’ve ever had ($150 TOTAL).

    And anyone not named Bill Gates could have it happen to them in a heartbeat. Even if you make six-figures a year you can still be on the edge depending on what life throws your way.

    The simple point (finally!) is that not everyone who is struggling financially is in that boat due to irresponsible choices. In fact, I’d bet money I don’t have that most people who are in a bind got that way through no real fault of their own.

    So for Will to say that companies should be allowed to pay their workers whatever the hell they want ignore the fiscal realities millions face each and every day. Because, once again, history has proven that companies look out for their money first, and their workers … oh, about 135th.

  • And People, please stop with the references to Home Depot CEO, this economy is largely built on the unkown [sic] small and medium sized business — which this new proposal will hit the hardest.

    Bullshit.

    Those medium and small companies often don’t pay minimum wage. Huge multinationals like McDonalds and Wal-Mart pay their workers minimum wage.

    Also, from my experience, CEOs do about half the work that the regular workers do. In fact, most companies I’ve worked for could’ve been just as successful (or not) if a half-retarded dachsund was the CEO.

    Sure, there are the Jack Welch exceptions, but for the most part CEOs aren’t worth one tenth of what they get paid becaue they don’t actually do a goddamn thing to contribute to the bottom line. Unless you considering playing golf five times week work.

  • “Those medium and small companies often don’t pay minimum wage.”

    You know, you might be right — they pay people off the books!

  • “Sure, there are the Jack Welch exceptions, but for the most part CEOs aren’t worth one tenth of what they get paid becaue they don’t actually do a goddamn thing to contribute to the bottom line”.

    Moses if its so easy.. how come you aren’t a CEO?

    Listen, I’m not defending their pay, it is excessive in many cases… but that is for the owners of the corporation to decide, not for you or the government. I am for full disclosure of public CEO pay, but not the regulation of it.

  • JRS–
    To be honest, I’m not a big fan of regulating CEO pay either. And the reason I’m not a CEO is because I have two English degrees instead of an MBA. And I’m okay with that.

    What I’m not okay with is this:

    In 2005, I created a direct mail piece that directly resulted in $7 MILLION in new business.

    During that same time, our company’s president came up with three ideas that COST the company $2.2 million.

    That year, I got a 3% raise and a 1% bonus.

    Meanwhile, he got a 100% raise, and his bonus was twice that new doubled salary.

    And that’s the problem with the current corporate culture — those who do the work, do it well, and are happy to do it, get hosed, while those who don’t do a lot of work, and don’t do it that well, get rewarded.

    It’s like giving a baseball player with a .250 average a $14 million contract, while the guy who flirted with batting .400 gets a $1 million deal. It simply makes … no … sense.

    I wish I had a viable solution that didn’t involve regulating the crap out of corporate pay structures. But I don’t.

    I do, however, know that raising the minimum wage would not harm the economy (a claim made in ’95 that never happened), while eliminating it would only put those lower down on the company food chain in an even worse position than they are now.

  • Unholy,

    I’m with you.

    I had to get my car fixed over the holidays and while I was waiting, the car dealership had the radio tuned to AM talk radio so I listened to a talk show host blather on about how the average Canadian CEO made 9 mil while the average worker made 38K and how it was so grand. A few callers called in saying it was bullshit, but weren’t articulate enough to say why which the talkshow host took advantage of. I kinda wanted to call in, but then my car was repaired.

    I don’t get all green eyed if someone makes more than I do. What burns me up isn’t the fact that an incompetent idiot gets paid $210million, but rather the fact that they got it by cutting costs, outsourcing jobs, reducing benefits and generally fucking everyone who depends on their jobs for their livelyhood. That money is what THEY took out of their workers pockets and GAVE to themselves. Fuck’em all.

  • “And that’s the problem with the current corporate culture — those who do the work, do it well, and are happy to do it, get hosed, while those who don’t do a lot of work, and don’t do it that well, get rewarded.”

    Correction, that’s the problem with SOME business cultures. You’re taking a personal experince and applying it way too broadly. What you should have done was walk your ass out the door and take your skill set elsewhere where they would reward you more. If every business was run the way your employer’s was, this economy would have broken down decades ago.

  • “But you also argue businesses must be required to pay unskilled laborers higher wages as well?” – JRS Jr.

    You bet I do! When laws exist to protect only the richest people of a country it’s call Opression. I don’t want to live in that country.

    Why – do – you ?

  • Correction, that’s the problem with SOME business cultures. You’re taking a personal experince and applying it way too broadly. What you should have done was walk your ass out the door and take your skill set elsewhere where they would reward you more. If every business was run the way your employer’s was, this economy would have broken down decades ago.

    You are correct that it’s not the case for every company.

    But it has been the case for every single employer I’ve worked for during the past decade. And I know because I’ve edited all of their SEC filings and/or annual reports.

    I’m not against people making more than me — I like writing and have no issues with not being rich. What I do have a problem is not being compensated for what I achieve, while those higher up get overly compensated for what they do not achieve. It’s just bassakwards.

    There’s also the issue of what would happen if wages were treated as commodities. In order to prove this, let’s revisit Econ 101 (which I had about 16 years ago, so take it for what it’s worth).

    Commodities rise and fall depending on the market. If there is more supply than demand, the price goes down. When the demand outstrips supply, prices rise.

    To apply that to wages would be catastrophic.

    Yes, it’d be nice and dandy during periods of low unemployment—more jobs than workers would lead to higher salaries (just see nursing salaries today).

    But when unemployment was high, employers could cut salaries across the board without any concern. After all, with fewer jobs, what the hell are you going to do, quit? And do what? There wouldn’t be any jobs.

    Granted, this type of salary fluctuation happens already. But to completely eliminate any type of absolute minimum could turn a city like, say, Flint, Michigan, into the new Marianas Islands, where workers have little choice but to work 16 hours a day for about a nickel an hour.

    Quite frankly, I find it frightening, sad, pathetic, and amazingly immoral to all but ignore those workers who, for whatever reason(s), find themselves depending on a job that pays jack shit to survive.

    If that’s where we’ve arrived as a society – where the needy are set aside so a few folks can earn millions of dollars simply for having the right degree, connections, or family members – then maybe we should start this whole thing over.

  • Unholy Moses – I’ve been to your blog a few times and on every visit I haven’t been able to read it because you have some sort of CSS bleedover with the text. Hopefully, you can get this fixed. I like reading Missouri based blogs and you could probably count on me as a regular reader.

    FWIW — I’m only having this problem with IE, I checked it in Firefox and it worked okay.

  • “Granted, this type of salary fluctuation happens already. But to completely eliminate any type of absolute minimum could turn a city like, say, Flint, Michigan, into the new Marianas Islands, where workers have little choice but to work 16 hours a day for about a nickel an hour.”

    Well, without the abilty to have variable wages, companies in this case laid out above will just lay off more workers to keep there expenses down while times are tough. You chose the poison.

    “If that’s where we’ve arrived as a society – where the needy are set aside so a few folks can earn millions of dollars simply for having the right degree, connections, or family members – then maybe we should start this whole thing over.”

    Moses, the fact is the sperm lottery has been alive and well since man kind has existed… I’m not sure what you mean by “starting the whole thing over”… but its one of those unfair parts of life we all just have to deal with. I mean, just put things in perspective, you think the average 3rd world citizen would be shedding any tears about your situation… I think not.

  • marcus–
    Well, I guess that’s yet another reason to use Firefox (other than, say, this).

    🙂

    Actually, since I’m no code monkey, I’m having a coworker who is come over in two weeks to find out what the hell is going on (I’ve received the same complaint several times).

    And thanks for visiting! I’m switing the site to a strictly local angle (KC, JaxCo and Missouri), but not sure for how long it’ll be up. I may not be able to afford the hosting, and I refuse to use Blogger. Maybe I’ll win the lottery and that’ll change …

  • JRS–
    Good points, especially the “sperm lottery” (a phrase I’ll be stealing without citation in the future, BTW 🙂 ).

    However, shouldn’t we, as a “modern” society, have figured out a better way by now? Socialism isn’t the answer (it only works on very small scales, not a large society), but neither is complete, unfettered, free-market capitalism.

    Hell, we have a “controlled” market and the gap between the top and the bottom is doing nothing but getting bigger. At our current rate, the middle class will be all but non existent if something isn’t done, and we’ll be back to the days of The Rich Nobility and Everyone Else seen during the Middle Ages.

    It just stuns me how the right (not necessarily you, but the right in general) talks about moral values when it comes to sexual orientation or abortion, but then completely ignores those same values when it comes to workers rights and the poor.

  • actually, as i noted with respect to will, kipesquire is correct: those with an elementary knowledge of economics think that there is no point to a minimum wage.

    those with an actual understanding of economics realize that the united states economy doesn’t function like those elementary economics models suggests it should.

    big difference.

  • Will, who likes to point out that Economics is a science of single instances (nothing every seems to repeat despite the same conditions applying) and thus is not a science at all.

    But he still quotes his favorite economists to claim that the markets should be setting wages.

  • Unholy Moses — Well…. I don’t think I’m going to make the switch to Firefox anytime soon. I’ve been using Maxthon, a browser built by a Microsoft developer. It runs on the same engine IE uses and has a lot of really good features. I get all the same security holes as before but more bells and whistles.

    I did check out your site and noticed that you are an alumnus of SMSU where I’m currently pursuing a degree (CIS). I thought that I detected your ghost wandering around Pummill hall this last semester, I’m sure you’d have some good stories to tell.

  • marcus–
    Ahhh … a fellow SMSU victim student.

    Actually, when I was there for **coughsixcough** years, the talk was that Pummil would be bulldozed for a bigger, better English Dept. building with a real library of literary criticism.

    While the library is no longer needed thanks to the intrawebs, it’s sad to know that same, POS building is still standing. That thing was a dump back in the early 90’s.

    As far as stories … well, let’s just say I’ve done almost everything in almost every corner of that entire campus. Most of it highly illegal and ethically questionable, of course.

    I’ll just leave it at that …

    🙂

  • Don’t forget that far too many employees are not being paid their full wages; and many don’t get paid at all. In particular, commissioned employees are susceptible to being underpaid or unpaid by their employers. I speak from experience. Lawyers won’t take cases for a civil complaint of $5-25K. Failure to pay wages needs to move from the civil courts to the criminal courts. Stealing money from the bank gets you 10 years behind bars. Stealing money from your employees gets you a 2nd house. Yes the minimum wage needs to be doubled, and corporate pay needs to be capped (if for no other reason than protecting shareholder equity), but the unpaid suffer even more than the poorly paid.

  • The amoral, hate mongering attitude that that is just the way things are and this is just one big queen for a day program where birth, skill and luck determine who is to have adequate housing, healthcare, education and other life essentials has indeed always been with us and is the real reason nations, societies, families and individuals are destroyed. Eventually, the human race will reject such evil and try to see that the needs of all are a right, or the human race itself will be destroyed. Those who would gain wealth and power for their own at the top are no different than those who would do the same at the bottom. Now some day and some way this will change. It can either be done pleasantly or not so pleasantly. Denial by making escuses about the details is no excuse. Again, either the human race will do this or cease to exist, just as the slut wealth system that is literally worshipped will cease to exist, one way or another. In the meantime, don’t be foolish and give respect or your life to it.

  • I’m very sorry I missed the discussion earlier. All of the arguments being made “against” now were made when the minimum wage was $3.35/hr. I remember, because I was putting myself through college on Pell Grants and working what amounted to two full time jobs at minimum wage. The economic disasters foretold then didn’t happen when it was increased, and I don’t think it will happen now.

    Unholy Moses, I certainly empathize with you, since we’ve been through much the same the last year. Hubby and I were working very hard to become debt free (mortgage, 2nd mortgage, car payments, property taxes, insurance, credit cards, etc.), and paying down everything, but only socking a little bit away in savings. When I got laid off in September and had to spend a 4-day stint in the hospital starting the day after I got laid off (and coincidentally, insurance coverage had stopped), we were in a real bind. We were at the point of putting the house up for sale, just to make the other ends meet. And our combined income was more than you intimated.

    We were lucky in that I got a job that actually pays more starting than I was making after several year at my old job.

    Now that we’ve got the COBRA straightened out, and the boarder we’ve taken in is contributing, things are looking up. The lesson has been learned, however.

  • Correction, that’s the problem with SOME business cultures.

    I don’t know what business cultures you’re talking about that don’t behave that way. In my 25 year career as an engineer working for five different multinational corporations the only thing I’ve ever seen is the upper echelons of management treating their employees as if they were assholes, and not assets. Meanwhile they were rewarded with stock options, millions in pay, and golden parachutes whenever a merger forced them out of work. All this while I’ve seen hardworking, dedicated, and even brilliant colleagues downsized out of jobs.

    But hey, that’s just market forces at work. Every few years I’ve packed up, found a new job for a few dollars more, and moved on. I can do that; I don’t have a family to raise. If you and your kind want a labor market full of gypsies, moving around from area to area, and never setting down roots, don’t EVER start whining about how our society is falling apart, and kids lack discipline.

    Funny how we have to accept those market forces when it comes to our pay, but those same market forces vanish in the stratosphere that CEOs and COOs work in.

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