Bernie Goldsmith, who has been spearheading the drive to put a $15 an hour minimum wage on the ballot for November, spoke before council and conceded that it will be a tall order for them to gain the 7000-signature threshold by May 1.
“It’s our hope to collect 7000 signatures by May 1. It’s looking increasingly unlikely that we’re going to make that deadline,” Bernie Goldsmith acknowledged to council. “Our efforts started around a kitchen table on January 11; since then, we’ve made a bit of a splash locally.”
“It is our hope to raise the minimum wage in Davis to a living wage,” he said. “I’m sure that many of you have read the Enterprise and it has had some opinions about our efforts. The Chamber of Commerce and local businesses have had some opinions about our attempts to engage the community.”
He and one of his organizers, Haley, spoke about their efforts to engage the community in discussion at this point at time. He said, “It was my hope that bringing Haley here as an example of how we’re engaging the community would sort of demonstrate that we are doing so by talking to thousands of citizens in Davis every day and letting them know what we’re up to and teaching them that the minimum wage in Davis is just $8 an hour.”
“One of the goals of this campaign was to start a public debate on what it would mean in this town to say as a moral proposition that no one who works full-time here should have to live in poverty,” he continued. “To contribute to this discussion, we’ve discussed engaging several academics, economists to produce a report on what a $15 minimum wage would look like to the economy of Davis, to the everyday worker of Davis, to the businesses of Davis. What the impacts would be.”
“We’re in the process of commissioning that study,” he said. “I’m here to invite this council. I’m here to invite the Chamber of Commerce. I’m here to invite all members of the community to submit questions that they would like studied by these academic experts if they are nervous about what it means to have a livable wage in this town.”
“If they have specific business models that need to be analyzed, we invite that discussion to start,” he said. He noted that there has been discussion about the organizers asking the city to conduct a study early. He argued, “I think the discussion should have started years ago. I definitely invite the city to consider studying the impact of a living wage early.”
“I have a specific request,” he continued. “To foster the civic engagement that some have apparently not had sufficient access to, apparently they haven’t gone to a grocery store in the last two weeks, I’m asking the city for a simple thing. I’d like an inbox somewhere, possessed by a staff member, where the Chamber of Commerce might be able to submit their ideas about how this would impact our economy, where academic experts could drop their studies, where the public can weigh in, in a single place.”
He ran out of time but reiterated that when it comes time for a discussion to take place, he hopes we have the resources there to have it.
Later in public, Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Kemble Pope responded, “I would be remiss if I didn’t respond to Bernie’s comments earlier. I’ve been to the grocery store probably 15 or 20 times since February 11, and I go to three different grocery stores and I’ve never actually seen anyone with a petition there.”
“Our main problem is that it’s been more of a monologue, not a dialogue,” he stated. “We’ve invited the Raise the Wage folks to come in and speak with our government relations committee, and ask them for some information, I have yet to get that information, but we look forward to talking with them this Thursday and hope that the community at large can have a more robust conversation.”
“I know that a lot of our members have been sharing their concerns with you and I hope that anyone in the community who has concerns will reach out,” he concluded.
The Enterprise this weekend in an editorial argues that “Davis businesses should not be saddled with a $15 minimum wage,” and that “good intentions don’t fund the payroll.”
The Enterprise notes, “If it lands on the June ballot, and gets approved by Davis voters, the measure would set the minimum wage at $11 an hour in January 2015, $13 in July 2015 and $15 at the start of 2016. At that point, the minimum wage would be 50 percent higher than the state rate of $10, with further increases linked to inflation.”
The Enterprise concludes their article by noting, “Oh, and while we’re at it: We oppose a city-by-city approach to the minimum wage. The state is the appropriate place for this change to occur.”
According to the organizers of Raise the Wage Davis, the Enterprise Editorial Board wrote this editorial having never invited the group to meet with them to get their perspective on the issue.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
I would like to see a study that demonstrates the adverse effects on business of raising the minimum wage as compared to the increased amount of business generated by workers at the lower end of the pay scale having more discretionary money to spend.
This is actually pretty simple in principle, but it varies across different retail sectors because their costs of goods and payroll percentages vary. But using some pretty typical figures…
For every $100,000 in sales, about half of that goes to the cost of goods.
30% of it goes to the costs of payroll, including the owner’s pay. So that’s about $30,000 out of every $100,000 in gross sales that goes to the cost of payroll.
If the employees are getting $10 an hour, and now must get $15 an hour, that increases the cost of payroll by 50%. In order to cover that, assuming other expenses remain constant, the owner will need to increase sales by about 22.5%.
Restaurants have higher payroll costs as a percentage of gross sale. Commercial businesses (non-retail) have lower. But I think you can estimate that most businesses would need to see a 20 – 25% increase in sales in order to cover the cost of this proposal. If they’re actually paying minimum wage (most pay a bit higher), then their sales would need to increase even more.
I don’t believe, nor do I think you are going to be able to prove to me, that sales locally will increase 20 – 25% by passing this ordinance.
One of the basic premises of the organizers is that there will be an infusion of money into the city by forcing businesses to pay their workers more. So that raises the obvious question: where do they think that money is going to come from? Some of those businesses, such as fast-food places, are not locally owned. So that would represent an increase in money to the city. But if you tell the local owner of a business that he or she has to pay more, you haven’t increased the money flowing around. You’ve just taken it from one group to give it to another.
If a small business owner doesn’t see that 20 – 25% increase in revenues, other expenses will be pared. That means less advertising revenue to the local blog or newspaper, less goods purchased by one business from another business. The owner will likely strive to reduce payroll costs by cutting hours, if possible. And the last part is simply taking home less money for himself or herself.
So ask yourself: where do you think the money to pay for this proposal will come from?
There are several ways you can reduce the adverse impact of a minimum wage increase, while still getting more money to the lowest-wage workers. You can have the law apply only to certain size employers. You can have a lower training wage. Examples: http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/10/news/economy/minnesota-minimum-wage/
More to the point, however, you should realize that the minimum wage is not intended to be a method toward achieving a self-sustaining income (SSI). The biggest factors that are used in calculating that are housing costs and the cost of child care. An arbitrary $15/hour doesn’t provide a SSI for a young parent, and is more than ‘necessary’ as a SSI for a single young adult. http://www.insightcced.org/index.php/insight-communities/cfess/calculator
I agree that a study would be informative. Who should commission the study, and who should pay for it? Should we start with the premise that ALL involved with the study be paid a minimum of $15 per hour?
Bernie is already proposing a study that would be generated at UC Davis. He outlines it in this article.
Tia wrote:
> I would like to see a study that demonstrates the adverse effects on business
> of raising the minimum wage as compared to the increased amount of business
> generated by workers at the lower end of the pay scale having more discretionary
> money to spend.
I don’t know if any city in America has ever voted to raise the minimum wage by 88% so I don’t think we have any studies on that.
What I do know is that EVERY time the price of something goes up more than 50% we get less of it (in this case we will have less jobs).
If this passes “some” people will have more “discretionary money” to spend but many will get fired and have “NO MONEY” to spend…
P.S. Does anyone know if the people gathering signatures are getting paid $15/hour?
“I don’t know if any city in America has ever voted to raise the minimum wage by 88% so I don’t think we have any studies on that.I don’t know if any city in America has ever voted to raise the minimum wage by 88% so I don’t think we have any studies on that.”
The city could always pull a few $100,000 out of the water budget to fund a study. We would pay it back over 10 years so it would feel like we didn’t actually pay anything at all.
The CBO has already come out with a report that states that 500,000 jobs would be lost if the minimum wage is hiked and that’s only to $10.10, we’re talking $15.00 here.
Except that the CBO report was criticized because it did not reflect the “consensus view” of economists on the issue of job impact. The CBO erred in doing a meta-analysis of economic data instead of running its own empirical study on the employment effect of minimum wage increases. The CBO simply looked at a bunch of existing studies and did an analysis of that body of work.
The CBO report was criticized by Obama backers and leftist economists and organizations. No surprise there.
Why would the CBO conduct a meta-analysis rather than their own empirical study? There is no good reason to do it that way.
Barack Palin wrote:
> The CBO has already come out with a report that states that
> 500,000 jobs would be lost if the minimum wage is hiked and
> that’s only to $10.10
If we are going to lose half a million jobs with a 20% increase in the minimum wage I’m betting that we will lose at least 4x (aka 2 MILLION) with an 80% (4x as big) increase.
As Don points out most Davis small business owners are not flying to the Cayman Islands with suitcases full of cash every month and I don’t see how taking from the employer and giving to the employee will do much to help the economy.
Don also writes:
> Some of those businesses, such as fast-food places,
> are not locally owned.
The vast majority of fast-food places like McDonalds, Burger King, Subway and Quiznos are locally owned and with the exception of “franchise fees” paid to the corporate parent all the profits stay with the local owner.
“If we are going to lose half a million jobs” – That’s a big if given the flawed methodology of the CBO report.
“The vast majority of fast-food places like McDonalds, Burger King, Subway and Quiznos are locally owned and with the exception of “franchise fees” paid to the corporate parent all the profits stay with the local owner.”
the weird thing is that the biggest consumers of fast food are the very group that earns minimum wage, so it may be that increasing minimum wage would increase rather than decrease fast food profits. but if they panic before the bottom line comes in, then they are going to cut wages. this thing starts to become self-fulfilling and the people who end up getting screwed either way are the low wage earners.
Good point. After you posted this, I’ve tried to think of which businesses might be non locally owned; i.e., not franchises. Grocery stores, but they mostly pay union wages already.
Yet the “local owner” may not be “local” at all.
Here’s a local example of how just going to $10/hour hurt jobs and businesses in San Jose:
“The report by Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit the Employment Policies Institute found that 40 percent of businesses surveyed saw costs rise $10,000-$69,000 this year after a voter-approved minimum wage increase from $8 an hour to $10 an hour.
Two-thirds of survey respondents raised prices to cover higher labor costs, while 42 percent cut jobs and 45 percent reduced staff hours, according to the study.”
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/01/16/pro-business-employment-policies.html?page=all
why didn’t you include the first paragraph: “A new survey of 163 San Jose restaurants completed by a nonprofit with links to business groups found that the city’s 2013 minimum wage increase caused some local employers to cut staff or close locations.”
part of what is missing here is that the minimum wage ordinance was just enacted, there is a knee-jerk reaction to it. that is occurring before they even see their numbers or the bottom line.
“part of what is missing here is that the minimum wage ordinance was just enacted”
At the writing of that article the wage hike had been in place for almost a year so business owners would by then know how the higher wages were affecting their businesses and their bottom lines.
the key of course is not the writing of the article, but when the study was conducted.
The survey was conducted in Dec/2013 and Jan/2014, very recent.
http://www.epionline.org/release/new-survey-san-joses-wage-hike-to-10-reduced-employment-at-restaurants-and-raised-prices-for-consumers/
Economists from UC Berkeley have studied the effects of raising the minimum wage. Here is a quote, “Our data show that an increase up to $13 an hour has no measurable effect on employment”
They have not studied what would happen at $15 an hour, however even raising the minimum wage to $13 an hour would be a huge benefit.
Here is a link to the Seattle Times article from March 13, 2014
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023116005_wageimpactsxml.html
From your link:
it’s problematic data analysis because it fails to take into account the trade off between someone in poverty receiving public benefits and making a low earner wage. so ask yourself, the people who live in poverty, what do they earn right now, what jobs do they have. and then what impact would a wage hike have for them.
Ask yourself: where do you think that money is going to come from?
so you completely ignore my point. interesting.
Sorry, what was your point?
that examining poverty rates among current low wage earners may not tell you the impact of a minimum wage hike on poverty
I will refer you once again to this link: http://www.insightcced.org/index.php/insight-communities/cfess/calculator
Note that the Self-Sustaining Income for a single person in Yolo County, without children, is $11.59/hour.
For a childless couple, it is $9.21/hour.
If they have a child, it is $13.94/hour.
If a single person has a child, it is $23.93/hour.
So if you want to help the working poor, tax yourself and provide them with child care.
Poverty rate:
I don’t think you can answer your own question. Remember: most minimum wage-earners are not heads-of-household.
i’ve reversed the question, you’re looking at what minimum wage earners are, i’m looking at what impoverished people do for a living.
So tell me, what do impoverished people do for a living? They aren’t the majority of minimum wage-earners. So why is an increase in the minimum wage considered by some to be an effective means of reducing poverty? It isn’t.
these aren’t rhetorical questions. but until we understand where impoverished people draw their incomes from, we won’t know if a minimum wage hike would impact them or not.
We know this: if they lack job skills, it will reduce their ability to get a job. And it would provide a pay increase to a lot of people who aren’t currently below the Self-Sustaining Income. So it is an inefficient way to reduce poverty, and would have some adverse impact on some of the working poor. Whenever you tinker with wages and prices, you have winners and losers. If you raise the minimum wage at a rate that businesses can absorb the impact without significant price increases or payroll reductions, you’ll get better benefit than if you adjust it upward rapidly and drastically.
According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: In 1968, the country’s hourly minimum wage peaked at roughly $10.75 in today’s dollars. Since then, the buying power of the minimum wage has steadily declined, reaching a low point in 2007, before rebounding slightly.
Another quote from the Seattle article:
A study two years later by the University of New Mexico Bureau of Business and Economic Research found “no discernible impact on employment per firm.” Employment in the city actually went up slightly, and did better when compared with Albuquerque, which didn’t raise its minimum wage.
The results of the academic studies will be depend on who commissions the studies and who they ask. The results will conflict. People will choose the study that fits their beliefs / politics and criticize the study that does not. Except for a very few . . .
Alan wrote:
> The results of the academic studies will be depend on who
> commissions the studies and who they ask.
There are many studies where you can debate the results, but since I can’t think of ANY time when the price of something went up by more than 50% that demand didn’t drop it sounds a little crazy to say that lots of people are not going to be out of work…
Fear is always used to control the masses. Words like may and might are spread across headlines to confuse people about policies what would benefit them. There is much more evidence that raising the minimum wage benefits more people than it harms with very little effects on business or on job loss. It is the same story every time the minimum wage issue comes up, yet I have never seen the proof of massive job losses or big price increases from past wage increases.
Think about it, if this was really something to cause layoffs and raise price, businesses would never give out raises.
You realize that makes absolutely no sense, right?
I guess when you’re proposing to spend my money, my next question is: who are you and what do you do for a living?
Businesses paying minimum wage today are using everyone’s tax dollars in the form of support for food, housing, health care, etc. to round out what they are not paying their employees in the form of salary/benefits. So don’t go telling me I am proposing to spend your money for anything. What I do for a living doesn’t matter, just know I am a tax paying, active voter that is very aware of what goes on in business and politics.
I don’t pay minimum wage, but I also don’t pay $15/hour. You are telling me I should pay $15/hour. So, I’m going to tell you bluntly that you are proposing to spend my money. What you do for a living only matters in terms of how hypocritical you’re being on this topic.
Think about it, if this was really something to cause layoffs and raise price, businesses would never give out raises.
Themis – with this comment you demonstrate the biggest problem with minimum wage. You and others are very uninformed about the business relationship between employer and employee.
The typical uninformed voter or disgruntled worker has this mindset that labor is exploited by business owners to fill the pockets of the business owner at the expense of the employees. With this attitude it is clear why someone would think that raising the minimum wage is a reasonable thing.
But let’s walk through the facts.
When a young person first applies for a job and is hired, most of the time there is a feeling of euphoria. the person comes home and says “I got the job!!!”. That feeling of euphoria is eventually replaced with other more stable feelings. Hopefully the feeling of satisfaction… one where the the employee feels he is being treated fairly and paid fairly.
The relationship between the employer and the employee is a contract… either implicit or explicit (if there is a formal employment agreement or contract)… but it is an agreement nonetheless. And agreements are two-party instruments where both parties need to be satisfied.
Now lets say that the employee starts to feel that he is not being treated or paid fairly. Have the terms of the contract changed? Is there any real justification for the terms to change? In any case, the employee can attempt to negotiate more favorable terms… for example a higher rate of pay or different responsibilities. But if the employer refuses, then the employee still has complete discretion to quit and find other work or find other work and quit.
But if a business can replace this employee with another equal employee (in terms of capability) for the same pay rate, then why would business pay more that is has to? Why would you pay more for a car than you had to? Why would you pay more for lunch than you had to?
Now, if the employee demanding the raise has developed new and stronger worker capabilities that meet a need for the company, the company would have to weigh the value of that employee relative to what it would cost to replace him. And in this case the employee would likely be in a great negotiating position to demand a raise.
Companies do not just pay for labor, they pay for labor owning certain capabilities. Doctors make more than nurses because doctors possess greater capabilities for providing needed healthcare services. Higher skilled NBA players make more than lower-skilled players.
There is also a supply and demand aspect to wages. Think of it as a pyramid. The bottom of the pyramid represents the population of lower-skilled workers. There are always more of them. They are paid the lowest wages because of the greater competition for jobs. It is also much easier to enter the workforce at the bottom… most of the jobs require little training and most able-bodied, able-minded people can do them. But move up the pyramid and the jobs require more education and experience… they require greater labor capability. And there are fewer people possessing the requirements to do the jobs. For example, I’m sure you have read that there is a shortage of doctors these days. Companies have to pay doctors a good wage to attract and retain them as employees.
I think we should change our dialog about “jobs” to be replaced with “careers”. People need careers. It is a string of jobs with greater responsibility and greater pay to match the accumulation of skills and experience that raise worker capability. People need to be satisfied in their work. If they are not, they need to work hard to find something else to do.
Companies give raises for business reasons. A company does not exist without employees, and employees don’t exist without companies. Both need each other. But there is a relationship between the two that is screwed up when government steps in to force wage levels and other things. There are consequences. And in the end the result is bad for both parties… fewer companies and fewer jobs. And less opportunity for people to acquire a satisfying career.
Frankly wrote:
> But there is a relationship between the two that is screwed up when
> government steps in to force wage levels and other things.
That is the goal of this to kill out the business in the “middle” (and the plan has been working great)…
The government does not care about the guy that does odd jobs and pays no taxes or the real small business that pays some people in cash (not paying any taxes, SSI or workman’s comp) and it does not care about big companies that pay no taxes (because they give big campaign donations).
“GE Filed 57,000-Page Tax Return, Paid No Taxes on $14 Billion in Profits”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/ge-filed-57000-page-tax-return-paid-no-taxes-14-billion-profits_609137.html
SOD, I get your point. But GE paid lots of taxes, just not corporate taxes. Just the income tax paid by all their employees is a big thing to celebrate if you like tax revenue.
Most business owners and executives of large companies that I talk to support a flat tax. Once of the thing that kills business and economic growth is the problems with tax liability uncertainty. Also, tax expense influences business strategy… i.e. business implements strategies for tax payment avoidance. And in a lot of cases a tax avoidance strategy is not one that is good for jobs creation.
If Democrats would only support a flat tax or a fair tax, we would see an explosion in economic activity that would lead to wages increasing and career opportunities increasing.
But Democrats like the opacity of the current 75,000 page tax code… so they can better maintain their political power looting from producers to hand out “free” stuff to those they have locked into a state of financial dependency.
The problem is that are already out of other peoples money.
Frankly wrote:
> Most business owners and executives of large companies
> that I talk to support a flat tax.
I’m sure they do, but the BIG business that fund the hundreds of Millions of dollars for BOTH Republican and Democrat Congressional campaigns and (now as of 2012) BILLION + Presidential campaigns want the tax code even longer to hide the loopholes that give them a huge ROI on each bribe (aka perfectly legal campaign “donation” they make)…
Here is the way I see it. Business pursues profit. In fact, that is pretty much all that business does. I like it because it is very easy to understand. Just like a dog that pursues food, they are pretty easy to train.
And the reason they behave in these ways that you call them out on is because our government trains them to do so.
Do you think a business would spend money on a politicians if that politicians wasn’t a reliable source of more revenue for the business? Why is that politician a reliable source? Because we have grown the size, scope and scale of government… with the total public dollar inflows and outflows equaling about 42% of the total GDP of the country… to the point where business pursues profit this way.
And the tax code… business finds ways to avoid paying taxes that reduce their profit. Make it a flat tax with no deductions, and business will pay it because they have to.
I snicker when I hear the leftist rant of the danger of oligarchs when their government is like the blob that ate New York… but instead it is hundreds of thousands times larger and eating the entire country.
“But Democrats like the opacity of the current 75,000 page tax code…”
i doubt you’ll find many who do.
I’m sorry. I meant Democrat politicians. I should qualify that point.
I agree that your average run of the mill Kennedy or Reagan Democrat voter does not like the tax code either.
Themis wrote:
> There is much more evidence that raising the minimum wage
> benefits more people than it harms with very little effects on
> business or on job loss.
I’m not going to argue that a small increase is not a good idea, but where is the “evidence” that an increase of more than 50% has “very little effects on business or on job loss”? If it has never been done before how can anyone have any “evidence”?
> Think about it, if this was really something to cause layoffs and
> raise price, businesses would never give out raises.
When was the last time EVERY business in a city was forced to give minimum wage workers a raise of more than 50%?
It has been a long time since I made $3.35/hour and I agree that the minimum wage should go up from $8.00/hour (and it is scheduled to go up), I just think that making Davis go to $15/hour will hurt more people than it will help.
When considering the Self-Sustaining Income for a single person in Yolo County, have you factored in the effect of them selling marijuana on the side?
In some states this is their primary source of income and they wear suits and get bank loans to support their enterprise.
From the Enterprise today:
“there are many studies that show increased inflation and job losses as a result of even modest raises in the minimum wage. The National Bureau of Economic Research showed that out of a study of 100 studies of raises in the minimum wage, 85 percent showed negative effects on the economy.”
Those who advocate raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour do not seem to understand basic economics. The unfortunate truth is that people with the lowest job skills will find it difficult or impossible to find work if the minimum wage is increased.
The people who will be hurt the most include people with minor disabilities, people with poor work habits, people with former criminal records, and people with poor language skills. Do we really want to say that these people should not be able to find work because they are priced out of the market?
How should people with low job skills survive if they can’t find work? They can try to get odd jobs in the underground economy such as babysitting, gardening, and day labor. They can take up panhandling. They can take up burglary or robbery or dealing drugs. If they are women they can take up prostitution. If they can qualify, they can try to get welfare and food stamps.
Is this really what we want for our most disadvantaged citizens?
i’m open as to how long we take in terms of ramping it up. but already people with low job skills can’t find work, see don’s post above.
>I’m open as to how long we take in terms of ramping it up.
Are you open to the idea of going along with the California State minimum wage rise to $9 starting July 2015 and to $10 starting January 2016? If so, there is no reason for Davis to do something different.
I think that the idea of regaining some of the lost buying power by raising the minimum wage to $10/hour has merit. $15/hour is too drastic and would have undesirable consequences. It also should not be a local action.
Huh? People with low job skills work at entry-level retail and service jobs. Hopefully they then acquire job skills. To which of my posts are you referring?
not surprising given their opposition to the ordinance.
Frankly
“Here is the way I see it. Business pursues profit. In fact, that is pretty much all that business does. I like it because it is very easy to understand. Just like a dog that pursues food, they are pretty easy to train.”
And here is the way I see it. I agree with your statement. And I feel that business pursues profit exclusively regardless of the effect that this has on other members of the community. When you write, you write from the point of view of someone who always behaves ethically when making hiring, firing, and wage decisions for your own employees. You then extrapolate that to the remainder of the business community. However, I would like to share how I see businesses exclusive pursuit of profit without regard to the adverse consequences.
You and I have spoken about the WalMart model which you basically dismissed as a “business model” that you do not favor. Pretty weak condemnation in my opinion for a multibillion dollar business that uses public taxpayer money to subsidize the incomes of its lower end workers. This to me is the height of corporate welfare, and yet
you merely “do not favor it”. Where is the outcry about paying so little to workers that they have to live off public resources in what amount to food stamps, public subsidies and ER care which is ultimately subsidized by all of us at far higher rates than if they had access to the health care that you and I enjoy ?
Don dismisses the issue by saying that low end wage earner heads of families do not constitute the “majority” of these workers. Perhaps not, but that does not lessen the impact on those who are and their children. I know first hand the hardships faced by the parent stuck in a minimum wage job while trying to raise children. This was my mother’s story after the death of my father. I find it unconscionable that a full time worker in our country can face the situation where they are not able to maintain themselves and their family above the poverty level.
Tia:You and I have spoken about the WalMart model which you basically dismissed as a “business model” that you do not favor. Pretty weak condemnation in my opinion for a multibillion dollar business that uses public taxpayer money to subsidize the incomes of its lower end workers. This to me is the height of corporate welfare, and yet you merely “do not favor it”.
Sigh.
Double sigh.
You are short-sheeting your logic again, and your are failing to grasp my main point.
Walmart like any company will exploit what the government provides them as a competitive advantage. If you leave meat out on the table and the dog reaches up to eat it, then who’s fault is that? Based on your post, you apparently would blame the dog… unless the party that left the meat out was Republican.
It is really frustrating for me to have to respond to this type of argument that points fingers at “evil” business just because the business follows the rules set by “benevolent” government.
You have your “good guys” and “bad guys” all mixed up.
Let me tell you what’s going on in the “evil” banking world today. The government keeps rates artificially low to artificially prop up economic numbers so the politicians will be reelected. They pummel business with copious new regulations – causing business more economic uncertainty and greater expenses – to satiate those demanding it… so that the politicians will be reelected. They force a business-hostile new healthcare law on business – again causing business more economic uncertainty and greater expense – so politicians will be reelected.
And then Great Leader stands up to his teleprompter and tells the public that business is terrible for hording cash and that banks are terrible for not lending. It is their fault the economic is not growing enough and there are not enough jobs.
Then the regulators start putting pressure on the banks to lend.
And banks lower their credit standards and load up on a bunch of crappy loan assets at low rates… so when rates do increase the bank’s portfolios will be in trouble again.
But then this will all be the bank’s fault again.
You and too many other are really too ignorant of business and economics to be credible in your commentary. I wish during your and their education the schools had spent half as much time educating these topics instead of racial, gender and sexual orientation social justice.
Think of it this way… the plutocrats and technocrats that make their careers in government and are generally doing so with a giant chip on their shoulder that their classmates with the lower grade-point average are out in the private sector making more money… are always going to lose the game of cat and mouse. They care always going to be one-step behind the minds in business that seek to maximize profit. They cannot win… all they can do is complain. Or, they can stop trying to win and start thinking in different terms. They can think about themselves being responsible for more abstract and bigger-picture contribution to the health of private business, instead of being able to control and profit from private business.
If the economy where like a soccer league, the government should be the franchise owner ensuring the most competitive, dynamic, entertaining and long-lasting soccer enterprise. Instead government is filled with a bunch of “smarter” people that are really grumpy, resentful and envious that they are not on the field and earning the rewards being a great soccer player… and so they seek to make it more and more difficult for the real players so they, those benevolent government people, can feel better by comparison. But the game goes on and it frustrates these plutocrats and technocrats even more. So then they are left to demonizing the players… using their like-minded pals in the media to establish a new popular template of bad and good… bad being the player, and good being the plutocrats and technocrats.
I think maybe you can post with questions instead of accusations in this topic area. I will do the same for topics in the area of medical diagnosis and protocol.
Let me know if and when you think Walmart breaks any of the millions of laws and regulations that it is forced to comply with by our benevolent government and then you will have a point worth discussing.
Tia wrote:
> Pretty weak condemnation in my opinion for a multibillion dollar
> business that uses public taxpayer money to subsidize the incomes
> of its lower end workers. This to me is the height of corporate welfare,
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black…
No one (not even Wal Mart) gets as much “corporate welfare” as MDs.
How much do you think you (and the hospital) would get paid for delivering an “anchor baby” for a destitute illegal alien without “corporate welfare”?
> I know first hand the hardships faced by the parent
> stuck in a minimum wage job
If someone you know is “stuck” in a minimum wage job that means that you are to lazy to help them get a better job (if they told you they “like” the minimum wage job and don’t want to do anything to get a better job then they are not “stuck”)…