The Political Discussion Thread

[pookey]

So, they have shut the stores suddenly, no warning and given them severance pay? They had no warning that this was coming, at all? No rumours of the plumbing being fixed? Are they removing any of the stock? The police car could be there to stop any break-ins. Have the people been told that they will be re-hired once the shops re-open? And if it was due to the people wanting more money then this is a way to get rid of them and find people who will work for what they are willing to pay

[Annoyed]

So what do you suppose is the real story with Walmart?

Wal-Mart mysteriously closed 5 stores and now there's a conspiracy theory explaining why

My guess would be that it's their reaction to their employees behavior.

[Coco Pops]

My guess would be that it's their reaction to their employees behavior.

What? Employees wanting fair pay?

How dare they ask for such a thing? :/

[SoulReaver]

What? Employees wanting fair pay?

How dare they ask for such a thing? :/

typical communist™ employees, refusing to work for free

[Coco Pops]

typical communist™ employees, refusing to work for free

I know it's bad isn't it?

[Annoyed]

The whole "living wage" thing such as fast food workers wanting $15 bucks an hour would be a nice idea, if it weren't utter fantasy.

If BurgerDonalds has to pay it's people 15 bucks an hour, they're going to have to charge a hell of a lot more for a BigWhopper. I don't think they're worth the $4 bucks or so they want for them now, I only buy when I have a 2 for price of 1 coupon. If they double the price of them to 8 bucks to cover the wage increase, I'm willing to bet that very few people will buy them at all. So they won't need as many employees, so they just fire the people that make them. Not so good for those people, is it?

In order to make X dollars an hour, you have to be able to generate at least that much revenue for the company in that hour. If you don't, the economics don't hold up.

So, what happens if NY for example raises the min. wage to 15 / hour. What do they do about the demand for products decline that results? Mandate that everyone buys X number of BigWhoppers per week?

Wishing for something is nice, but unless the numbers add up, it's just fantasy.

[SoulReaver]

alternative: instead of raising prices, lower the main shareholders' dividends and also lower the salaries of the board of directors & the CEO, that's where tons of $ can be saved & numbers balance out, easy peasy (and don't worry about them they'll still be able to afford caviar)

[Coco Pops]

How do currencies work? Here $16 an hour is considered minimum wage? Howcome we can do this in Australia but not the USA?

[Annoyed]

Is the U.S. dollar the official currency for Australia? If not, how does the value of the Aust. $ compare to the US dollar? (exchange rate).
Also, your government may be subsidizing or otherwise manipulating wage rates.

[Womble]

alternative: instead of raising prices, lower the main shareholders' dividends and also lower the salaries of the board of directors & the CEO, that's where tons of $ can be saved & numbers balance out, easy peasy (and don't worry about them they'll still be able to afford caviar)

Do they balance out?

Because if you give fast food workers a raise to 15$, do you leave everybody else's salary as it is, or do you raise it to reflect the requirements to hold that job, the costs of education required and the added value it generates? If a fast food worker makes 15$ an hour and a licensed practical nurse makes $18 an hour, is that fair?

[Annoyed]

alternative: instead of raising prices, lower the main shareholders' dividends and also lower the salaries of the board of directors & the CEO, that's where tons of $ can be saved & numbers balance out, easy peasy (and don't worry about them they'll still be able to afford caviar)

Do you really think that will happen? Granted, we have that one guy who runs a credit card processing co. in Washington state who is cutting his own salary to pay for everyone making 70K, but do you really see many following suit?
I don't.

[Annoyed]

Do they balance out?

Because if you give fast food workers a raise to 15$, do you leave everybody else's salary as it is, or do you raise it to reflect the requirements to hold that job, the costs of education required and the added value it generates? If a fast food worker makes 15$ an hour and a licensed practical nurse makes $18 an hour, is that fair?

Of course, it will be inflationary.

The key to this whole thing is "A thing is worth what it will bring." If you arbitrarily increase the salary of a low skill job, markets and prices will fluctuate for a while, before settling back into the same relative place they were before. BigWhoppers will cost 8 bucks, the guy making them might get 15, but his rent, utilities, and everything else will double as everyone else's wages go up. So he ends up exactly where he started, for one simple reason. An hour of his labor is valued at X on the open market, but to use your example, an hour of the LPN's labor is worth 2X on the open market.

The only thing that might even temporarily mitigate this is if the vast majority of CEO's, stockholders, business owners and so forth in every business that is involved choose to eat the cost of the labor increase rather than pass it along in the form of prices. Even that will only slow things down, not stop it. But I don't think that is a reasonable expectation to begin with.

[Falcon Horus]

Sometimes children just sorta happen, not always a thing that can be planned. Accidents happen.

That is one of the purest forms of BS there is. We know what causes pregnancy, and it is easy to avoid becoming either pregnant or a sperm donor.

If you really believe that, than you are either very ignorant or very naive. I can assure you accidents happen as I personally know a couple who wasn't on planning on having a third child, took precautions and yet 6 months later their little benjamin was born 3 months too early in their car in the middle of the highway.

Where does the money for those benefits come from?

You're just mad you have to pay your taxes so the government can use that money to pay for kids you say shouldn't exist in the first place - don't have the right to exist because their parents can't afford them (nor can they afford the expensive TV, yet they got one on credit).

You want them to spend it on something a bit more valuable perhaps?

As noted above, I'm firmly of the belief that if you can't afford to support your children, you have no business having them.

So, what shall we do then? Make them infertile? Snip the men and steralize the women?

Isn't that called eugenics? You know, the social movement claiming to improve the genetic features of human populations through selective breeding and sterilization, based on the idea that it is possible to distinguish between superior and inferior elements of society.

It probably would be difficult to find US citizens or legal immigrants to the US to work on farms primarily because many of us have lost the work ethic that once made our country great.

I'd be happy to work as fruit picker. Really do. Perhaps mix two jobs. During the winter hide behind a desk, and during fruit season spend it out in the field.

As for welfare, I do think that there is more abuse of it than most people realize. This is mainly because the government has made it far too easy to live off welfare.

Absolutely. Hence why our current governments have implemented several more rules to make it harder. Except that a lot of people who were trying so hard to make ends meet, have fallen through the cracks of the system and end up worse than they were before... and all thanks to them who abuse the system.

And there's the problem... they're not all bad people.

...the colonists explored more and more of this then new country and eventually encountered tribes of Native Americans that weren't so friendly and were in fact downright violent, and were more often than not also enemies of the friendly tribes. So what likely happened was that encountering the less friendly tribes soured their relations with Native Americans as a whole which led to the many and varied skirmishes that led to their eventual placement on reservations.

Would you like it if some foreigner/stranger was walking around your property like it was their own? I don't think so.

FH I think you'll find that modern man was the cause of Neanderthals dying out by over population.... They were bred out of existence. Plus the planet's climate changed in many ways making it not suitable for them any more but modern humans seemed to take to it very well.

Also I suspect there may be other reasons they died out too. But I don't think our modern anscestors killed them off. They just died out.

Wasn't that what I said - that they lived side by side. Yes, Neanderthals eventually disappeared but they weren't chased off their lands, or out of their caves, with violence. Families might have fought over some prime cave-locations - well, it's quite possible they did actually. But, they nevertheless still lived side by side until one of them wasn't able to adept anymore and merged with the stronger species.

Is the U.S. dollar the official currency for Australia? If not, how does the value of the Aust. $ compare to the US dollar? (exchange rate).

Currency converter which states that today 1 USD is worth 1.29597 AUSD.

[Coco Pops]

Isn't that called eugenics? You know, the social movement claiming to improve the genetic features of human populations through selective breeding and sterilization, based on the idea that it is possible to distinguish between superior and inferior elements of society.

Wasn't that what I said - that they lived side by side. Yes, Neanderthals eventually disappeared but they weren't chased off their lands, or out of their caves, with violence. Families might have fought over some prime cave-locations - well, it's quite possible they did actually. But, they nevertheless still lived side by side until one of them wasn't able to adept anymore and merged with the stronger species.

Hey there I wasn't arguing with you but rather agreeing with you and posting my own beliefs, views in regards to the neanderthals. BTW the trilogy by Robert Sawyer is good reading. He wrote three books about this set in modern world where we find another kind of Earth with modern tech savvy Neanderthals in a parallel universe...

BTW on eugenics I wonder if we are in a way already doing that with things like IVF?

On our local news last night they ran a story about doctors finding even more ways to make sure that older women can get pregnant via IVF and also the ability to choose "good babies" as in weeding out defective embryos, which sounds an awful lot like eugenics to me.

[SoulReaver]

Do they balance out?

Because if you give fast food workers a raise to 15$, do you leave everybody else's salary as it is, or do you raise it to reflect the requirements to hold that job, the costs of education required and the added value it generates? If a fast food worker makes 15$ an hour and a licensed practical nurse makes $18 an hour, is that fair?

chances are the nurse is too busy to reflect upon this

anyway $15 was Annoyed's example for a figure
incidentally will everybody else automatically demand a raise? when you compare the nurse & the ff worker do you take into account 'risk & harshness' factors or just total working hours & academic prerequisites? in the private sector only - where the shareholders & leaders' salaries can also be lowered - or in the public sector as well?

has any mcdonalds worker felt a calling to do this sort of job? '_'



nb. tbh hospital personnel could do with a raise, firefighters also. wouldn't mind a tax increase if it's for such a cause