The Controversy over the $15 minimum wage, what rich people are really afraid of.

California and New York now both have $15 an hour minimum wage bills signed into law.  This is great, but I think in most of the urban areas of those states you need at $25 dollars an hour just to get by, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

Already there are company CEOs, such as Andy Puzder, of Carl Jr. Burger, saying that he now wants to eliminate jobs with automation as a counter against the minimum wage.

The real thing that the wealthy do not like about the minimum wage, other than taking money out of their own personal profits, is the impact it will have on inflation.  For many business, especially, I would imagine, fast food, the biggest expense is labor cost.  Labor cost increases mean that businesses would have to charge more for goods and services in order to see the same level of profit. Also workers will have more money to spend making more of a demand for other goods and services and their prices will go up. This will start a rise in inflation, and if you like to gamble on the stock market like many wealthy people do, you will have a harder time borrowing money because inflation will ultimately make interest payments go up.  The stock market won't get the infusion cash it needs and stock prices will ultimately go down, making it very hard to make easy money with stock investments.  This why stock markets tend to drop in value when investors hear that the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates.

Andy Puzder is a long way off from Henry Ford, who wanted to make sure his employees made a fair wage in order for them to afford the cars that they were building in his factory.  A well paid employee is actually good for business and good for making the economy grow.  Poor and middle income people who have money are more likely to spend the money they earn because in many cases they have no other choice, while wealthy people can horde their money in offshore banks that will do no good to anyone other than the bank and themselves.  Henry Ford understood Keynesian economics, and I think the wealthy business owners understand Keynes as well they just choose to ignore him for an economic policy that says that they get to keep all of the money.

I just cannot believe how callous wealthy people can be to the common man.  The minimum wage increase helps make their lives more comfortable, but this is unacceptable to the wealthy just so they can make greater profits and fatten their own wallets.

Keep on striking! Walmart workers...

I am so glad to see that Walmart workers are finally taking some nationwide action against their employer. 

The attitude of most employers in America today has become like this:  "Well, you are very lucky to have a job right now, so many people are out of work, so you won't mind if I defecate on your head.  Please bow your head to the ground, while I pull down my pants."

Walmart is notorious for treating its employees in such a fashion and underpaying them.  Walmart's everyday values come at a great price to its workers.  I try to avoid shopping there. I prefer shopping at Target which has a slightly better reputation.  Sometimes you really don't have a choice because your wages are stagnant, and discount stores are usually very convenient and have the best prices, what can you do?

I got a kick out this Jibjab animated video called "Big Box Mart" which sums the situation at Walmart and how the powers-that-be are purposely driving the United States into the ground.  And it does a great job of explaining our current predicament in under three minutes to the tune of "Oh, Suzanna."

Please check it out here:  

http://www.jibjab.com/originals/big_box_mart

It is time that Walmart workers unionize at fight for better wages and working conditions.  And if this eliminates Walmart's competitive edge in the market that's too bad.  Maybe it will make it easier for smaller retailers to compete.  Markets do best when there is competition, right?

Offshoring of American jobs: What the US government needs to do, but won't.



Taken from Wikimedia Commons

 The massive off-shoring of jobs from the United States has only been around for less than ten years but we already have national unemployment rate of over eight percent.  If the United States government continues to take no action, having a totally liassez faire attitude towards business and economics, unemployment will continue to rise inexorably. 

The United States government needs to take action now, by making a law that forces American companies or companies that do business in the United States to pay off-shored workers at least the current federally mandated minimum wage.  They also need to add high taxes to overseas telecommunication in order to make off shoring less attractive and give American workers a chance to compete for jobs.

This kind of action will be labeled protectionism, which the right-wing yahoos have tried to label as a taboo, worse than incest or bestiality.  But it is not a taboo.  We don't try to protect what we have?  The rich don't try to protect what they have by off-shoring their money and refusing to pay taxes? You don't try to protect what you have by having locks on your doors?

Protectionism is not a bad thing.  We need to put the brakes on off-shoring and free trade.  We need balanced trade and jobs paying livable wages for anyone who wants to work.  We will not get this by letting the wealthy live tax-free or letting business do anything they want without regard to the law.  We will not get this by allowing federal debt to exceed our GDP.   We desperately need to stop big business and special interests running this country into the ground by taking away jobs from Americans.

We can only do this if American politicians start developing a conscience and start serving the American people and not serving big business and special interests who want to send your jobs overseas and see the American middle class completely disappear.

Don't believe the [insert adjective here] media.

This past summer, some right-wing nut job posted signs all over the town where I work that stated "Don't Believe the Liberal Media!"  The first thing that came to my mind when I saw those signs was that they should read "Don't Believe the Corporate Controlled"Media." 

I personally feel that the media is far from liberal.  It focuses on criminal trials of celebrities and baby murderers and totally ignores or downplays topics like the fact that US Debt exceeds our GDP, that we appear to be in an endless war in the Middle East that we cannot afford, that information technology as well as move to free trade is taking away jobs from Americans, that political lobbies run by multinational corporations, and other special interest groups hold more sway over government than do the needs of the American people, and that we cannot have clean elections without violating the rights of multinational corporate entities, that claim that they have the same rights as individual American citizens.

Over the past several years laws have loosened up about corporate media control and the amount of media a company can control nationwide and in specific markets and this has had an overall detrimental effect on news coverage, but the media won't report that either.