who wants to raise minimum wage..that in turn just raises inflation.

Lets keep the minimum wage jobs for kids in highschool trying to save up enough money to pay half of thier car insurance bill to thier parents.

Instead, lets cut down on the CEO bonuses and spread that money at least a little more evenly down the line to the people who HELP keep the company profitable...including the fellas on line B bolting the D washer to the F ring.

BTW, worked through all schooling but mba: military, academic scholarships, fellowships, work study, and 2 years of plain old full time job + full time school.
Now I have $100K in school loans, but the salary makes paying it back possible.
You don't need mommy and daddy to do it (but it helps)

This issue should be so easy to fix:

CEO's should be highly compensated for their talents and ability to successfully run big companies.

But they make too MUCH money. Money they don't need.

Minimum Wage earners have little or no skills, other than ability to work hard. So they need to work hard to make a living.

But they cannot make a living on that kind of money.

Companies need the work done. Workers need to make a living. These are two undeniable facts of life.

With all the riches we have in this country, you'd think we could work this out in a reasonable fashion. Somehow.

Oh yeah, I forgot, rich people are never satisfied, and they don't give a shiat about the people doing all their dirty work for them.

I don't mean raise the actual minimum wage, but raise the pay of everyone whose pay is stuck down low - because of the virtually unlimited supply of low skilled laborers *illegals* who will to work below minimum wage. Cut off the dilution on that end, and you will see peoples skills valued more highly.

In a free economy, guess what the downside of capping a CEO's salary is, even if he makes a quadrillion-bazillion dollars a year?

Even if everybody else is envious?

czarangelus

You sure do like to rag on Wall Mart don't you?

You do realize that the majority of in-store walmart workers make more than minimum wage, right? Stock-workers get $12 an hour in some areas. Managers get a decent wage as well. Hell, even Cashiers get over minimum wage.

Does walmart pay the best wages? shiat no, and why should they? The employees get health and dental insurance. Also pays for your college if it's in a related field. Hell, it even has babysitting. This isn't free you know. It does go towards the total pay given to an employee.

jake3988

That's just it though, it's not like somebody sat down and said "this is what this guy deserves". I agree with you, but the fact is that when they did sit down to figure out the salary, what was being discussed was "this is how much we need to offer before somebody else snatches him/her up".

Same deal with pro athletes. I found it absolutely insulting that Michael Jordan would be paid 40 million a year back then, but that's how much he needed to be paid unless they wanted to risk him going to some other team. On the other hand, he NEGOTIATED for that salary that last year, which didn't sit too well with me (sort of stuck up, I don't know--he made enough with endorsements he didn't need an extra 10 million just to boost his ego).

Still, I understand your disgust. It's unfair that somebody can be making much more money than they could physically spend in a year (unless they do really stupid shiat like buy a diamond-studded condom) and have somebody else work two jobs without making ends meet and often without any benefits. It's life, I know, but it seems a lot of farkers here are entirely TOO comfortable with that.

The firm I work at pays all staff (including janitorial and the like) a livable wage with benefits.

bigdamn

Yeah, illegal PAY is not good for any economy. But thats a whole other fark thread(s) :-)

Singleton
We've all seen all the fun stuff with CEOs running companies into the ground, while escaping with their golden parachute. In these cases, shareholders have been ripped off. CEOs often get generous pay packages that guarantee them tons of money regardless of performance. Is it because they are good CEOs? No, it is because they know the right people and know how to work a board.

Were you thinking of anybody in particular??

BigDamn
One of the companies I work for seems to be pretty fair about wages right up to the top.

bmihura

Outside of suggesting a CAP, how about we ask these companies to be more responsible when negotiating contracts? As someone else pointed out...we're treating CEO's like sports stars with the obvious differences in responsibility to other people...such as thier employees and their welfare.

Hoblit,
What I am saying is that the endless supply of people willing to work for minimum wage or less drags down the pay for all of the low-skill and semi-skilled jobs, and makes it practically impossible to support a family on them, something you used to be able to do with such a job.
/control immigration
//parents are mexican citizens
mexico has to fix its own problems, not hoist them onto us.

czarangelus,

"23 year old recent graduate. Looking for a job and a real life, has anyone left one anywhere?"

So you're going to chop off my head?

I really don't think so...lifting the ax might take too much effort for you...

I love how big evil companies are awful for abiding by the amount they agree to pay people, but in philosophy world, the poor aren't worse for breaking the whole not murdering part of being a citizen.

So living up to what you said you'd do = bad
Killing those who pay you an amount you agreed to work for = noble

lenfromak
Anyone who can pass a piss test can get a job on the north slope of Alaska for twenty USD or more these days. There's just no excuse for anyone to be stuck at minimum wage in 2007.

Yeah! All people who aren't middle class should leave their home towns and families and work in inhospitable environments! What do we care? They're poor!

are you idiots really THAT blind to the issue here? The problem is NOT that CEO's are making that much money (although i would argue that creating that much division of wealth and power is never good). The issue is the ethics involved in making that much money. The top CEO's in this country all sit on eachothers board of directors and dish out cash to eachother with disregard to the needs of the average consumer or shareholder. Combine that with the backdating of stock options and grievous exploitation of tax loopholes and you get a system that continues to favor the rich and exploit the proletariat.

capitalism is flawed. Very fataly, and we will begin to see that in the coming decades as we find new ways of exploiting labor and resources to squeeze a few extra pennies out of the bottom line. Many other nations around the world have recognized this and placed the neccesary restrictions on enterprise while still allowing the same free market. However, as long as the common person (you) only cares about what is in your wallet, and whether you will be able to affort the oak floors instead of the pergo in your brand new split level house in the suburbs, this nation as we know it is doomed.

/end rant

I've said it before but I'll say it again. If 99% of the world's wealth was in the hands of 1% of the world's population (which is the inevitable endpoint of free market capitalism), over 50% of a Fark thread would be people attempting to justify it in the vain hope that they too will someday join the ranks of the rich and powerful.

Hoblit

Not a bad idea if it could be done.

rga184

simulpost baby!

Yeah, I understand BigDamn but I wouldn't limit that to just immigrants. There are plenty of people outside of immigrants working (again) at illegal pay standards. Sure, I imagine illegal immigrants make up the majority of the percentage but I think that problem runs deeper than that and even has other branches such as outsourcing issues and what not. (not to mention welfare benifits that are being taken advantage of)

I think America should work harder at making illegals legal. From there we can start to tackle the labor pay issues.

/figure out immigration issue
//Mother is Canadian immigrant now U.S. Citizen.
///her father crossed border for job.

AgentOrangeDrink: I've said it before but I'll say it again. If 99% of the world's wealth was in the hands of 1% of the world's population (which is the inevitable endpoint of free market capitalism), over 50% of a Fark thread would be people attempting to justify it in the vain hope that they too will someday join the ranks of the rich and powerful.

If I have enough pie to be full, why do I care what percent of the pie it was, or who got more pie than me?

I am jesus

First one. I'm glad I took that second to re-read it before pressing the button.

bmihura and there lies our discussion :-)

/Shaking tiny impitent fist
//probably spelled impitent wrong

mrtimo: Are people really so incompetent that they can't get a raise or experience for a better than minimum wage job after six months?

Are people so ignorant that you don't realize that even if 100% of people were intelligent, educated and ambitious, minimum wage jobs would still exist and someone would still work them due to circumstance?

Minimum wage is exploitive. It should be doubled and Sam Walls kids could each get 7b inheritance instead of 15b. Who gets hurt there?

There is a real war of haves vs have-nots. Like Warren Buffet said, "If there is a war, we're definitely winning."

It is to the point that our economy is almost like a feudal system. The rich and powerful are happy of course and use all their considerable means to do whatever they must to stay in power. Meanwhile, the other 99% are pretty much just down and out.

The best example is the difference between someone who owns a lot of land vs someone who doesn't own land. The one who doesn't own land pays a huge portion of their wealth towards rent, which goes entirely to the land owner(s). The renter is stuck in a vicious cycle while the land owner just gets richer and richer.

There used to be enough wealth in the nation to go around for everyone to be happy. That has changed. Scarcity is kicking in, living standards are going down.

I predict years from now there will finally, finally be a revolution. But it won't be televised, because the entirety of major media outlets are owned by like 5 people.

scrantonicity: Minimum wage is exploitive. It should be doubled and Sam Walls kids could each get 7b inheritance instead of 15b. Who gets hurt there?

It should be a Billion dollars, that way we'd all be rich, and then we could make hats out our meaningless money!

Hoblit
Yeah, I understand BigDamn but I wouldn't limit that to just immigrants. There are plenty of people outside of immigrants working (again) at illegal pay standards.

Amen. While we're at it, give waiters, busboys and bartenders a fair wage and do away with tipping. Gawd that's a ridiculous custom.

Oracle to B

For the record, I do not endorse murder. Poor or Rich, please don't be killin' folk...or rippin' people off.

Bad is bad. Rich or poor... ethics apply to both.

Hoblit: For the record, I do not endorse murder. Poor or Rich, please don't be killin' folk...or rippin' people off.

Bad is bad. Rich or poor... ethics apply to both.

I was more getting at czarangelus's glorious revolution.

Is our system doing better than some others? Yeah I'd say so.
Could it be better? Yeah I'd say so.
Can people reasonably disagree on how to improve it? Totally.

It should be a Billion dollars, that way we'd all be rich, and then we could make hats out our meaningless money!

Sure, because that happens every time minimum wages were raised.

Is our system doing better than some others? Yeah I'd say so.
Could it be better? Yeah I'd say so.
Can people reasonably disagree on how to improve it? Totally.


Exactly & Absolutely.

Oracle of Bandwidth


AgentOrangeDrink: I've said it before but I'll say it again. If 99% of the world's wealth was in the hands of 1% of the world's population (which is the inevitable endpoint of free market capitalism), over 50% of a Fark thread would be people attempting to justify it in the vain hope that they too will someday join the ranks of the rich and powerful.

If I have enough pie to be full, why do I care what percent of the pie it was, or who got more pie than me?

You're apparently not the Oracle of Math, since you seem to think that 1% of the world's wealth is adequate enough for 99% of the world's population. When that happens, you won't have enough pie to be full, since you'll only get a sliver.

AgentOrangeDrink: You're apparently not the Oracle of Math, since you seem to think that 1% of the world's wealth is adequate enough for 99% of the world's population. When that happens, you won't have enough pie to be full, since you'll only get a sliver.

So the problem is the amount of wealthy, not what percentage you have. So shouldn't we focus on the best way to create more wealth?

Oracle of Bandwidth: So the problem is the amount of wealthy, not what percentage you have. So shouldn't we focus on the best way to create more wealth?

Actually, the problem is *exactly* what percentage you have. If you add more "wealth" to an economy without changing the distribution, the buying power of everyone (including the poorest 99%) stays the same.

Really, poor distribution of income/wealth is not one of the hallmarks of a successful economy/society.

Oracle of Bandwidth

So the problem is the amount of wealthy, not what percentage you have. So shouldn't we focus on the best way to create more wealth?

There's already plenty of ways to make new wealth, the problem is that it just keeps ending up in the hands of the same people. All money is arbitrary anyway, it doesn't actually mean anything unless we agree upon it, so it's possible to imagine that when 1% have 99% of everything, the other 99% will just decide to no longer agree to recognize the validity of the 1%'s wealth. Then we could develop an entirely new system of wealth distribution that encourages people to work hard without concentrating wealth in unnecessary amounts. Capitalism, like everything else, cannot last forever. The problem specifically with capitalism is once the wealth distribution reaches its inevitable 99-1 ratio, it essentially becomes slavery, with the extremely minor compensation offered existing only for show.

Rush Limbaugh is a junkie pedophile and Ayn Rand was skeezy, hypocritical old whore.

Keep licking it up, dipshiats...

I say if you're really gonna preach all this social Darwinism bullshiat, then you ought not pansy out about it.

If you want survival of the fittest, then by god make it survival of the fittest... not "let's see who can do the best under the rules we wrote and the system we own!"

Free market should mean free market. Deregulation should mean deregulation. Deregulate the whole farking shebang. Jeffrey Skilling can keep what I can't club him to death for... I can keep what Bubba the meth-head can't knife me for.

This bullshiat of executives rubber-stamping each other's own compensation packages and the gap between the average worker's salary and executive pay doubling and tripling and quadrupling year after year (the gap that is) is just farking atrocious.

It's robbery no less than putting a knife to someone's throat in a dark alley... just because it's systemic and sanctioned, and gussied up with bullshiat platitudes and dogmatic devotion to absurd economic philosophies doesn't change the fact the wealth created by the people of this nation is being plundered by the handful who have an iron grip on the reins.

As goes the working class, so goes the middle class. The foundation is being eroded and we'll be sucked into the muck too.

Our economy is like two balloons joined by the neck, and all the air is being sucked out of one and into the other. It's not happening overnight, but it is happening and it will continue to happen, and you morons are applauding it like a drooling fat kid with an ice cream cake just so Bill O'Reilly will like you.

To the people who are saying that the money is made on the backs of the workers, and the CEO's are just the idea men? You're right.

Form a union. Fight greed and get what's yours.

technicolor-misfit

I like the cut of your jib, and so for you, and for all the silly capitalists, here's Atlas Shrugged 2: One Hour Later. http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif (sorry for the lack of HTML, but it's funny enough to merit the copy n' paste)

So fark what?

/haven't read the article
//or the comments

Czar:Well, I think that the character of the blue collar jobs would change. Americans can start taking jobs illegal immigrants are taking for $3 an hour for $20 an hour. Heads of lettuce would get a lot more expensive, but everyone could afford it then. I think financial independence is the most important thing to which a sovereign nation can aspire.

Now as an employer, what incentive do you have to higher someone at an outrageously higher price? There is none! The employer wants to make money, not lose it. You have no logical reasoning behind how people would start affording lettuce. You're just going to perpetuate poverty even more.

The people working in factories in China have terrible lives. They live in conditions that make a college dormitory look like paradise.

Oh boo hoo, give me a farking break! Do you know what conditions were like for people in America during the Industrial Revolution or in factories in the South before air conditioning? You can't be seriously complaining about this. It's called evolution of the economy. I'm pretty sure their working conditions are relatively a lot better compared to what they had before and they are getting paid better. Give them 50 years and working conditions will improve. Don't be an idiot and compare their working conditions to America, we've had a longer time to mature.

The only solution that I see is to increase worldwide demand for American products, and your solution is pointed firmly in the opposite direction, and for that reason alone I say that it'll only accelerate the coming hard times.

Hello genius, that's done by cheaper inputs into the products and services. Raising wages all across the board will make our products less appealing because they will be more expensive compared to similar products produced in other countries. No one is going to buy our products because they are "Made in America," they are going to buy them because they are cheaper. You are an economic retard.

What if we reset the dollar and brought back the gold standard? A lot of nations lending to us would get pissed, but what could they do? No nation can ever invade America and win.

Oh yeah, real smart there. Let's fix our money again, because that does a WHOLE lot of good. Ever looked at Asia in the 1990's and how their economies fell off the deep end? Yeah, that's because their money was pegged to something, and they had no monetary controls to stop the economic downfall. Free floating currency is the best choice because it is dynamic and able to deal with economic downturns better than those currencies that are pegged to gold or some other standard.

That's why power needs to flow from the bottom up.

What would that do? Nothing. You'd just flip over the ladder, woo hoo!

I am tired of hearing idiots spout out 'we are exporting jobs to China' or 'those damn immigrants are taking our jobs!' Despite whatever job losses people have experienced and those jobs that are being given to illegals, we are still at one of the lowest unemployment rates ever. The jobs that are being taken by others are jobs that regular people don't want to do. People don't have incentives to work those jobs because they suck!

If you want to really see increased wages, get rid of labor unions. They lock in wage rates and don't allow people in the union to get what they should be paid. But I couldn't expect people to do this because of the 'good fight' labor unions make for people.

/Currently getting a degree in Economics
//And Biomedical Engineering
///Czar, never talk about economics again because you clearly know nothing.

what incentive do you have to higher someone

Should have majored in English, champ.

Maybe because a CEO, in two days, does more to impact a company than a minimum wage earner can do all year. Ever think about that, Mr. SmartyPanz?

ow--I'm so happy to have such a flock of Junior Economists swoop onto Fark and explain to us how our middle class is disapearing, minimum wage increases are needed, and CEOs get paid to mucch (there aught to be a law, you know that like, says you can't make more than a certain amount of money).

Normally I'd ask for like, a link to some stats or something verifying your claims, but I trust all you Junior Economists haver done your homework.

While he was still President and CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates at his peak was making money so fast that if someone placed a $50,000 bill (the largest denomination available to the public: the $100,000 bill is only used between banks and the Federal Reserve) at his feet, and told him that it was his if he simply picked it up and put it in his pocket, but that during the time it took him to do so he’d have to forego any other money he earned from any other source during those few seconds, he’d walk off and leave it there. It wouldn’t be worth it to him to pick it up.

Garm
Old boys club, hmm, sounds evil.

Lemme see here, you need someone to run your company. Do you hire the guy you know or the guy you don't know and your colleagues don't know?

That's "Good Ole Boys Club" . Just out of curiosity, have you met many of the execs who run some of these companies? The fact that some of them can tie their own shoes amazes me. Some of them are real idiots. You know, like "W" our executive good ole boy president.