4 Responses to “Minimum Wage should be increased even more”

1. David W. Shelton Says:
   July 26th, 2007 at 9:13 pm

   Jeff, sometimes I wonder if you’re just disagreeing with me for the sake of disagreeing. You say that I “shot myself in the foot,” yet you seem to have casually neglected this paragraph: “Not so in today’s multiplex environment when shows are staggered to have walk-ins at all hours of the day. These kids are running ragged, and to my knowledge, that chain has not changed their policy.” Clearly, the situation is far different now than it was when I had my position there. If you ever visit the Great Escape, then you’ll see these kids on their feet at all hours. Even McDonald’s will give (small) raises. The reality is that minimum wage is just too low. In a time when so many of us have to work two and three jobs, it’s just not worth the time to put into it.

2. Bill Larson Says:
   July 28th, 2007 at 11:33 am

   The minimum wage is economic fairness, nothing more, and nothing less. I seem to recall someone saying Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Sadly some people, particularly those in the business world, would pay slave wages if they could get away with it. Sometimes people just don’t have a choice. In a world with true free market, wages could indeed be set by what the market would bear, but in a world of anti-competitive actions, consolidations, and mergers it can not. You have to have a choice of other places to work, for that to occur. For one local example look at the widespread rumor of collusion between the EDC and Trane not to allow new manufacturing jobs in Clarksville that will pay more than the Trane company currently does. Why? Because they know in a truly competitive wages marketplace the Trane company would have to pay much better wages, or risk losing their best people, and of course they wouldn’t want to do that, unless they are forced to. So I strongly support the current minimum wage laws until we get something better, like a federal living wage law. I also think we should tie congressional pay increases to increases in the minimum wage laws.

3. Bill Larson Says:
   July 28th, 2007 at 8:52 pm

   The golden rule is a human thing, not a religious one. It originated in Egypt well before it made it’s way into the Jewish Torah, and thus into Christianity. 1970 – 1640s BC “This is an ordinance: Act for the man who acts, to cause him to act. This is thanking him for what he does.” – The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant In line B1 142 page 64 of The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems, tr. R.B. Parkinson OUP. ~1280 – 650 BC “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love your fellow as yourself: I am the LORD.” – Moses, Tanakh, new JPS translation, Leviticus (Leviticus 19:18), Judaism. ~700 BC “That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self.” – Dadistan-i-Dinik 94:5, Zoroastrianism. ? BCE “Whatever is disagreeable to yourself do not do unto others.” – Shayast-na-Shayast 13:29, Zoroastrianism. ~500 BC “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” – Udana-Varga 5:18, Buddhism. ~500 BC “The Sage…makes the self of the people his self.” Tao Te Ching Ch 49, tr. Ch’u Ta-Kao, Unwin Paperbacks, 1976. Daoism ~500 BC “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” Analects of Confucius 15:24, Confucianism, tr. James Legge. ~500 BC “Now the man of perfect virtue, wishing to be established himself, seeks also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge others. To be able to judge of others by what is near in ourselves; this may be called the art of virtue.” Analects of Confucius 6:30, Confucianism, tr. James Legge. ~500 BC “One word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life [is] reciprocity. Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.” – Doctrine of the Mean 13.3, Confucianism ~500 BC “Therefore, neither does he cause violence to others nor does he make others do so.” – Acarangasutra 5.101-2, Jainism. ~300 BC “One should not behave towards others in a way which is disagreeable to oneself. This is the essence of morality. All other activities are due to selfish desire.” – Mahabharata, Anusasana Parva 113.8, Hinduism ~300 BC “It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly (agreeing ‘neither to harm nor be harmed’). And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.” – Epicurus ~180 BC “What you hate, do not do to anyone.” – The Book of Tobit 4:15, NRSV translation, Judaism. ~150 BC “This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.” – Mahabharata 5:1517, Hinduism. ~100 AC “What you feel painful to yourself, do not do to others.” – Tiruvalluvar, Tirukkural 316. ~100 AC “What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary.” – Hillel the Elder; Talmud, Shabbat 31a, Judaism. ~30 AC “So in everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, for this sums up the law and the prophets.” Jesus- Sermon on the Mount, Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 7:12 NIV), Christianity ~100 AC “What you would avoid suffering yourself, seek not to impose on others.” – Epictetus. ~600 CE “Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.” — Muhammad in The Farewell Sermon. 1785: “Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature.” – Kant’s categorical imperative. ~1808 “Identity is the identity of identity and non-identity.” – Hegel’s reflexive, antisymmetric identity, X = not(X), at foundation of all moral systems. ~1870 “He should not wish for others what he does not wish for himself.” – Bahá’u'lláh, Kitab-i-Aqdas 148.73 Bahá’í Faith. ~1890 “And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbour that which thou choosest for thyself.” – Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, 30, Bahá’í Faith. ~1940 “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” – Gandhi 1945: “The golden rule … is further improved by doing unto others, wherever possible, as they want to be done by.” – Karl Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 2) As for slavery you can have forced slavery or more subtle forms. Take the coal mining towns company stores. Get the worker into debt, then keep him in debt forever. While that is not as blatant as it once was, it’s still going on today. Just look at the credit card companies and the new bankruptcy laws the Republican controlled congress rewarded them with. Continued in the next comment…

4. Bill Larson Says:
   July 28th, 2007 at 9:00 pm

   You see government as bad, I see it as necessary. Yes they sometimes waste our money, but without them we would be still in the days of child labor, sweatshops, debtor prisons, mass poverty, ignorance, and monopolies. You enjoy the standard of living you do because the government put a stop to the worst excesses of business. Socialism does not equal Communism. No matter how much the government brainwashed you during the cold war Socialism isn’t a bad thing for working people. We have socialism in our education system, postal system, interstate highways, lets not forget our police and fire departments, water, and sewer. Why because we can’t trust private enterprise to do these things. I don’t see our form of capitalism on it’s own being a good thing. If you do then you are simply day dreaming. True Capitalism doesn’t exist. American Capitalism only benefits the wealthy. You might wish you were independently wealthy, but it will not likely happen, no matter how hard you work, and how much you sweat. It comes down to the simple fact that it takes money to make money. What we commonly have is monopolies and oligopolies. A few examples of oligopolies are the accounting & audit services industries, tobacco companies, beer brewers, aircraft manufacturers, military contractors, Auto makers, and the movie and music recording industries. An oligopoly is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers. In some situations, the firms may collude to raise prices and restrict production in the same way as a monopoly. Where there is a formal agreement for such collusion, this is known as a cartel. Firms often collude in an attempt to stabilize unstable markets, so as to reduce the risks inherent in these markets for investment and product development. There are legal restrictions on such collusion in most countries. There does not have to be a formal agreement for collusion to take place (although for the act to be illegal there must be a real communication between companies) – for example, in some industries, there may be an acknowledged market leader which informally sets prices to which other producers respond, known as price leadership. If you read the link I gave in comment 4 it proves that the cities which institute a living wage law do not have the level of job loss as the minimum wage opponents claimed would happen. “New study shows higher incomes from ‘living wage’ outweigh the cost in job losses.” When you give more people a decent living wage, they have more money to buy products and services from you. Basically it balances out in the end… I can keep discussing this all day.

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