Dependence on Food Stamps

[BridgeTroll]

I just don't get why you guys are so adamantly against paying people more.  You have no problem with CEOs making outrageous sums, many making more than they could ever possibly spend.  Yet you're against paying those at the bottom a few dollars more an hour, which they certainly will spend, which will increase the size of the economy and be better for everyone. 

Quite the contrary... I want higher wages for everyone.  Clearly government mandated wages are not the way to get there.

[ChriswUfGator]

I just don't get why you guys are so adamantly against paying people more.  You have no problem with CEOs making outrageous sums, many making more than they could ever possibly spend.  Yet you're against paying those at the bottom a few dollars more an hour, which they certainly will spend, which will increase the size of the economy and be better for everyone. 

Quite the contrary... I want higher wages for everyone.  Clearly government mandated wages are not the way to get there.

So before the enactment of a federal minimum wage, is it your impression that wages for unskilled labor were higher or lower?

[avonjax]

I just don't get why you guys are so adamantly against paying people more.  You have no problem with CEOs making outrageous sums, many making more than they could ever possibly spend.  Yet you're against paying those at the bottom a few dollars more an hour, which they certainly will spend, which will increase the size of the economy and be better for everyone. 

For me this is the 1st and most important issue. WHY should the people who run these companies make obscene amounts of money when the lowly workers can barely eat.

It's not my job, nor is it my corporation's job to help others. It's my job to concentrate as much wealth into my families and my business coffers. There is no mandate that says help all the dumb clucks , who won't (not can't) improve their lot in life. Who I choose to help and be charitable to is my business, the myth of "the living wage" is that it's a crowbar to leverage more money out of the hands of those that earn it.

Don't want to make 7.50 an hour? don't get knocked up in 9th grade , know who your dad is, finish high school, learn a trade or goto college for a technical/medical  degree.

this isn't hard.

And for me and people who actually give a crap about other humans beings this may as well have been written by Satan.

[tyrsblade]

And for me and people who actually give a crap about other humans beings this may as well have been written by Satan.

And stealing money I've worked hard to make out my hands and giving it to someone else is some kind of moral high ground, no it's theft. Capitalism's fundamental mechanic is based on self interest, it is the thing that powers the forces of commerce. When you disincentivize a person from working in their best interest they become complacent and unwilling to make decisions for their betterment. Minimum wage was created in a time when the workers were being abused, today's "living wage" debate isn't about abuse, instead it's about wealth redistribution, or more concisely put stealing.

[finehoe]

The powers that be will NEVER let a large segment of the population get ahead simply because wealthier means better educated.Then they wont be able to pull the crap they pull now with impunity when a significant segment of the populace is informed and incensed.

"It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste.

But in practice such a society could not remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupified by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away.

In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."

George Orwell, 1984

[finehoe]

Minimum wage was created in a time when the workers were being abused

Thank goodness that's not happening any more.

[finehoe]

Self-interest, without morals, leads to capitalism's self-destruction
By Jeffrey Sachs
Financial Times; January 18, 2012

Capitalism earns its keep through Adam Smith's famous paradox of the invisible hand: self-interest, operating through markets, leads to the common good. Yet the paradox of self-interest breaks down when stretched too far. This is our global predicament today.

Self-interest promotes competition, the division of labor, and innovation, but fails to support the common good in four ways.

First, it fails when market competition breaks down, whether because of natural monopolies (in infrastructure), externalities (often related to the environment), public goods (such as basic scientific knowledge), or asymmetric information (in financial fraud, for example).

Second, it can easily turn into unacceptable inequality. The reasons are legion: luck; aptitude; inheritance; winner-takes-all-markets; fraud; and perhaps most insidiously, the conversion of wealth into power, in order to gain even greater wealth.

Third, self-interest leaves future generations at the mercy of today's generation. Environmental unsustainability is a gross inequality of wellbeing across generations rather than across social classes.

Fourth, self-interest leaves our fragile mental apparatus, evolved for the African savannah, at the mercy of Madison Avenue. To put it more bluntly, our sense of self-interest, unless part of a large value system, is easily transmuted into a hopelessly addictive form of consumerism.

For these reasons, successful capitalism has never rested on a moral base of self-interest, but rather on the practice of self-interest embedded in a larger set of values. Max Weber explained that Europe's original modern capitalists, the Calvinists, pursued profits in the search for proof of salvation. They saved ascetically to accumulate wealth to prove God's grace, not to sate their consumer appetites.

Keynes noted the same regarding the mechanisms underpinning Pax Britannica at the end of the 19th Century. As he put it, the economic machine held together because those who ostensibly owned the cake only pretended to consume it. American capitalism, more secular and less patriotic, created its own vintage of social restraint. The greatest capitalist of the second half of the 19th century, Andrew Carnegie developed his Gospel of Wealth, according to which the great wealth of the entrepreneur was not personal property but a trust for society.

Our 21st century predicament is that these moral strictures have mostly vanished. On the one hand, the power of self-interest is alive and well and is delivering much that is good, indeed utterly remarkable, at a global scale. Former colonies and laggard regions are bounding forward as technologies diffuse and incomes surge through global trade and investment.

Yet global capitalism has mostly shed its moral constraints. Self-interest is no longer embedded in higher values. Consumerism is the world's secular religion, more than science, humanism, or any other -ism. "Greed is good" is not only the mantra of a 1980s Hollywood moral fable: it is the operating principle of the top tiers of world society.

Capitalism is at risk of failing today not because we are running out of innovations, or because markets are failing to inspire private actions, but because we've lost sight of the operational failings of unfettered gluttony. We are neglecting a torrent of market failures in infrastructure, finance, and the environment. We are turning our backs on a grotesque worsening of income inequality and willfully continuing to slash social benefits. We are destroying the Earth as if we are indeed the last generation. We are poisoning our own appetites through addictions to luxury goods, cosmetic surgery, fats and sugar, TV watching, and other self-medications of choice or persuasion. And our politics are increasingly pernicious, as we turn political decisions over to the highest-bidding lobby, and allow big money to bypass regulatory controls.

Unless we regain our moral bearings our scope for collective action will be lost. The day may soon arrive when money fully owns our politics, markets have utterly devastated the environment, and gluttony relentlessly commands our personal choices. Then we will have arrived at the ultimate paradox: the self-destruction of prosperity at the very moment when technological knowhow enables sustainable prosperity for all.

[GoldenEst82]

I listened to a fascinating episode of the Diane Rhem show last night, in which Jeremy Rifkin was speaking about the emergence of a "zero marginal cost" society- and how the combined internets (yes there are more than one) can bring about a world without the abuse of people and the planet.
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2014-03-31/jeremy-rifkin-zero-marginal-cost-society-internet-things

Extremely relevant to this topic.

Thank the powers- The generation(s) that grow up connected to the world, care about that world and the people in it.

Also, Im curious; if Mr. Tyrsblade calls himself a Christian? Because that post was the least loving thing Ive seen up here in a while.

[finehoe]

...a time when the workers were being abused...

Two former McDonald's store managers have come forward to admit making staff work without pay. 

The former managers said they felt pressure from corporate to cut labor costs, so they engaged in some illegal practices, such as asking employees to clock out and continue working.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-managers-withheld-pay-2014-4#ixzz2xkNG1x2p

[tyrsblade]

Two former McDonald's store managers have come forward to admit making staff work without pay. 

They should have quit and went to work at Popeye's , Wendy's , Arby's or any of the bazillion fast food  establishments. Then contacted a lawyer and sued the hell out of them (which I am certain they are going to do). They are not bound and tied to their employer.

I know I sound heartless, but people aren't powerless in these situations.

[finehoe]

Last year $76 billion flowed from the U.S. Treasury to people's food stamp cards. That money then flowed into the revenue streams of about 240,000 stores across the country, all of which have been approved by the federal government to accept food stamps, officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. You can look at SNAP as a government subsidy with two lives. First, low-income people enrolled in the program get financial help to buy food. Then, when they swipe their EBT cards at the checkout counters, the government pays those stores for that food—which is, of course, being sold at a profit.

So it seems worthwhile to pay attention to how this "second life" of a food stamp subsidy works. There's just one problem: A lot of the information about how stores benefit from food stamps is confidential.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/04/big_box_stores_make_billions_off_food_stamps_often_it_s_their_own_workers.html

[tyrsblade]

stephendare, name calling is not very civil.

[tyrsblade]

Tyrsblade, are you under the impression that everyone who hates their job should work for another company?

Yes, or at least change fields to something they enjoy or can make a living from.

All of those McDonalds managers who kind of prove that you were wrong in your first post about people being taken advantage of could just get jobs at Burger King eh?

They should have known their rights, corporations are required to post information about workers rights in break rooms and other areas. If they are skilled , hard working people , they should be able to apply for alternate employment. Further, if their rights had been compromised there are various legal resources available to them.

That way all the honest people leave the corporations until the corporation finds someone that is willing to be dishonest?

A corporation whose workforce composition is comprised off morally bankrupt individuals  will soon find itself also bankrupt (ok, well in small business anyways. Goldman Sachs and AIG have been bending the US over for quiet sometime).

And what about all the people who got their wages stolen?

They should sue. Or at least find another job, I wouldn't stay somewhere as an employee if my wages were being messed with.

Does having their manager quit make the theivery stop?

Their manager should be fired and hopefully run over by truck on his/her way out the door.

Or is it just harder to punish the people who stole the money in the first place, and therefore paying out food stamps and public assistance to the tune of billions of dollars is inherently better?

I've read a couple of articles about the McDonalds thing and am still unclear on who these directives came from whether management or ownership, if the later I would think a class action suit would be en route.

[fsquid]

Fine. That is certainly more the job of government than the job of Wal-Mart... in no small part but because at least you can target the 'payers' of that tax to impact the more wealthy.

Consider that Wal-Mart and their investors will STILL make the same return and pay the same taxes they currently pay. They will charge more thus increasing their revenue, but they will also expense more in worker's pay. so their net income remains the same, as does their taxable base. The people who will PAY this 'tax' are the people who shop at Wal-Mart, who aren't the 1%.

[tyrsblade]

The point that's being missed here is we are talking about low-wage jobs. Service industry jobs that by and large are meant to be stepping stones into something better, not life-long pursuits. Arguably these jobs are meant for teenagers and retired part timers. not adults in the prime of their lives. There are other jobs , just look in the trades, hell, vocational school is even option in most school systems now. Not all of us can be phd's , quite a few of us can be tradesmen however. Mastering a trade increases your time-value and can lift you out of poverty.

The thing I don't understand is why do we think increasing the wage of cashier will make things better? all that'll happen s that prices will adjust to the new bottom and those extra costs will be passed on others, with no marked affect on the earnings of walmart.