The Minimum Wage

Your points 1 and 4 kinda contradict each other, don't they? The fact that agricultural products do get destroyed to keep prices high shows there's an over-abundance of them, and hence an over-abundance of agriculturally used land. So losing some of that land to urban development is no big deal.

And cooperatives are fine and all. If they're voluntary.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

The actual problem with agriculture is that the big farms are all growing one thing and one thing only. Miles of it, be it corn, wheat, rutabegas, what have you. They're paid to grow those through subsidies, which exhausts the soil and grows more of a particular item than we need. Agriculture would be just a bit better off with less of the subsidies and more diversity in what the big farms and little farms are growing.

Indeed.

However, we're missing the fact that we don't even need farmland any more. We can literally factory-farm produce using hydrophonics. I think the subsidies could go towards having farmers set up such hydrophonics, and then we can sell off the land space for development and whatnot.

Not at current production costs we can't.

Also, nobody would need so much development land anyway.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

I'm... fairly certain that our technology isn't actually at that level yet. Not to mention that I fail to see how that is in any way superior to regularly grown food.

Hydroponics, I mean? Hydrophonics was a typo.... errr...

I'm sure it's basically factory-farmed produce. It was in my Biology textbook!

Well, you can get food all-year-round. And they're usually bigger than most regularly grown stuff. And for some reason, cheaper in the supermarkets.

We already get food all year round, and food grown out of season is less tasty. And probably less nutritious, if I'm remembering my information right. And I don't really take cheaper is a sign of quality in food.

Good point...

Wait, how did farming get onto this? What do them farmers gotta do with the min. wage?

edited 29th Dec '11 9:38:50 PM by Inhopelessguy

I don't remember, but I assume that a farmer's earnings have to do with a state's GDP or whatever the letters are, as that they factor into a state's median wage. *shrug* /derail

Oh, right, that kind of thinking has no value for me whatsoever.

But, for some reason, the farming regions of Britain have a higher GDP per capita than the post-industrial regions.

Anyway, I like the idea of a decent min. wage.

If we assume that potential min. wage is 10 Merits.

Before min wage leglislation, the worst jobs pay 4 Merits.

That means a man must work 2-3 jobs to meet the proposed MW.

By having a MW, that man would have to work one job for a MW. This frees the other two jobs for two other people, who could then work for MW.

Granted, that's a very basic grasp.

Plus if you lower the total number of hours in a work week that are allowed, companies will have to hire even more people to cover themselves.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

We have a better employment policy than most governments.

We're not even allowed to vote yet. We're awesome.

I get told by a lot of people, including my parents (who are generally quite removed from my politics in practice) to go into politics, but I couldn't stand working with the people there and I can't be bothered to get a law degree instead of the degrees I already want to get.

Anyhow, presumably, all of this is much more complex in practice. That, and you have to plow through the Friedman/Randian people...

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

I misread that as Fruedian, and that would have made me want to help you push through the psudopsychologists.

My post was being in jest, but yeah, there are a lot more factors that play into this.

edited 29th Dec '11 10:00:29 PM by Inhopelessguy

Earlier Hyroponics Tangent: Hey, that's a good idea for a thread. :3 Make one and bring the discussion there! :o

edited 29th Dec '11 10:33:56 PM by Zersk

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ

Doing it.

@USAF/Flyboy

Would there really be a point in trying to go into politics in the US? Not much difference you can make.

You never know. Look at Chester A. Arthur.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

And he's dead.

Therefore, if Aerohead entered US politics, he would die!

Of course he's dead, silly, he was President in the 1800s. Though he also died of kidney/pancreatic disease/cancer, or something like that. Hm.

Anyhow, the system—including minimum wage—could be fixed. It merely requires people less worried about a continued political career and more about fixing the problem.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

I agree with Breadloaf and Karkadinn. Also, I wanted to address this:

First of all, no it won't. Corporations (and some small business owners too) may be inhumane in their business practices, but there are employers who are trying to be decent to their workers. Some people realize that there is quite a bit more to life than monetary profit. They compensate their workers fairly, and do not require unreasonable working hours or an excessive number or tasks and duties.

Every state has its underclass, that's true enough, but the size of the proletariat varies widely. In some countries, being a high school teacher will support a family of four quite comfortably. In others, it won't. If the middle class is pushed down to join the lower class in the ranks of the poor, the state becomes burdened by a high percentage of people who rely on governmental assistance to make ends meet.

The real problem is in the people who believe that survival is all that is necessary, and that if you can survive working 90 hours a week for an incredibly low wage, you are being spoiled and irresponsible to complain about your lot. Living on $5 a day while working 8 hours for someone else's profit is miserable. If you can barely afford rent (never mind health care), and working only to get by, going into debt to purchase a bit of extra comfort, education, and entertainment looks like a pretty necessary thing to do. I'm not going to make guesses about your background, but I think you should, no matter where you come from, consider where others have started and where they want to go (and what stands in their way). It is the government's responsibility to provide means for them to get there, and regulating wages so that people can work a dead-end job and still feel satisfied with their life is part of that.

You are a blowfish.

Yeah. And to use a different angle from the one so far (I'd rather use the individualist angle, but maybe people like Sheep are more convinced this way) - this should really not be necessary in industrialized countries (and I don't just mean the USA with it - the expansion of the temp work market here in Germany has led to some deplorable conditions as well). I mean, I can get there are societies out there which just materially cannot help such people. But if this happens here, in Europe or North America - then that is just insulting to the entire nation in question. It's a disgrace, a national shame. If there are conditions in part of first world countries that resemble the developing world, then it can be called nothing else.

More even - mutual solidarity is IMO the entire raison d'etre of states. Humans form states because we are social people (there never was that 'natural state' of the social contract philosophers), humans are social because that is what has proven to be evolutionarily successful, and it is successful because it allows humans to support each other. So, in essence, this mutual support is the reason states exist. If it fails - why have states at all?

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

It's also probably important to say that between 1979 and 2007, income in the US grew by...

And the share of income going to higher-income households rose, while the share going to lower-income households fell.

Taken directly from the government site here.

Which I think is just terrible, and the numbers should speak for themselves here.

edited 30th Dec '11 6:27:00 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

As they say, the rich get richer, and the poor get screwed over.