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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Which means they have to spend more money to manufacture more goods, driving up employment in manufacturing jobs and creating more people to spend more money on more products. The trickle-up effect, basically.
Which is conceptually exactly how capitalism is supposed to work. The problem right now is that employers are so quick to betray for the meager benefit they get from it that they don't even let the game-master finish explaining the rules of the Prisoner's Dilemma before mashing their choice button.
edited 11th May '16 2:48:06 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.@Key Break: I fail to see how making it necessarily means taking away money from someone else, especially in creative fields like writing or movie making.
@Jovian I think it's called the American Dream because America was the first country where this became possible. Moreover I think America's version is a bit different from other places. The reason we draw so many inventors and entrepreneurs from all over the world is that while they can get rich in their homelands, in the US they can get fantastically rich. And that is seen as their god given right, provided that the thing they achieved has been deemed to be "worth it."
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.@Jack Anybody who makes the vow to watch only one superhero vs. superhero movie this year would have to choose between Batman Vs. Superman and Civil War.
There are a lot of books I want to read and movies I want to see and video games I want to play, but I only have so much focus, let alone time, let alone money, to look at them all.
You gotta believe me when I scare you away, all that I wish for is that you would stay@American Dream: I define the Dream as, effectively, the idea of the "Self-Made (Wo)Man". The idea that people can come here starting with relatively little and working their way up in the world on sheer "merit". For example, a guy building a computer in his garage ending up becoming the richest person on Earth.
The American Dream itself has never been fully realized to all groups of people, of course, though it would not be accurate to say it's entirely non-existent, either. It exists in most first-world nations, though I'd argue America is uniquely fixated on it.
Leviticus 19:34Sounds about what I think of when someone mentions the American Dream. And I believe in it too.
And I've come to realize that all the people on top will do their damndest to make sure everybody stays poor. Especially if they're not white or male.
So we have to create a place where people have an opportunity to make it. And if that means we gotta disenfranchise some bigots, twist a rich person's arm, or redistribute some wealth then all the better.
Oh really when?America was made by more populous settlers flooding into the country and outright stealing it from the people who already lived here.
Now we have laws and enforcement to (mostly) ensure that everything anybody "owns" stays in their possession.
You gotta believe me when I scare you away, all that I wish for is that you would stayThe embodiment of the American dream can be summed up be the reminiscences of an immigrant (whose name escapes me at the moment): "When I first came to America, I had nothing but the clothes on my back. Everything I have now — my house, my business, my family — is net profit."
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.This minimum-wage talk is turning way too moralistic for my tastes. Employers don't have a moral obligation, in my mind, to give employees any more wages than are stipulated in the contract. It's not "theft of labor" to set the price you're willing to pay for labor and accept laborers who are willing to do the work you stipulate at the price you stipulate.
A minimum wage is a good thing for society, but it's properly seen as an artificial social-engineering decision by our elected leaders.
Oh Mittens.
Senator Ted Cruz plans to run for re-election in 2018.
@Ramidel: Well, it's both moralistic (we owe it to workers to pay them enough to live on) and economic (minimum wages increase consumption, which increases economic output). Not exactly rocket science, and it's not even really ideology.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@Fighteer: The discussion a page above was running along the lines of "it's theft of labor to not pay employees what they're 'worth'," which I found somewhat annoying. (And because this thread is running at warp speed today, a page passed before my reply hit.) The idea that labor has a natural value is quite frankly medieval - the value of labor is what employers are willing to pay for it.
"Each person has the right to a living income" is a better formulation, as is "a higher minimum wage stimulates the economy," but it doesn't place the onus specifically on employers to do better than lawmakers.
edited 11th May '16 4:52:39 PM by Ramidel
@Ramidel: It is precisely the fact that there is no inherent obligation on employers to pay more than the market wage that makes it necessary for government to intervene.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The chemical plant that exploded in West, Texas in 2013 (killing 13 and leveling 500 homes) was caused by a deliberate fire, according to the ATF.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/11/us/texas-fertilizer-plant-blast/index.html
So I read this article, claiming that 90% of Bernie supporters
would vote for Trump over Hillary, and I find it highly suspect. I think it cherry-picked the respondents, since virtually every Bernie supporter I know would vote (perhaps less-than-happily) for Hillary over Drumpf. Lots of pie graphs at the link to various questions, so I'm only pasting an excerpt. Emphasis from the link.
Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about why that is. Bernie Sanders supporters consist of a diversity of people, from all walks of life. Each demographic has their own motives, but essentially what it boils down to is that we disagree on a fundamental level about money in politics.
The older generation, and Gen X crowd witnessed the erosion of the Democratic Party into center-right policy and lukewarm opposition to right-wing extremism that has allowed our government to become beholden to corporations and big money.
The younger generation, the millenials who are professed to be the so-called “majority” of Bernie Sanders’ supporter base have inherited the debts and mistakes of lawmakers who have only represented such a small portion of the American population that there’s nothing left for them to identify with or relate to.
Roughly 23% of the whole, these millenials have no false sense of entitlement – the “good old days” of social and economic equality are completely unknown to them. Is it any wonder why their ideals are pushed off and seen as “lofty,” “pie in the sky,” and dismissed as near impossible?
Establishment politics and government have stamped a bar code on the foreheads of the middle class and the poor. The DNC has treated us more like a consumer base than the supporters of a candidate… And don’t get me started on the mainstream media. Sanders has been branded a socialist, far left, “fringe candidate.” Meanwhile, the narrative is “Trump is scary, please vote for Hillary regardless.” Only we’re not buying it.
If we owe the millenials anything within this entire campaign, it’s most certainly their proclivity to obtaining credible information from the areas they’ve been most accustomed. (The internet, You Tube, social media, etc.)
As a result, like a tidal wave, the vast majority of Sanders’ supporters quit buying into the propaganda machine, that in previous elections was the mechanism you all have used to garner support for your preferred candidates.
<snip>
Almost two thirds of Bernie Sanders’ supporter base calls themselves a Democrat, so whatever the issue is – the DNC has yet to take a stand against voter suppression in a way that appeases both Democratic candidates’ supporters.
To us, this is why the question of Bernie’s loyalty is ludicrous. Where has the establishment or the Democratic Party shown loyalty to its constituents? Why should we commit to a party that has left many of us disenfranchised and without a voice? Bernie’s comment “We’ll see,” in reference to whether or not he would support the DNC no doubt refers to his commitment to the people and the “If” exists only to ensure that the DNC does its due diligence to the people.
edited 11th May '16 5:18:36 PM by BlueNinja0
That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - SilaswThat's a completely idiotic article that flies in the face of most polling.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Regular jobs insist that you work their hours under their conditions and their rules. You don't have to work for them, devoting your time to them should probably be evenly matched.
I've always hated money but since I'm coming into adulthood I guess I should start caring, and I'm all for more people being able to afford more.
You gotta believe me when I scare you away, all that I wish for is that you would stay