[jms62]

Originally Posted by Rudeboyelvis

I'll try, but don't hold me to it.

My initial point was in response to the original post / Thread starter which contained a link to a Forbes Article the pronounced:

Report: Walmart Workers Cost Taxpayers $6.2 Billion In Public Assistance

To which led to an immediate discourse about how the culprit for all of this is that the minimum wage is too low, thus Walmart workers require 6.2 billion in public assistance to make ends meet. A fairly elementary conclusion, be it however ill-informed.

The conversation then took another turn into the abyss of wealth concentration and middle class wage stagnation, which is where I took chimed in. The issues with the top 1% getting exponentially more money than their counterparts even 15 years ago, and the way it has coincided with the exponential shrinking of the middle class, is due to a myriad of complex circumstances, none of which have a single thing to do with the minimum wage.

But that is the way the media has programmed it's viewership. Straw man - pit the have-nots against the have-alot-less-than-they-used-tos in the hopes of keeping the smokescreen veiling the continued thievery of our economy, at any and all cost.

So on one hand, I agree fully with Dell in that I do not believe that there is any value at all, and actually potential economic collapse, in artificially propping up the lower class by imposing huge increases in the minimum wage as it only serves 2 purposes:

1. to devalue the entire economy
2. impose even further degradation of what is left of the middle class by exponential hyper-inflation. People can cite "studies" that shows that increasing the cost of bringing products to market (from the Port intake to Distribution to Warehousing, to however many other steps it takes before your Greeter get's his /her 12.00 an hour) won't increase the cost to consumers, but that doesn't make is so. Common sense has to prevail at some point.


The other point which JMS made and cannot be argued, is the manner in which this untethered (to steal a phrase from Piketty) capitalism in a global economy has now subverted any manner in which to control it.
You have lawmakers who are influenced by corporate interests (though a variety of methods, most notably by going to work for them as lobbyists after their terms expire) - it is so pervasive that they don't even bother trying to hide it. Why else would someone spend 7 million dollars running for a Congressional seat - a job that pays $174,000 a year?
They make millions upon millions influencing laws that line the pockets of corporations through the very same tax breaks that the public pays for - to supposedly "offset the cost of employing Americans".

And the peons continue to blame each other for the mess, as they try to grab the diminishing crumbs.

It's mind-numbing.


So Dell is correct, and so is JMS - just about two completely different things.

Really awesome job with that. And again my comparison to why we are becoming like a third world countries is that in third world countries you have uber rich buying influence from the government to further their wealth. The winners are the uber rich and those that work in government. Not a hard concept to understand.