Quote:
Originally Posted by Mazer
That's a fine opinion to have, and I understand where you're coming from, Vern. It's just my opinion that in a western democratic/capitalist society the market determines what's fair. I can tell you, working for a small company with a handful of employees, that my boss isn't a fat cat getting rich by paying some of his employees seven dollars an hour. Around here we earn what we're worth, it's only fair.
Face it, some people just aren't worth as much as everyone else.
The minimum wage isn't about making things fair, it's about keeping people from falling so far below the poverty line that they'll never recover. It's the so called safety net you hear about sometimes. People earning minimum wage should be motivated to work harder and earn more to better support themselves and their families. But if you raise the minimum wage too much you take away that motivation. The true measure of any welfare system is the number of people it helps raise above the poverty line. Raising the minimum wage also raises the poverty line, if you think about it, and raising it too much actually puts more people below the line than above it.
In the case of this congress, the Democrats are trying to buy the votes of the poor with someone else's money. In this case, raising the minimum wage is also unethical as well as unfair. That's how I see it.
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The Republicans in the Senate, 21 of which are up for reelection in 08, don't really give a crap's ass whether the minimum wage is raised or not.
They are just stalling the Iraq war resolution vote which will force them to go on record as either for the war or against it.
And while they are stalling, Bush will be deploying the new troops to the big mistake and then they can go back to the old stand-by, "that's old news".
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, "If they defeat cloture on minimum wage, they think we're going to bring this right back? Oh, no we're not. We're going to move to another subject they don't like to talk about
: escalation of the war in Iraq... they know when minimum wage is finished, we're going to Iraq."
Bush and what's left of his rubber stamping congress are still in denial.
To them, the November election either did not happen or the results were much different than what they were in reality.
The minimum wage will be increased, as it should be, and I do not see America going back to the days of company towns and company stores and paying the workers with script that can only be spent at the company store; you know; back when "the capitalists" ie. those with the money, determined what was "fair".