[Vision2020] Mininum Wage

Thu Jan 9 13:59:27 PST 2014

In Idaho we work on the cheap, from the Governor on down, and then we wonder why our poverty rates are so high, our schools and universities are raising taxes and tuition to keep the doors open, and our infrastructure falls apart.  You gave 3 good reasons: greed, selfishness, and ignorance.   Our legislature will prove the point one more time when they again refuse to expand Medicaid.  We don’t really believe we have a class of “working poor.”  All our poor folks are lazy and could find work if, “they only applied themselves.”  And that many of our poor are children is irrelevant.  Their mothers shouldn’t have had them if they didn’t have a man willing to support them.  

Sueh

From: rhayes at frontier.com 
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2014 9:40 AM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com 
Subject: [Vision2020] Mininum Wage

I work in Washington. I see MacDonalds is always busy, Safeway is full of customers, Walmart's parking lot is full of cars, Arbys is constantly cutting sandwich meat, the university continues to hire cleaners and other minimum wage workers. Yet, I don't see a large disparity in the costs of things between Pullman and Moscow. And by the way, all workers in Washington now receive a minimum wage of $9.32 per hour!  

Pullman is booming while according to certain factions(hint-GMA- Lambert, Steed, others)Moscow is stagnant. Walter Steed complained (before the election) that 1,700 cars commuted to Pullman every morning for work. Wouldn't a more than 2 dollar employee expense for business dictate that all the businesses would be migrating to Moscow? But they are not. And hamburgers are not more expensive in Pullman. And gasoline is 2 cents more a gallon. 
I don't know what propels people to resist a cost of living increase for our nation's lowest paid workers...other that greed, mixed with a large dose of selfishness, served up with a heaping spoonful of ignorance. 

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Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2014 9:38 AM
Subject: Vision2020 Digest, Vol 91, Issue 42

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Today's Topics:

  1. Re: Fifty years ago today (January 8, 1964) (Paul Rumelhart)

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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2014 09:38:14 -0800 (PST)
From: Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>
To: Donovan Arnold <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com>,
    "fotopro63 at hotmail.com" <fotopro63 at hotmail.com>, "ngier006 at gmail.com"
    <ngier006 at gmail.com>
Cc: "vision2020 at moscow com" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Fifty years ago today (January 8, 1964)
Message-ID:
    <1389289094.85052.YahooMailNeo at web161304.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

If our government mandates an increase in wages, won't most businesses in this tough economy who have already mapped out just how much they can afford to spend on salaries (and benefits) simply lay some people off?? The only other option is to raise prices, but people selling widgets are already working to hit that optimal price for their product based on a number of factors.? Having to raise price to offset salaries could upset the apple cart.? Same thing if they have to scale back because they can't afford to pay everyone at the new wage level.

I'm curious whether that 10 to 25 percent number is really what we see locally.

Paul

________________________________
From: Donovan Arnold <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com>
To: "fotopro63 at hotmail.com" <fotopro63 at hotmail.com>; "ngier006 at gmail.com" <ngier006 at gmail.com> 
Cc: "vision2020 at moscow com" <vision2020 at moscow.com> 
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2014 7:49 AM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Fifty years ago today (January 8, 1964)

The welfare state is bloated. It is bloated because wages are so low that a family of two working adults cannot pay their basic living expenses.  If we raised wages less people would be on goverment assistance and more would be paying taxes instead. The idea that raising wages only causes inflation is an outdated one. This was when labor was 50 to 90 percent of a business's expenses. Today, because of automation and moving of jobs overseas, labor is only 10 to 25 percent of a business's expense.  Further, the bottom 90 percent of wage earners make up an even smaller percentage of a business's expenses. Therefore, raising wages even as much as 50 percent would only cause a 5 percent increase in prices cover loses by employers. A 50 percent pay raise for 5 percent inflation would be a good increase in quality of life. 
Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android 

________________________________
From:  Nicholas Gier <ngier006 at gmail.com>; 
To:  Kai Eiselein <fotopro63 at hotmail.com>; 
Cc:  vision2020 at moscow.com <vision2020 at moscow.com>; 
Subject:  Re: [Vision2020] Fifty years ago today (January 8, 1964) 
Sent:  Thu, Jan 9, 2014 7:44:59 AM 

The question to ask about American poverty is where would we be today without Medicare, Medicaid, and Food Stamps? ?We are now at the bottom of most industrialized nations in general health (worst in preventable deaths), poverty, child health, STDs, infant mortality, adult life spans, etc., etc. Without these programs we would have dropped to into Third World conditions.

Kai: if it is the bloated welfare state's fault, why is it that the Nordic countries (see attached) with the most generous benefits and highest taxes are at the top of of all these quality of life indicators? ?As I have been saying for years, economic facts defeat the GOP on every issue.

Brazil has raised its minimum wage twice in huge increments, and its poverty rate has dropped dramatically and its economy keeps humming along. ?If the U.S. federal minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, we would have won the war on poverty with that effort alone. Adjusted for inflation wages have been flat since Ronnie Reagan, while the fruits of our labor has gone to the rich and the corporations.

The minimum wage in Australia is $16/hour and it was one of the only countries that flew through the Great Recession with flying colors. ?They were government by the lefty Labor Party the whole time.

The facts support the Middle Way between Communism and Libertarianism,

Nick

On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 7:05 PM, Kai Eiselein <fotopro63 at hotmail.com> wrote:

That's pretty much what the graph in USA Today showed this morning. They had an article about it in yesterday and today's edition. Saw it while eating breakfast at a La Quinta the past two mornings.
>If I had to venture a guess for why it has failed, it would be that too much money goes to bloated bureaucracies and not enough gets to the actual programs.
>Our government can be counted on for a few things:
>Lies
>Spying on citizens
>F---king up just about everything it tries to manage.
>
>________________________________
>> From: scooterd408 at hotmail.com
>> To: thansen at moscow.com; vision2020 at moscow.com
>> Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2014 13:51:55 -0700
>> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Fifty years ago today (January 8, 1964)
>
>>
>> War on Poverty at 50 -- despite trillions spent, poverty won
>> 'Over, the last 50 years, the government spent more than $16 trillion
>> to fight poverty.
>> Yet today, 15 percent of Americans still live in poverty. That?s
>> scarcely better than the 19 percent living in poverty at the time of
>> Johnson?s speech. Nearly 22 percent of children live in poverty
>> today. In 1964, it was 23 percent.'
>>
>> http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/01/08/war-on-poverty-at-50-despite-trillions-spent-poverty-won/
>>
>> I don't have the time to fact check, but the story is from Fox News
>> which is the only source of news trusted by conservatives.
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: thansen at moscow.com
>> Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2014 04:48:26 -0800
>> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
>> Subject: [Vision2020] Fifty years ago today (January 8, 1964)
>>
>>
>> "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on
>> poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with
>> me in that effort.
>>
>> It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy
>> will suffice, but we shall not rest until that war is won. The richest
>> Nation on earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it. One
>> thousand dollars invested in salvaging an unemployable youth today can
>> return $40,000 or more in his lifetime.
>>
>> Poverty is a national problem, requiring improved national organization
>> and support. But this attack, to be effective, must also be organized
>> at the State and the local level and must be supported and directed by
>> State and local efforts.
>>
>> For the war against poverty will not be won here in Washington. It must
>> be won in the field, in every private home, in every public office,
>> from the courthouse to the White House.
>>
>> The program I shall propose will emphasize this cooperative approach to
>> help that one-fifth of all American families with incomes too small to
>> even meet their basic needs.
>>
>> Our chief weapons in a more pinpointed attack will be better schools,
>> and better health, and better homes, and better training, and better
>> job opportunities to help more Americans, especially young Americans,
>> escape from squalor and misery and unemployment rolls where other
>> citizens help to carry them.
>>
>> Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but
>> the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow
>> citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of
>> education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a
>> lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their
>> children.
>>
>> But whatever the cause, our joint Federal-local effort must pursue
>> poverty, pursue it wherever it exists--in city slums and small towns,
>> in sharecropper shacks or in migrant worker camps, on Indian
>> Reservations, among whites as well as Negroes, among the young as well
>> as the aged, in the boom towns and in the depressed areas.
>>
>> Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it
>> and, above all, to prevent it. No single piece of legislation, however,
>> is going to suffice.
>>
>> We will launch a special effort in the chronically distressed areas of
>> Appalachia.
>>
>> We must expand our small but our successful area redevelopment program.
>>
>> We must enact youth employment legislation to put jobless, aimless,
>> hopeless youngsters to work on useful projects.
>>
>> We must distribute more food to the needy through a broader food stamp
>> program.
>>
>> We must create a National Service Corps to help the economically
>> handicapped of our own country as the Peace Corps now helps those
>> abroad.
>>
>> We must modernize our unemployment insurance and establish a high-level
>> commission on automation. If we have the brain power to invent these
>> machines, we have the brain power to make certain that they are a boon
>> and not a bane to humanity.
>>
>> We must extend the coverage of our minimum wage laws to more than 2
>> million workers now lacking this basic protection of purchasing power.
>>
>> We must, by including special school aid funds as part of our education
>> program, improve the quality of teaching, training, and counseling in
>> our hardest hit areas."
>>
>> - President Lyndon Johnson in his State of the Union Address (January
>> 8, 1964)
>>
>> http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/640108.asp
>>
>> -----------------------------------
>>
>> Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .
>>
>> "Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
>> http://www.MoscowCares.com<http://www.moscowcares.com/>
>
>>
>> Tom Hansen
>> Moscow, Idaho
>>
>> "There's room at the top they are telling you still.
>> But first you must learn to smile as you kill,
>> If you want to be like the folks on the hill."
>>
>> - John Lennon
>>
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