Gould 0738 wrote:


The guy who thinks he's got the world dicked because his $7 an hour employees
produce $30 an hour gross profit is usually lucky to rise above lower middle
class himself. Give me a $15-25 an hour guy who can produce $100 an hour any
day over a miniwager who can barely justify his nothing salary. I'll take as
many hundred dollar bills (that I can buy for $25@) as I can get, and thank you
very much. :-)



Geeze, Chuck. And to think I had you written off as a left wing liberal.
Now I can see that you are really a hard-core Capitalist! :-)

Eisboch

On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 14:33:29 -0500, Harry Krause
wrote:

Dave Hall wrote:
On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 11:40:55 -0500, Harry Krause
wrote:



Hmmm..... First you say:


I never said I was leaving.


.... set off dirty nukes in the top 20 markets on
the same day. And that would do it.

Sounds like you've got it all planned.

Then you say:

My plan is to be outa here before that happens.

Which one is the lie?

Dave


Neither.

I never said I was leaving.

But you are thinking about it?


But I do plan to be outa here before the nukes hit the fan.

That implies at least a preliminary timetable.

Your brain cannot parse that?

Sure. I just parse it for the doubletalk that it is.


Saying I am leaving implies I have a definite plan...a destination...

Saying I plan to be outa here implies I am thinking about it.

Thinking is the first step of a "plan".


I know you have problems with nuance. It isn't my fault.

The only "problem" I have with nuances is resisting the temptation to
illustrate just how skilled spinmeisters use them to make the claim
they mean something totally different than what they actually said, or
how they deliberately remain vague enough so as to claim to support
either side of an issue depending on how future events unfold.

Dave

On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 18:13:16 GMT, "Don White"
wrote:


"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...

Indeed, and as you know, Canada is one of my favorite places, but...
it's a tad cool for my taste. I have a retired buddy who moved to Costa
Rica a few years ago, bought himself a small coffee plantation for under
$100,000, and plays at farmer and fishing guide. Costa Rica is pretty
stable and the weather is great.
snip..

A buddy of mine, who has pretty well lived in the Caribbean since 1979
always said Costs Rica would be a good place to move to. At one time, all
you needed to immigrate was to show an income of $ 1000.00 per month. That
figure might be $2500./month or so now but still reasonable.

Whether or not that figure is reasonable depends on what your source
of income is. If the best job you get there only pays $300/week, you
might have a problem.

It's all relative.

Dave

"Jelle" wrote in message
...
JimH wrote:


"Gould 0738" wrote in message
...
BTW: I see you conveniently cut off your initial insult when you
responded
to me.

Somebody accused me of losing.
I said it was better to lose than to be lost.

How is that an insult, me2?

You just don't get it. It is always the other person and never you.

He got it very well. That is exactly the game you are playing. You jump on
it anytime you can blame somebody else.

--
kind regards,

Jelle

As you just did?

On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 13:48:43 -0500, P.Fritz wrote:


I a fully aware of the minimum wage, my point being that having a minimum
wage is simply wrong.....If a worker is willing to work for $4.00 an hour,
why is it the guvmint position to say, no he can't.

Why stop there?

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NG3J8UE1U1.DTL

"Dr. Dr. Smithers" wrote in message
news:hQCid.297078$wV.284572@attbi_s54...

[OT garbage snipped]

The doctor is out!

Goodbye for ever a**hole...

*ploink*

--
-Netsock

"It's just about going fast...that's all..."
http://home.columbus.rr.com/ckg/

"JimH" wrote in message
...
As you just did?

Posting off topic...

Feeding the trolls...

Contributing nothing about boating...

Strike three...you're out!

*ploink*

--
-Netsock

"It's just about going fast...that's all..."
http://home.columbus.rr.com/ckg/

On Fri, 05 Nov 2004 07:38:01 -0500, Harry Krause
wrote:

~~ snippity snip ~~

You have lots of problems with nuance. Life while you're living it is
conditional at best, with lots of "If-Thens." Well, at least it is if
you are driven by intellect. If you are Pavlovian, then I suppose you
don't have to concern yourself with nuance.

I don't see it that way. In my world, everything is pretty much black
and white. And I don't see that as Pavlovian as much as I see it as a
rational look at how the world works. I think it comes from being a
mathematician by education and a engineer by profession.

Remember the French language wars of the early '70s? French good,
English bad? Then they discovered that the France French they'd been
speaking for the past 200 or so years isn't French at all but an
amalgation of Basque, Spanish and English leading to purifying the
language by, and I loved this bit, sending French teachers to rural
Louisiana to learn "true" French.

Now that's pretty black and white in terms of culture isn't it? :)

Anything that "defiles" the language is purged in favor of
non-inclusion of terms from other languages and cultures. That's not
nuance - that's pure simple arrogance and, if you wanted to use the
term, bigotry.

I think way to much emphasis is placed on nuance as being an
intellectual trait. Nuance certainly does have it's place in
philosophy, psychiatry/psychology and other medical professions that
are not based on pure science, but as a practical trait, a factor in
daily decision making, it's counter productive.

Later,

Tom

Let me try this another way, let's assume you owned a construction company
who needed unskilled labor for short periods of time. Your needs would
vary, from needing no unskilled labor to needing 50 short term unskilled
employees. Do you think society/government should mandate that you keep
these people on the payroll for the full 52 weeks and pay them a respectable
income, even if their services is not needed?

Society/government also mandates that we just increase the minimum wages so
that all an employees earn a living wage. This living wage would pay for
food, health care, clothes, transportation and all basic needs. Should we
pay them $15/hr, $20 hr. $30/hr? What should we pay them? The income an
individual needs to live on is less than a 6 person family, should we make
the minimum wage based upon the number of people the person needs to
support? How about the 16 yr old kid working at McDonalds, since he lives
with his family, his needs are substantially less, should he earn enough the
same amount as a 6 person family or should be provide a tiered system of
minimum wage? What about the short term employees such as the produce
pickers, should we insist that the company providing these services pay them
for 52 weeks? Should we make sure we do not allow temporary work permits
for Mexican's to work these short term jobs? If we allow the temp. workers
to come in the US for the harvest season in the US, after the harvest is
over they go back to Mexico. Should we pay these people enough to live
comfortable in Mexico or the US? Remember, if we increase the money supply
without a corresponding increase in productivity we end up with the kind of
inflation we saw in the south during the civil war and Germany saw during
WW2. Unfortunately, anytime you increase the money supply without an
increase in production, you have more money chasing after the same amount of
good and services and you will have inflation.

My point is there is no easy solution. While the marketplace is a very
brutal way to determine the value of goods and services, no one has found a
better way to do it. Communism was an attempt to solve the problems you and
many of us are concerned about, but it is a failed experiment. Socialism
was tried by in Great Britain after the war. This was another attempt to
correct these inequities in the marketplace. Their economy suffered as the
result, causing many industries to fail, and a larger segment of the
population to lose their jobs and end up on the dole. GB ended up
dismantling much of their government corporations so society as a whole
would benefit. I wish there was a better way to spread the wealth, but in
the last 6000 years, society has never found a better way, even though many
have tried. Economists would tell you that laws to have employers provide
the safety net now provided by the government is the most inefficient way to
provide these services. The average citizen would still be paying for these
services by paying more for all goods and services. Instead of paying taxes
to the government, we would be paying the tax to companies via higher
prices. It would transfer the cost/tax from the government now provided
this safety net, to the private sector. As crazy as it sounds, economists
would tell you, the cheapest way to provide this safety net, is to give it
to them.


"Gould 0738" wrote in message
...
What should we as a society do for those people who do not have the
desire
or the ability to move up?

Employment is not a contract between a worker and "society", but rather
between
a worker and an employer.

What society should do is prevent the unequal status of the
applicant/supplicant desperate for work and the potential employer with
the job
from becoming an abusive situation. The lower the wages paid to an
employee,
the greater the dependence that employee will have on the public trough.
Mini-wage sets a realistic standard that says, "you will pay at least this
pittance, to offset at least some of the living expenses and keep your
people
out of the trough as much as possible." It shouldn't be the taxpayer's
responsibility to provide virtually all the basic needs for a family just
so an
employer can get by with paying a predatory wage.

What should we do when an honest hard working immigrant (either legal or
illegal) wants to work picking produce or digging ditches.

See above. Asking society to provde food, shelter, and other basic
services to
an employee so that you, the employer, can work that person on the double
cheap
is just plain wrong. It's just a surely a raid on the public treasury for
the
benefit of a private individual (the employer) as the stereotypical
welfare
woman cranking out 15 kids to stay on the dole most of her life.


In construction
and farming, 2 or 3 levels promotion is middle management. If we don't
believe they can move up to middle management we just don't hire them?

You don't oridnarily hire a lot of permanent workers in farming. When you
have
a crop to pick, you take all willing and capable hands. You don't worry
about
30 days down the road, harvest will be over by then.

When you do hire those willing and capable hands, it should be done
legally and
at a rate equal to or above the state minimum.

In your car dealership when you hired a janitor, what jobs were you
planning
to promote him to?

Janitors were outside contractors. I would imagine a beginning janitor
would be
able to work up to crew chief, or what not, before long- but I never
direclty
hired janitors.

Menial laborers were typically "lot boys."
Good ones could work up to slightly less menial jobs in the shop, take
some
technical classes and buy some tools, and eventually make a decent middle
class
income as a technician. Those proving unworthy of promotion typically
didn't
last long- chronic absenteeism, showing up to drunk to work, burning a
phat one
out behind the detail shop, etc. "Next!"


What do we do for all these people who can not meet your requirements for
employment.

We don't do anything for them. No need. There are plenty of guys who
believe
that hiring as cheaply as possible is the only way to go, and they can't
be too
picky about what they get. The guys who don't want to pay anything and
those
who don't want to work very hard deserve each other, and they do seem to
find
one another more often than not.

All we do is be sure that the employer doesn't take such extreme advantage
of
his superior economic power that his sick, starving, homeless workers
create a
huge drain on everybody else.

An employer with a growing business is always in a position to provide
opportunities to bright, energetic, talented people who will grow along
with
the business and make everybody in sight richer along the way. It isn't
the
employers responsibilty to waste those opportunities on the dull, the
undermotivated, or the unqualified. The culls should go to the guys who
run a
business so badly that a worker isn't empowered to produce enough wealth
for
both himself and his employer.

Ever notice that it is usually the same guys who call for the elimination
of
minimum wage laws who also call for an end to all public assistance for
food,
shelter, or medical care?

You might ask some of them what should be done with the working poor.....

"better they should die, and decrease the surplus population" Ebenezer
Scrooge, "A Christmas Carol", by Charles Dickens

Anyone lacking a close up perspective might enjoy reading a book called
"Nickled and Dimed, on Not Getting By in America."

On Fri, 05 Nov 2004 07:38:01 -0500, Harry Krause wrote:


There are a number of attractive places in the world where the Bushtapo
isn't...I suspect there will be a significant and increasing outflow of
some of our really best and brightest to those locations as the United
States of Jesus slides back into the primordial ooze.

Geez Harry, we aren't there yet. While I found the election results
*very* discouraging, I have faith in the resilience of this great country.
We will survive this administration. Also, don't forget, that since
Eisenhower, the Republicans haven't been able to run this country without
shooting themselves. I'm sure with all the zealots, the DeLays, history
will repeat itself.