It absolutely is true. Study after study has shown the same result. Furthermore, in a global economy, please explain to me how increasing the price of the input increases your market share when everyone else's costs remain the same? Here's a primer: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/MinimumWages.html (there are plenty of others)
Do you have a less controversial source? "In his book The Assault on Reason Al Gore says that between 2002 and 2004 that 97% of the attendees at their training seminars for judges were Republican appointed judges. Gore suggests that such conferences and seminars are one of the reasons that judges who regularly attend such conferences "are generally responsible for writing the most radical pro-corporate, antienvironmental, and activist decisions." Referring to what he calls the "Big Three", the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, George Mason University's Law & Economics Center (LEC), and the Liberty Fund he adds "These groups are not providing unbiased judicial education. They are giving multithousand-dollar vacations to federal judges to promote their radical right-wing agenda at the expense of the public interest.""
I just pulled the first one that popped up. Do a google search and you'll find dozens. The vast majority of them show an inverse relationship between the minimum wage and employment levels. As for Al Gore calling something biased, well, let's just say the irony is delicious.
All the Econ textbooks around here say the same thing. It isn't a shocker, relax people. Economists are very wild and random, so it is surprising when we mostly agree.
More than 50% of this country identify themselves as "Conservative". Please me where over 50% of the university law schools are run by predominantly "Conservative" law professors. Don't bother looking you won't find it. So, since the left has control of the majority of the law schools, don't you find it interesting that Al Gore would complain about private initiative to find someplace or someway of spreading Conservative thought.
You're right. Forget I mentioned it. I'm just having a hard time reconciling more employment in extreme poverty being better than less employment in borderline poverty, especially when there is a safety net involved in Unemployment Benefits. Unless removing those are also part and parcel of the plan. I'm an emotional fella and feel like the hope of getting a job that pays okay even if you're unemployed is less hopeless than having a job that pays so little you can't make ends meet anyway. As someone who was long-term unemployed in 2000-2004, I understand that first situation (the quest for a good paying job) more than the second. So maybe it's just a matter of context.
As a hispanic person I have a problem with someone saying minimum wage in the US is borderline poverty. You don't know what poverty is. And poor black people will have a lot more jobs and our dollars will be more powerful.
I can only speak to poverty relative to the United States, and what I went through as a kid. I can't speak to your experience. But minimum wage is just beneath the United States poverty line. Thus, borderline. I do regret involving myself in the discussion; not because I was debated into a corner (which I certainly was), but because politics among friends is pretty much the most worthless way to waste time. I can't think of anything more self-serving than holding court with people who will never change their minds. I forgot to add my point which is I don't want to look like a clown to you because of my political beliefs... I want to make sure it's the basketball talk that does that!
I actually enjoy debating politics with those that disagree with me. I oftentimes learn things and get points of view I had not considered. By the way, the best way to raise the minimum wage is to create a robust economy. If labor demand is high enough, the minimum wage will rise on its own. It's one of the reasons illegal immigration hurts the legal unskilled labor pool the worst; it depresses wages.
There's no such thing as illegal when two parties engage in consensual acts. The state is raising the price of inputs by interfering.
You seem like a good guy, BC. Politics is like a sport to many: it has winners and losers, scoreboard (the polls), and a long season with regular season games (primaries). It's no wonder sports fans (and others) are into it. The law of supply and demand works great for wages. Think about how that law works and you see that "full employment" reduces supply of workers and raises their pay. During the Clinton years, he cut the size of the govt. workforce by letting people quit and not hiring replacements. Unemployment hit a low of ~4%. The private sector heated up in a good way. The burger kings in Silicon Valley were offering several dollars over minimum wage just to attract any employees at all. So I look around at other countries that some of us want to be like and see chronic high unemployment and stagnant economies. Some european countries saw GDP growth when ours grew, but they also saw longer and deeper recessionary periods than we suffered, and even when our GDP was growing. Someone mentioned Spain and their health care system. What an awesome example of what we don't want to be. Unemployment for people under 25 is over 50% there, and near 25% overall. The nation's debts have soared (5th highest national debt in the world). They simply cannot afford a cadillac health care program, because it was paid for with credit cards and the bills on those cards finally came due. EDIT - Oh yeah, I wouldn't equate poverty level to quality of life. HK is right about how actually poor people are in poor nations (like Mexico). And the poverty level doesn't apply the same in california as it does in detroit. I knew may people in Hawaii (natives) who earned far below the poverty level who seemed quite happy to me. They owned land and homes, they rode horses every day and swam in the ocean and had a fairly easy life. The downside is they fed themselves by hunting for deer, butchering their own meat, kept their own chickens for eggs, fished, etc. These people were more harmed by separation of church and state and truancy laws, which basically combined to destroy their language, culture, and religions. These things were national treasures and are now lost pretty much forever.
NY Times: 'No Evidence' Romney Did Bain Business after 1999 That won't stop President BushDidIt and his lackeys from continuing to lie, though.
You are downright hilarious. Native Hawaiians are the poster boy for racially-based (Un-Constitutional) entitlement programs. No Native Hawaiian ever has to work for a living, every imaginable necessity is provided to them by our tax dollars. While they enjoy a lifetime vacation at taxpayer's expense, most of those same taxpayers will never even be able to afford a 2 week trip to Hawaii. Native Hawaiian Racial Entitlement Programs Valued in the Billions of Dollars -- Description and List of Many (c) Copyright 2003 - 2004, Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D. All rights reserved On February 23, 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Rice v. Cayetano. http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/ricevcayetano.html The decision directly affected only the right of all eligible voters of the State of Hawai’i to vote, without racial restriction, for trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. But in making that decision the Supreme Court by a 7-2 vote explicitly declared that “Native Hawaiian” is a racial designation and not a political one. One logical consequence is that all the racial entitlement programs for Native Hawaiians sponsored by the state and federal governments are unconstitutional government-sponsored racial discrimination under the 14th Amendment equal protection clause. There are over 160 such programs (see below for a lengthy but incomplete list of them!) Therefore, defenders of such programs decided it would be necessary to get Congress to declare that Native Hawaiians are an Indian tribe, so that the entitlement programs could continue, and so that Native Hawaiians could continue to hold “tribal” elections restricted to “tribal” voters and “tribal” candidates. Hawai’i’s Congressional delegation and OHA trustees immediately began writing what would later become known as the Native Hawaiian Recognition bill, or “Akaka bill,” to create a phony Indian tribe. They knew a public relations campaign would be needed to persuade Native Hawaiians, as well as non-Hawaiians, to support the legislation. The most important part of this campaign would be to scare people that without the legislation they would lose all their benefit programs. The Native Hawaiian beneficiaries would lose their benefits, but more importantly, the bloated bureaucracies of the service provider institutions would lose their money and power. Thus it was important to let people know how valuable those programs are for Native Hawaiians and for the economy of the State of Hawai’i. On March 20, 2000, less than a month after the Rice decision, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin published an article identifying $440 Million in federal grants made to Native Hawaiian racial entitlement programs during the previous few years, as compiled by the Hawai’i Congressional delegation. “Bringing home the bacon” is an important part of what politicians do, and Hawai’i politicians are outstanding performers. Here is the Star-Bulletin article: http://starbulletin.com/2000/03/20/special/story3.html Hawaiian funding tops $440 million By Pat Omandam, Star-Bulletin THE U.S. Congress in recent years has awarded more than $440 million to native Hawaiians through legislation and grants, according to U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye's office. Many Hawaiians, including most on the Star-Bulletin roundtable, fear these programs and services are in jeopardy after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Rice vs. Cayetano case. The Feb. 23 ruling struck down the state's Hawaiians-only elections for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, casting a cloud over other government programs for Hawaiians that are based solely on race. To see what might be at stake, here's a condensed list of the recent congressional funding to native Hawaiians, the year(s) funded, the total amount awarded, and some of the top programs funded: So as not to add 100 pages to this thread, I have not posted the partial list from the article, but please click the link for a quick but mindblowing look at just how much Hawaiians really owe Real Americans: http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/listhawnentitlements.html
In principle, that's how it should work. But the early lords of industry made a mockery of that law and rendered it impotent by importing slaves from Africa and China as they built their fortunes while Americans starved, and once slavery was outlawed and civil rights progressed to protect all Americans they found another way to negate that law by sending jobs overseas to countries where slave labor still thrives. This is how Mitt Romney made his obscene fortune, on the backs of slaves and by stealing the livelihood of Real Americans.
As for Denny's "cry for the Hawaiian culture" rant, the original Hawaiians were settlers from Marquesa. They lived peacefully on the islands for about 1,000 years until about 700 years ago when they and their culture were completely exterminated by invading Tahitians who are the only ancestors of the people we now refer to as "native" Hawaiians.
