I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Sharon
http://www.autoloans101.info
.... you say: "What we need in this country is a national Living Wage law. If workers in this country were paid a decent wage, a wage they could live on, a living wage, and that wage were the law of the land, maybe we wouldn’t need unions anymore."
...you can't define a "living wage" because it means different things to different people...no matter what the wage is set at, people will demand more and more because most can't live within their means...if everyone lived within their means, the economy would collapse overnight....credit is what keeps this country going...but all this talk is moot anyway because the u.s. is well on the way to becoming a socialist country...then everyone except the oligarchy will be living on what the government gives them....
...you can't define a "living wage" because it means different things to different people...no matter what the wage is set at
Acually Joe, that's not true, The Living Wage is definitely different things in different communities, depending on the cost of living in that area. It costs more to live in Boston or San Francisco than Smyrna Tenn. But you can most definitely use existing cost of living data to calculate a living wage for a community. That is in fact how it's calculated in communities where living wage laws are already on the books.
You can read more about it at the Economic Policy Institute's living wage issue guide (.pdf)
The evil that conservatism has always been is in trouble these days with the explosion of info available detailing their methods and actions.
But people still fall for their shuck and jive, thinking an incremental loss isn't a bad thing to keep everybody warm and fuzzy. Fifty years of incremental losses though and pretty soon we're almost back in unheated shotgun shacks buying from the company store.
Do you really think if automotive worker wages in Michigan are cut this year to accommodate the whims of the rich in Tennessee that the same wages won't be cut next year to accommodate them again for some other worthless reason?
If the rich weren't scares shitless of the power of Unions they wouldn't be going through all this stuff.
And by the way, I'm very disappointed in you SB. Your waffling on unionism and the right of labor to organize is sad to hear. So many otherwise good-hearted people are snowballed by this "equal to the union" wages/benefit bullshit. Think about it.. the only reason they are even trying to play that game is because of the existence of the union in the first place.
Unionism is the ONLY thing that has reined in the rich in the entire history of human society. Well, that and an very admirable effort by the French Revolution to gut them entirely.
And you would toss it off because some rich asshole finds a bunch of google-eyed suckers stupid enough to believe in the 'separate but equal' wages is the same as a Union fantasy? If its the same, why are they so afraid of the union?
Why are the rich and powerful allowed to organize but you turn into Uriah Heep over the workingman and workingwoman in this country doing exactly the same thing?
Your waffling on unionism and the right of labor to organize is sad to hear.
I didn't say any such thing. I'm a big believer in the rights of working people to organize. I'm just pointing out that if unions lose this battle, working people can still win the war.
SB - The source you cited for information on a living wage notes that most (if not all) living wage laws only affect contracts with government agencies or government subsidized projects. Are there any studies that show expected results if these laws were to be expanded to all jobs? For instance, should the cashier job at McDonalds pay a living wage? What would that do to the cost of a meal at McDonalds? Would not that cost increase as well as others in low cost low pay industries affect the calculations of what constitutes a living wage and drive up the wage further?
The prevailing arguement against living wages and increases to the minimum wage is that it actually causes people to be unemployable. If a person cannot generate enough revenue for a company to cover their employement costs (wages plus taxes, insurance, etc.) then companies will not hire them. As the level of employment costs goes up, more people would fall under that line of employability.
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