[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Illuminaughty

There is so much wrong with what you stated in this post.

Okay, these are the two passages you bolded for emphasis. So let's look at how wrong these comments are.

Working class people are those people scraping by on 7.25/hour because we can't possibly imagine raising the minimum wage. Working class people are those who rely on Medicaid to help cover their healthcare needs because their employers don't pay enough, nor give them enough hours to qualify for benefits.

So what exactly is wrong here? This is 100% accurate for the working poor here in the United States. There are millions of people who are living paycheck-to-paycheck, pay day loan-to- pay day loan, and can't afford what we consider the basic necessities of life. $7.25 an hour is about $14.5K a year. Try living anywhere for $14.5K a year, let alone a major American city. Now try doing that without healthcare coverage, since the premiums for even an average plan are about $15K a year.

These coal miners in Appalachia who have been watching the steady decline of coal for decades refuse to listen to their own bootstraps argument. Rather than moving forward and accepting that times are changing, rather than finding new careers for themselves, they just whine and complain that the world left them behind.

Again, what is inaccurate here? It's the exact same argument Canadians use with the Atlantic fishery and the people in the maritime provinces who refuse to retrain. Shouldn't these Appalachians pick themselves up by the bootstraps and move on? Shouldn't they adopt to the changing economics and adapt to the market? This appears to be your mantra, so why is what witty said wrong?

Here's a brief economics lesson.

Can't wait!!! I always enjoy when school is in at Rocko's Garage and Night School for the Grossly Ill-informed.

You can thank Hillary's husband for NAFTA and other global trade agreements for why there are no more "working class" jobs anymore.

Roh-roh. Someone skipped Economic History Class at Rocko's.

Yes, Clinton signed the bill that ratified NAFTA, but it was passed on a majority of Republicans not Democrats. NAFTA was also the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation and first promoted under Reagan, negotiated under Bush, and then passed by the Senate Republicans for signature by Clinton.

The facts destroy so many tired conservative tropes when you actually bother to look for them.

There is only two things that can happen when a mandatory minimum wage is instituted:

Only two things? I would think that the market economy would present many more options than just two? I thought an open market was the source of choice and new ideas? Why only two options? To hard to argue the complexity of the system?

1. That cost is passed on to the consumers making goods and services more expensive. Robbing Peter to pay Paul essentially, and the consumers will only tolerate that so much before not participating.

There is some truth to this. Cost of labor is factored into the cost of goods and services, so by raising labor costs you are certain to see inflation take place in the cost of those goods and services. What is missing is that there are other factors that influence price as well, and those factors can be used to counter inflationary effects of labor costs. Resources used in manufacturing can be sourced elsewhere. Contracts can be renegotiated for better pricing and margins on components. Different suppliers can be sought out. Internal processes can be streamlined leading to greater efficiencies and lower overhead. Marketing costs can be reduced. Overpriced executives and middle management who do nothing but soak up profits can be eliminated. Labor costs are just one factor in prices. But you would know that if you had attended Econ 101 at Rocko's Garage and Night School for the Grossly Ill-informed.

2. The employer is forced to make cuts, guess where the axe usually falls? Those lower level jobs that you just effectively priced out of the market. It's a nice idea and something pretty easy to campaign on but clearly doesn't solve the problem that it claims to, it makes things worse EVERY time.

As just pointed out, this is not always true. It has become a standard practice with American businesses, because they are very near-sighted and don't think long-term. Investing long term is not really in the American business lexicon any more. Too bad, because that is what made American great - long-term planning and investing in their workforce by big business. We can thank Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan for the destruction of these principles. Trickle down economics made businesses focus on the short term, and as a result, the little guy was doomed to a life of indentured servitude.

Where does the money from medicaid come from? Taxes, who pays most of the taxes? Those businesses that are employing people and can't afford to pay them a low wage because of these taxes and other regulations imposed on them, then sometimes forced to lay them off because of more costly government oversight and regulation.

Well, you're half right. The vast majority of medicaid funding comes from individuals. It is payed through their payroll taxes. So every person that contributes through payroll taxes is funding medicare and medicaid. Do you know who isn't paying for medicare and medicaid? The uber rich who live off of their investments. They don't contribute through a payroll tax. In fact, they don't contribute at all.

Regulations have zero to do with the funding of medicaid. NOTHING. Regulations are put in place to protect consumers, to protect the marketplace, and to protect the environment. Regulations do not impact any funding to medicaid because regulations do not impact the taxes collected through payroll deductions.

You can't just use the producers in society as an atm to fund all these social programs, if you want to have a low unemployment rate and a thriving economy.

Why not? The rich do it to the poor all the time. When the stock value is weak and dividends look like they aren't going to pay out, what do these big businesses, those "producers" as you like to call them, do to make sure they hit their short-term measures? They lay-off the workers who produce the products these "producers" produce. Let that roll around in your head, and when the echo stops tell me whose getting the short end of the stick? Who is getting used as an ATM?

There's a reason why all socialist states always end up bankrupt given enough time, eventually you run out of other peoples money.

Socialist states go bankrupt? Really? Share more on this. How do these socialist states go bankrupt? And more importantly, which socialist states more so than others, especially their pure market driven economies? I think this is 100% bull#### as most European countries are "socialist" and experience great stability in their economies, and a great number of African countries are open market economies, and they experience great instability and failure.

The only "socialist" state in recent memory that went bankrupt was Iceland, and that was a direct result of deregulation and allowing the banking industry to make poor decisions.

The countries that are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy have done so as a result of two major factors. The first has been over-aggressive expansion of infrastructure projects, usually driven by foreign aid or trade agreements (read Confessions of an Economic Hitman, its a facsinating look into how economics really works for developing countries). The second has been deregulation of the banking sector, allowing them to leverage risky products and putting the entire economy at risk. When the American economy ate itself, and the people (yes, those little guys that pay those damn payroll taxes) bailed out the banks, that was all a result of deregulation. That one big domino almost destroyed the entire global economy. So, please tell me how the market is better?

The Democrats use to be the party of the working class, but abandoned that long ago.

Let's be serious here. BOTH parties abandoned the working class. They chase the money, and that money is available from the major donors.

Now they are the party of the people looking for "freebies", wealthy coastal dwellers and yuppies that want to have both their lavish lifestyle and "moral currency" at the same time.

Freebies? What is a freebie? Because last time I checked, those "freebies" are coming out of my paycheck. I consider those "freebies" as investments, and I know a lot of other Americans who view them the same way. We are investing in our future retirement. We are investing in the betterment of our future generations through quality education. We are investing in the strength of our nation by insuring that the weakest are afforded the same protections as the strongest. The problem is that our "investment managers" are taking our money and managing it poorly. Our "investment managers" are making poor decisions and charging us exorbitant fees for managing our money. That is where the problem is. Not the invest, but the #######s managing those investments.

Obama killed the coal industry and subsequently subsidized the "clean" energy movement. I guess we will see what Trump will do.......

What a tired talking point. Economics killed the coal industry. Natural gas is cheaper to produce, is cheaper to burn, and is cheaper operationally for power plants. Obama had dick to do with that.

If you are going to play the virtue signalling identitarian politics game from the left side, just remember that you are teaching the other side of the aisle the same game, hence the rise of people like Trump and the Alt right.... Just sayin.

Identity politics? Seriously? After Trump ran his campaign on singling out specific identities and blaming them for all the problems white people face? Get serious. The rise a Trump was a result of ignorance and deep seeded racism.

Originally Posted by Illuminaughty

Yeah, I heard Obama and Hillary both address it and CNN never said anything different. It must be true

Huh?

The facts don't lie. The information in question came directly from the Trump White House. How can you deny the information on salaries and wage gap that came directly from the White House?

Just a quick observation, I think it's great that you should sit up in your ivory tower in "socialist" Canada, trying to tell Americans what the reality of their situation is. You get to sit on your government provided healthcare, with your social safety net to catch you in difficult times, and a healthy economy because of the very "socialist" constraints the government puts in place to save the many from the few. I keep wondering what is preventing such a staunch idealist and believer in the market economy from moving his arse down here and taking advantage of the system you so greatly admire? What is holding you back? There's a good low paying job waiting for a guy like you (health insurance not included)!