And so it begins:
By Steve Foley Posted in Congress | Spotlight Blogs — Comments (36) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The 110th Congress - Swamp is drained and corruption free! Well not so much...
We all know what the Democrats (led by incoming speaker Pelosi) agenda will look like as laid out in depth here:
Read on . . .
1. Toughen House Ethics Rules
2. Raise Minimum Wage
3. Enact 9/11 Commission Recommendations
4. Cut Student Loan Interest Rates in Half
5. Broaden Federally-Supported Stem Cell Research
6. Negotiate for Lower Medicare Drug Prices
It seems to me getting past the first item up for bid in her own party should take the better part of the year... let alone 100 hours! With the latest round of hard charging democrat ethics reform coming in just before the new year where it was decided that since, John Conyers (D-Detroit) had "taken responsibility" for allowing his staff to work on the Detroit City Council campaign of JoAnn Watson and the presidential campaign of Carolyn Moseley Braun while getting paid from congressional coffers, all is forgiven and we can go about our business!?!
Taking reasonability meaning, No Action taken, What? excuse me while I check to see if Spock is clean shaven or has a beard???
Curt at floppingaces has a great report (as usual) and detailed analysis on the list of dems who are neck deep in the swampy bogs of ethics violations the speaker should be looking at called Let The "Corruption Free" Congress Begin here's a bare list and remember Pelosi said "This leadership team will create the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history"
1) John Conyers - No Action taken
2) John Murtha - No Action taken
3) William Jefferson - No Action taken, and my favorite
4) Alan Mollohan - No Action taken
Here's a couple of stories I've written about this piece of work:
Rep. Mollohan Porker of the Month and Mollohan may control the purse of the agency investigating him?!?
Well it's obvious Pelosi and Co. didn't heed my warning last January when i said Better Think Twice: The Campaign Against Republican Corruption
According to Bruce Bartlett:
Skeptics can go to the web site of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, popularly known as the House Ethics Committee. Click on "historical documents" and go to a publication called "Historical Summary of Conduct Cases in the House of Representatives." The document was last updated on November 9, 2004 and lists every ethics case since 1798, when Rep. Roger Griswold of Connecticut attacked Rep. Matthew Lyon of Vermont with a "stout cane" and Lyon responded with a pair of fireplace tongs.
Link is here: Historical Summary of Conduct Cases in the House of Representatives
By my count, there have been 70 different members of the House who have been investigated for serious offenses over the last 30 years, including many involving actual criminality and jail time. Of these, only 15 involved Republicans, with the remaining 55 involving Democrats.
I have no doubt that any poll of the American people asking which party had more frequently been the subject of House ethics investigations would show an overwhelming majority naming the Republicans, when the truth is that Democrats, historically, have been far more likely to have been investigated.
Not so much with the swamp draining that I can see!!! Anyway - And so it begins - I'm looking forward too the next two years, watching the dems fall all over themselves trying to please the far left, (which isn't going so well at the moment) keeping their promises and trying to govern effectively.
The Academy is open.
And really bet that they abandon Both simultaneously...
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
1. Toughen House Ethics Rules
2. Raise Minimum Wage
3. Enact 9/11 Commission Recommendations
4. Cut Student Loan Interest Rates in Half
5. Broaden Federally-Supported Stem Cell Research
6. Negotiate for Lower Medicare Drug Prices
1. Listed above (In His Freezer!)
2. Raise inflation!
3. Even if they are utterly stupid ideas!
4. Raise Tuition costs!
5. I'm sure that's in the Constitution somewhere!
6. Less development of new drugs!
All hail our new Democrat Overlords, they will make everything All Better™ Disclaimer: By All Better™ we mean better for elected Democrats and their cronies. All Democrat guarantees are null and void in all 50 states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. Any attempt to hold any Democrat candidate or office holder to any promise will be punished. All media will cover for Democrats - 'cuz we roll like that.
Two thirds of the world is covered by water, the other third is covered by Champ Bailey
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. After this, therefore because of this. Does the purchasing power rise because of, or in spite of, a minimum wage increase?
People who are out of a job don't have much purchasing power -- except what Aunt Nancy doles out to them.
Which is the goal, I think
The Academy is open.
And the purchasing power of the Middle Class (or anyone else not on MinWage) suffers because of.
I'm all for helping out the poor. But when the "Poor" face obesity as their Number 1 health concern, then they really aren't poor anymore, now are they?
Furthermore, I am More for helping out the people this country is built on and by: The Middle Class. And since there are More of them than there are Poor or even pseudopoor, then screw the poor...
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
by many economists that it does in the long term raise the purchasing power of min. wage earners, (I majored in finance, so I know without doubt that its true) so its not "post hoc ergo propter hoc."
Also very few people lose their jobs because of it. Mostly because no company is going to hire more workers than they need. If all they need is 5 workers, why should they hire more than that. Then why would they fire anybody because of a roughly 2 dollar increase in pay, when they still need them.
Personally in South Florida , I don't understand how anybody can survive under 10 an hour. While I believe the best system is to have federal min. wage be about 7.25 per hour and then let each state decide for themselves that what amount above that is best for their state economy.
if the wages of your employees are increased it seems like you have two choices. Raise prices (inflation) or cut labor (layoffs). Unless you think that employers have extra piles of cash hanging around that they are not using for anything in particular.
_Unless you think that employers have extra piles of cash hanging around that they are not using for anything in particular._
...which is actually the big reason why Sony has not gone bankrupt amongst huge battery recalls, a subsidizing PS3 prices (and loses on PS3 as a whole), and an expected Blu-ray flop.
but the minimum wage doesn't effect (generally) large corporations like Sony. It effects small companies, and to a lesser extent, companies that use labor at the very bottom end of the scale.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"...
your typical McDnald's franchise, or gas station or small construction company that pay minwage don't Have Company Reserves.
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
>>>>>>>>>>>>>by many economists that it does in the long term raise the purchasing power of min. wage earners, (I majored in finance, so I know without doubt that its true)
and furthermore work in operations research, let me introduce you to a topic that you apparantly slept through in some of those finance courses. That would be the notion of the linear constraint.
Linear constraints involve limitations to how much of a resource you have available. They cause you to have to make choices amongst competitive goods.
One common example involves what a business owner spends his supply of capital on. She/He/IT can choose between labor, material, investment and several other things that really bright finance majors like yourself can enlighten the whole world about.
So what happens when one of these goods gets more expensive without a coresponding increase in price. The owner gets less utility per dollar spent thereupon; less bang for the buck so to speak. This makes that business owner buy less of it.
So yea verily, if the minimum wage goes up faster than the cost of money, the workers who still have jobs, have more purchasing power. You get a big, gold star on the nose for pointing that one out.
The point that isn't being discussed is how many of them are enjoying purchasing power at all, and how many are now sitting at home listening to their Pearl Jam CDs and getting stoned instead of working. Once you've got an answer to that one that doesn't dwell in sinonmy with "Hello, AFDC payments and food stamps," I might be dumb enough to buy off on a higher minimum wage.
"The minimum wage should be set to $0." - George Will
or $25.00 or lets be really fair and make it $75.00
These arbitrary numbers are meaningless!
Since you provided no link to back up your claims allow me to provide one Why the Minimum Wage Law Causes Unemployment
President Clinton proposes to increase the hourly minimum wage form $4.25 to $5.15. In support of this proposal, Secretary of Labor Robert Reich claims that an increase in the federally mandated minimum wage would help thousands of workers avoid welfare and poverty. He says that more than one-third of minimum wage earners are their families' sole breadwinners, struggling to get by.
In fact, Secretary Reich grossly overstates both the number of poor people earning the minimum wage and the number of households dependent on a minimum wage worker's income.
Only 3.7 percent of hourly wage earners are paid the minimum wage and most of those are not poor.
A majority of minimum wage workers are either young persons living in nonpoor families or a second or third earner in a household - not the primary breadwinner.
In 1992, only 198,500 of the nation's 4.7 million minimum wage earners were adult householders.
Only 1.2 percent of all minimum wage workers (about 58,600) were adult heads of households with less than $10,000 of income.
Supporters of a higher minimum wage also frequently imply that a large portion of minimum wage workers are single mothers for whom welfare is an alternative to work. However, this belief is also disproven by the facts.
Single parents, male and female, make up only 6.5 percent of the minimum wage workforce.
Only about half of them (155,900) of a total 311,600) work full time. The number of poor people earning the minimum wage is small in part because most poor people of working age are not working.
Only 9.2 percent of poor people of working age have full-time jobs.
About 60 percent do not work at all.
Thus the minimum wage increase proposed by President Clinton would do little to reduce poverty. Instead, it would cause real hardship for some low-income Americans, the very people it is designed to help. A large majority of scholarly studies demonstrate that increasing the federal minimum wage causes higher unemployment. Those who suffer are most likely to be teenagers, racial minorities and low-skilled workers.
Teenage unemployment rose sharply when the minimum wage was increased from $3.35 to $4.25 in 1990 and 1991.
Furthermore, the extent to which teenage unemployment exceeds that of the whole population tends to increase in direct proportion to increases in the minimum wage.
All the evidence shows that the job-killing impact of the minimum wage is worse for blacks than for whites.
Prior to the imposition of the minimum wage, the unemployment rates for blacks and whites were very similar.
Today, however, the unemployment rate for nonwhites is about twice the rate for whites, and changes in the unemployment rate for nonwhites closely parallels changes in the real minimum wage.
For example, the 1990 and 1991 increases in the minimum wage were accompanied by rising nonwhite unemployment, which reached a peak of 13.1 percent in June 1992.
The minimum wage reduces on-the-job training opportunities that allow low-skilled, low-income workers to rise up the job ladder out of poverty.
An increase in the minimum wage would also shock the labor market and might trigger a recession, especially since this is a time of economic uncertainty. In the past, increases in the minimum wage have triggered recessions or prolonged depressions. For example:
Evidence demonstrates a link between minimum wage increases and the recessions of 1990-91 and 1974-75.
A good case also could be made that both the 1979-80 economic downturn and the recession that began in late 1981 were exacerbated by minimum wage increases, but this link is less obvious because inflation and other factors were involved
A minimum wage requirement mandated by the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 halted an increase in employment, lengthening and deepening the Great Depression.
will distort the market to an unreasonable level, and most companies can not afford that or can the consumer when it is passed on to them. A gradual 2 dollar increase is more reasonable.
Also given that article starts off with junk stats. I'll read it, but remain skeptical.
I case your wondering why they are junk statistics:
Overlaying reason is that they don't cite where they got these statistics, or if they calculated it themselves then where is their documentation of the methods they use. Also their about page describes themselves more conservative, meaning partisan bias.
* Only 3.7 percent of hourly wage earners are paid the minimum wage and most of those are not poor.
1.) Which min. wage? The federal min. wage? If a state like Florida that has a state min wage above the federal, are they included in this? Does this include those who work for tips like servers and bartenders?
2.) If somebody makes just above minimum wage, say instead of 5.15 they make 5.40 per hour, are they included in that 3.7%?
3.) What is their definition of poor?
* A majority of minimum wage workers are either young persons living in nonpoor families or a second or third earner in a household - not the primary breadwinner.
1.) There is no definition of "young persons," the term is too vague.
2.) This stat is bonding 2 different demographics together, the young persons of nonpoor families and the second or third earner of a household. Thats a big no no in statistics, I was originally a actuarial science major, meaning a lot of stats. Also household does not always mean families.
3.) For the second demographic, if the second or top breadwinners are making just above min wage then are they consider min wage workers?
* In 1992, only 198,500 of the nation's 4.7 million minimum wage earners were adult householders.
1.) What is their definition of "householder"? Is it the head of the household or somebody who owns a house? Because it is damn near impossible to own a house earning min wage.
2.) What those living with a bunch of roommates where there is no head of household?
* Only 1.2 percent of all minimum wage workers (about 58,600) were adult heads of households with less than $10,000 of income.
1.) Again, are they including those making just about min. wage?
2.) Also the $10,000 qualifying limit is questionable. 5.15 per hour times 40 hour weeks times 52 weeks per year comes out to be $10,712 per year before taxes. (5.15 x 40 x 52 = 10712) That comes out to be just above the $10000 limit to be included, so there are adult heads of households that are not included in this statistic.
Sidenote: If somebody is making min wage then why would they try to become head of a household? I definitely wouldn't want a family or be head of any household when living on min wage.
If you want a link the look here:
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp178
and also if you want to see a link for that min. wage increases dont cost jobs, then look here
http://www.risep-fiu.org/reports/Florida_Minimum_Wage_Report.pdf
is like getting your news from the Enquirer.
EPI is an advocacy thinktank and I find it ironic that you'd take their junk stats as being superior to some other set of junk stats.
an economy policy change, maybe because they are a economic think tank.
However they are using solid sources to to base their argument, and their stats are nowhere as "junky" as those posted before mine. If they are junk then break them and show me their flaws like I did to ones of the NCPA.
...to expressing my view on this subject that the minimum wage should be 0 in his piece today called The Minimum Wage is a Bad Idea
Since I have zero desire to change your view on this I'll thank you to take this argument elsewhere....cnI redruM has created a great place Here
I've been doing this online discussion thing since about 1988. I think you need some advice, and I'd like to use this minimum wage issue to give it to you. Please don't get caught up in the details of the minimum wage debate for this, as I'm pretty sure your mind will not change over it.
That less than 5% of hourly workers earn the minimum fits common sense, doesn't it? Think about it. Employers compete for workers, and want the best ones. Typically only new hires at entry-level jobs get the minimum, and most employers pay entry-level people something above the minimum anyway, to attract better workers. After an initial period, the non-buffoons get a raise, while the buffoons quit, get fired, get arrested and are then fired, and so on. But guess what: whatever the number is, it's a lot less than 100%. You will fare better in these debates if you stop quibbling over details, if the details when settled won't change the argument.
For instance, you went to the trouble of punching the numbers to show that $10,000 < $5.15 x 40 x 52. People never work 52 weeks a year, if only because they call in sick, take an unpaid holiday, or spend a month unemployed. But whether the number of head-of-household minimum wage earners is 1.2% or 3.2% doesn't matter to the argument. It's not many people, as you showed you knew when you expressed doubt about trying to live on $10K. Is there some magical number that represents poverty? No. $10,000 was used because it's a nice number in the ballpark. Therefore, you should simply accept the concept that most people working minimum wage aren't depending on it to feed their families, but to pay for non-necessities like those unpaid vacations.
In general, avoid arguing what you hope is true, unless you can prove it to someone who doesn't. Avoid the urge to oppose every point your "opponent" makes, unless he's the rare idiot who's wrong about everything. There's a lot more to it, like changing your goal from proving a point to finding the truth, but I have to go.
My boss here at the gas station gets mad if I don't fill the blessed windshield washing tanks.
The Academy is open.
Given that it has been confirmed by many economists that it does in the long term raise the purchasing power of min. wage earners, (I majored in finance, so I know without doubt that its true) so its not "post hoc ergo propter hoc."
No, now you have reduced it to an appeal to authority, which you have failed to cite. Furthermore, while I would never dream to argue that increasing a person's wage fails to increase their purchasing power, that isn't the point. The point is that in doing so it forces employers to raise prices for their products, and leaves other people without jobs with which to purchase the now more expensive goods and services. That increases the burden further on those who do have jobs (minimum wage or not), whose taxes now support the unemployed folks †.
Also very few people lose their jobs because of it. Mostly because no company is going to hire more workers than they need. If all they need is 5 workers, why should they hire more than that. Then why would they fire anybody because of a roughly 2 dollar increase in pay, when they still need them.
So as long as it's only a few, that makes it ok? But you have missed the biggest point, because you hope it isn't true: the reason companies would fire, or not hire, as many workers as they would like is because they can't make money at the artificially high labor price.
Now we come to the grandest piece of question-begging I've seen in quite some time:
Personally in South Florida , I don't understand how anybody can survive under 10 an hour. While I believe the best system is to have federal min. wage be about 7.25 per hour and then let each state decide for themselves that what amount above that is best for their state economy.
If the States should set their own minima, as they do now, you still haven't explained why there needs to be a Federal minimum, and why it has to be changed.
† Granting for the sake of argument the false assumption proffered by minimum wage advocates that people working minimum wage work full time; most are teenagers and others who are supported by a primary breadwinner. Something like 80% of minimum wage earners live in a household above the national median income.
The Academy is open.
because the other 2 are answered in my other reply:
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/steven_foley/2007/jan/04/and_so_it_begins#...
The Federal min wage sets the standard for the nation, also the purchasing power of the min wage and the "just above" will increase without crazy amounts of inflation and very very little job cuts.
Reason why states and cities should adjust their minimum wage because a 10 per hour minimum wage is too much in some states and less than enough in others. State and local government need to adjust it yearly according to the cost of living and changes in the local consumer price index. Not just inflation, because that covers everything including items that the poor is not going to buy.
Raising the minimum wage increases inflation pressure, which triggers another increase in the minimum wage which increases inflation which.....
Artificial price controls rarely have the intended effect.
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
is that if certain necessary items fall in price say car insurance (yes in Florida and some other states it is a necessary), which I know Florida congress is promising to work on, then min wage would adjust for that fall as well.
It also benefits the middle class and upper class, since it adds more pressure for politicians to keep inflation of necessary down.
is that if certain necessary items fall in price say car insurance (yes in Florida and some other states it is a necessary), which I know Florida congress is promising to work on, then min wage would adjust for that fall as well.
Why don't we just set price controls on auto insurance and everything else while we're at it? We could draw up a 5 year plan.
---
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
"It also benefits the middle class and upper class, since it adds more pressure for politicians to keep inflation of necessary down."
And you're advocating that politicians pass a law that is inherently inflationary and yet "keep inflation of necessary down". Pick one.
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
this morning Pelosi is calling herself the most powerful woman in America (sweet ain't it?).
Peace through superior fire power:)
ever"
I am curious to see what they do to reform ethics in the house, and whether they apply any of it retroactively-to at least they guys with more current issues-but I won't hold my breath on that one either.
I suspect ethics reform will in the end be lobbying reform-which depending on what they do there will be a good thing (my fear is that grass roots type groups will lose all voice, while the huge money groups will still have power).
Because, in my experience, there's no negotation about it -- it's the kind of, er, negotation that Don Corleone used to do: either your signature or your brains are going to be on this contract.
I'm not a doctor, but a number of my friends are. And you should hear them talk about how Medicare and Medicaid "negotiate" the prices for various types of services and procedures. The negotiation basically goes like this: here's a list of how much we'll pay you for all particular medical procedures if you want to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients (which counts for a *huge* percentage of all patients).
You can either do it for whatever price they put out (your signature) or say goodbye to half your patients (your brains).
It's frankly amazing to me how little people on the left understand basic economics -- and I mean just the very basic stuff. I had a guy one time try to tell me that disallowing the reimportation of price-controlled drugs from Canada was harmful protectionism!
I think they've really convinced themselves that all this great stuff -- life-saving drugs, advanced medical procedures and care, food, whatever -- is just there and plentiful and that all we need to have is a good system to make sure everybody can have as much of it as they need without regards to their ability to pay for it.
It's be Western civilization's downfall eventually.
... every Democrat I know is pumped up about only two things: "Oversight" and "investigations". I notice neither is on the list.
--
We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.