Tom Toles for February 20, 2014

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    ConserveGov  about 10 years ago

    Sorry Tommy, but if you’re living on your own and making minimum wage, you’re already in poverty. Raising it to $10 will not change that.BUT….. It will cause another half MILION people to have no job!Minimum wage is for brand new workers or students. Most people with half a work ethic move out of minimum wage within 1 year.

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    Doughfoot  about 10 years ago

    Without a MW, experience proves that employers will lower wages across the board when the economy turns down, knowing that, when jobs are scarce, workers will “just have to take it.” Lowering wages lessens overall buying power and while it may help the individual employer cut his costs, if everyone does it, it depresses the economy overall. This is one of the problems with our present economy. The CEO makes as much money as a thousand of his employees combined. But he doesn’t buy a thousand times as much in goods and services: a thousand times as many cars or houses or milk or clothes. The market for luxuries is doing fine: but that doesn’t employ anywhere near as many people as a bigger market for middle-class goods would employ. When Tiffany’s prospers, it doesn’t do the country as much good as when General Motors prospers. Of course, when the economy is booming and jobs are plentiful, UNLIKE TODAY, and employers are competing to find and retain workers, the MW serves less purpose. Ensuring the MW keeps up with inflation is no panacea, but is simply justice and and sound policy. Raising the minimum wage too fast or too high would be a problem, but there is no such proposal on the table.

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    RevBobMIB  about 10 years ago

    Just for starters, raising the minimum wage will get lots of Walmart’s workers off of welfare, reducing the roughly $900K/year tax burden that each Walmart store costs its community. Imagine that – one of the biggest companies on the planet might have to pay its own workers instead of stealing our taxes to do it for them. THE HORROR! But then, I think we could use a good, solid infrastructure stimulus program for the next couple of years. Think of it as a second WPA – while interest rates are at rock-bottom, hire the unemployed to rebuild our national infrastructure. Yes, it’s short-term deficit spending – but it gets people off of the unemployment rolls and into useful jobs. They make money, they spend it, that creates more demand, the private sector needs to hire more people instead of just socking its record profits away in the Caymans, and by 2016 we could actually be out of this recession! Naaah, we can’t have that. Might hurt the GOP’s chances in the next election, and that’s WAY more important than silly little things like running the country, right?

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    RevBobMIB  about 10 years ago

    Forgot to mention – we’re going to have to repair our infrastructure sometime. It’s not going to fix itself, and the longer we wait, the more expensive it’s going to be. Low interest rates make the deficit spending less painful, the recession makes the labor cheaper, and hiring the unemployed makes it even less expensive because we’re not paying those unemployment benefits. It’s a win all the way around, except for the political costs to those who oppose it.

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    cdward  about 10 years ago

    CBO report is also not the end report. Several economists have stepped forward to suggest there would be little or no job loss, and even if there were, it would be offset by the reduction in working poor on Welfare. The extra money in their pockets would, in turn, stimulate the economy and ultimately result in more jobs.

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    Crabbyrino Premium Member about 10 years ago

    Infrastructure infrastructure and infrastructure … Solid jobs will create solid infrastructure. Solid infrastructure creates solid economy.

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    Enoki  about 10 years ago

    According to Nancy Pelosi, Obama’s administration, and many other Democrats putting people on welfare, unemployment, food stamps, and other government handouts will grow the economy and provide a positive economic return. So, we win either way!… .At least in the surreal fantasy land that Progressives live in ….

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    Enoki  about 10 years ago

    I’d be interested in how I miss Bush arrived at that number too… And, if it is correct I’d like to have a guide on how to sign up as that’s better than getting another job as I’m about to retire from my current one!

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    stpfeffer  about 10 years ago

    Here Here! Well said!

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    cyzicus  about 10 years ago

    Raising the Minimum Wage will destroy as many jobs as Trickle Down Economics has created….None.

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    hippogriff  about 10 years ago

    Bob: Consider becoming a blooming idiot? Or foraging for food like we did in the Hoover depression? Those woods and fields are mostly urban sprawl now and we use guns to terrorize minorities, not hunt for food.

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    I Play One On TV  about 10 years ago

    I am so very proud of today’s posters. Very good points, spoken clearly and without venom (there are the everyday exceptions, but we have to put up with them).

    Thanks especially to ypoons and RevBob.

    It is heartening to note that other posters realize that our corrosive political atmosphere is undermining the very roots of our society. The first step to solving a problem is to recognize it exists.

    I agree that altruism is a needed fix, but that comes from within. What comes from without is a far greater issue, at least in the short term, and that is the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove strategy: if you continue to poke the hornets’ nests, the hornets will remain angry. We have legislators and “news” networks that do nothing all day other than to poke the hornets’ nests. They feel we must have outrage 24/7/365, or else they aren’t doing their job. Right down in the sewer with divorce lawyers, in my opinion.

    That has to stop: right/left/center….doesn’t matter. “If you can’t say nothing’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.”

    And if you don’t like what’s going on, WORK TO FIX IT. Stop complaining, stop finding websites and “news” outlets that just feed your outrage and give you the happiness (?) that other people are just as unhappy. If you make it a point to be unhappy and hateful to others, there is only one very predictable end, and it ain’t pretty.

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    I Play One On TV  about 10 years ago

    " If they refuse to use that money they should be brought up on charges, go to prison and take the money back with interest."

    Abso-freakin’-lutely.

    One of the greatest failures of the Obama administration is the Justice Department’s ostrich imitation regarding what Wall Street has done to ordinary citizens. WE BAILED OUT YOUR SORRY ASSES, and you can’t find a way to loan money for us to try to rebuild our economy? Please.

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    RevBobMIB  about 10 years ago

    I would say you’re preaching to the choir, but I think the preaching’s my job… ;) The tax-cutters’ dirty secret is that we’ve been trying their plan for 30 years. Their theory is that giving rich people more money would encourage investment and create jobs, but the reality is that it’s sucked the middle class dry, which created ballooning personal debt and finally crashed the economy – reducing demand, which actively DIScourages investment and lowers wages. It doesn’t work. No businessman hires people out of the goodness of his heart, or because he’s making a lot of money. He hires people to meet demand. No demand means no jobs, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen in this “jobless recovery.” The rich aren’t investing – they’re sitting on their money because there’s nothing to invest IN, due to that lack of demand. Compare the ratio of a CEO’s earnings to his average worker’s earnings between 1982 and 2012. What used to be around 40:1 has shot up to over 300:1, and it’s still rising. The economy’s not going to get better unless we can turn that ratio’s direction around. (Frankly, I’d like to cap it at 100:1. Make all the money you like, but not while paying your employees crap.)

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    ConserveGov  about 10 years ago

    “Obama is trickle up POVERTY! "Well said!

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    kevin87031  about 10 years ago

    @ I Miss BushCalling citizens of another country lazy and arrogant, is, in my eyes, arrogant.

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