Here's what fast food will cost with $17 an hour wages

What would the ripple effect be if you dropped an unwrapped candy bar in the pool?

 

If you think that everyone who is able to work should work and that people should not rely on government assistance to support themselves and their family, should there not be an obligation from their employers to pay them enough to support themselves and their families?

 

That's a good question, to which I would reply . . .

No.

Because once it's an employer's obligation to "support an employee and his family", you open the door to a wide spectrum of expectations. It costs a heck of a lot less for a single person to support himself than it does a married person with a wife, four kids --- one of them disabled --- and an ex-wife to "support himself and his family." You don't pay people based on their "family dynamics".

This is where personal choices play a key role. Do I get married? Will my wife work, too? Can we afford children? Can we afford to send them to private school? Sadly, a lot of people make bad choices and then scream "HELP!" to the government.

IMO, an employer has a reasonable obligation to pay enough to the person he is employing to support himself. Period. What that person does regarding his family life is of no interest to the employer.

 

No, I was 100 percent correct. Please demonstrate a single instance in the history of American minimum wage increases in which the working poor have not benefitted in the aggregate.

 

The burden of proof's on you, champ. You and your pals are the ones arguing that the Law of Demand doesn't apply.

Besides, as I am sure you well know, it's awfully hard to count those people who would have had a job but for the compassion shown them by you and your pals.

 

But employers should have an obligation to pay enough for employers to support themselves without government assistance?

 

I interviewed some of the survivors of the Battle of Gettysburg. It wasn't that big a deal. The guys I talked to weren't hurt at all.

#cranberrylogic

 

The Battle of Gettysburg was bloody? Find me a single unharmed soldier who was wounded.

#cranberrylogic

 

Ooh, you "champed" him.

It's on now!

 

"In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price--determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away."

#cranberrysfavoriteeconomist

 

Nah, he's starting to edge up on relegation territory. If I stop responding to his nonsense, you'll know I've optioned him off to low-A.

 

Raising the minimum wage hurts the poor because it means fewer jobs. And the cost will be pushed on customers.

Paying millions and millions in salary, bonuses and stock options to CEOs and other execs -- even at companies with no success to speak of -- helps the poor because they could be CEO someday. Customers don't mind paying a little extra because the executives work hard and earned it.

Plus, the government is not demanding you pay the CEOs a grotesque wage, that's the result of capitalism and buddies taking care of each other. God Bless America.