First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out....

Is this irony? McDonald's earnings are being hurt because too many Americans are paid like they work at McDonald's.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140208/ISSUE10/302089990/this-is-mcdonalds-real-problem-and-theres-nothing-it-can-do-about-it

Eventually, there are going to be a lot of big businesses that might call for income redistribution in order to protect their profits. Well, as long as it doesn't involve them paying their own employees more.

 

So that's, what, two antebellum? And the one in Arkansas and the one in Oklahoma. But none in that post-1944 lacuna, eh? Given the powderkeg of violence that only SNAP and the like hold at bay, one would have thought the list would have run much longer. Certainly one would have thought reaching back to the pre-Second Industrial Revolution wouldn't have been necessary.

 

America in the immediate aftermath of WWII isn't exactly a good baseline for planning economic and social policy.

 

Never said it was. Just curious as to why, given this violence that is reportedly held at bay by SNAP (and the like), there've been so few of them (even given the various panics, recessions and two major depressions in the years between the War of Northern Aggression ( ;D) and WWII). A cynic might begin to think the "Hungry People Riot!!!" apologetic has roots that are, to put it politely, located in the posterior region.

 

This is where the real problem lies with our "redistribution of wealth/income" model. It has become a reason to keep wages low because, hey, the government will just pick up the slack.

It's not just SNAP, though. If you think about it, the Earned Income Tax Credit is really a means for employers to keep wages low because the government makes up the difference in the form of a big, fat check presented after poor people file their income tax returns.

The truth is, higher wages for employees means less of a need for the government to step in and fill the gaps. Unfortunately, what I worry about the push to raise the minimum wage is it's going to become less about "reduce dependency on government programs or help simplify the tax code" and more about "since we're already paying for products that are arguably a need, why shouldn't we just let the increased wages go toward things that might not be so because that's good for the economy."

 

Jones once stated on this board that Canadians have such a hard time understanding the mind set of some Americans that once their tax dollars are collected, those dollars are not burned in a bonfire in DC, the state capital or the county seat. These dollars are actually spent at businesses or given in salaries.

I feel much better knowing a child has food than a 1%er can have another floor on a beach house.

 

Ever read Zinn's "A People's History of the United States"? That book is full of riots in the U.S.,, most of which had an economic basis, except for those racial ones.

 

Ragu haz a mad.

 

No, I've never read it, but I understand that many -- perhaps even the vast majority of -- serious historians consider that book to be full of a lot of stuff with origins of a posterior nature.

 

When did the food riots happen?

 

Maybe not rioting, but the Poor People's Campaign (1968) and Occupy Wall St. more recently were both sustained, large-scale demonstrations centered on economic justice.