FROM 2012 INTO 2013 POLITICS THREAD

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

That's at least the fourth reissuance of that letter since it first surfaced in 2011. Between that and the "ZOMG health care is going to destroy us!" garbage, the political motives are plain.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Let's get rid of the minimum wage then. That law forces businesses to pay labor more than they think they're worth and those employees have no incentives to gain skills that might, just might, improve their pay.

I assume you know the reason why there is a mininum wage law. It prevents employers from essentially making their employees work for mere pennies. Just like I assume you know the reason why there is a law on hours and overtime.

Of course, when those laws were passed back then, they were decried by the employers as "Socilism!"

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Yes, Morris has a "resume".

And he has a distinctive "personality".

He's also been throwing shit at walls the past few years, hoping that something correct actually sticks. But if he's been holding his breath during the described period, he's dead.

His credibility was long-ago shot to shit.



This depiction also largely applies to the recent years of WSJ columns submitted by Mr. Rove, Karl.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

“You know that if the President is re-elected, he will still be unable to work with the people in Congress,” Romney said. “He has ignored them, attacked them, blamed them. The debt ceiling will come up again, and shutdown and default will be threatened, chilling the economy.”

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/11/romney-new-recession-warning.php?ref=fpa

Choose me or the economy gets it!

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Institutional memory . . . and preventing a competitor from hiring the individual in question . . . come immediately to mind. There are other reasons, as well.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

25 cents an hour = $10 a week.

Walmart has 2.2 million employees. A $10 a week raise for each of them would be $22 million. Multiply that by 52 weeks, and you get about $114 million per year.

Walmart's NET operating income was about $15.7 BILLION.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart)

In other words, a 25 cent an hour raise would be cost 0.00726114649 (yes, I used a calculator) percent of Walmart's net income.

Pity poor Walmart.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Ask Henry Ford about that.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

You missed a couple of decimal points.

1) $1.14 billion ($1,140 million).

2) 0.7... percent, not 0.007 percent. So actually 7 percent.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

I'll have you know I can go multiple seconds without breathing.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

I got a Ford PM minutes after making that post.

The answer, which I responded to in general on the board, was this: Ford saw the higher wages as a long-term investment in the business, basically. He DID think that's what he had to pay the workers. He just had a longer view than today's stock price-at-this-second-driven CEOs.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

The idea that Ford paid his workers more because to create a market for his cars is one of those stubborn historical myths.

He paid them more because he did the cold, hard calculations that said that attracting quality, steady labor would be more beneficial to his bottom line than cheap, high-turnover labor.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Well, people are dumpster diving for anything to eat. I wouldn't exactly call that a great relief effort. You might, but I wouldn't.