Shannon

Did you read the statistic provided by MMFA that only 1/4 of minimum wage earners are ages 16-19?

That ought to shut you up for awhile. People like you and AA who spread outright lies about the minimum wage must be held to account for your deception.

Indeed...

Isn't our friend Shannon one of those who espouses the asinine theory that everyone who is poor deserves it because of "bad decisions" or "immoral behavior"?

After all, if God wanted me to be rich, he would have made me that way.

Exactly

Yes, that is what Shannon believes. On an earlier thread she said that minimum wage earners should get "education/training" to relieve their abject poverty, like it is their fault for making such a low amount of money.

Of course, Shannon is clueless about the real world.

New welfare rules set down by the Department of Health and Human Services in early July establish uniform definitions of what constitutes work or work preparation activities for welfare recipients, limiting states’ ability to make these determinations. For example, the new rules require that a welfare recipient who is in school cannot count their study time towards their work requirement unless it is done in a supervised study hall. States have no leeway in interpreting this rule if, for example, the student has small children and needs to study at home at night after the children go to bed.

I just find it funny that Shannon can so callously and uninformedly proclaim that people who make minimum wage should have just gotten education/training, yet is completley ignorant to the fact that the federal government is making such a possibility IMPOSSIBLE!!

Not to mention

that getting education/training takes a lot of a very precious commodity: time. Something people who are actually trying to live off of minimum wage don't have much of.

??

Who's Shannon?

You

haven't encounted Exclamation Mark Shannon? I think she uses them to let you know when she's screaming at you.

No...

I have NOT had the pleasure. Look forward to it ;-)

Just

another soulless conservative who believes poor people are morally inferior to the rest of us.

ol' JC

Jesus was poor, and surrounded himself with poor people.

Careful, Neal

Most of your listeners are probably unemployed alcoholics who aren't even making minimum wage. Keep talking like this and they might turn you off and start lookin' at teevee or beatin' the dog or the ol' ball and chain.

Even more important...

How many people does Boortz employ at only minimum wage? Or even just $6/hour? At the very least, surely some of his staff members must have held a minimum wage job at one point in his life. And what about interns who earn nothing? Are they even more incompetent, ignorant, etc.?

they don't do well...

from what i hear..up here in philly, average phone screener gets $8-$10 an hour on larger stations. Producers, depending on their contracts, won't make that much more per hour if they are not on air talent as well.

again this is just hearsay.

Boortz

Is a classless piece of crap. These "worthless" minimum wage earners are the backbone of the American economy and are the people who clean bathrooms, make the fast food rich conservatives pick up in their SUVs, stock grocery shelves, pick tomatoes that end up in our burrito at Taco Bell, etc, etc.

There will always be a demand for such positions that will pay minimum wage. And yet Boortx has the audcity to label these necessary workers as "wothless" and "trash"?

I have worked two minimum wage jobs and do not appreciate being denigrated by a punk, out of touch, fat, white male with a microphone.

Boortz can go f*** himself!!!!

How Sad

These people are to have such hatred and contempt for the weakest among us. Boortz is the antithesis of everything decent about being a human being, he truly embraces his darkness.

Hm, if, as the BLS says, that only one-fourth of those earning minimum wage

are teenagers . . . that must mean 75% of those earning minimum wage aren't teenagers . . . and Boortz clearly is no teenager . . . so - I wonder if Boortz himself is part of that 75%? That would clearly explain the "incompetent", "ignorant", "stupid", "worthless", and "pathetic" . . .

Boortz is himself.......

Boortz incredibly rude comments aside, hiking the minimum wage is a job killer.

Employers who can afford to pay five workers $5.15 an hour can’t afford them all at $6.15 an hour, as payroll is the first expense to be cut, ask any employer. Their greed is not the issue, they are the job creators. Somebody will be laid off. So, by raising the minimum wage, four are helped a little and the fifth is on the unemployement line. And any subsequent workers won't even be hired in the first place.

This is basic economics, not a bash on those earning minimum wage. It is reality, unfortunately.

Right Wing Myths

"But new research over the past decade shows that modest hikes to keep the low-paid abreast of inflation will cost few if any jobs. The point has been widely embraced since 1995 studies by University of California at Berkeley economist David Card and Princeton University economist Alan B. Krueger found no employment losses among New Jersey fast food restaurants hit with minimum-wage hikes. Given wide variations in costs around the country, the federal minimum should serve as a floor, which would allow high-cost states such as California or Alaska to set their own minimums higher if they wish. "Indexing doesn't improve conditions for low-wage workers, it just keeps them from deteriorating further as prices rise," says Robert Pollin, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who led a study of the Florida initiative for its advocates."

[link to www.businessweek.com]

The discussion should be about a living wage

[link to www.responsiblewealth.org]

[link to www.responsiblewealth.org]

Lynn

Haul out all the economic professors you want to, the same could be done to support my point. The fact is payroll is the most frequent cost cutting method employed by most businesses. That is not a right wing myth. I am not talking about the morality of the decision, that is debatable. I am talking strictly financial reality.

The bottom line is what investors and stockholders look at, that's the way it is. If that is shrinking and labor costs are increasing because of higher wages, then jobs will be cut.

Yeah

there are smarter alternatives to cutting of low level workers even though it's standard practice it may not be the best practice. Closing the ever increasing gaps between the highest paid and the lowest paid workers would be the fairest thing to do. What should happen is that the astronomical salaries at the very top would/should be reigned in. The executives will remain rich they just won't make 400 x the average company worker(Ok I exagerate). But you know what I mean.

Actually..

...you are not far off on that.

Good point.

I have often thought that tying the highest salary in an organization in a ratio to the lowest salary might be the best solution.

It probably would be difficult to enforce and we have to remember that much of the money that put the legislators (from both parties) in office came from just this class of people. It may be naive to think this class would allow such legislation to ever be passed.

It may be the best solution, but I don't think it could work. Remember these people also control the media as well.

If it ever became popular, they would just shout it down by calling it socialism. Over and over and over....

forgot to mention.

One of the many ways CEO's avoid tax is to pay themselves a fraction of their earnings as W2 income. Much of their income comes from dividends. Stock options are another thing to consider as well. It can get complicated fast.

You would have to make sure if you tied the ratio of the highest to the lowest, you included dividends (or any other compensation) or else you may be surprised how easily the top executives can get away with things.

REINed in

(Sorry, spelling Nazi.)

Anyway, yeah. The CEOs might have to buy the 30-foot yacht this year instead of the 40-foot.

Tragedy of tragedies.

My sympathy runneth dry.

Spelling Nazi,

You will have a great time critiquing my posts because I'm a poor speller. Thank God for spell check and you would be surprised that I'm a pretty good writer when I'm writing formally. I edit my work 50 thousand times before letting the powers that be see it. (smile) At MMFA I just type and submit. Yesterday when meaning to write trash bin and I actually wrote trash bend, but come on cut me some slack.

financial reality

The problem is that the Hummer of "financial reality" often collides with the Mini Cooper of morality...and regularly drives right over it.

I've always found it confounding that dollar-humping conservatives, with their oh-so-finely-tuned sense of morality, cannot see the inherent immorality in our current economic system.

And to counter your argument about minimum wage:

Workers who are paid more can afford to buy the products that keep your company in business. It's the same logic the Right likes to use when they give avaricious tax breaks to rich corporations. Funny how they are so reticent to apply such logic where it would make the most sense...

Excellent Point

There was a recent article in Time magazine about the living wage campaign. They examined the experience of Pittsburg, PA. The businesses adopted the living wage and there was a notable up tick in the economy - goods and services purchased as well as house purchases. . Moreover, it actually drove up wages across the board. Pittsburg's experience with this was very positive.

...

Gee. Maybe the current min. wage is to high. Why not $1.00/hr. By your basic understanding of Econimics Tommy that would increase employment.

Problem with the argument.

It is possible that minimum wage hikes in areas where the supply of jobs is relatively high compared to the size of the potential workforce may not mean much, because the scarcity of workers has driven up wages naturally.

The results for New Jersey may be skewed by natural supply/demand forces on wages.

To put it another way. Natural market forces may have already raised the wage floor well above minimum wage, thus mitigating any real effect of the minimum wage increase.

I think it would be more interesting to see the effect of a minimum wage increase in states where the wage floor was at or near the minimum wage to begin with.

Not exactly basic Economics...

If an employer is at full production then dropping a worker would reduce that productivity. Also, the precentage of labor cost that make up total production cost is not 100%. So , the precentage increase in wages does not translate to an equal increase in overall production cost.

What?

Of course the percentage of labor costs is not 100% production costs, there are many costs that factor into that. But when you increase labor costs, they either you absorb that in the bottom line, or you don't. If you are maintaining a certain net profit percentage, then you will have to cut costs in order to meet that %. Labor is the most containable cost in any business, where fixed costs cannot be cut.

Bottom line, cut a worker or two, absorb the production costs through management or other ways. Believe me, when costs are high, the first item looked at is payroll.

Not to be nitpicky.

But another way to make up for the extra cost is to raise prices for goods and services. It is probably the least desirable option, so I don't blame you for not mentioning it.

I am kind of with you on this subject. It is not my most enthusiastic support, but economically, I can't really argue with what you are saying.

Boortz, however, is really trying to egg people on again. He is a pretty smart guy and I think he knows what he is doing. It is all about ratings. He is playing a character and really doesn't care one way or the other what anyone thinks.

open_mind

You are absolutely correct, prices could be raised. But if it's manufacturing jobs, or one where their customers (not the end user) could go elsewhere for the same service at a cheaper price, then that puts the entire company, and all the workers in jeopardy.

Boortz is, of course, a fool for making such offensive remarks. A person's worth has nothing to do with how much money they make, so for him to berate people who don't earn near what he does is condescending, insensitive and just plain rude.

No one has mentioned healthcare yet...

It plays directly into the cost of running a business and the Republicans continue to drag their feet and stifle any chance of real health care reform that can help people who live off minimum wage and have no health insurance. All we hear from righties is that the solution is healthcare spending accounts. WHAT????

As usual

Tommy spouts GOP talking points as facts and then explains that it is just "reality" when in fact it is the furthest thing from it.

Intergalatic Purveyor

Try purveying back to the intergalaxy where your reality lies. Ours is planet earth.

Oh, speaking of reality...

How's your salary/wage been for the last 6 years? (I've seen mine drop by $3k per year)

How's your job security been for the last 6 years? Are the execs secretly planning on shipping it to another state or to India for a tax break? (I've lost my job twice to downsizing)

How's your healthcare cost been for the last 6 years? (My premiums and deductibles have skyrocketed)

How's it feel paying through the nose for gasoline to get to work?

How about those electric bills and heating bills? Are they getting any lower?

Ok, to be fair, not all of this may apply to you, but I thought it would be fun to bring up since you mentioned 'reality'.

(Man, how I long to have the Clinton years back.)

What does it matter?

So what if they ARE talking points. Does that mean they aren't really arguments then? Does that automatically invalidate them for that matter?

Does it really matter where the argument originates? It either stands or falls on its own merrit. Am I wrong?

Your post does not adress the arguments at all. If you have problems please address them to the argument and not the person or their supposed motives.

Not reality

Only if you assume that there is a static amount of money. The reasoning you have would mean that there'd be no inflation or any pay increases for anyone, since it would apply to everyone, not just minimum wage earners. So it's pretty easy to disprove.

Blech.

Thas all I got.

Farmworkers...

...don't make minimum wage. They usually get paid piece rates. It's not uncommon for them to end up with less than the minimum wage. That's why you see whole families out in the fields, even the littlest kids, trying to scrape a living.

i don't think adults should work at fastfood stores

and I really don't think that they should be raiseing (or trying to raise) a family working at McDonalds. Well at least when I was a kid those jobs were held by HS Kids and Kids working their way through college...i don't mena to sound any particular way but a kid in the SF Bay Area would have a really hard time getting a job at McDonlds these days...you have seen who's working these jobs nowadays. And don't get me started on paper routes either...

but what do you think of them ?

I would like to see adults working better jobs too. That's not the reality though.

Would you consider adults who work min wage jobs to be "incompetent", "ignorant", "stupid", "worthless," and "pathetic" ?

What about towns that have lost their industries ? What if a plant closes and the people who have lost their jobs are forced to take min wage jobs at the local Wal Mart ? What do you think about them ?

Please

Don't make to much sense, some people on this board can't handle it. I read about a call center in Oregon a few years ago and everyone there made $8/hr but it was one of the few places to work after the industry left the area. I can't remember which industry it was but many people were making about half of what they made before. Happens all the time.

...

It does happen all the time, even in big cities. Some major empoyer or facility shuts down, and the workers have such specialized skills and maybe have worked there so long they can't just find the same job elsewhere and make the same kind of pay. Or if another job exists it could be such a difficult commute it isn't workable.

And the Repoops dare label liberals "elitists".

Exactly.

I was laid off a few years ago and no one was hiring in the telecommunications sector in the kind of work I do.

I had the choice of working at a low-wage job or collecting unemployment. I was lucky to find a temp agency that was 1/6th of what I was making previously for 10 months until I caught a lucky break and went back to work in my specialty.

The funny thing is that I almost couldn't take the good job because the gas cost was eating me alive just to go to the interviews that were 3 hours away.

I was making a little more than minimum, but if I hadn't found the temp job, I was looking at the fast-food industry next.

Boortz doesn't know what he is talking about.

Think I know of what you speak,

the timber industry shut down, the call center came to town, got the city fathers to put out $ for infrastructure and when the lease renewal came around, the company suddenly found they could move their call center south of the border (Central America) and save even more.

A suggestion to a minimum wage earner

If this classless idiot shows up in your resturant, take a full pot of hot water and dump it in his lap. Don't worry, there is nothing there to which you would do any damage! I seriously question if Boortz has ever broken a sweat doing an honest day's work. Taking a crap doesn't count. Another repiglican waste of flesh.

Better yet...

Put a booger on his hamburger.

"Boortz"...

... is the sound you make just before you hurl.

How fitting.

and the liberals are elite ?

This is a popular rant of Nealbo:

[link to boortz.com]

In the debate over the minimum wage, we will hear people time and time again say that it is impossible to raise a family on the minimum wage. Well ... duhhhhh! Of course you can't raise a family on the minimum wage! This is a wage that is usually paid to teenagers who are bringing the bare minimum of job skills to their very first job. Beyond that .... losers. Oh yeah, it's insensitive ... and you might even find it offensive. That would be your problem. Face facts. The minimum wage is for losers. Baring some physical or mental disaster ... anyone living in this country who has not managed to acquire enough education and job skills to earn more than the minimum wage is a complete failure ... a loser. These are not the kinds of people who should be having children. Not only can't you raise a family on minimum wage, you shouldn't even be trying to. If our child welfare agencies were really doing their job they would be classifying every child in a household where their parent or guardian can't earn more than the minimum wage as endangered ... and promptly remove them.

[link to boortz.com]

Then there was Edwards talking about poor, poor pitiful families struggling to get by on the minimum wage, another myth. Most minimum wage workers are, for the most part, students and young people in their first jobs. The average minimum wage worker stays at the minimum wage for less than one year. The harsh truth is that someone incapable of earning more than the minimum wage has no business getting pregnant or getting someone else pregnant. Stupid people rely on the minimum wage for extended periods of their lives. Stupid people shouldn't breed, so don't give me this "raising a family on minimum wage" BS. Please tell me you already know why Democrats like to hammer the minimum wage issue. It's for their union pals! Many union contracts are tied to minimum wage. As the minimum wage goes up, so do union wages. Simple as that ... paying off your union supporters.

[link to boortz.com]

If you want to earn more than the minimum wage, or if you want a raise, you earn it. You do something to become more valuable to your employer and then negotiate for the wage you believe you deserve.

And please, people! Let's stop with this crybaby nonsense about raising a family on the minimum wage! I've said this 1000 times, and I'll say it again ... largely because it irritates so many people: If you can't earn more than the minimum wage, you have no business having children. Develop some job skills first, then work on developing an embryo.

Yes, demand of your Wal-Mart manager for that raise you deserve. And then good luck finding another job.

And if you have a better paying job, lost it due to layoff or business closure, and you had to take a min wage job AND you have kids ? Would Neal suggest killing them ?

[link to boortz.com]

Another thing ... and I've said this many times before. Don't whine and moan to me about "minimum-wage families." You have to be an incredible dunce to be limited to earning the minimum wage in this country. Now ... here is a basic truth for you to mull over. If you are incapable of earning more than the minimum wage than you should not have children. You should not have children because you simply cannot afford to raise them. You should not have children because it is irresponsible for you to do so.

There's much more.

[link to www.google.com]

Boortz must be blind...

He must not realize that quite a few minimum-wage earners are college grads and that many also have advanced degrees.

He must not know about something called OUTSOURCING...you know, where jobs are eliminated *HERE* to be shipped *THERE* leaving people with BAs, MAs and some with PhDs out on their ass. What are they supposed to do? Many DO take a McJob.

Hell, quite a few new college grads who can't find jobs because their degrees aren't "marketable" end up flipping burgers, waiting tables driving cabs or stocking shelves as well...

Guess according to Boortz anybody who loses a job via outsourcing or can't get a job just out of school is "incompetent, ignorant, worthless " and "pretty pathetic."

Very True

My kids who are still in college have worked in restaraunts and other low paying jobs with college grads looking for a job in their field.

Exporting jobs is all part of the "war on terror"

We have to pay them over there so we won't have to pay them here, you see...

A Perfect Example

The attitude and comments displayed by Mr. Boortz are a perfect example of what is wrong with the path our nation is on, due in no small part to the policies of the current party in power.

Mr. Boortz deserves only to be ignored. Also voice your objection to Cox Syndications' Managing Director to help curtail "hate radio" such as this:

Paul Douglas Managing Director Cox Radio Syndication Phone 404.962.2078 Fax 404.897.2226 dougatl@earthlink.net or paul.douglas@cox.com

Mailing Address: 1601 W Peachtree St. NE Atlanta, GA 30309

Please do all you can on November 7 to put the United States back on the road to being the compassionate and forgiving nation it should be.

That's new...

I see this jerk isn't mentioning MMFA in this rant. This topic must be extremely important to him...