Comments by "Xyz Same" (@xyzsame4081) on "The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder"
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It is not my experience that big biz wants the minimum wage any more than smaller businesses. Where I live (Austria, Germany) we may have less chains (fast food) and more smaller restaurants. They are doing OK with the minimum wage here (we did not have one for long time but 80 - 85 % of the wages are covered by collective bargaining so that kept wages liveable). I know the situation is the same in Denmark and Sweden. Switzerland pays very good wages even for unskilled labour (even when considering the higher living costs there . They are very selective with immigration however so they do not expose their workforce (the unskilled workforce, but also nurses etc. to too much competition).
We have here the system of apprenticeship. (Full employment, young person - 15 years, or occasionally older 16 - or 17 when they do not finish high school, nurses are on principly only accepted at the age of 16 - they are doing night shifts alone in the 3rd year of training so they should be adults then). It is like an internship. There are a lot of regulations to make sure the youngsters are acutally trained (you cannot use them to walk your dog, wash your car or for cleaning services - if you want that get an employee with minimum wage).
Businesses are allowed to pay them less (pay is regulated), the contracts are for 3 years or longer, the apprentice cannot be fired after the trial phase (except for severe misbehaviour). They go to school one day a week (the school supports the training, accouning etc.), sometimes they get help with learning (voluntarily from the company), and they have 6 weeks instead of 5 weeks paid vacation. (They are young after all ;)
The saying is "They cost you in the first year, you are getting even with their productivity the next year, and in the 3rd year they bring more than they cost". Let me add that with healthcare and taxes these (hormonal and not always concentrated) youngsters even in the first year cost more than USD 5,-- (or Euro 5,-- per hour).
They are one of the reasons for the excellent reputation when it comes to machine building and traditional technology here (we have apprenticeship also for office work, accounting, nurses, sales clerks, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, constructions workers, gardeners, ....). Every blue and many white collar profession.
Since we have this system with paid apprenticeship since WW2 (before the apprentices did NOT get paid) I would argue that your argument does not hold. If you can make it work with hormonal 15 year olds you can certainly pay an adult for an unskilled work more. Unskilled means that they can fullfill the task easy and without much preparation and that the taskitself does not differ that much from enterprise to enterprise.
Between 1945 and 1971 productivity and wages rose pretty much the same (around 95 %, wages were behind but only about 5 %. From then on wages had almost NO increase while productivity till 2013 or 2014 rose around 90 % (this are the numbers for USA).
From my experience when training people on the job: You do not hire someone with a wide gap between the necessities of the job and what the person is able to deliver within short time. Not an under- or an over- performer. If they cannot cope they will drive the trainer (and the collegues and the customers ) crazy and the worker is not going to be happy either. After all you hired them to get work done and not for a social experiment. (With exception of apprenticeship, but that model is NOT a fit for every company. One cannot use them for essential tasks or for tasks with high responsibility. Apprenticeship means that you built your own skilled workforce - they are an addition to the team, you cannot build your business on apprenticeship (not possible and would not be allowed).
It takes a village to raise a kid and a team of lets say MINIMUM 5 - 10 people to train one apprentice.
Economic solutions - like the minimum wage, trade agreements, tariffs, the currency, tax policy - are always meant to work for hundred thousands or millions of people. The state has an interest to keep folks out of poverty (to keep the economy afloat and to keep society safe and crime low). Your suggestion with 5 USD might work in a very few individual cases but not in the grand scheme of things.
If we talk about UNSKILLED labour. If the person has normal intelligence and normal motivation they should be able to do the job well and you can test them in the trial phase. They should be pretty productive after the trial phase. If NOT it is not either not UNSKILLED labour (so pre-training is needed and minimum wage is not even a topic). Or the person is not capable at all to fullfill the position and likely will not be in the future. (There are provisions for special needs people, handicapped or blind, but these are a minority - they work in special institutions or the company gets a subsidy to compensate for loss of productivity - if they can argue ther is a loss).
If the price level / price calculation in the country/region includes 15 USD or 12 USD or whatever per hour than THAT is the wage for the "normal" performance for an unskilled person. So you make your calculation, if your product / service requires a lot of human labour prices will go up a little (it is not that dramatic - as examples have shown). On the other hand people will use more of your services because there is more money to spend. So a waitress gets a higher wage, but business might be better (so there are less "slow" times. In the end she might be more productive because her time is better used.
Money (e.g. in form of wages that "must" be paid) is always treated like a "product" or a "possession" something "solid", one person HAS it and would rather keep it. Employers hold on to it - paying more feels like a "loss" to them (even if they do not want to exploit their employees).
No - Money is a social agreement and a facilitator. the more it travels around (like it did after WW2) the more good it can make happen.
It is NOT the corporations who create the jobs - in the end the consumers create and secure jobs. That's the catch with outsourced cheap labour, we miss out on the Chinese or Mexicans as customers - the volume of products did not shrink but disposable income is less - part of the wages was shifted to the profit portion of the corporations.
The numbers and graphs show it clearly (in all First world countries).
Wages have not risen (adjusted to inflation) profits for big corporations (which dominate about 60 % of the economy) have dramatically risen since the 1970s.
Since the high wages even for unskilled workers worked fine in the 30 years after WW2 (and the minimum wage that was introduced in the middle of the recession in the US - New Deal ) we know that this "system" works (it does of course NOT work when the government helps the businesses to evade taxes and to outsource production).
If we had had an FDR and a New Deal we would not have had an Adolf Hitler.
From what I heard the Black Friday of 2015 and Christmas sales 2015 were not satisfying - of course not because of stagnant wages people have not enough disposable income.
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+ Dude - no, he got 977,000 vs. 512,000 votes for Nixon - but 1 % of the vote was 14,900 votes approx. * - and if it comes to a narrow majority turnout for her - which would have been a sensation - it certainly would have helped to deny approx. 15,000 people more (out of the 200,000 purged) to vote for her.
And a purge of 200,000 people when done strategically can achieve that. If he wins by a wide margin fine, if she wins in a landslide it gets harder to manipulate. But in many, many cases 1 - 3 % will win or lose the race. The total number of votes are not that large in primaries (the last primary was much weaker the two stronges candidates had 512,000 togehter) - so it is easier to rig that.
* 1,49 million votes for the 2 togehter - I dismissed other candidates and invalid votes - just to give you an idea
It was a safety measure. Polls had deceived incumbents recently (see Ocasio-Cortez or Gillum in Florida).
In the end the purge in 2016 was not necessary for Clinton to beat Sanders in the primaries in N.Y. City - but they did it - just in case.
Cuomo threw 25 millions into the race - primaries only.
A letter saying recently that she is anti-semitic and supports BDS. A little here, a little there. Many races are decided with a margin of 1 - 3 %.
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+tesladrive1 There is an unfortunate trend in times of economic troubles that rightwing populists, or even fascists dictators prevail. - The U.S. was CHEATED out of a decent, caring, intelligent LEFT POPULIST by the DNC - so they got the right wing "populist".
Don't get me even started on Hillary Clinton, she for sure is more intelligent and has better manners than Trump. In the big picture (including the horrors the U.S. can unleash by war and regime change) I am not even sure NOW that Trump is worse than her.
Lawrence Wilkerson (highly recommended btw for Foreign Policy) asked President Obama why he allowed the Saudis to start a war against Yemen (a very poor backwards country).
( Do you KNOW WHAT happens to the poor civilians and children THERE ? Obama, HRC, Trump - neither of them would/will stop the carnage )
Obama's answer to Wilkerson: The Saudi leaders were already upset about the Iran deal (!) they would potentially have turned their back on the West (or the U.S.)
Wilkerson (during the speech where he narrated that): I would let the bastards go.
If the Saudis do not want to sell their oil on the short time - Venezuela has plenty, so does Mexico and Brazil. - or Iran.
They could well do with slightly higher oil revenue (that would help to develop those countries so that less migrants are coming). Would give a nudge towards renewables (tesla).
Iran at least has a chance to become a democracy or at least a more secular country AGAIN (see U.S. backed coup of their democracy in 1953 - "shining light") - give them 15 years w/o war and see what happens.
While I am at it at: in the 1950s until the 1980s the U.S. WRECKED HAVOC - and openly not covertly like now - in Latin America. The countries south to the U.S. could be almost like Canada had it not been for 100 years of U.S. intervention. The U.S. would not have more migration problems with them than with Canada.
Back to Iran: young, very open curious, very hospitable population, well educated people. Stable society, developed infrastructure and not THAT ideological about religion.
They are not Arabs, they are an old culture, they are Shia Muslim and not that into the caliphate, the jihad and whatnot.
They do HAVE ELECTIONS, but the extreme leadership they have right now decides who gets on the ballot (pretty much like in the U.S.). From that choice the citizens usually go for the most MODERATE candidate.
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+bigstink9 - Obama did not have a willing Congress AFTER fall 2010 because he and the DEMS sold out in 2009 and 2010. - Scenario: the president (who had just run an exceptional race, had turned out the vote, and scored a historic win) would not have had the support of HIS OWN party - THEN controlling BOTH houses (and with a filibuster proof majority for 59 days, then they could have passed anything w/o the Republicans, this was when they passed ..... ACA).
Now in the case or lack of support for popular measures he would have needed to use the bully pulput, pull a FDR (and threaten that he would campaign to make the dissenters lose their seats), - get the support of the base, of the grassroots (and Obama would have had the enthusiastic support of the masses), get the people on the streets if necessary.
It is not like all Democrats (usuallly wealthy people) were positive in 1933 when FDR made his unheard of programs happen in the middle of the crisis. Starting to SPEND on behalf of the little people.
(introducing Social Security and unemployment benefits, starting emergency work programs to employ people - for instance in the Northern woods, then followed by infrastructure investments, MINIMUM wage, - financed by SUBSTANTIALLY raising income taxes and corporate taxes on those who still did well (doing well while the country was going down the drain).
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@JeffPenaify it was indeed wise - the first duty of Corporate Dems is to WIN PRIMARIES and to keep the Progressives away from influence. That is what the Big Donors pay them for. - Good shills especially when well connected to the party leadership, will be taken care of when they lose seats (Crowley got a job even though he made the serious mistake to lose against AOC, he had earned it working for the special interests for so long).
Now, the politicians would of course like to win the GE as well. But keeping the Big Donors happy and the money in the election circus flowing is more important. That money also means that media provides jobs (columnists and anchors, experts) - mainstream media gets a lot of the money in form of ads and they are supportive to keep the system going. These are also cushy jobs for ex-politicians.
Or jobs for consultants, strategists ... when grassroots campaigns are pressured with whom to work or that they have to reserve 75 % of the raised money for ads ... you get the idea ....
Some voters would be out of reach for the Republicans so the Corporate Dems are useful for the Big Donors as well. In the end the oligarchs want a ballot that offers the voters the "choice" between a fierce Republican and a spineless sellout Corporate Democrat. The pendulum swings between those and it provides the illusion of democracy.
(Democratic politicians can fight fierce and dirty btw - but only against FDR style Dems or Progressives. hardly against Republicans. Rolling over before being pushed is the Big Donor-approved strategy. A little bit grandstanding here and there - to motivate the base).
That strategy (defeat progressives in primaries or hang them out to dry) was described by Ben Jealous: DCCC under Rahm Emanuel saw a Blue Wave coming in 2006 (that was before the financial crisis, but voters were fed up with the Cheney/Bush admin). So they stacked the primaries with Wallstreet Democrats (I think Big Finance had an inkling they were going to need their guys and gals in Congress and Senate soon).
These corporate Democrats were showered with money (indirect benefits for the industrial-election-complex), if a blue-collar type Democrat won the uphill battle they were abandoned in the GE.
The Democratic party literally would rather have a Republican win than a Democrat that is too "left" or even not completely donor-friendly (they would not admit that).
They assumed of course that they would win seats anyway and could afford to not fight for some. And frankly having landslides is not even desireable. They would run out of excuses why they cannot pass bills that help The People.
I think that applies now as well. The Democratic establishment would prefer to have another term of Trump - or Pence (which is more dangerous). Most of the rich oligarchs do not like Trump, but after all they got the tax cuts, the environmental deregulation, the deregulation of the insufficient regulations of banks after the GFC, and the insane military budget was pumped up even more.
So for the Big Donors Trump is not bad - he is uncough, but of course they prefer him over Sanders as well.
With another Trump term the Democratic establishment can continue to virtue signal and to grandstand, "Trump is bad" and they can cover up their lack of substance.
Sanders in office ? - he could rock the boat (not sure he will be able to, or that he will be fierce enough - but it is possible that he does a FDR. And another danger: he might wake up the Sleeping Giant. Approx 250 million people had the vote in 2016 - only 55 % = 139 millions used it).
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