Well Jay, let's take the first one for starters....

If the minimum wage ccould be increased, then inflation would continue at a more escalated pace and rich people like (pick one) would have even greater assets so that this "poster" has the fuel to complain again about the "rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer".

Besides, they WANT interest rates to go back to 20% but they never say why....

Mr. Tea,

You write about the "current" minimum wage, as if this wage is in some sort of period of fluctuation. But the truth of the matter is, the minimum wage has not been raised in a decade!!!

So conservatives:

If you're never willing to raise the minimum wage, if you're willing to permit the minimum wage to degrade into a substandard pittance through year after year after year of being ravaged by the effects of inflation, you clearly do not believe that there should be any minimum wage at all.

WHY DON'T YOU JUST HAVE THE GUTS TO COME OUT AND ADMIT IT???

Six-hundred-plus academic economists, including five Nobel Laureates in Economics, have recently recommended a raise in the minimum wage. Do you conservatives believe you understand the effects of such an increase better than these economic experts do? DO YOU????

Herman, when I first heard about the minimum wage, it was $3.35. It ain't that now, and people want to change it, so "current" is the valid term.

But did you miss the part where I mentioned how HARD it is to get a job that only pays minimum wage, and won't go up over a whole year?

I mentioned that Halloween seems to be an appropriate time for witch hunts. Apparently the scarecrows are also making you reach for straw men.

I'm undecided about whether or not there should be a minimum wage. I just don't think that raising it right now is a good idea.

As far as economists' views... there's an old saying that if you have two economists, you have three opinions. And I'd put more weight in their opinion if they were millionaires, and had proof that they understood our economic system enough to benefit from it personally.

J.

I fail to see the weight an argument from the liberal/socialistic side gains from using the "nobel Laureate" tag on its side of the argument.

Six-hundred-plus academic economists, including five Nobel Laureates in Economics, have recently recommended a raise in the minimum wage.

Yes and how many of those academic economists have ever run a major corporation? How many just pull their "academic" salary every year and probably have never been anything more than some consultant at a business?

Jay- you can get into the poll if you watch the free commercial first, but there are not internals available to see the breakdown of the respondents.

Hey Herman,

Minimum wage is for young, uneducated, unskilled people. Then again as Jay says, it's hard to find one since the market dictates a higher wage.

You must be one of those "Living Wage" advocates who want to force businesses to support people who choose not to better themselves through finishing school or learning a skill. How pathetic. Why don't you invite all the lazy leeches over to live with you and you can pay them a "Living Wage" to do nothing.

Redistribution of income. Take from the hard working and give to the lazy asses. Oops, I meant masses.

It's amazing the libs never advocate redistribution of wealth, that way they get to keep what daddy gave them.

Err....last time I checked many states have minimum wages that are huge when compared to the federal minimum wage. Take California, for example. It's been a long time since I've worked at a job where I've been affected by the minimum wage (as in just a few dollars more), but I believe it was somewhere in the 5.00-7.00 region.

Raising the fed minimum wage will cause wages to rise nationwide (eg. someone who earns 2 dollars above the minimum wage now earns only 1 dollar above the minimum wage, is now effectively earning less in the whole scheme of things-I forget the real term- so is going to attempt to bargain upwards), and let us hope if that happens another spiraling inflationary period won't start (example of the huge inflation during the 60's-70's, of which I'm glad I didn't live through)

You don't just give free money to someone it has to "come" from somewhere, business have to pay out the extra money, so they'll probably charge more for their goods or services (depending on the elasticity of their goods or services, one of the reasons why taxing goods like cigarettes and gasoline just passes the burden on to the consumer, not the supplier).

Steve of Norway beat me to it!! Drat! But I gotta comment on Herman's "Six-hundred-plus academic economists..."

"academic economists"??? hmmm...so the Monday morning quarterbacks of the economic world got together over tea and crumpets and figured this all out, eh? Impressive.

Steve asked how many of them ever ran a major corporation?? I wonder how many of them ever had a REAL JOB???

It's amazing the libs never advocate redistribution of wealth, that way they get to keep what daddy gave them.

Posted by: Jeff

This makes NO sense. Liberals generally support the Estate Tax.

Steak is puzzled that the proggs want interest rates at 20%. He(?) is probably young, so doesn't remember the biggest leftie triumph. No, not ending the Viet Nam war, but it was contemporary.

When I started college in 1966 one of the people I knew had just been hired by a major corporation, to start after he finished the i-dotting and t-crossing for graduation. The faculty of the department, and everybody who knew about it, were all agog. The guy had been offered the biggest starting salary history -- $11,000 a year! "That's more than I make," the PhD who was his advisor complained.

The senior tech at the lab where I worked had two cars, two kids (one in college), and a paid-for house. He made $6,500 per year. That was typical. The few that made $20K and above were justly regarded as plutocrats.

And nobody, but nobody, worried too much about income taxes. Most people were in minimal "brackets" where what they paid was nominal.

The vast inflation of the late Sixties and the Seventies pushed everybody up in dollar amounts without affecting their relative purchasing power, except to the extent that it effectively wiped out any debts incurred before. But it also pushed everybody into the plutocrat tax brackets. An average worker these days is paying income tax at rates only corporate presidents and rock stars encountered then, and a high-paid engineering graduate nowadays is flirting with the Alternative Minimum Tax. It doubled or tripled tax collections without anybody in Congress having to admit to a "tax increase".

The proggs want to do that again. Nobody making minimum wage makes a living; they can't and never will. That's because they don't contribut a living's worth to the economy, and the economy will semi-automatically adjust to see to it that they don't get more than they're worth. That's how it works. The way it does that is by inflation -- and another round of massive inflation can now do what the Nixon/Carter years did, push everybody up to even more plutocratic tax brackets, because we have the AMT and the AMT isn't indexed.

What the proggs really want is to double or triple the Government's share of the economy, so they'll have more cash for social experiments. They can't really sell that level of tax increases, so they have to do it indirectly if at all, and increasing the minimum wage is the first shot at doing that.

Simple when you understand it.

Regards,
Ric

muirgeo, did you miss my recent piece showing how Ted Kennedy has weaseled out of taxes at every opportunity, including the Estate Tax when his mother died?

Also in the Bay State, how would John Kerry's finances be affected? He got his money the old-fashioned way -- he married it. Then he traded up to a richer wife.

J.

2) Pass legislation to provide healthcare insurance to those who do not have it.

Again, nice thought, but utterly impractical.

I'm a single guy, with a mediocre job. My employer offers me health insurance, and I take it. I pay about 33 bucks a week for it. (Rounded down.) It's not a great plan, but I have enough health issues that it's indispensible.

Jay Tea

You don't pay $33 bucks a week for your health insurance. You AND your employer pay about $100+ a week and thats with $25 buck a visit co-pays;

https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/ehi/quote?carrier=kaiser&allid=Goo22290&sid=KAISER-all+states

If we had a single payer system that combination would drop to $50 or $60/ week either giving you a raise or more profit for your employer. Also you wouldn't be as fearful of losing your job AND your health insurance at the same time, one of the number one reasons for Americans going bankrupt. We are the ONLY developed nation with out health care and basically we pay 2 X as much as other countries and don't cover $60 million people.

Universal health care via a single payer system is a no brainer. Rolling all the current programs (medicare, medicaid, the VA system ect) into it would cover a good portion of the cost. Dropping SSI rates to about 4% and getting rid of the limit would pay for the rest and employers would actually save money on this.

The only thing stopping it is ignorance and rigid ideology.

muirgeo, did you miss my recent piece showing how Ted Kennedy has weaseled out of taxes at every opportunity, including the Estate Tax when his mother died?

Posted by: Jay Tea

No but that's a shame. If it was up to me almost every deduction would be gone and the rates could drop a little. Also any mone donated to political causes or campaigns would be taxed at 100% and that would go to funding public elections.

But notice how a completely controlled republican government did NOTHING about deductions and simplifying the tax code. Many wealthy people benefit from its complexities and the Republicans don't want to hurt their wealthy donors. It's all about power, control, greed and money for these people and nothing about patriotism or government of the people, by the people and for the people...

And you and many other smart Americans buy into their crap ad thus are co-conspirators to selling out our country.

I am always amazed that people think they can make economics go away with legislation. Raising the minimum wage is a win-win for the democrats. They make sure to keep high levels of unemployment benefits, welfare and the like, so when they raise the minimum wage and put more college kids out of work then who cares? It just keeps the downtrodden beholding to the Dems. It's the same philosophy employed in France and the rest of Europe. I can't wait for the 10% unemployment and return to stagflation.

The biggest problem with healthcare in the US is that it costs too much. The people who are willing to pay for health insurance generally have health insurance. Increasing the size of the insurance pool will cover those that now have no coverage, which will increase the cost (overall). It really is just another money redistribution scheme: socialism light? I have to admit that it would make me feel better knowing that poor people can have their tonsils out without selling their daughters, and really, isn't that what it's all about? We need to have programs and taxes so we don't have to feel bad about poor folk?

4) Set a time-table for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

I've said this far too many times before. One does not measure accomplishments by time, but by achievements...

Jay Tea

13,000 dead or seriously wounded American soldiers (not counting PTSD) ,millions of innocent Iraqis living in hell (if their not dead or maimed), $500,000,000,000 spent, a civil war and a breeding ground for terrorism while homeland needs go unmet.

So Jay what of our achievement???

Raise the minimum wage for Halloween, that way we will be sure who the joke is for. Why not make the new minimum $100 an hour, surly this is a living wage. The whole concept of a minimum wage is a bad Democrat party socialist joke.

I too am looking for the answer to the question raised by Michael Graham -- Hello, anybody out there?

Jay it's good you snoop around lefty sites. I think its important to have an open mind.

I challenge conservatives here to listen to the Thom Hartmann radio show. If you are conservative and call in you will go to the front of the line. His a brilliant progressive thinker. He has conservatives (the ones willing to) come on his show and they have great civil debates.

Liberals aren't communist or socialists. We are great Americans who have helped make this nation great and we want to make it even better.

http://www.thomhartmann.com/

In the last several years in 5 of 6 states that raised the minimum wage the economies grew significantly and inflation was unremarkable. It's a myth that moderate raises in the minimum wage kills the economy.

What happens is that as the minimum wage goes up ALL that extra money earned by these people living on the edge goes right back into the local economy and stimulates it. Currently with no increases in 20+ years all the extra money goes to the super rich and they invest it in shops in China.

Again...600 economists...AND the facts...

Rush has sooo brainwashed you people you all spew the same familiar reality challenged baloney.

As for the medical/health care issues, I'll weigh in having practiced as a solo entrepreneur for two decades, military for one, and now as a salaried public clinic physician.

Executive Summary: Managed and Socialized Health Care BAD if imposed universally on our society/country. Fear those who champion it.

A majority of the physicians and CEOs of community-based clinics like the one I work in seem to share chronic BDS. Yet there is a significant minority that do not. Most of these folks have had a professional life outside the salaried world. Their strong commitment to serving their community and country by serving the uninsured and under-insured, is not contaminated with socialistic-driven ideology. Most keep their views to themselves, as the "movement" is strongly run by those who flaunt their BDS and socialist views. You know the type: they've now developed an established bureaucracy (after starting as valiant revolutionaries against "the man" or "the system") and jealously guard their 6 figure salaries against anyone with contrary views. Yet by continuing their isolation and power-protectionism, they've become the enemy they once challenged.

But I digress.

There are big disparities in the availability and actual delivered services in health care that can be heart-wrenching. I have seen a young, married mother die from breast cancer that was recognized early, but not treated because the available local health facilities qualified to manage the problem would not offer free care to the uninsured woman without resources to pay cash up front. Delays in getting her elsewhere or qualified for Medicaid were fatal. Proponents of Universal Health Care or Socialized Medicine use such cases as examples to promote their cause.

It is easy to take such events as a rallying call to provide socialized medicine. But I believe its quite obvious from those countries, both rich and poor, who have adopted such an approach, that in our huge, diverse and vibrant society, a single, governmentally administered or created health care system would drive health care availability, quality and economics into the ground as the process would become wedded to myopic ideals, well as bureaucratic self-interest and inertia. I believe even MORE mothers would fail to receive care in a timely manner under such a system. Look north or east to see florid examples.

Wait a minute, we don't need to look beyond our boarders to see what problems Medicare and Medicaid suffer - imagine these problems translated to our entire health care system.

The VA system is a another good example. Great care is available, but only to those with either the time or the drive to maneuver through the system. Physicians who may be committed to a great vision, and personally sacrifice to try to meet this vision, still find themselves shoulder to shoulder with those who at least appear to only be interested in maintaining their government job and pension and will see the "required" patient load while carefully managing their time card. Even those committed to providing care find limitations in staff, funding and infrastructure frustrating their efforts: care availability and provider productivity suffer at choke points in the system of care. As their is no competition within the system, there is no drive for specialists to keep their referral doctors happy. They even gripe and refuse referrals that don't meet their standards (usually because they have limited resources) nor drive for the primary care providers to keep their patients wanting to come back to them (the drive is to have enough visits per hour to satisfy the bean counters in finance). The "free" availability of medications is a major drain on the financial resources of the system, causing severe rationing and formulary restrictions. In what seems a rather comical though probably financially sound decision, our great country offers our proud veterans one pill a month to treat erectile dysfunction. You can cut it in half and get two doses if the lower dosage works for you. Whoopee! Aren't we paying back our folks who take the physical and emotional shrapnel dished out against our forces well? Wouldn't you all enjoy such a system forced on all of us with no alternative?

You can not legislate nor regulate ethics, mission and vision successfully (our Congress repeatedly provides more than adequate demonstration of this). Ethics, mission and vision tend to suffer both at extremes of capitalism and socialism.

I believe the disparities in our system are served better by providing grants for communities to be administered by local boards (significantly increased by Presidential Initiatives in the past 6 years and projected into the next decade in contrast to Clintonian luke-warm support, Reagan's lack of support, and in contrast to a startling lack of Congressional funding) to serve those who have needs not met by the current free-market system, than by imposing such funding for care on the entire system.

One last comment: illegal immigrants are a significant part of our community, and denying them any form of health care is cutting off our nose to spite our face. Public Health is served by immunizations, TB identification and treatment, and STD identification and treatment provided to the community of illegals that space share in our homes and businesses. Preventive outpatient care reduces free care imposed upon our emergency rooms and hospitals. As long as these folks are here (I'd be happy to support LEGAL immigration increases and ILLEGALs being deported pronto), for our own self-interest it pays to keep them healthy pro-actively. Driving them out of clinics by requiring them to prove citizenship could drive epidemics or bankrupt small (and large) hospitals through their ER's.

muirgeo: "Liberals aren't communist or socialists"

Of course you meant "not ALL Liberals are communists or socialists"."

Which I would agree with.

Sadly, many who are NOT communists wind up being "useful idiots" for those who are!

Which are you?

Jay;

I only have a problem with the order.

Impeachment should come first, and I don't mean just Bush. However the obstruction of justice will continue unless the table is cleared of the obstructinists. Making every Pentagon cafeteria menu 'classified', and claiming Executive Privilege with abandon needs to make way for open government and transparency.

Every sonofabitch who traded (regardless of party affilitation) their floorvote for some fianancial advantage must suffer a similar fate.

They should be sentenced to house arrest and confined to Section 8 housing while being forced to use public transportation to their mimimum wage jobs for from 2-10 years. Of course, that's after all their assets have been disgorged to a trust fund designed to help Iraq military dependents with medical costs and college tuition. Since they so love money, the best punishment is to take it away from them.

muirgeo,

In the medical utopia of Canada, with universal health care; the average wait time for treatment of bladder cancer (which is very common and aggressive) is 92 days.

That wait time is allowing the cancer to spread and thus creates poor outcomes for those Canadians suffering from bladder cancer. The survival rates in Canada for bladder cancer are decreasing, which is unforgivable in an 'advanced' society.

(statistics from the AUA Times, abstract presented at AUA meeting, Atlanta, GA May, 2006)

The Buddha once said that the cause of poverty was the maldistrubution of wealth. So, it's time to raise the minimum wage to about 10 bucks an hour. It will force non-innovative corporations to pack up and leave or give their worthless management less money. But the multiplier effect will be huge giving people on the lower end more disposable income which in turn will help to create more small businesses as the demand for goods and services grows.

The root cause of terrorism is politics. People who feel offended, abused, or injured by the policies of the major powers but have no armies with which to defend themselves often resort to terror. It's the only weapon available to the weak.

When you find yourself the target of terrorist tactics, you can't kill your way out of it. That's because, if left unchanged, the same policies that produced the terrorists will keep on producing them. As a matter of fact, the more terrorists you kill, the more you create, especially in cultures where revenge is an important ingredient.

POVERTY, HEALTHCARE & HOMELESSNESS ARE MORAL ISSUES
Just ask any republican.........Jay tea has the answers too.

Foolish Americans

did you miss my recent piece showing how Ted Kennedy has weaseled out of taxes at every opportunity, including the Estate Tax when his mother died?

I don't see how obeying the tax code constitutes "weaseling out of taxes."

1. Set minimum wage at 5 million an hour, one hour of work and we are all set for life.
2. Have the government in charge of all medicine and pay doctors the minimum wage. One patient and they are set for life.
3. Destroy all the drug companies, they are all leeches anyway. Go to natural healing. If you die you lose. None of your money goes to your kids, they need to do the hour of work.
4. Cut and run and beg the terrorists to be nicer each time they hit us. Maybe they would like us better if we crawled to they on our knees. Or we can consider terroistf acts as work and give them their 5 million dollars.
5. Let's just make up a bunch of stuff and hange everyone we don't like. Particularly people who smell funny even if they agree with us.

Is this about right?

I believe the disparities in our system are served better by providing grants for communities to be administered by local boards

Clearly, what the healthcare system needs is greater overhead. I mean, I can't believe I never realized that before your comment.

Perhaps a more practical idea is to look at these kinds of stories from the Canandian system and, if true, figure out a better way to run things, combine the best of both to provide a more universal system that avoiids this type of outcome. A case that requires aggressive action would be triaged appropriately, while someone demanding an MRI for a minor back strain would go to thend of the line.

The idea of "legislation to provide healthcare" kind of sticks in my craw, but I think there's a workable single-payer system out there somewhere. The key to coming up with one is to give equal weight to all the parties involved in such a plan, kind of the opposite of what happened with the Medicare Drug plan, which was largely written by big Pharm. Those who see single payer health care as some communist threat need to remove their head from that dark place and let the sun shine on it a bit.

Disentangling US from the Iraq debacle and formulating a strong, intrelligent foreign policy shpuild be the top priority, followed closely by health care reform.

I think that

"I'm undecided about whether or not there should be a minimum wage." -- Jay Tea

Yeah, right.

You'd love to go back to those glory days of capitalism, the 1880s, when unions were scarce and robber barons were paying workers pennies per hour.

"I just don't think that raising it [the minimum wage] right now is a good idea." -- Jay Tea

Well, Mr. Tea, exactly what criteria do you in all your economic expertise use in choosing when is the right time for an increase in the minimum wage??? GOT AN ANSWER, DUDE?? WELL????

"But did you miss the part where I mentioned how HARD it is to get a job that only pays minimum wage..." -- Jay Tea

This website, http://www.epinet.org/issuebriefs/227/ib227.pdf , indicates that 5.6 MILLION Americans would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage, while less, while the "estate tax reduction would primarily benefit 8,200 very wealthy estates."

So which of these two, minimum wage increase or estate tax reduction, do the conservatives support?? Why estate tax reduction, of course!!! It's the Jesus thing to do, to support tax cuts for the exceedingly wealthy while denying the poor an increase in the minimum wage, right, conservatives??? "Compassionate Conservatism" in action!!!

So, naturally, the Republican-controlled Congress has passed several pay raises for itself since the last time the minimum wage was increased for the poor. Your god would heartily approve!!!

Oh, and Justrand, you seem to be of the bizarre opinion that some people have real jobs, and some people have unreal jobs. Could you please provide a single example of someone having an unreal job?