Fast food jobs in NY evidently attract a lot of comedians.

Someone else in charge of your kids, for one thing. Foster parents can have tax money to raise the kids, and the taxpayers are spared having to support the useless fuckstick biological parents.

If you want a solution where I'll voluntarily part with some money, you must parse the guilty parties from the innocent ones. If not, you can pay for it your damn self.

I have never argued for the right to make irresponsible choices at someone else's expense.

So you're married and you can't afford to raise a child:

(a) Have a child anyway -- bad! Be punished.

(b) Adopt a child as foster parents -- good! Raise the child on tax dollars.

Have you thought that one through?

You've just argued against putting a collective care system in place for just that reason over in the obese immigration thread. Here, you advocate collective caretaking of kids, and are willing to punish parents for making bad life decisions.

Albert seems a big mess of contradictions, until you realize he lives by the unifying philosophy of hating everyone who isn't Albert.

That's just it. I'm not taking sides. I favor allowing both sides to freely negotiate mutually agreeable terms.

Yes, and the market price is the balance of those interests. It's the price at which buyer and seller agree. The minimum wage is a third party intervention in that balance that (1) favors one side exclusively and (2) is non-negotiable.

So, an increase in the minimum wage doesn't affect employees who have already agreed to work for a lower price? Or is the contract now suddenly up for revision by forces favorable to one side?

But losing profit, the making of which is the reason the businessowner created the business.

And the only reason the worker can't be replaced at a lower price is not because there aren't any workers WILLING to take the job for a lower wage. It's because the law doesn't allow them to.

Let me clarify: the value of labor is what the laborer will accept to do the job. It is NOT what it costs to have the job done. And it is most certainly not the maximum labor rate at which the business remains viable.

Yes, a business may still operate profitably with the higher rate commanded by the state (and, in fact, it usually does if the increase does not make the business non-viable), but this is because the state has put its thumb on the scale in favor of the worker.

If the government commanded that the price of milk be padded an extra $1.00 or that wages be lowered by $1/hour to provide extra profit to the business, there would be howls of outrage. But why? People could still buy milk, and they could probably still get by. I see little difference between these scenarios and the minimum wage.

The government does sometimes command that the price of milk be padded by an extra dollar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Dairy_Compact

not a good thing, in my opinion, for the same reason that low wages are not a good thing.

Skipped the thread, a thought. The job of a McDonald's cashier is just pushing buttons with no words on them, I'm pretty sure I can handle that part, so we can cut that position. Profit.

Yeah you've got this flipped around. If a bunch of businesses are able to pay artificially low wages because of the welfare state, then realistically who should be picking up the tab?

If you insist on forcing taxpayers to foot the bill either way, then yes, it is preferable to send the kids to a vetted, supervised foster home rather than reward the bad behavior of biological parents. If you can't see the difference between that and irresponsible procreation, that's your defect.

Here, I'm compromising with the sniveling pissants who insist I be somehow made to pay for other peoples' mistakes, and in this case, there are innocent parties to consider. If you're willing to let the taxpayers off the hook entirely, then so be it, but either way, it does not require me to endorse NHS for able-bodied adults or exploiting it as a way to interfere with individual free will, as some superficial display of consistency.

"If a bunch of businesses are able to pay artificially low wages because of the welfare state, then realistically who should be picking up the tab?"

Sounds like if you want wages to go up the best way to do that is to get rid of the crutch businesses use to keep wages artificially low. What is that crutch you ask? The welfare state.

In Albertopia, "smaller government" would enact mandatory sterilizations on those who can't afford to have children. It would also take children away from every family that fell short of a certain income level after they'd had children and raise those children in government-run institutions.

By a peculiar form of arithmetic unknown on any other planet, this would free the Real Citizens, a.k.a. the Cubicle Rats, from taxes.

I'll even be generous and fund a tiered pricing/payment plan approach based on income for these sterilizations.

Nope, you don't get to resort to generalities like that. I need to know why they are unable to support their kids.

Pick any of the scenarios in which competent working people lose their jobs. Would you dole out x-number of weeks' unemployment payments (limited to once in a lifetime, we'll assume), then remove the kids from the home if they hadn't found work within the allotted time?

There are exactly two scenarios at issue. Either it was circumstances beyond their control, or it fucking wasn't.

I'd rather divide their time between vocational training and menial labor for the state. Some of them can be put to work in child care for the rest of the parents. At no point will I be offering free money in exchange for nothing.

Then logically you should eliminate the welfare state and wages will rise.

But I dispute your claim that businesses pay "artificially low" wages because of the welfare state. You'll have to show me that most low wage earners are on public assistance.

So you'd need to hire government workers to investigate each individual case. Okay.

So, government-funded vocational training and job placement. It's been tried: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act#2012

Unfortunately, it's administered by the states, and doesn't take into consideration little things such as local transportation issues, and one piece or another is constantly under attack by one Congresscritter or another. Some here would call it "socialism," but it's nice to see some flexibility on your part at last.

If that's too much trouble, you can abandon the endeavor entirely.

I'll even repurpose old warehouses with rows and rows of bunk beds, with a shuttle service to the work farm. There will be no free rides in my kingdom.

It's your project. I'm just fascinated by your intention to Implement Smaller Gubmint by Creating More Gubmint.

Because what would you do - set up these programs on the assumption that a single massive screening will eliminate all of those you perceive as deadbeats and then close down the program and fire the people you've hired? Do you see anything wrong with that scenario?

So where does the revenue come from?

No, sweet cheeks. My endeavor is to allow for your safety net without supporting undeserving people. First choice is still no safety net with compulsory funding.

No, it would be ongoing and never ending.

All the public schools I closed down.

I'm not insisting on anything right now, just trying to find out what policy you'd prefer.

You've basically outlined a radical but logically coherent position on caring for kids. on that. But I'm unclear on whether you're only offering that as a compromise, as you seem to be saying some of the time, and would in fact prefer not to be involved in financing them in any way whatsoever; or whether you actually accept a collective caretaking for kids otherwise uncared for as a good thing in its own right.

Nope. Purely compromise, because I am the great uniter. I still view other peoples' kids as other peoples' problems, with their fate the result of other peoples' choices.

Then why compromise at all, given that your compromise is still a radical departure from all current policy that will never be set into practice, much less begin to satisfy anyone who disagrees with you?

I don't think you're compromising with other people here. I think you're compromising with you own unease in condemning the kids, which you've just described as an innocent party yourself, for the actions of others.

For shits and grins. Seeing if I could satisfy everyone else's conditions along with my own. The hell do you care why?

Dimestore psychoanalysis.

I'm not condemning anyone. I wasn't the one responsible for bringing them into the world, so I wasn't responsible for their fate. The only people condemning them were the ones with any explicit responsibility for their welfare. I am not, by default, responsible for the life of my neighbor at any age. I reject that implicit burden outright. Do I really need to re-state my position on "social contract" as it relates to this?

Whether or not it's the "nice" thing, that someone would choose on their own, is irrelevant. You must justify forcible compulsion with something more than emotional sentiment.

FYI, the automated order machines at McDonalds are actually better than many of the people they hire. Real easy to use, you can modify ANYTHING and you don't have to worry about the order being screwed up because some teenage flunky doesn't know how to listen. Now the automated cashiers at Walmart? Forget it. I still prefer people.

But how many languages are printed on the machine? Does it let me demand ridiculous custom orders for my 15 kids in the drive through?

"Please remove un-scanned item from the bagging area. "

This is one way in which the bag ban sped things up. As everyone has different weight bags they really loosened the tolerances. I haven't gotten that error message since moving back. And yes in NC is was annoying as fuck. MDK.

Oh and almost forgot the WalMarts near me do have self checkout.

Hmm, let's see, 46 million Americans are on Food Stamps, and you have to have a net monthly household income that puts you at lower than 100% of the poverty line. So are most low wage earners on public assistance? I'd say a great deal of them are.

and gods forbid those people actually buy stuff new form a store rather than a pawn shop.
the last thing the economy needs is more people participating in it!!!

Going back to this post (I've only started reading it today) that could be one example of a national corporation deciding that making less money in one state is worth the hassle of keeping their commercials advertising their 99 cent menu across the country. And just because it is true in your locality, it doesn't mean it's true everywhere else.

Take Banff for example. Whenever I go to the McDonalds there, their sandwiches cost $2 to $3 more than in Calgary. Because it's a tourist trap and rent is much higher.

I don't know about UA, but I don't accept a collective anything for anything.