Hello? One million dollar cap on CEO salary imposed by Pres. Clinton ASAP in 1993? Grants to Executives of options, to replace the excess salary over $1 million (that was capped by Clinton (see previous sentence))? Dot-com bubble that led to exploding share price (and consequent spike in options value)? http://www.wordforge.net/showpost.php?p=1830891&postcount=26
They just laid off 14 people at my workplace today. Two of whom were my friends. I guess the dumb shit in chief's stimulus bill isn't working.
Federal minimum wage is set by the federal government, isn't it? Unless the federal government actually lowered it themselves, it shouldn't go down unless you're adjusting for inflation.
You might be right had I elected to reply to you after having removed my tongue from my cheek, but it's kind of stuck there for you AFAIK.
It has to be, because as far as I know, federal minimum wage has never been lowered in straight-dollar terms.
The space between each adjecent pair of vertical lines represents a year, not a month. Hence, that's about through May.
So the massive spike in unemployment was well on it's way up long before Obama took office? In your estimation, how long does it take for a Presidents actions to have real effects on the economy? A day, a week, a month? How long did some people blame the 2001 economy on Clinton?
Jesus man, show some initiative. Print out this thread and show it to your Mom. Maybe she'll raise your allowance.
Effects start immediately. They may not end for years. Overcoming previous effects takes a much more variable amount of time. The Fed caused a bubble. The bubble caused a bust. (that part is inevitable). Obama is trying to cause a new bubble. Bear in mind that economically, a bubble is just as harmful as the bust it causes. Unfortunately, all he's doing is prolonging the unemployment the bust is causing. Changing unemployment from looking a little like attachment 1 to looking like attachment 2. (ignore the location of the y axis. Scale is the same. slightly less peak unemployment which comes somewhat later, total unemployment for way, way longer). What matters are the integrals of these graphs, not their maxima.
Which raises an interesting point: Barking moonbats are quick to blame Bush for the economic meltdown. Yet for at least seven years of his administration, the economy was doing just fine. But then the Democrats took over the Congress and within two years the economy was in a shambles.
There are many ways to care about the unemployed. The best way IMHO is to stimulate growth so they will have job opportunities.
I only get up and bust my ass 5 days a week. Sometimes less if there is a holiday or something. Or if I am using paid time off.
Your employer either wanted to save money to increase profit, or they were not doing well enough to keep on those workers. Is this somehow the governments fault? What about personal responsibility?
Every time and place that sees an increase in the minimum wage sees economic libertarian predictions of resulting employment doom and gloom. Actual doom and gloom never, however, seems to result. Empirical reality suggests that increases in the minimum wage merely result in labor getting a slightly larger chunk of profits. It turns out that employers really do tend to hire only the number of workers that they need, and that differential bargaining power means that most low wage laborers end up with smaller wages than employers can afford to pay. When I meet the libertarian who admits that minimum wage laws have negligible effect on unemployment I'll have met my first honest libertarian. It shouldn't be that hard for libertarians to admit because unemployment isn't really the libertarian reason for opposing such laws, but rather is nothing more than a concern trolling pretext made up because the libertarian mantra of noninterference with markets doesn't sell well to the public at large. Still, I'm not holding my breath.
It's only "negligible" to people who keep their jobs. If you're a young black kid who takes two months longer to find a job because of the hike, it's a lot less "negligible." Furthermore, employers do not merely hand over the wage -- they will also cut hours, demand more productivity and increase the minimum qualifications they will accept from new workers. A McDonalds can get the same job done with 6 $7/hr employees as it can with 7 $6/hr employees. But it may have to replace more than one $6 employee to do it -- are you going to tell them their unemployment is "negligible?" LOL, no -- you're going to tell them you got the wage raised. Nice rationalization.
In some areas, the minimum wage law probably doesn't have much effect. Here in California, the existing minimum wage law is already higher than the federal standard. In other urban areas, the market rate for unskilled labor might be higher than the proposed federal rate (though in high unemployment times, I doubt it). At least the libertarian mantra has a basis in reality. It's much easier to sell the public on the unrealistic ideas that prosperity can be legislated and that people's lot in life can be bettered by government fiat without adverse consequences. I oppose the minimum wage for two reasons. First, it IS an unwarranted intrusion of the state into labor markets. Second, it DOES have negative economic consequences.
Third: it needlessly skews the market which can have both obvious and unforeseen implications. Instead, common sense: just send checks to the impoverished-employed if that's the purpose, be transparent so society knows the costs of the particular policy. It would leave little room for debate, and is very simple to implement.
Hello, 9.7%! I expect those figures will be revised and re-released in a couple of weeks on Friday evening.
I hope I'm wrong, but I'm expecting massive unemployment increases starting in mid December as retailers don't get their Black Friday sales boosts. Of course, O2C has shared about the coming commercial real estate plunge in January, but I don't know that companies will be able to last even that long.
That graph is obviously false since the current recession began in Nov 2007. It's nothing but partisan hackery especially since in order to compare different years you have to show percentages of jobs lost. This is no more honest or accurate then when Democrats bitched about Bush's deficits using uninflation adjusted graphs. Think just a little bit, please.
