Wages, gay marriage could tilt ’06 ballots
Prohibiting gay marriage and boosting the minimum wage are expected to be the most common election questions on state ballots come November, and their inclusion could influence gubernatorial races around the country.
Voters in at least seven states will decide in 2006 whether to join the 19 states that have banned same-sex marriage in their constitutions. Although eight states may vote on increasing the minimum wage, only one, Nevada, so far has committed to placing the issue on its ballot. Eighteen states have set the wage above the federal level of $5.15 an hour.
$5.15 per hour……it’s kinda sad that someone working full time at MINIMUM wage to support their family is still under the poverty level. I’m used to being called a loony lefty, but the insult usually comes in lieu of an explanation of why the right wing agenda includes maintaining a “working” poor. People willing to work should have the opportunity to earn a reasonable living. Even if they have no education. Shouldn’t hard work count for a little more than poverty, not less than…
I’ll never understand America’s obsession with making homosexuals feel unwelcome. I beleive the most homophobic people are the most likely to be self-denying homosexuals themselves. Why can’t gay people be given the same legal union rights as others?
I am currently married. I live in Canada. Homosexuals are now permitted to marry nationwide. This has in no way diminshed my marriage. If people are worried about their own marriages being metaphorically lessened by homosexuals being included in the definition, then I say those people don’t have much of a marriage to begin with.
I respect and applaud the American constitution as one of the most important and forward thinking documents written in human history. It truly saddens me to see the way Americans seem to be slowly pissing it away, either by petty lobbying groups trying to get amendments to ban certain rights or by your president willfully ignoring it whenever he pleases.
What’s really sad is a person who can only get a minimum wage job starts a family. People who cannot support families should not have them. It’s called being a responsible adult.
And exactly how much should an unskilled service job pay?
If I am an employer, I am only going to pay a worker what it is worth to me to keep them employed, after taking into account local demand and competetive rates for labor.
Let’s also not forget that it costs a lot more to employ somebody even at the minimum wage level. There’s the Social Security shell game where employers “contribute” half of their workers’ SS tax. There’s also the cost of unemployment insurance, training costs, and the cost of any other benefits the employees receive. In the end, nobody earns only the minimum wage.
I think homosexuals should have the right to be as unhappy as regular married couples. More power to them.
Thank God we don’t have these idiotic ballot measures where I live.
I like the idea of two transsexuals getting married. Oh, the irony there. Haha.
Minimum wages are silly. People need to start realizing they lay in the beds they make…
What is really sad is that our educational system fails to teach people about birth control. The same people who are against sex education, birth control, abortion and raising the minimum wage have the incredible temerity to say these people are irresponsible and shouldn’t have fathered children in the first place. These religious fundamentalist nuts care only for people as long as they are in the womb, once you are born they could give a crap if you have food and shelter and god forbid a decent education.
What we need to do is let our schools prepare our children for 21st century jobs. Teach them good math and science skills as well as critical thinking. Give them real, valid information about sex and contraception so they avoid getting pregnant and ending up poor single parents or having an abortion. You can’t make stupid choices like teaching “just say no*” and not expect to have to put up with the consequences of ignorance.
*Parents of teens know that just telling your kids don’t do “that” is a 100% guarantee that they will go out and do just “that”.
jasontheodd,
Would you rather have fewer people with jobs that pay a slightly higher wage or more people with jobs paying the current wage? That’s the trade off. Raising the minimum wage reduces employment.
It is far better to let the market decide the minimum wage. If you, as a laborer, cannot support your family on $5 an hour, then do not take that job. If you cannot find a job which pays a sufficient wage to support your family, then you need find a way to improve your skills so that you can.
In addition, there the point that dougtherealist made. If you cannot get anything other than minimum wage jobs and that is not enough to support your family, I question whether you should have started a family in the first place.
No, it isn’t better to let the market decide the minimum wage. The market isn’t working. We have China and Wal-Mart pulling the minimum wage down. If you force Wal-Mart to give their employees a fair wage with benefits and stop sending our jobs to China where workers lack all the hard won benefits that workers enjoy in the US, then you can allow the market to work it’s magic. We cannot allow ourselves to enter a low wage competition with China. There is no bebefit to US workers and we will lose our jobs and our money.
Alex,
So forcing a company to pay a higher wage is going to make it MORE competative in a global economy?
Secondly, the retail jobs at Wal-Mart aren’t going to end up in China, no matter how little or much they pay… unless you plan on flying to Beijing to go shopping for cheap stuff. The wages of Wal-Mart employees have nothing to do with “outsourcing” of manufacturing jobs to China, the demand of consumers to pay less for the things they buy does.
Listen bozo, Wal-Mart is forcing other companies to race them to thew bottom by not having full time employees who get benefits. The local state governments end up subsidizing Wal-Mart employee’s health costs. So Wal-Mart makes money by making tax payers pay their employees benefits while they force other businesses who pay decent wages out of business. That isn’t fair. Wal-Mart should pay their share of health benefits to their employees. Wal_mart is not some rinky dink, mon-n-pop operation that cannot afford to pay benefits. They are just greeby bastards who care only for their profits.
It is widely know that on its crazed search for lower prices, Wal-Mart has forced many American companies to move their manufacturing facilities abroad, often to China. So you end up out of work form your manufacturing job, having to get a shitty, dead-end, part-time job at Wal-Mart that doesn’t even have medical benefits. If this is progress to you, you are part of the problem.
HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
as a married man, i say let ’em get married and suffer like the rest of us!
wanna watch a man squirm? take away his only reason not to get married! hahahahaha!!
marriage is grand, divorce is twenty grand!!!! hahahahaha!
but seriously, if you base the meaning or validity of your marriage on whether or not two queers can shack up and play house, then you are a loser and your marriage ain’t worth spit. your marriage should be about you and your wife and nothing else.
besides, this is a red herring issue designed to get politicians into papers and on the news without addressing anything of real importance.
Wal-Mart is not the real culprit when it comes to the loss of manufacturing jobs in the US, it’s the consumers who would rather pay $15 for a pair of jeans than the $25 it might cost for a pair made by an American. Wal-Mart, in order to compete with other retailers for consumer dollars, is simply going with the suppliers who can provide the cheapest goods; and if that mean they are made by the Chinese, then that is how it goes. Don’t blame Wal-Mart because it is catering to the demands of the comsumers who shop there.
The government does not “subsidize” Wal-Marts health care costs, since Wal-Mart has no obligation to provide healthcare benefits in the first place. It does so because it needs to compete with other companies for labor and because a health worker is usually a more productive worker. If the government chooses to provide healthcare to people, that is its own business, and has nothing to do with Wal-Mart.
I used to watch Bozo when I was a kid. Very creepy as I can remeber.
I agree we could do a better job with the educational system, but there has to be a balance between societal obligation and personal responsibilty.
Ignoring Alex’s completely offensive and overly generic religeous comments, family versus wage is simple economics. When people have more children than they can afford, then our society picks up the slack through social programs like WIC and subsidized housing. Those of us who have no children and /or occupations from which income taxes are gathered get to pick up some of the bill.
How is that fair? Being mindful that fairness and morality are not mutually inclusive, it’s not. However it is the right thing to do.
Thirty years ago, I would go to nearby store and buy pair of Levis for $15. The salesman that sold me those jeans worked for minimum wage and no health benefit.
Today I go to Wal-Mart and buy a pair of jeans for $15. The lady at the cash register works for little better than minimum wage and has no health benefit.
The only real difference Wal-Mart brought to the retail market is a very significant savings for the consumer.
And don’t blame Wal-Mart for the demise of the textile industry. Those jobs were history long before Wal-Mart began to dominate the market.
Hey, the truth hurts. Religion is the source of most of the world’s ignorance. You may not like it but it is a fact. Don’t blame me, blame the people feeding fairy tales and legends to the masses as holy truth. You want something really offensive? How about trying to pass “intelligent design” as science?
The problem is companies like Wal-Mart and their unfair practices. They come into a town and set up shop driving other busineses aground by shear size alone. Once the competitors are gone where are people supposed to get jobs? Whether they like it or not they have to work for places like Wal-Mart. I am not making up the fact that many companies doing business with Wal-Mart have had to close their US factories and move them to China. What happens to the people who worked at those factories? What jobs do they find now? You think that doesn’t affect the economy?
The problem isn’t that people in a tight budget are looking for affordable goods. The problem is how those goods are made “affordable”. Instead of losing all the benefits that workers in the US earned in the last century, we should be making sure that China treats their workers fairly. The US will never be able to compete with China if we let China treat their workers poorly. Do we want to improve the living standards of China and the rest of the world or do we want to lower our standards to theirs? If you think this only affects menial work, think again. Knowledge workers are being outsourced to China and India these days. We could very soon live in a country where the only jobs left are pushing fried food at fast food joints. We either invest in our people and their education or we stand to lose all we have worked for.
If we don’t treat our workers fairly who is going to do it for us? You think the Chinese care about the welfare of our workers, that they care about our high living standards? Do you want them to dictate how much money you make? Before you dismiss the idea, remember who’s been buying the American debt. Don’t forget for a second that China is poised to overtake the US as the leading world economy in the 21st century. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we are going to be in a very deep economic hole in a few years. You may be working for minimum wage sooner than you think.
Alex,
China’s economy is at about the stage ours was 100 years ago. It is making the transition from a mostly agrarian one to one that is industrialized and now consumer oriented. Just as work standards and conditions have changed here in that time, China’s will change over time as more wealth and other economic forces flow through the country. In any case, the Chinese economy must first build up its new institutions and infrastructure before any of the other changes that you would like to see can happen.
What you can’t reasonably expect is for China to instantly have the same high level standard of living that Americans enjoy without having the economic systems in place to support it. Most of you don’t seem to understand that what may be viewed as exploitation by our part in the short-term is actually helping them to reach our level in the long-term.
Feminism has put more workers out there. Shouldn’t you be counting 2 minimum wage jobs at 5.15 per hour? That’s 20k right there, with basically no income tax, and even some earned income tax credit thrown in.
Mike,
I had no idea how bad things were in the US 100 years ago. The US Army owned massive factories, forcibly constricted Americans into their factories and forced them to work for a pittance.
What, that never happened??? It happens daily in China now. How can any country today compete with slave labor on the scale China employs.
It is a vicious circle. North American and European companies are compelled to move their manufacturing to China to compete with each other. The Chinese get vital knowledge of these companies trade secrets and turn around and sell the same product for even less – they don’t have to eat R&D costs like everyone else. If this seems a little dire, try talking to anyone working for a smaller computer hardware manufacturer.
Alex, your religeous hang-ups are wholy irrelevent to the issue at hand. There are many reasons for unwanted pregnancies. You seem be willing to assign blame to everyone but the people doing the f***ing.
Nik,
You’re right, there was never a time here in the United States when children worked in factories from sunup to sundown, or entire mining communities lived in company provided housing and were being paid money that could only be spent in the company store. That our history happened in a free republic and China is a communist state is irrelevant to the point being made.
The other point is that the only economic advantage China currently has is its vast availability of cheap labor. And no matter how many people they put into a sweat shop, it is the fact that other nations are buying the goods they produce that they even have a chance to transition from a nation of poor farmers living in squalor, to a country with an economy that might someday resemble ours.
It is also becoming more evident that as more wealth flows into the country, along with more free-flowing information thanks to technology, the grip of the communist system will wane.
I am an atheist, I have no religious hang ups to speak of. I don’t let anybody tell me what to think specially religious types. I figure it out on my own. Right or wrong I make up my own mind without resorting to religious dogma. My only guides are reality, reason and facts.
In this country the religious nuts don’t allow real sex education to be taught in public schools. Instead of teaching our kids the reality of our biology, physiology and psycology they teach abstinence and tell them “just say no”. What we need is to teach kids about what happens in real life and give them good information on how to avoid pregnancy. Abstincence is great, but it is unrealistic to expect kids to keep it in their pants till marriage. At least some teens are going to have sex whether we like it or not. It goes without saying that people are responsible for what they do. So if you have unprotected sex and you get pregnant, it’s your fault. But, ignorant people make many more mistakes than educated people. It is in society’s best interest to keep people who are not ready to have kids from having them. All I am saying is that we need to give people the information they need so they don’t go out and make as many stupid mistakes. You cannot expect to keep people ignorant and at the same time expect them to make intelligent decisions. It just ain’t gonna happen.
“It is also becoming more evident that as more wealth flows into the country, along with more free-flowing information thanks to technology, the grip of the communist system will wane.”
How is this becoming evident? Communists are gaining power and wealth by exploiting their Oligarchy to the fullest. Their power will never wane. There will not be a smooth transition to a more representative system. The only thing that will happen is a quick sudden revolution in an undisclosed time in the future when things get really bad. Things are very good in China right now (by Chinese standards, not mine) so no change is coming in the immediate future. But when the next inevitable overthrow of the government in China does occur, who knows what form it may take.
Judging by your free market rant in previous comments, you must believe that there still should be sweatshops and no labor rights in the USA today. The only reason these things no longer exist is because of government regulations, like minimum wage laws. I’m sure your Classical Liberal approach to economics is offended by anything the government chooses to stop the free-market from perpetrating, regardless of how heinous it may be.
Ok…for the 100th time….Wal-Mart pays it workers the same or sometimes a bit higher than all of it’s compititors. This has been proven in so many studies by goverment and private sources that we count them all. It’s a red herring to say they don’t pay compititive wages.
Lets face it, as someone said above, you pay what the job is worth. McDonalds, Burger King, Wal -Mart, Penny’s, Sears, Radio Shach etc, etc pay low because the skills are minimal to fill the job.
States have the right to set the minimum wage in their state higher than the federal minimum. California does, I imagine some others do as well. Another factor in the border states that keeps wages low is the illegal influx. When a state has a high concentration of illegals certain jobs pay less.
It’s just not responsable to start a family if you can’t earn enough to live alone. Two CAN’T live cheaper than 1, and 3 or 4 can’t live at all.
If our kids(i’m 23, and i know) can’t figure out what causes pregnacy, then they are stupider than we once thought. I figured it out by watching *kids* t.v. when I was 8 or 9. And T.V. is a lot more open now than 15 years ago.
As to the gay marriage issue…..if people want to get married, cool, then do it…..at least if it’s 2 men they won’t have to worry about minimum wage being enough to support a family.
I’m waiting for the divorces to start…..that should be a show to watch.
You’re right Nik, we’ll just snap our fingers, pay all Chinese workers the same wages and benefits that Americans make (union wages of course) and then we can watch their economic growth come to a screeching halt, because there will be no more economic incentive for us to buy any of their stuff anymore since it will cost more (after shipping and tarrifs) than something produced domestically. Or maybe we can just recognize that we have the luxury of comparing ourselves to them while ignoring the fact that we had 120+ years of growing pains as well. You can’t live in a mansion without first building it.
Yep, sweatshops on every block I say… whatever dude. It must be nice to criticize classical liberal ideas while you enjoy the very freedoms of a country that was founded on those beliefs. “Thank you very much Tom, but we’ll take it from here.”
And I would be caution in making a comparison between the evolving state of China’s government and economy to that of, say, North Korea or the 1970’s Soviet Union. The only things that allow the communists to maintain power is to have closed economies and restricted flow of information and free-thought. By having an economy that is participating and competing globally, they will ultimately be unable to control the other.
But hey, first things first… let’s make sure they all make $15 USD an hour and get an hour for lunch with 2 paid breaks somewhere in between — oops, almost forgot about the pension. 😛