[billypilgrim]

Brenda Brenda:

billypilgrim billypilgrim:

sure: by ensuring that their developmental needs are met.

So putting them in foster care because you have to work a minimum wage job (or be on welfare, you choose) is "properly raising"?

what?! [/quote]
That was Barts solution...[/quote]


ok..

i'm not going to call down the thunder on foster care..it can and often does meet the basic needs of children.

..but...starting a family with the knowledge that you will have to rely on 'the system' is irresponsible, i.m.o.

[Brenda]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Chumley Chumley:

Bart, what's your opinion on 2cdo having been on welfare?

First, it's not related to the topic at hand which is people who earn minimum wage and who decide to have a family while unable to support themselves.

That is what you made of it.

$1:

Second, if more people used welfare like he did, to get through a bad time and then to get on his feet, I'd be a freaking cheerleader for it. Welfare should be a way to a better life, not a way of life.

Absolutely.

$1:

It may shock you, but I've long worked with Jan Scully, the Sacramento District Attorney, to prevent the prosecution of selected Vietnamese and Russian-Ukrainian immigrants for welfare fraud. Some of these good people saved back money from their welfare checks in order to get small businesses going and then when they could they quit welfare. Around California it's a crime if you use welfare for what it was originally intended for.

See, if these people had simply stayed on welfare the rest of their lives there'd have been no problem.

That's stupid.

$1:

But they did the best they could with what was given to them and they made a start on the American dream.

I'm all in favor of giving people a hand up, it's the lifetime hand-out I oppose.

Huh, we agree...

[Brenda]

billypilgrim billypilgrim:

ok..

i'm not going to call down the thunder on foster care..it can and often does meet the basic needs of children.

..but...starting a family with the knowledge that you will have to rely on 'the system' is irresponsible, i.m.o.

I agree with you.

[BartSimpson]

Brenda Brenda:

So the mentally challenged (not prisoners, they can do hard labour as far as I am concerned, and not get paid) do not have a place where they can work where they are not supposed to make profit for the company, but just work?
In the Netherlands we call it a "Sociale Werkplaats", non-competitive, but fun for them, gives them a reason to get up, be productive. They make Christmas Cards etc, the "simple work", no disrespect meant.

The kind of work they can do without taxpayer assistance, such as sweeping floors, yard maintenance, janitorial work, all of that is out of their reach because the wages that they must be paid preclude them from competing for those jobs and that's if the jobs exist in the first place.

I don't mean to sound all soft, but inmates who've done their time also need work and they're generally illiterate and unable to obtain your typical minimum wage job. They still need an opportunity to succeed at a normal life elsewise releasing them from prison is unfairly setting them up for failure.

The stark reality is that there are classes of people who simply are not worth minimum wage. As awful and mean as that sounds it's true.

And now all of those unskilled and illiterate people, along with all those released prisoners, are getting the double-helping of economic whoop-ass as they try to compete against people with Master's Degrees for a job at Timmie's.

[Brenda]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Brenda Brenda:

So the mentally challenged (not prisoners, they can do hard labour as far as I am concerned, and not get paid) do not have a place where they can work where they are not supposed to make profit for the company, but just work?
In the Netherlands we call it a "Sociale Werkplaats", non-competitive, but fun for them, gives them a reason to get up, be productive. They make Christmas Cards etc, the "simple work", no disrespect meant.

The kind of work they can do without taxpayer assistance, such as sweeping floors, yard maintenance, janitorial work, all of that is out of their reach because the wages that they must be paid preclude them from competing for those jobs and that's if the jobs exist in the first place.

I don't mean to sound all soft, but inmates who've done their time also need work and they're generally illiterate and unable to obtain your typical minimum wage job. They still need an opportunity to succeed at a normal life elsewise releasing them from prison is unfairly setting them up for failure.

The stark reality is that there are classes of people who simply are not worth minimum wage. As awful and mean as that sounds it's true.

And now all of those unskilled and illiterate people, along with all those released prisoners, are getting the double-helping of economic whoop-ass as they try to compete against people with Master's Degrees for a job at Timmie's.

Well, to be fair, so does everybody else...
The problem is imo, that an education doesn't give you a related job. When you see the requirements for a $14/hr desk job (Masters is highly recommended), it is just ridiculous. You end up with a $40,000 student debt (that you only have to pay back when you make enough) and you will not make more than $15/hr with it... How stupid is that??

[BartSimpson]

Brenda Brenda:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

And now all of those unskilled and illiterate people, along with all those released prisoners, are getting the double-helping of economic whoop-ass as they try to compete against people with Master's Degrees for a job at Timmie's.

Well, to be fair, so does everybody else...
The problem is imo, that an education doesn't give you a related job. When you see the requirements for a $14/hr desk job (Masters is highly recommended), it is just ridiculous. You end up with a $40,000 student debt (that you only have to pay back when you make enough) and you will not make more than $15/hr with it... How stupid is that??

What I mean by the Master's Degree comment is that there's a lot of laid-off, unemployed people with Master's Degrees out looking for work these days.

CBS News' 60 Minutes recently had a program noting how 2/3 of the unemployed in California's 'Silicon Valley' had advanced degrees.

And you are right that the amount of school debt is absurd in relation to what you can earn with your degree.

But when people protest to support professors earning big paychecks with lifetime tenure and obscenely generous pension plans and then the leftists protest for the classified staff at the same universities to unionize and demand similar pay and benefits then someone has to pay for it.

Just this year in California we saw the spectacle of University of California students protesting in January for raises for SEIU union members and then they protested in the summer when tuition was increased to pay for the higher wages of the unionized staff.

It was pretty amazing to me that these idiot kids could not see the causality between higher wages for university employees necessitating higher tuitions to pay for it.

[Canadian_Mind]

A part of it is that in highschool kids aren't taught to learn cause-and-effect anymore. There is so much pandering, forced neutrality, and forced advancement (no one fails classes in highschool anymore), that the kids know nothing of competition, consequences, or the need to reason about things, producing situations like those idiots in California.

[Bruce_the_vii]

I posted they should make minimum wage higher, aggresive, to skew the job market to a higher average. Proculation and BartSimpson doubted it would work, cost jobs in the Global economy. In fact I said raise the minimum wage in the cities, Canadian cities have job growth that is being met with immigration. Be reminded that Canada is an immigration country because the problem is actually labour shortages. So the job loss from a higher minimum wage would impact immigration - which could be delayed.

BartSimpson said some people aren't worth the present minimum wage, they don't do good enough work to be paid that. He pointed to some troubled people in his family. He said it was a matter of a hard nose business decision. I work at a small company that employees some pretty dysfunctional people and they get the job done. He argues that some people are so bad they can't make minimum wage but could find an employer that would tolerate them for $2 less. Well, some employer with no quality issues would tolerate them. You just match them up by the advertised wage. In Canada here we put the worst cases, his family say, on disability pension. You can't do a minimum wage job, your disabled.

Also in growth cities a way to improve the economy, the value added of business jobs, is to cut the dogs. That is to bankrupt the least efficient businesses. This is in fact the traditional way of economic progress. The jobs are replace by growth.

[ASLplease]

bruce, i dont believe that minimum wage drives the labour market, not even enough to skew things.

imo, minimum wage is lower than most jobs are paying. imo, min wage does not affect markets. imo, its only serves to protect entry level employment in markets that would try to pay you less.

[Bruce_the_vii]

What you say makes sense. The minimum wage is low most places and just protects kids and that. However Ontario and Newfoundland have an aggressive minimum wage. Ontario is now $10.25 and this caught a some more bad employers. If you applied Ontario's aggressive minimum wage to Alberta's stonger economy at the bottom the arithmetic would give you a $12.52 minimum wage. It'd boost the average at the bottom from $11 by $1.52. This would skew the median wage up. Some of the businesses at the bottom would shrink or go out of business all together. The jobs would be replaced by economic growth. A problem is the jobs being created are not that good, don't have pensions, so economic growth itself is dysfunctional. However you can conture the growth with a legislated minimum wage. The lack of good jobs affects social order, which you'll eventually be taxed for. So sqeezing bad employers makes sense, is an alternative and would help some. If the problem of growth in jobs gets worse, less than average jobs being created, you could review again. I paid Statistics Canada to run the tapes on the low wages in Alberta so my arithmetic is based on some numbers.

[ASLplease]

If, If, If

If you made it maditory minimum wage of $25 for all canadian, then we wouldnt have to debate on what gets skewed, right?

[QBC]

I bet if you were to look in most communities in Alberta, you wouldn't have to raise min wage. There are more job than people willing to work and that in itself has raised wages without government legislation. I know here in Grande Prairie, it's an employee market right now. (And except during last year when the economy slowed, it's been that way for several years) I've seen signs out front of McDonald's looking for workers and offering $12 for part time, $14 for full time employees. If you have a trade or desirable skills, willing to work hard and put in longer hours, you can pretty much pick your wage. Here, right now, those who aren't working are those who don't want to work.

[andyt]

QBC QBC:

I bet if you were to look in most communities in Alberta, you wouldn't have to raise min wage. There are more job than people willing to work and that in itself has raised wages without government legislation. I know here in Grande Prairie, it's an employee market right now. (And except during last year when the economy slowed, it's been that way for several years) I've seen signs out front of McDonald's looking for workers and offering $12 for part time, $14 for full time employees. If you have a trade or desirable skills, willing to work hard and put in longer hours, you can pretty much pick your wage. Here, right now, those who aren't working are those who don't want to work.

That's great. If only it would be like that across the country. And if we quit importing a quarter million people every year, maybe it would be.

[Brenda]

QBC QBC:

I bet if you were to look in most communities in Alberta, you wouldn't have to raise min wage. There are more job than people willing to work and that in itself has raised wages without government legislation. I know here in Grande Prairie, it's an employee market right now. (And except during last year when the economy slowed, it's been that way for several years) I've seen signs out front of McDonald's looking for workers and offering $12 for part time, $14 for full time employees. If you have a trade or desirable skills, willing to work hard and put in longer hours, you can pretty much pick your wage. Here, right now, those who aren't working are those who don't want to work.

But can you pay your bills from that?
minimum wage here is $8/hr, and that is what is offered. $14 is a LOT. Rent starts at $650 for a 2 bedroom, and it is crappy.

[Canadian_Mind]

Doesn't really matter Brenda, wages rise with cost of living. It's called inflation, and that is exactly what raising the minimum wage country-wide would cause. Thankfully, the most recent dip put a dent in cost of living both in Alberta and BC, but not really enough to be overly significant.

Don't ask me why housing prices are so high in BC. Right now the place my family lives in is valued over 400 000, when 10 years ago we bought it for 170 000. Don't ask me why it is so high, because people aren't buying. I think it's just a tax grab.

However, Alberta has a reason for high prices. There were more jobs than employees, which produced both higher wages and an influx of people to the province. Thus, housing prices went up, because of demand for places to live and people could afford it. This increase in demand for housing led to more homes being built, which in turn led to a demand of even more jobs. This hasn't slowed down, and until there are homes for everyone and the grocery store doesn't have to pay the stock boy 15 bucks an hour to place fruit, everything is going to cost more there.