today.reuters.com — On a vote of 54-43, Democrats fell six short of the 60 needed to end debate and go to passage of the House-passed measure, which would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour from $5.15 per hour over two years.
Jan 24, 2007 View in Crawl 4
salgatJan 25, 2007
Unfortunately theres two justified sides to this debate. On one side, minimum wage jobs are intended for kids and young adults who are not skilled workers, not intended for adults and people to live off of. On the other hand, the sad reality is a lot of people either can't find jobs for their career or for one reason or another never get the training and education needed to be a skilled worker, and need to live off that minimum wage to pay for not only themselves but their kids. Bah, its a twisted balance between how it should be, and the reality.
chase001Jan 25, 2007
How sick that everything is an excuse for a tax cut for Repugs. I have said for a long time let's let Repugs not pay any taxes at all like they want, but then not allow them to use public services, vote or hold office. No representation without taxation.
matrixbanditJan 25, 2007
To those that claim "It wasn't designed to be enough for people to live off of!" What the f**k kind of sense does that make?? What then, was it designed to be just less than survivable? Perhaps this was the solution to the for sought population problems. That's bulls**t, it was designed to keep unfortunate people from being completely taken advantage of! Why might you not want to be taken advantage of?? MAYBE SO YOU CAN FEED YOURSELF AND STAY ALIVE! How god damn hard is it to put two and two together!? To say that the minimum wage wasn't designed to be enough to live off of is the same as saying it was designed to let people die. Inflation is happening regardless of what you pay the people at the bottom of the barrel folks! There hasn't been an increase in over 10 years? Do you even have a concept for the inflation that has occurred over the last 10 years?? No I suppose not, you obviously have enough money to feed yourself and equip yourself with a computer and internet connection, so f**k everyone else, right? The wage needs to be increased because the minimum standard for what it means to be a working American needs to be increased, and yes that means everyone has to pay the price.
mikedawgJan 25, 2007
In the Utopia (which the U.S. is not) what this would do, is force the CEO's and head honchos to take a tiny cut, and allow everything to be hunky-dorey, unfortunately, as I said, this is not a Utopia.
ohearnJan 25, 2007
@ rdoger6424 :For corporate level upper management that is a good thing. If most of thier pay is in stock then it means they don't actually get paid very much if they do thier job poorly (increasing the worth of the company and making it more profitable).
15charmaxwtfJan 25, 2007
Your logic does not make sense as you can not hack economic law. If one thing rises in price something else will change, most likely for the worse. You can not get free lunch, it is impossible.I bet anything the reason that you found it difficult to get a job and move up was because of other government interventions into the economy. For example you mentioned housing, with intervention, such as zoning laws and rent control, of course it is going to be more expensive. For example, zoning laws and similar regulations makes land artificially for building more scarce, thus raising prices. More intervention is not going to help the situation, it will only help one particular group at the expense of others.
fireball74Jan 26, 2007
@analyze:Only because we have a bunch of f**king greedy ass companies who don't think about their employees as people trying to survive. They think about them as a drain on their bottom-line.
palmettoJan 26, 2007
How the hell did we get so many people in the nation believing they are entitled to something?If a business owner has a position open, and offers x dollars for performing the services of that position, and John comes in and thinks he is better off working for the x dollars than sitting on his ass at home, and he is offered and accepts the position, who the f**k is losing here?John gets x dollars for work, and the business gets widgets. Done deal. Why the hell is the government involved? The business is a saint in my opinion. It is helping to reduce poverty, is helping people feed their families. Now you people want to call them big bad ogres out do destroy lives? WTF?!Forced labor is slavery. It isn't practiced here anymore. No one is forced to take a job. If a person takes a job, he does so because he thinks that taking the job is better for him than not taking it. The person benefits.No one deserves a wage of any sort other than the one the wage earner and his company/boss agree on, "living wage" or not.