Income gap between rich and poor

You are indeed correct, however the problem is not "the union" per se, but rather racketeering that uses "the union" as a tool. Other examples are the control and use of vital suppliers to extort such as trash removal and linen.

Even when a union is broken as in the case of the Teamsters, industry problems continue and in many cases get worse. The current state of the trucking industry is an illustration.

It is of interest to note that when individual businesses are destroyed by racketeering unions, the media and politicians are incensed, and corrective legislation such as RICO is quickly enacted and enforced, but when racketeering banks and other financial institutions destroy entire sectors of the economy and devastate entire cities and states (and even entire countries, e.g. PIIGS), little is said and less is done.

Pass the Kool-aid.....

Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

The instructions here are to lean my carcass against a tree on garbage day, perhaps with a $20 bill stuck in my mouth to bribe the trash collectors.

Oh, man, you have no respect for the dead at all. d8-)

They will take it, but only if you deliver (really).

Kevin Gallimore

You mean, I have to walk in and die on the spot? Or can I arrange for a U-Haul ahead of time?

They said the only use they'd have for me is as a cautionary tale.

You have to get someone to sign papers stating they will pay the transportation costs. Ex Post Facto,(are my declensions right?)they get a bill.

Think of it as providing entertainment for the medical students. Perhaps I could get someone to put a frog in my mouth before UMD takes delivery.

Kevin Gallimore

Well, I don't know how useful these tips are, but it's good to see how many people have a sense of humor about kicking the bucket.

When I was young -- in my teens -- I wanted to be stuffed and mounted, sitting on top of my headstone. Then I realized that would be a terrible waste of resources, and it wouldn't last very long.

When I die, I want a bronze statue of me made, on a horse, holding a adjustable wrench in the right arm, and a laptop in the left.

I agree. The minimum wage law could be eliminated with little effect.

I think the minimum wage law is something the politicians dreamed up to say they are doing something to help the poor. The latest idea is to make unpaid internships illegal. There goes Monica Lewinsky.

=20 Dan

Hey, that's a good one. If I did that it would have to be a transmission shift lever and a fly rod.

============= for aggrigate (un)employment rate correlation with inflation adjusted minimum wage for Jan 54 - Oct 2006 see

in summary N R R-Square Std.Error normal 633 0.23 0.05 1.24 corrected 0.23 0.05

Well, it has little effect on the overall economy. It has somewhat more effect on some people to whom it applies.

Wikipedia tells us that the first minimum wage law was enacted in New Zealand, in the late 19th century. In the US, it was enacted to deal with some of the abuses of sweatshops.

It's not something that I've spent much time looking into, but I think its effect today doesn't amount to much, except, again, for the relatively small group of people who are living on it.

Right. And there's plenty of that going around here. d8-)

And for the relatively small group of people who are not working because of it. So it balances out. Black teenagers do not get a job and learn skills. Others earn slightly more because of it. Monica can not work for free and show she has the talent for a high paying job.

Dan

On Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:45:07 -0500, the infamous Ignoramus11457 scrawled the following:

Might I suggest an inscription? Thank you.

"Ig: Casting trolls even beyond his lifetime."

-- Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.

Let him waste the money. Someone will be along shortly with a truck & sledgehammer to haul it in as scrap metal. Since he's in Chicago, it might not even make it to the graveyard. People are stealing brass vases from cemeteries, all over the country.

I have a very firm conviction that dead is dead.

I'm not going to argue with that, and you seem to have a good sense of the situation, but there's one more point here, one that I've never looked into deeply but with which I have some personal, anecdotal experience.

Most jobs that pay minumum wage are jobs in small businesses. By far the largest proportion of them is in the food-services industry, especially independent restaurants, etc. The average age of someone making minimum wage in California, for example, is 33 years. Minimum-wage workers also reflect a sizeable number of teenagers, and they are disproportionally women.

In most small businesses, those workers are essential to doing business. They're a "fixed resource requirement." Thus, in California businesses overall, an increase in the minimum wage 5 years ago is claimed to have raised their costs by 0.7%. But in food services, it was 2.7%.

So you can see that increasing a minimum wage does effect a small increase in costs among the kinds of businesses that have the largest proportion of such workers. They need those workers, and the number of workers they hire is largely inflexible in regard to wages.

I haven't ever investigated the numbers more than that, but the point is that where people have few opportunities to work for higher wages, increases in the minimum wage provide the greatest benefit to workers. The other side of that coin, as you point out, is that larger businesses that hire some workers at minimum wage will hire fewer workers, because they *do* tend to have some flexibility regarding the number of workers they have, and they're playing the game on a cost/benefit basis.

Those are the places where increasing minimum wage can hurt workers, by reducing the number of opportunities they have to work and learn skills that will move them up the ladder. It's my strong suspicion, however, that there are few of those jobs to begin with, because larger businesses tend to pay more than minimum wage to start.

It's not a simple thing to sort out, and doing so would require a LOT of research work. On the face of it, however, it's hard to believe that increasing the minimum wage really reduces many opportunities for workers, or potential workers.

For those of us that give a $**t see

summary: Added 28 April 2010 -- A XLS file of inflation data as un adjusted CPI-U, delta from previous month, percent change from previous month. Minimum wage data in CY$ and cpi-u March 2010 CV$ , offset 0, 1, 3, and 6 months to detect any lagging effects. Data by month for Dec 1949-Mar 2010. Not all possible combinations were analyzed, but the month number [to include the "march of time" effect] had at least as large a correlation to "inflation" as either the CY$ or CV$ minimum wage. Any correlations are minuscule, and it can be concluded that minimum wage increases, within the data set limits has no effect on the inflation rate.

Thus any attempt to posit a correlation between US inflation rate, within the data set limits and an increase in US minimum wage is simply so much hot air, as there is AT MOST minimal correlation with second order effects.

Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).