George Will: Minimum Wage Should be $0 !! (No, I'm not kidding.)

[Sparkly]

George Will's column in WaPo today proves again what a jerk he is.

He calls the minimum wage hike "moral grandstanding" and a "feel-good bit of legislative fluff." Without saying where he gets his statistics, Will states that "Only one in five workers earning the federal minimum lives in families with earnings below the poverty line." Of course, he doesn't say how many are working two jobs, or how many are single-parent households with children, or how the minimum wage lowers hourly wages above it.

You may wonder how many are teenagers whose household income includes their parents. He does mention that: "1.9 million earn the federal minimum or less, and of these, more than half are under 25 and more than a quarter are between ages 16 and 19." And what is the problem with raising it for them? Hold onto your seats: "Two scholars report that in states that allow people to leave school before 18, a 10 percent increase in the state minimum wage caused teenage school enrollment to drop 2 percent." That's right, according to two unnamed "scholars," raising the minimum wage will cause kids to drop out of school. (Since the studies aren't cited, we don't even know whether lower population or other factors affected that monumental 2 percent drop.)

Finally, he grasps at this straw: "But the minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities' prices. Washington, which has its hands full delivering the mail and defending the shores, should let the market do well what Washington does poorly." As IF "the market" has a conscience and does WELL at protecting labor!!

George Will: a colossal jerk, or an incredibly colossal jerk?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/03/AR2007010301619.html

[stonecoldsober]

1. People are not commodities! What a nazi gasbag!

[LynneSin]

2. That's easy to say when you're an overpaid blowhard

It's so easy to make claims on what people should make when you have a nice salary, good benefits and all the wants & needs in life filled. These bastards should be forced to live a year making nothing more than minimum wage working at a Wal-Mart to find out how life really sucks for millions of people out there

[ck4829]

3. Even less people will be positively affected by repeal of the estate tax

And yet, they are soooo vociferous with their desire to eliminate it.

Why is that?

[Sparkly]

7. Excellent point!!! nt

[NotGivingUp]

4. funny...when anything is done for the people, it's called grandstanding.

i never could stand this guy.

[Mr Rabble]

5. Free market fantasies.

What is with these people?

His comment that "labor is a commodity" is very telling. I'm sure the right wingers will just love this op-ed.

[PatrioticOhioLiberal]

26. Slaves were also a commodity

Sounds like George (What is it with that name, "George"? Do parents just somehow know their kids are genetically defective so they give them that name?) is advocating a return to the days of humans as "property".

IDIOT!

[BearSquirrel2]

32. George doesn't care

George does not care about the standard of living in the United States. He thinks that everyone is paid what they are because of their hard work and dedication .... BULLSHIT!!!

People are paid above sustinence because of labor unions. People have a minimum standard of living in this country because we have collectively insisted it be so.

George Will and his ilk actively herald the "American Dream". But they actively pursue the creation of an American nightmare. Actually ... look at Mexico. That's what they want for America. Invisible hand my ass.

[rubberducky]

6. Now we are a commodity!!!!

[unhappycamper]

8. I would go with incredibly colossal jerk. n/t

[papau]

16. I agree - why not charge the poor for "teaching them job skills"? - the Free Market demands

compansation for the effort being put out by corporations to teach the unwashed masses.

[acmejack]

9. I have come to the conclusion Mr. Will is a fool.

Albeit a well spoken fool, but an imbecile, nonetheless. He pontificates from his warm, well fed existence, having never performed an honest days labor in his entire pampered life. I will opt for B, an incredibly colossal jerk.

[ThomCat]

28. Welcome into the fold.

Most of us figured out years and decades ago that George Will was a total fool. The more the merrier.

[PA Democrat]

10. I worked for minimum wage when I was in high school many years ago.

I was able to pay for a good portion of my college education with my earnings. How many hours would a teenager have to work to put themselves through college now? Tuition increases have drastically outpaced inflation, and minimum wage has lagged far behind inflation.

Maybe that's part of their plan? Keep the masses poor and stupid.

[ThomCat]

29. A lot has been done to make college unreachable.

The republicans know that their world-view requires a large mass of uneducated peons to work for next to nothing.

Education makes people look up. I helps people see what's really going on instead of focusing on their day to day routines. It helps people know what the alternatives could be, and then people start acting up demanding rights. That's a big part of the reason why our education system sucks, and every 'reform' they put in place ends up devestating education even more.

[Felinity]

11. Hmmmm

"George Will: a colossal jerk, or an incredibly colossal jerk?"


Let me think.




Okay, INCREDIBLY COLOSSAL JERK.

[acmavm]

12. George Will uses overly complicated language because he

thinks that will make his worthless opinions look like they came from someone who has a clue.

Just because he's managed to obtain some language skills (no matter how convoluted and pointless most of the time) doesn't mean that he has any idea of right/wrong, good/bad, legal/illegal, intelligent/stupid, moral/and the republican way.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

13. The one point that isn't clearly nonsense is the one about school dropouts.

I think there's a strong case to be made that minimum-wage legislation should come with a lower age limit.

[ThomCat]

30. I strongly disagree.

In poor families, kids have to work to to help the family. Kids have to save if they have any hope of going to college. At some they are told to start buying their own clothes and paying for their own lunches. These add up to a real need for a real wage.

I don't believe in punishing people because of their age.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

31. Except it isn't a punishment.

People under the age limit would be free to work for more than that limit if anyone was willing to pay them it, and they'd also have the option of volunteering to work for less. People over the age limit would not be able to enter into such contracts even if they wanted to. If anything, such a minimum wage would be "punishing" people *over* the age limit, although with good reason.

[ThomCat]

37. "volunteering to work for less than the minimum"

You sound like a republican. They think we should all have the "right" to "volunteer" to work for less than the minimum. Of course, that means there isn't a minimum, and people could be coerced into working for peanuts. Teens would be the most vulnerable anyway, and you'd just make them even more vulnerable.

[tanyev]

14. I'll go for a $0 minimum wage when all CEOs pledge

to pay themselves no more than 30 times what their lowest-paid employee earns. (Including stock options)

[papau]

18. Does that include the $210 million serverance from Home Depot for 1 yrs work

CEO's have certain living standards, you know, that must be met when they are between jobs.

[tanyev]

19. Disgusting, isn't it?

[papau]

21. Yes - why there is not a shareholder lawsuit is beyond my understanding. n/t

n/t

[BearSquirrel2]

33. Loophole ...

CEOs are already outsourcing a large portion of their workforce in order to get them off the benefit package. Such a rule would not work unless it extended all the way down the chain. A better tactic may be a couple more tax brackets on the high end of the scale.

[rock]

15. Well, what can I say. His should be!

[bullimiami]

17. i guess its easy for him as a wealthy white man who gets paid far more than it

is worth, by other wealthy white men, to sit around on his heartless ass and think about why people who have very little really have too much.

[On the Road]

20. Sounds Like The "WTO" Proposal for Private Stewardry of Labor

Philadelphia - At a Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa, World Trade Organization representative Hanniford Schmidt announced the creation of a WTO initiative for "full private stewardry of labor" for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa's free trade with the West.

The initiative will require Western companies doing business in some parts of Africa to own their workers outright. Schmidt recounted how private stewardship has been successfully applied to transport, power, water, traditional knowledge, and even the human genome. The WTO's "full private stewardry" program will extend these successes to (re)privatize humans themselves.

"Full, untrammelled stewardry is the best available solution to African poverty, and the inevitable result of free-market theory," Schmidt told more than 150 attendees. Schmidt acknowledged that the stewardry program was similar in many ways to slavery, but explained that just as "compassionate conservatism" has polished the rough edges on labor relations in industrialized countries, full stewardry, or "compassionate slavery," could be a similar boon to developing ones.

http://www.gatt.org/wharton.html

And for context:

http://tinyurl.com/y9o2tj

[papau]

23. I did not believe a WTO bring back slavery proposal until I read the article!

Listen to Voice of America broadcast about this proposal, Dec. 11, 2006

http://theyesmen.org/voa/voiceofamerica.mp4

[Virginia Dare]

22. George Will's opinions never have any basis in reality...

rather an ironic statement coming from someone who's never actually had to work, except to keep his own overinflated ego properly pumped up. I look forward to the LTTE's that will shred him to the core and expose him for the bloviating fool that he is.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

24. What he's not including...

are the millions of people who make $1 - $1.50 above the minumum wage because their employers want a more stable workforce (people at minimum wage change jobs - a lot). All of those workers making a little above the minimum will see their wages go up, because their employers will want to keep their competetive edge when it comes to hiring.

I should point out the the CEO of Culver's (a regional fast-food chain based in Wisconsin) is a long-time supporter of raising the minimum wage, and he backs it up by paying his employees more than the current minimum. So all of those neo-cons who think paying higher wages will stifle growth should take a look at Culver's -- they've grown from 100 locations to 300 locations during the past six years.

And their frozen custard rocks!

[no_hypocrisy]

25. Why stop there? Why not have employees PAY for the PRIVILEGE

of being employed? Slavery is too good for us peasants/serfs. I know: indentureship. We'll pay off our debts to our creditors via working for them.

I'm getting tired of the economic theory of "everything has a price".

[baldguy]

27. George Will has never had to work a day in his life.

He should be cleaning toilets in return for cast off bread crumbs.

[FormerDittoHead]

34. But if there's no bread, why don't they just eat cake? n/t

[SanCristobal]

35. OH SNAP! Another minimum wage thread!

I wish I didn't have to go to work right now, I love to argue this point. In order to prevent this from being mere post count whoring, here is my contribution to the discussion:

The minimum wage is racist!

Continue.

[onenote]

36. Hey George: do you support slavery too?

heck, if you're going to be a free marketer, be a free marketer. Let people be bought and sold.

What an ass.

[Hosnon]

38. How one-dimensional to say: "Labor is a commodity." Does he really advocate

viewing humanity through only an economic lense?

[leftofthedial]

39. just an idiot

an ideological fool

[sandnsea]

40. Income disparity

Yep, the free market has been working stupendously the last few years. Poverty rates are dropping, middle class is growing, savings are higher, health care and housing prices are stable... oh wait..

[swag]

41. Echidne, guest-blogging at Atrios has a brilliant response

that, among other things, exposes George Fucking Will as George Lying Will:

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_12_31_atrios_archive.html#116793453699997761

"And an odd path it is. Take this, for example: Will gives us a lot of data about how unimportant the minimum wage is in general, and one of these data is the number of people earning it:

Most of the working poor earn more than the minimum wage, and most of the 0.6 percent (479,000 in 2005) of America's wage workers earning the minimum wage are not poor.

Ok. And where might he have gotten these numbers?

Could it be from the government sources? Like this one:

Of those paid by the hour, 479,000 were reported as earning exactly $5.15, the prevailing Federal minimum wage. Another 1.4 million were reported as earning wages below the minimum.

Bolds are mine. Note how conveniently George forgot to include the information I bolded in his column."

[DixieBlue]

42. What a freaking jerk!

Maybe he should try living on minimum wage for a while ... see he how he likes it? Moral grandstanding! Must be nice to live in his little cloud above reality.

[LuckyLib]

43. George, I'd like to see you get exercised about student dropout rates in many states in the US:

and you can start with Texas. And they have nothing to do with wage increases!

[Sapere aude]

44. To the wealthy ruling class labor is a commodity. We are only useful when it serves their wealth

building. Any other time we should be not seen anywhere. I remember when the maids at the hotels in Santa Barbara could not afford housing on what they were making and they were living in their cars on the streets. The Hotel would not pay them a living wage because it would have to raise the rates on their guests. That is how labor is a commodity.

[Debs]

45. George just wishes it were ZERO

Because THAT is what he wants to pay the guy who cuts his lawn and the lady who dusts his life size portrait of Ebeneezer Scrooge.

[Hippo_Tron]

46. While we're at it lets bring back child labor and eliminate workplace safety laws as well

The market will take care of everything

:sarcasm:

[Norrin Radd]

47. George Swill should be exiled. n/t