Minimum Wage is Not Living Wage

I hate liberals...and conservatives...anyone who only sees the side of the story they want to see. Thinking solely along the lines of leftest or right-wing is precisely why we can't resolve the simplest of issues in this country....well....that and politics is inherently corrupt.
The fact of the matter is that there are times when conservative thinking may help solve the problem, there are times when liberal thinking may help solve the problem, but most of the time it's a combination of the two that offers up the best solution. Yet people only look at whatever side they want to look at without stepping back to look at the whole picture. When an opposing view is presented, many people automatically go into defensive mode, shutting their ears and opening their mouths.

I recently got into a debate with a friend of mine, who is, by every definition is a bleeding heart liberal. We were talking about theories on bringing jobs back to the States and economic recovery and all that good stuff.
Her theory was that American companies that manufacture products overseas for the importation of those goods back into the U.S. should pay the foreign workers the U.S. minimum wage. The thought was that if we had to pay foreign workers the same that we have to pay American workers, then there would be no benefit for companies to send jobs overseas. Now, I've known this woman for 20 years and consider her to be a fairly intelligent individual, but unfortunately, she's dead wrong and here's why:


1) If American companies were willing to police themselves, we would never had experienced anything like the sub prime mortgage meltdown. While these companies are perfectly capable of policing themselves, pure greed will not allow them to. If American companies won't police themselves on American soil, how can we trust them to police their ways overseas?

Let's face it: large corporations exist for the sole purpose of making money.
That's it.
That's why they are structured the way they are. That is why they do what they do and that is why they rule the world, regardless of what country you're in. If you don't believe that statement, go to just about any country in the world and see how many people you can find that do not recognize logos for Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Pepsi, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Facebook, etc.

People start companies for 2 reasons: to run the show the way they want and/or to make money. It's usually a combination of the two, but in the end, it's the latter that will ultimately win out.

If you don't want to make money, and you want to be a nice fucking guy, you start a non-profit. But those make money too.
Don't kid yourself. The rappers of the world have their shit correct: it's all about the money and the power.

2) In the U.S., the minimum wage is not a living wage. Anyone who tells you that it is, is lying to you and you should punch them in the fucking face. Currently, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. That's $290 per week or $1160 per month....gross.....before taxes, insurance, medicare, social security, federal with holdings because you owe back child support.

Here in Seattle, the minimum wage is $8.67 an hour. That's $347 a week or $1388 per month. The average rent in Seattle has recently dropped to an all affordable $1023 per month, which is probably more than you're actually bringing home as a minimum wage employee. But, if you're making minimum wage, you're probably not paying average rent. You're probably living in a low rent neighborhood or possibly outside the city in the south Puget Sound area. It's hard, but you can probably find a place to rent for $500 a month if you looked, or shared an apartment with a roommate. That's about half of your gross monthly pay. Before taxes that pay for things you probably won't use and Social Security that you'll never see.
If you have a car, you'll need to fill it up with gas @ $4.00 or more a gallon in the Seattle area. Hopefully you'll have insurance, but after you gas 'er up, you might not have any money left. So let's say you ditch the car and opt for a transit pass. If you live in the city, this might be a viable option. If you live in an outlying area, one of these passes could run upwards of $300 a month.
Now you've already spent the majority of your gross income on a place to live and just getting to and from your minimum wage job. You still haven't fed or clothed yourself. You haven't taken a shower because you haven't paid for utilities...unless you're fortunate enough to find the rare building that rolls that into the rent. You can't call in sick or late because you don't have a phone because you didn't pay the bill. And let's hope you don't have any kids or a spouse or anyone else to take care of because, let's face it, you're fucked.

Now that $8.67 an hour is eight times more than many Chinese people currently make in entry-level jobs. Eight times. That's like making $72 an hour here in the Emerald City. Fuck. I wish I made $72 an hour! That's over $11,000 a month.
Which is precisely the problem. At $72 an hour, you'll probably find a pool of highly qualified, highly motivated applicants. At $9 an hour, you will find high school kids in search of their first job.
Now you run into training costs, quality control issues and costs, employee turnover rate costs and the list just keeps going.
Any way you slice it, in many cases it's still cheaper to outsource the labor overseas.

3) We have no business being the world police. I'm sure who elected us, but it sure as fuck wasn't me. We have our own problems here in the U.S.A. to contend with before we take on the problems of others. And that's another problem.
What we view as a "problem" or a "rights issue" or whatever in our culture is not necessary a problem or issue in another culture. Our perception upon the world as Americans is warped due to the media, due to the bleeding hearts and the ultra-conservative right wing.
All we have to do is look inward at our own individual "cultures" right here at home. You might not agree that firearms and the death penalty are OK, but I do. That doesn't make either view right per se, it just makes them different. You might believe in a Christian god or a Muslim god or a Buddhist god in your home. In my home, we do not. Again, not right or wrong. Just different.

What we need to do is do away with NAFTA and all this free trade bullshit and tax the shit out of foreign made goods. ALL of them, whether they are manufactured for U.S. or foreign owned companies should not matter. If we make foreign goods cost more than American goods, then people will be more inclined to buy American, to buy local. Thus, more money will circulate through the economy, and voila. Problem solved.
That's not to say that American companies will make good quality products, that's another issue.  But at least people will be buying American. Then we can begin to police our own companies on our own soil rather trying to chase down some overseas vendor that makes something for somebody who in turn sells it to an American company who then imports it and resells it to the American people.
If we hike up import tariffs, that would entice American companies to start making things here in America again.

That's why the Japanese have built facilities here in the states. It's cheaper for them to build their products over here rather than build them in Japan and ship them here. As it should be.

We also need to let American companies fail. Stop bailing out Chrysler and Bank of America. Let 'em fail.
One of the reasons we make such shitty products in this country is because we can. Because companies know that there will be a safety net, there is no motivation to be any better than the next guy or to strive for greatness. Historically, many companies failed. Nash, Hudson, Cord, Studebaker, Packard, Tucker, Marmon, Kaiser, LaSalle, and those are just the auto companies that failed in the 1940's!
Some will argue that letting these big corporations fail would just add to the already high unemployment numbers and bad economy. But I think it would drive companies to not fail. There are a finite number of executive positions out there, so if companies continued to fail, eventually the execs would also find themselves in the bread line with the rest of us.

The answer to the problem isn't to treat everyone fairly. The answer is to treat us better than everyone else. Pay people a decent wage for decent work. But also, be sure that the work is decent. Get rid of the union labor force. There may have been rationale to have a unionized unskilled force 75 years ago, but there is no longer. Unskilled workers should not get skilled worker pay.
Period.
Pay should be based on performance and merit and that should echo through the ranks of corporations all the way up.
Ditch the golden parachutes for the execs that continually fuck the American people. Kick them out of the airplane and see if they can fly.
Stop policing the goddamned world. It's not our job and we can't afford it at this point.

Let's stay focused on rebuilding the U.S. and not tearing down other countries.