Trump voters: what he does in his own time is none of my business!!!! Also trump voters: make abortion and gay marriage illegal!!! .... plus there are almost certainly some campaign finance laws there. If Cohen paid off women because he felt it would hurt trump's chances as a candidate, that counts as a campaign donation.
Yea but if Cohen committed state level crimes, which was alluded to last night, Trumps federal pardon cannot save him. Avenatti showed a bank receipt of some sort last that showed Cohen’s money going through a bank in California. If he laundered money out there, the state of California can charge him, not to mention the state of New York.
Then he’ll just have to sign in a law that states you can’t fuck with anybody provided the president thinks that they’re awesome. Trump doesn’t seem to be the type to let faggy things like rules or laws stand in his way. He calls Mueller, a Republican war hero, a traitor. This barrel-assed NYC pussy born without a shred of accountability. He’s Nixon with Down Syndrome: just as big of a no-account cunt, but not smart.
This is a great article and for anyone that thinks the answer to income inequality in this country is jacking up the minimum wage to $20/hr I strongly recommend you read it. During the election I tried several times to explain why our country's continual transition into an over dependence on service sector jobs is a disaster for our long term economic health. Maybe I didn't explain my reasoning very well. The thing is, you simply cannot solve the problem of having too many low wage jobs by demanding companies pay for value that doesn't exist. It will not work, ever. I don't really understand how the idea that our manufacturing base disappearing was a good thing suddenly became a liberal position either. I mean, when the fuck did that happen? That was never a strong sentiment in the democratic base, but suddenly all these Hillary supporters are writing articles that our economy becoming more and more invested into the service sector is totally great. That position is flat out fucking wrong. I think this fairly recent shift in lefty economic thinking around this issue only became a thing anyway because people don't like Trump and therefore the opposite of anything he says is supposed to be true or something. Now, I am not saying that there is some easy solution to solving income inequality. It is monumental task to say the least. However, the moronic, nonsensical, overly simplified, purely emotionally based answers liberals continue to come up with as solutions to problems like this is what really disgusts me about modern liberalism. Rich people bad. Companies bad. Pay worker more. Gee, you're a real fucking scholar, aren't you? It's the same with immigration or a number of other issues. I continually see people just make shit up because what makes them feel better is far more important than what might actually work. I want to be clear. The republicans often have either no answers to these problems, or their solutions are far worse than the problem to begin with. That said, I really think the left needs to start getting back to their classical liberalism roots. They may be totally fine anyway. Give it 3 more years and by then Trump may have done so much damage to the republican brand that him winning the election might turn out to be the greatest possible result the left could have hoped for in the long run. Still, it's totally fine to mock the ever loving shit out of republicans for things like climate change positions, but maybe it's time root out philosophies in your own dogma that are just as demonstrably wrong.
People that want a $15/hr or the like min wage make me want to run my head through a wall. Wanna start our hourly rates there? Then I hope you feel like paying $20 for a McD burger. For the same reason, unions can suck my dick.
Our manufacturing base hasn't disappeared though, only our manufacturing employment base. Manufacturing employment has dropped ~35% since the late 80s (dipped even lower than that during the recession), but our manufacturing output has increased ~60% during that same period. Our manufacturing perhaps isn't as visible as it once was because China has taken over making the cheap consumer goods that the public sees, but US manufacturing in other sectors is highly productive, highly advanced, and most importantly highly automated. It's not that 1,000 jobs in a GM plant in Detroit became 1,000 jobs in a GM plant in China, they became 15 jobs in a Toyota plant in Kentucky. I'm not convinced that a minimum wage is a solution here, but the real problem is that the core value of human labor is being driven ever downward by automation and we'll need to deal with that sooner or later. The era of universal participation in the market is coming to an end, because it is predicated on human labor being a valid entrance fare even if you have nothing else.
Yes, I know. I've worked plenty in manufacturing and the unskilled labor jobs are evaporating day by day. We eliminated 12 jobs in one department overnight alone because there is just no reason a company would pay 12 people to do a job that 6 machines and a few conveyors can do, and do much more efficiently at that. The job losses might sound terrible to some(cough, I know, the Trump base), but that is exactly why manufacturing jobs are paying increasingly well and will continue to do so. The guy stuffing frozen burgers into a shipping box all day isn't worth a whole lot. But the engineer who has to make sure the machines replacing him will perform well and continue to perform well? He's worth a lot more. The numbers you are using are true, but just a tiny bit misleading, errr at least to me. The population and overall output has increased quite a bit too, and you have to factor that in. In the 1950s employment in manufacturing made up about 1/3 of the total work force. Today it is about 8%. In 1997 manufacturing was 23% of our gross output. Although it has gone up in total value of goods pumped out the share of gross output has dropped to 18%. So yes, the total output is going up, but the share of output relative to goods in the entire economy is dropping. I certainly don't disagree with you in that automation is killing jobs, but outsourcing is part of it as well. It's not like in the last 30 years there hasn't been any companies moving production overseas so they can pay $.50/hr, or alternatively importing workers so they can pay $10/hr at home without having to worry the workers are going to go on strike. I've worked for companies that do both of these things so don't tell me it just straight up doesn't happen, but maybe you just meant this in terms of what you see as the far more pertinent issue, in which case, I don't totally disagree, but I do think both factors are issues that contribute. Well, yes and no. The mule sort of human labor you are talking about is on a path to extinction, and I don't really see that as a bad thing. It's interesting because if we can trust anything in economics it's that the more shit people can make the more shit they will use and want. Sure, people are only going to use so many paper towels, but if the potential exists to buy and use more goods people will eagerly do so. It's an interesting topic and I don't think anyone can really predict the future, but I'm not wholly convinced that more efficient production simply means there won't be jobs for a large segment of the population. Whether I'm wrong or not though, it definitely at least means that people are going to have to work smarter, be better educated, and have better technical skills. If the old base that made up the mule labor can't adapt, then yes, absolutely they are fucked and I have no idea what the answer will be in 50 years on what to do with someone who can't learn to do anything more complicated than simple line work. I don't think we are prepared to adapt with our current mentality right now. Take the trucking industry. It's not just all the shipping companies, (which is a lot of fucking jobs right there) it's also all the companies that do a good portion of shipping and distribution with their own trucks. For right now it is actually a pretty good paying job for someone that doesn't really have much in the way of valuable skills, but those jobs are going bye bye, and I don't believe for a second that companies won't let self driving cars take the wheel because they'll be "too dangerous and unreliable."
I went back to school to stay ahead of automation, and truthfully, everyone else I work with because I work in a factory. Here’s a list of positions that will sooner or later be obsolete in factories: Machine operator Lead hand Material handler Shipping & Recieving ...everything with a human job will be in the department of maintenance and quality assurance on a shop floor, eventually. Robots can assemble things, lift things, transport things. What they can’t do is maintain. They can’t crawl inside shit, they can’t change their own filters, they can’t change the oil inside their own splash boxes. They can’t weld themselves. They can’t tighten their flow valves when they eventually leak. They can’t say “this product we made sucks”. Everything breaks down, everything needs to be put together and taken apart. Unless of course the robots go Skynet and siphon all our body energy. The horrible, horrible robots...
It may well be true for the plant you worked at, but for the ones I have that job won't be going away for a long time. The thing is, there's such a diverse amount of really expensive machines that have a very limited number of them made and they just aren't going to function well enough to operate on their own because they aren't common enough for the companies making them to invest in perfectly refining them. They have way too many things that can go wrong way too often, and it's often the case that the technology is too new for all the problems to be clearly seen. It's not like the first car made ran like a Lexus GX. Machine operators will steadily disappear for machines like package sealers and whatnot, but the job itself will still be around long after we're dead. They will have more and more in common with maintenance techs and less and less in common with the operator who changes rolls and hits buttons, but they'll still be there. I can't tell you how many times I've seen the company making industrial machinery extremely confused about what the cause of a problem was because they had never seen such and such issue happen before.
For a second, can we get back to that $15-20 hr min/wage? I'd like to see someone actually try to defend it.
The only defence of it is that due to inflation, minimum wages SHOULD have been around that high by now. But standard wages were never adjusted properly. The minimum wage will be $15 an hour here soon. And that will no doubt cause problems, it already is in the form of non-stop bitching.
Exactly. Though in my opinion, it's just fine. At least here in Texas. I can't speak to other states. Here is the state-by-state min wage chart for reference
The defense of a higher minimum wage is that it was supposed to be a living wage and in most places it certainly is not. I don’t think the answer is to make it $20/hr everywhere but I do think by and large it is too low. I like that more states are passing legislation to tie minimum wage to cost of living, and hopefully that will continue. But also fuck the idea of making $7.25/hr that sounds miserable.
I still think that a $15 per hour minimum wage would be a job killer and would result in hours being slashed for part time workers. I don't buy the fact that it would lead to an increase in automation, though; to whatever extent that happens I don't think that it will be tied to wage regulations. Also, the minimum wage has never been $15 per hour in today's dollars when adjusted for inflation. I have seen different numbers, but it looks like it peaked around $10 per hour in the late '60s. Is that really a whole lot better than what it is now? To me it seems like it makes more sense to address the affordable housing crisis first.
But when minimum wage was instituted, that was the point. For it to be a living wage. And while, adjusted for inflation, minimum wage isn't that much lower than it has been previously, a lot of things cost WAY MORE than they used to, particularly housing.
How timely: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/upshot/fast-food-jobs-teenagers-shortage.html Valid question, where DID all the teenagers go? Why were these jobs ever available for unemployed adults to move into, and ultimately demand higher wages? Is there really that much babysitting money floating around out there?
But while they’re waiting for Walmart to raise their wages what are those people going to do? When they can’t pay for food for themselves or their family. If employees were unionized and had built up strike reserves or something similar then sure that might work, but you’re asking a lot of people to take no salary for a while. Assuming you could get that coordinated effort a company like Walmart can outlast its individual employees in that game. There is too much of a power imbalance between the employees and the corporation.