Dude your life will only be sweet and cushy at the expense of others. In order for you to have, someone must have not.

Yes, it's important to be the big fish. At this point in time, the USA might be the big fish which we should overtly capitalize upon.

I find this hard to believe because of the vast amount of “help wanted” and “now hiring” signs that I see plastered in commercial areas everywhere. There are TONS of jobs available which pay minimum wage or slighly better in Ohio, yet the unemployment rate remains the same. P.S. - I live in Ohio too.

There is definitely some potential in using an unemployment office that keeps tabs on unemployed people. Instead of the unemployed individual reporting unemployment, the employer reports “recieved application for SSN: xxx-xx-xxxx” or “SSN:xxx-xx-xxxx refused offer for employment” I have thought about the potential of this system before, and you are absolutely right on this.

You also have a point about individuals working menial jobs for the government to earn their “unemployment paycheck”. Unskilled? Clean up the highway. CDL? Drive salt trucks in the winter/garbage trucks all year long. Admin? Process payroll. All of these jobs would require a base “rate of work” to ensure that the employee performs at or above a minimum work rate instead of simply existing and collecting that paycheck. Two problems exists:

1. How do you fire an “unemployed” person when this is the last way that they may earn an income? (The solution is to simply fire them without a bureaucratic red-tape that keeps them “employed by unemployment”. The reason being: If a rational person KNOWS he will be fired from his last opportunity of income, he will do everything he can to make sure this DOESN'T happen. If the worker doesn't fear recourse, the job will not get done)

2. How long do you keep a worker on “un-employment”? If they are working for their unemployment paycheck, they have far less time to search for permanent employment. We are then depriving an individual of his freedom to find a job by requiring that he perform a job instead. Allowing them to exist on this sort of unemployment indefinitely is not a solution. They will require a pay rate equal to federal minimum wage if it still exists in this system.

Define the “poverty line”. What is this “poverty line” that you speak of? Why WILL businesses lower the price of goods if they can hire workers for less? It's called competition. Given all of the information, and no barriers to market entry, any business that sees a profit because of a wage decrease will be required to drop their prices or risk bankruptcy. Let me explain:

Consider the following fictitious proprietorship as an example: ABC Garage Doors employs 15 people at a labor rate of $7.50/hr. They make enough profit, after paying their employees, for the proprietor to take a comfortable check home every week. Suddenly the government declares “there is no longer a minimum wage”. ABC Garage Doors cuts their salary to $5.00/hr and continues to charge the same price for their service. After calculating the total wage reduction for 15 employees, the proprietor now makes a profit of (15 workers * 2.50/hr * 40hrs/wk = ) $1500/week ON TOP OF the original comfortable wage that he was earning before the pay cuts. One of his workers, tired of earning a crappy wage, leave ABC and starts 123 Garage Doors. 123 Garage Doors offers exactly the same service as ABC always has, BUT, to be competitive, they price their services at 10% less than ABC. Now, keep in mind that the demand for garage doors doesn't increase, so ABC has to lose business for 123 to gain business. ABC soon realizes that they have to cut their prices in order to stay competitive with 123. A price war ensues, and the end result is that both proprietors each make LESS profit than the single proprietor did before the company split. The actual gain that has taken place is that the new proprietor (of 123) makes more money now than he did working for ABC.

AND, the total price for a garage door is LESS than it was before the company split.

The alternative to a company split is for ABC to reduce their prices before 123 splits in order to make it less lucrative for 123 to form in the first place. ABC can also keep wages at $7.25/hr to entice its current employees to remain employees.

Another thing to consider: Everyone is whining about the "economy" and "oil prices" (which are directly related, but that's another discussion). 10 years ago, what were we complaining about? How about "jobs getting sent overseas"? The whole reason that jobs are sent overseas is because of labor costs here. If employers can hire employees here for lower wages, it suddenly becomes much LESS profitable to manufacture tennis shoes, televisions, and toasters in China. Suddenly our job base comes back to America, and we've just significantly improved our own employment situation.

My social/economic opinions are not formed by watching news sources. I have my opinions because of a college minor in economics, which has taught me “how” to think instead of teaching me “what” to think. I was not raised in a pro-conservative family. Quite contrary, I was raised in a trailer park. My dad was a truck driver, and my mom a cafeteria worker.

With regard to “poverty lines”. Take a step back and open your mind for a moment to what I would like to propose. I don't have any hard solid facts on what the average person in China makes per year, I assume it's equivalent to somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000/year. I find it difficult to believe that these people are dying en masse because they cannot afford to live; quite contrary, they don't consider themselves to be impoverished at all. Now we need to take a critical look at what we consider to be “requirements” to live. Private housing, automobiles, and steak dinners are NOT requirements. People can survive in group housing, transportation via tennis-shoe or bicycle is nearly free, and we all have the capability to grow our own food in a garden. It's essentially very difficult to do it all in a cityscape, but it's quite cheap to eek out a living for yourself, very nearly free of the “economy”, in rural America, as long as you aren't afraid to EARN your living. So reconsider what the “requirements” for living are, and make sure you aren't considering luxuries/entitlements in that consideration set.

One popular argument against getting rid of the minimum wage that I've heard is that EVERYONES wages will drop to pennies. This is economically impossible. Wage rates do not drop to pennies, they drop to whatever the current market rate for labor is. In a perfect capitalist economy, we wouldn't have a depression...we would have a wage reduction. Everyone would continue to have jobs, they would just get paid less. The reason wages cant fall to mere pennies is because as soon as this happens, it becomes INSANELY profitable to start a competitive company. To hire workers then, you must offer a better salary package than the "other guy" to attract the skilled labor away from their current jobs. Average low salaries my only fall to $6.25/hr if all minimum wage requirements are eliminated, but it's all based on the supply and demand of labor.

Why? He didn't break any law. Hell, I'd burn one myself if I wasn't so busy winning.

Also, unjustly policing our citizens because they do things that someone else in the world doesn't like...yeah, thats letting the terrorists win. How are controversial freedom of speech issues handled in your country?

Dude the whole goal of the usa government now is to let the terrorists win. That's what DHS is for, duh

It WASN'T the Koran.

A Koran is only a Koran if it is written in Arabic.

Therefore, if it was written in English, or any language other than Arabic, it is simply an "interpretation of"

This specific "Koran", IIRC, was written in English.

The American equivalent to this would be seeing someone burn a picture which happens to contain an American Flag in it...They're not burning an American Flag, they're just burning a picture.

That would still piss off a lot of people regardless if its the flag, picture of a flag, drawing of the flag, etc

Kinda like how "draw a cartoon of mohammed day" pissed a lot of people off? People is dumb everywhere.

I think it's a lot more offensive to Muslims then burning an American flag is to Americans. Shit like burning Korans gets soldiers killed, the guy just wanted attention, which he got. I think he got a free car too.

There's still much more of a culture difference than you percieve.

Consider that the picture with the American Flag in it, in my previous context is not a picture prominently displaying the American Flag, but rather a picture of a girl in middleschool, which another girl finds and burns because the pictured girl stole a boyfriend of the girl in possession of the photo. Now in this photo, you can make out in the distance an American Flag being flown in the top left corner, which is partially concealed by the edge of the middle school building.

That is the context of "burning a photo with an American Flag in it" that I was trying to get at.

If it was indeed an Arabic Koran, then you are 100% correct. That's some shit to kill people over.

Yah, and it's not limited to muslims either. I used to have the license plate "SATAN" and I got middle fingers every day. The plate is actually banned by my state's MVA. "JESUS" is not. How about that for free speech?

You must be from the internet:

http://www.geek.com/articles/news/ca...anism-2011044/

"But I meant to write SANTA, really!!!"

The terrorists have won!!!

BTW roflmao at my new avatar

Santa is not approved by the catholic church either!

Seriously though, making fun of religions and trolling their faithful is WAYYYYY TOOOO EASYYY

I must try this.