Grade Obama

[Bible_Belt]

Obama, who was criticized for issuing too many executive orders, would still research each one for months in order to understand all the possible far-reaching implications and consequences. Lawsuits are one good example. TPP Partners currently has a $15 billion lawsuit against the US Gov't for violating trade agreements over pipelines. It has been pending for some time. It's looking quite obvious that We the People just lost that lawsuit with Trump's flurry of executive orders this week, and that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as our legal liability goes. The Feds are about to get sued from every direction, and it's not looking good right now for the Team Trump in court, especially with geriatric nutball Jeff Sessions tasked with the job of representing the Feds in court.

So what then? Is he just going to fire every Federal judge who rules against the government? The Republicans don't control "both" branches of government; they control two out of three. That's why the Constitution has lasted so long. It is supposed to be stronger than any one leader.

 

[BlueAlpha1]

Anybody claiming that Obama is the best OR worst President in history is an ideologue who can't be swayed by facts. He is an average President who had some big strengths and big weaknesses, as I've already explained why.

I highly doubt that @taiyuu_otoko is enough of a historian to claim Obama is the worst President in history. I am not either. A more appropriate assertion is that a President is the worst in one's own lifetime, and even that is a ridiculous claim.

George W. Bush was objectively, in every way imaginable, the worst of the 5 Presidents in my lifetime. The biggest terror attack in American history happened on his watch, he got us into a war with the WRONG COUNTRY and didn't win it, botched a category 5 hurricane that killed thousands of people, bankrupted the treasury and left the 2nd worst economy in American history to his successor, suspended habeas corpus, implemented torture, wrote the Patriot Act and was the catalyst for the now out of control NSA.

This isn't even really up for debate. You can use all the silly charts make pseudo-economic assertions. Obama gets a C/C+ and George Bush was an F

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

94% of new jobs during Obama era were part-time, contract

A new study by economists from Harvard and Princeton indicates that 94% of the 10 million new jobs created during the Obama era were temporary positions.

Female workers suffered most heavily in this economy, as work in traditionally feminine fields, like education and medicine, declined during the era.

The research by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Alan Krueger at Princeton University shows that the proportion of workers throughout the U.S., during the Obama era, who were working in these kinds of temporary jobs, increased from 10.7% of the population to 15.8%

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

State Minimum Wage Hikes Already Passed Into Law Expected To Cost 2.6 Million Jobs, New Study Finds

 

[Bible_Belt]

You keep posting propaganda from right-wing think tanks. Just because you agree with it doesn't mean it's not propaganda.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Action_Network
The American Action Network is an advocacy group founded in February 2010 by Fred Malek, founder of Thayer Capital and former Republican National Committee deputy chairman.

They are right-wing nut balls whose only purpose is keeping the republicans in power by helping them convince poor Americans to advance the interest of rich Americans. And you think climate change scientists have a political agenda? But these fvckwads don't?

 

[Bible_Belt]

Bringing manufacturing back the US only benefits "rich" Americans?

It does when those jobs pay minimum wage. A Japanese car parts company built a factory next to me just because the wages were so low. They are always hiring...at $8.50 a hour. Manufacturing will come back, but the middle class will not come back with it.

Hell, I could see the Republicans eliminating the Federal minimum wage entirely. You know they've got to be thinking about it.

 

[Bible_Belt]

They make sun roofs, door panels, and electronics.

There is a tire factory about an hour north of me that does pay much better, double minimum wage to start. I honestly don't know why they pay so much more. Maybe they have to in order to get people to breathe tire fumes all day.

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

You keep posting propaganda

Perhaps you could argue the actual point (minimum wage helps or hurts the average worker) rather than attack the messenger, either me or the people I am quoting.

If you increase the cost of something, people will buy less of it. That is simple supply and demand.

By artificially increasing the cost of labor, people will simply buy less of it. Simple supply and demand.

I don't need right wing think tanks to validate this simple economic theory. I've already posted many sources that hate right wing think tanks as much you that also argue that raising the minimum wage destroys jobs.

It doesn't matter if you love poor people or hate poor people. Artificially increasing the minimum wage will lead to a decrease in minimum wage jobs.

This is a simple concept to understand. Forcing employers to pay more for labor will make them spend LESS in other areas. They might raise their prices slightly. If that happens less people will buy their stuff (Increasing the price of something will decrease its sales) and they will need less workers.

Or they will find the extra money to pay their workers by reducing the amount of workers they have. Some workers benefit (they keep their higher minimum wage jobs) and others don't (they get fired).

If you don't believe this, please argue the opposite point, or explain where you think the extra money will come from to pay the same amount of workers more.

 

[Bible_Belt]

where you think the extra money will come from to pay the same amount of workers more.

Right now it is coming from government in the form of welfare, like food stamps, which working people used to not qualify for. But since we've had massive wage stagnation, now working full time still leaves a person in poverty and on benefits. Welfare is bridging the gap between flat wages and rising cost of living. We are all subsidizing the corporations who refuse to pay a living wage.

It looks like Trump hasn't found the edit button on the Dept of Labor web site yet:

https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster
more than 600 economists, including 7 Nobel Prize winners wrote, "In recent years there have been important developments in the academic literature on the effect of increases in the minimum wage on employment, with the weight of evidence now showing that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market. Research suggests that a minimum-wage increase could have a small stimulative effect on the economy as low-wage workers spend their additional earnings, raising demand and job growth, and providing some help on the jobs front."

Give a poor person money, and they spend it immediately. Give a billionaire money, and they stick it in an offshore investment designed to evade taxes.

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

You didn't answer the question. You evaded and deflected. Perhaps I was unclear. I'll ask it again.

Question

The government tells a small business owner he has to pay his workers more. Where does the small business owner get the money to pay the employees more?

Perhaps an example would be helpful.

Suppose a small business owner has ten employees, each working forty hours a week. They each make $8 an hour. The total amount the employer pays his employees per week is:

8 ($/Hr) x 10 (ten employees) x 40 (hours per week per employee) = $3200 per week.

Now the government steps in and tells him he's got to pay them $10 an hour.

10 ($/Hr) x 10 (ten employees) x 40 (hours per week per employee) = $4000 per week.

He was paying them $3200 per week, but now he has to pay them $4000 per week.

Question:

Where does the employer come up with the extra $800 per week to pay his employees?

 

[BlueAlpha1]

@Bible_Belt , don't bother trying to explain this to @taiyuu_otoko .

On this topic, he repeats the same old right wing talking points about the minimum wage. Pure theories about how most businesses will go under or switch entirely to robots overnight, not acknowledging profits have never been higher.

He speaks as though every business is a mom and pop shop barely surviving, and we're about to double their employees' wages and send them into the red. Of course, this is the exception and not the rule. The rule is Verizon and McDonalds. But they can't afford to pay their employees $12 instead of $8 with a trillion dollar profit per year, and how will that CEO survive making $20 mil per instead of $23?

He also doesn't understand that which you clearly laid out, that we are subsidizing poor people ANYWAY because almost everyone making $8 an hour is going to be on welfare. A $10-12 minimum wage would get about half of them off the dole, savings taxpayers billions.

Lastly, from a pure humanitarian perspective, he offers no alternatives to this starvation scenario. We have inflation every year, but no wage increases since 2006, thereby we actually decrease the minimum wage every year for the last decade. His solution is "get more skills" and just don't work for minimum wage, as though we don't need low skilled workers in this economy. He'd be perfectly OK with a $1 minimum wage because the free market shouldn't restrict any willing 2-party "contract". Never mind its a contract signed under duress by a civilian living under corporate fascism.

80% of Americans want it raised, 20℅ don't. He wants it abolished entirely. He's a minority within a minority.

 

[Trunks]

Question

The government tells a small business owner he has to pay his workers more. Where does the small business owner get the money to pay the employees more?

Question:

Where does the employer come up with the extra $800 per week to pay his employees?

Wouldn't all that depend on the employer's profit margin? The way this is set up, it is making it sound like the extra cost of raising wages can never be afforded by the employer.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Where does the employer come up with the extra $800 per week to pay his employees?

He will eat that loss for about two weeks, until all the minimum wage workers of the world get their next pay check and start spending it.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Ten companies control most of the US food supply: http://www.alternet.org/files/story_images/screen_shot_2014-07-07_at_10.58.44_am.png

That's why we have food stamps - within 30 days all that money goes right back to the mega-corps. They are the ones who lobby congress to keep the programs we have and write the rules. There is no "giving" poor people money, at least for very long. If they knew how to hold on to money, they wouldn't be poor.

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

Wouldn't all that depend on the employer's profit margin?

Yes, it does depend on his profit margin. There are plenty of ways to come up with the extra cash. But what does he do if profit margins are pretty thin? Essentially, if he is the business owner, he can lower his own salary.

But most rational humans, when faced with this decision will keep their own stuff and let somebody go. Most business owners would not likely raise prices, because they would fear it would lose them customers.

Since there are 28 million small businesses in the US, a few of them would choose to let a few employees go.

If only one business owner out of a hundred decided to let somebody go, rather than cutting down their profits or whatever, that would still be 280,000 unemployed people who went from minimum wage to no wage.

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

That's why we have food stamps - within 30 days all that money goes right back to the mega-corps.

And guess whose hands it goes through in the intermediary?

JP Morgan’s Food Stamp Empire

And which company administers nearly half of all states’ EBT programs? You guessed it: JP Morgan Chase.

Since 2007, Florida has been contracted to pay JP Morgan $90,351,202.22. Pennsylvania’s seven-year contract totaled $112,541,823.27. New York’s seven-year contract totaled $126,394,917.

 

[FairShake]

George W. Bush was objectively, in every way imaginable, the worst of the 5 Presidents in my lifetime.

Trump: "Hold my beer!"

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

Minimum Wage Massacre: Wendy's Unleashes 1,000 Robots To Counter Higher Labor Costs

In yet another awkwardly rational response to government intervention in deciding what's "fair", the blowback from minimum wage demanding fast food workers has struck again. Wendy's plans to install self-ordering kiosks in 1,000 of its stores - 16% of its locations nationwide.

Wendy's chief information officer, David Trimm, said the kiosks are intended to appeal to younger customers and reduce labor costs. Kiosks also allow customers of the fast food giant to circumvent long lines during peak dining hours while increasing kitchen production.

As Nobelist Milton Friedman correctly quipped, “A minimum wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.”

 

[Bible_Belt]

If the robots were brown, would Trump deport them?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bi...ld-pay-taxes-if-they-take-your-job-2017-02-17
If robots are taking people’s jobs, then they should pay taxes too. That’s at least according to billionaire Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft.

“Right now if a human worker does you know, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed,” Gates said in an interview with Quartz. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think we would tax the robot at a similar level.”

 

[backbreaker]

On the ap grading scale is give him a seven out of 9