Morality of Wealth Redistribution

[Foxfyre]

Only if they are forced to work.

I can actually see a truly modest minimum wage to ensure that nobody is coerced into working for nothing. In my opinion, however, the minimum wage was to ensure that there would not be slave labor but it was never intended to be a so-called 'living wage'. It was intended to provide a modest compensation while people gained experience, learned a trade, developed a work ethic, and acquired marketable skills. People who do that don't ever stay at minimum wage because their labor usually steadily gains in value and they can command a higher wage.

Require employers to pay people with no education, no work ethic, no references, no marketable skills a 'living wage' and I guarantee those people won't ever have a chance to get an education, develop a work ethic, acquire references and marketable skills. Or, there will be even less incentive for kids to stay in school or make something of themselves. If they can merit a 'living wage' for doing nothing, that's exactly what a lot of them will choose to do.

Once upon a time, mw was a living wage. You could afford your own apartment, to go to college part time and to buy a car.....

Now you claim those same people have no education, no work ethic, no references, no marketable skills, what happened????

My brother was one of those people (I was late, by the time I started working mw lost it's spending power). I spent time in the berry fields, I worked as a maid, I babysat, I did whatever it took to make money and you think I somehow have less education, less work ethic than my brother simply because I was born later? When mw didn't have the spending power it did for my brother born 7 years earlier?

Face it, greed is what's wrong with our society. The top 21% of our country has seen their income grow by more that 250% since the 70's while the rest of us have seen our wages stagnate and drop. Work ethic has NOTHING to do with it. Greed has everything to do with it.

Back off friend. I did NOT make any sort of assumption related to you, your brother, or anybody else. Please read what I did say more carefully.

Kudos to your brother if he was able to live on minimum wage. I have worked for minimum wage many MANY times over my now quite lengthy working career and I certainly was not able to afford an apartment, a car, college etc. on minimum wage and I bet I'm a far sight older than your brother. I, however, have worked two and three minimum wage jobs or lots and lots of overtime to make ends meet. I have also at times worked long hours at far less than minimum wage and was darn happy to have the work. I am happy now to have arrived at a point that my labor is worth enough that I didn't have to work full time in the years that I wound down toward retirement. That was always my goal. To make my labor worth much more than minimum wage.

 

[Foxfyre]

"When the top 400 individuals control more wealth than 150 million Americans combined, something is very, very wrong."

yea, we have a group of entitled, do nothing slugs at the bottom looking for their handout instead of making a living on their own.

So the people working at McDonalds are do nothings, and the hedge fund managers are "making a living on their own?"

Nobody is forbidding people who work at McD's to manage hedge funds on their own.

Not to mention that McDonalds has been paying well above minimum wage in most places because they can't attract dependable staff otherwise.

 

[HenryBHough]

Not to mention that McDonalds has been paying well above minimum wage in most places because they can't attract dependable staff otherwise.

Experience has shown that McDonalds apparently has an intelligence test for applicants. If they pass they're not hired. Doubt it? Ask one to make change without relying on the cash register to calculate it. OK, the older ones might remember how......but most will be afraid to do it for fear of provoking the younger workers and being abused for having done so.

In one state, in particular, most of the restaurants in the chain are operated by one company who appear to believe sanitation is optional.

McDonalds needs to hire more inspectors and arm them.

 

[Againsheila]

Well hell, why not raise it more than that? If a minimum wage is a good idea, why not $100 per hour...or $1000? Heck, make it a million dollars and hour!

I'd settle for raising it to have the same spending power it did in 1968.....why do you think today's mw workers deserve less than you did?

You just don't get it. Why should you be able to force a man to not work? That's exactly the result of ANY minimum wage. Older Americans, the uneducated, young workers...many of whom are perfectly willing to work are prevent from doing so by your government meddling. Not everyone wanting to work has a family to support. Some just want to earn a few extra dollars. You're position ends up driving those willing to work away from a job and on the dole. Of course, I understand that once they're addicted to government handouts, they will vote for the re-distributionists but I find the whole idea disgusting. Shame on you.

More than 70% of those making minimum wage are adults. Why do you think someone's work is worth less because they don't have a family to support? Don't you think people should make what they "earn"?


You remind me of my dad, one of his worst times. I came home from school and mowed the lawn for the first time of the summer, using a push lawnmower. He came home and said if I trimmed it, he'd pay me $2.00. Mind you, this is when you used trimmers to trim the lawn. I did. One week later a local neighborhood boy came by with his power mower and my dad paid him $5.00 for mowing the lawn and I still had to trim it, but of course, he was a boy so he needs to make more.

 

[bripat9643]

"Earned" means acquired through voluntary exchange.

"Pllunder" is when you acquire money through the use of force. Take welfare or Social Security as examples of the later.

I know, but we do not have voluntary exchange in our society. Instead, we have political and crony capitalism in our society, so welcome to reality.

Crony capitalism is what Democrats have been trying to implement since Woodrow Wilson. Don't blame it on those who want to eliminate government interference in the market.

How do you declare ownership over limited resources that benefit mankind as a whole?

All economic resources are limited. If they weren't limited, they wouldn't be a subject for economics. Air is about the only natural substance that falls into this category.

It doesn't matter how you declare ownership, so long as you do it. Once ownership is declared, then rules need to be established to allow for the owners to dispose of and control their property.

 

[westwall]

I'd settle for raising it to have the same spending power it did in 1968.....why do you think today's mw workers deserve less than you did?

You just don't get it. Why should you be able to force a man to not work? That's exactly the result of ANY minimum wage. Older Americans, the uneducated, young workers...many of whom are perfectly willing to work are prevent from doing so by your government meddling. Not everyone wanting to work has a family to support. Some just want to earn a few extra dollars. You're position ends up driving those willing to work away from a job and on the dole. Of course, I understand that once they're addicted to government handouts, they will vote for the re-distributionists but I find the whole idea disgusting. Shame on you.

More than 70% of those making minimum wage are adults. Why do you think someone's work is worth less because they don't have a family to support? Don't you think people should make what they "earn"?


You remind me of my dad, one of his worst times. I came home from school and mowed the lawn for the first time of the summer, using a push lawnmower. He came home and said if I trimmed it, he'd pay me $2.00. Mind you, this is when you used trimmers to trim the lawn. I did. One week later a local neighborhood boy came by with his power mower and my dad paid him $5.00 for mowing the lawn and I still had to trim it, but of course, he was a boy so he needs to make more.

We don't. However, the minimum wage was never meant to support a family (or even a single person) as a living wage. Before I started college I worked two full time jobs to pay for my tuition. Then when I had actually started college I still worked a full time job to help pay the bills. Both jobs sucked the big wazoo but I was looking for the payoff at the end.

So here's a question for you. Is it proper to pay someone who has worked hard for their education (whether it be in a college or trade school) the same as a person who hasn't done anything to improve themselves?


BTW your Dad was a jerk!

 

[jgarden]

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end - people like myself - should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it.

- Warren Buffett

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/warren_buffett.html

The 400 of us pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you're in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.

- Warren Buffett speaking at a $4,600-a-seat political fundraiser in New York, as quoted in "Buffett blasts system that lets him pay less tax than secretary", Times Online, June 28, 2007.

Warren Buffett - Wikiquote

There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.

- Warren Buffett, New York Times, November 26, 2006.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html

Warren Buffett is an atheist and also appears to one of the few wealthy people in America who actually possesses a "social conscience!"

 

[Lakhota]

 

[Mr.Nick]

The fucking government forced the lending in the first place.

Lenders were strict before Bill Clinton and Jesse Jackson claimed lending bias against the poor was pure racism.

Creditors were forced to lend to anyone - credit was turned into a right via the community reinvestment act..

Thats the fucking problem... Thats the root cause...

"The guy in charge 10 years ago did it" "This is the fault of the (democrats/republicans)!"

So? Blaming it on politicians who are no longer in power really does not do anything.

Well whats done is done.... Too bad the fucking progressive socialists have learned absolutely nothing.... As a matter of fact they're still hung up on the notion that everything under the sun is a "right" and its governments responsibility to provide whatever they want for them.

Of course if you object tho their dumb shit greedy insanity you're just a racist that "hates everyone." Yeah, little kids pull that bullshi.... when they don't get their way they stop feet and make absurd irrational accusations.

 

[Lakhota]

So? Blaming it on politicians who are no longer in power really does not do anything.

Not true! Accurate history is important for many reasons!

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Morality of Wealth Redistribution

What's your opinion on the morality of taking money from those who earned it and giving it to people who haven't?

Yeah.....everyone-else needs lessons on morality from....

....the 1%ers/high-roller$.

*

 

[Mr. Shaman]

So? Blaming it on politicians who are no longer in power really does not do anything.

Not true! Accurate history is important for many reasons!

....And, is NEVER wasted on....

....the Teabaggers.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Like how the government subsidizes the oil companies? They receive money they didn't earn. Let's give that money back to the people who earned it: the taxpayers.

Stop having donor states give the taxpayer's money to states that receive it. In my state we give some of our hard earned tax dollars to other states, who haven't earned it.

Anybody who doesn't support these two things, isn't really serious about being against the redistribution of wealth.

HOW does gubmint subsidize Oil companies? Giving them TAX breaks to get the oil flowing? Producing revenue? Creating JOBS?

Tax breaks aren't giving them anything....but allowing them to KEEP their money to invest for commerce that affects the entire economy.

....Like paying their stockholders....with what's left-over....after the mega-bonu$e$ have been paid-out.

Isn't a good/profitable-business supposed to generate it's OWN working-capital??????

​

 

[BoycottTheday]

Bad news, my accountant said you have no more money to redistribute.

 

[Uncensored2008]

i think it's terribly immoral to redistribute wealth to the top 1%

Then stop doing it.

Tell Obama to stop handing hundreds of billions to JP Morgan - Chase, Goldman Sachs, General Electric, General Motors, et al. Tell your Messiah® to stop merging corporations with the federal government as he is doing with Obamacare, making the IRS the enforcement arm of Kaiser and Blue Cross - the fascist fuck.

The hate sites that do your thinking are heavy on hyperbole, but absent any fact.

 

[Uncensored2008]

There is, raise the minimum wage to a living wage, eliminate illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration, problem solved.

What do you suggest for a minimum wage? $75,000 a year, perhaps?

What about a maximum wage? Do you support that as well?

 

[Uncensored2008]

Not moral. After all, how is forcing some men to labor on behalf of others not slavery? Read Mises.

They will no more read Mises than they will read Rand or Rothbard.

These are people who get their news from Jon Stewart; even if they DID read economically sound literature, they wouldn't grasp it. The sad fact is the the American left is built on a foundation of poorly educated people with low IQ's.

People always think I'm just insulting the left, but I'm not.

The fact is that leftism is the manifestation of the inability to process information in a logical and rational manner, reaching a reasoned conclusion. Leftist emote rather than think, because thinking eludes them.

 

[Uncensored2008]

I can actually see a truly modest minimum wage to ensure that nobody is coerced into working for nothing.

I don't agree.

If someone is coerced into working, then a crime has been committed and it should be dealt with as a criminal act.

In a free society, the decision of what a person is willing to purchase the time of another, and the price the seller is willing to take for his/her time, is purely a decision of the parties involved. If the buyer doesn't offer enough, then the buyer is free to refuse the offer and not work for that person. Just as if the corner store wants too much for a can of tomatoes, I am free to refuse to buy them. If I offer less than the asking price, the store is free to refuse my offer.

In a free society, trades are between the buyer and the seller - kings, princes and presidents are not part of the deal.

 

[Uncensored2008]

I'd settle for raising it to have the same spending power it did in 1968.....why do you think today's mw workers deserve less than you did?

Why not raise it to what you make now?

 

[eflatminor]

I'd settle for raising it to have the same spending power it did in 1968.....why do you think today's mw workers deserve less than you did?

You just don't get it. Why should you be able to force a man to not work? That's exactly the result of ANY minimum wage. Older Americans, the uneducated, young workers...many of whom are perfectly willing to work are prevent from doing so by your government meddling. Not everyone wanting to work has a family to support. Some just want to earn a few extra dollars. You're position ends up driving those willing to work away from a job and on the dole. Of course, I understand that once they're addicted to government handouts, they will vote for the re-distributionists but I find the whole idea disgusting. Shame on you.

More than 70% of those making minimum wage are adults. Why do you think someone's work is worth less because they don't have a family to support? Don't you think people should make what they "earn"?


You remind me of my dad, one of his worst times. I came home from school and mowed the lawn for the first time of the summer, using a push lawnmower. He came home and said if I trimmed it, he'd pay me $2.00. Mind you, this is when you used trimmers to trim the lawn. I did. One week later a local neighborhood boy came by with his power mower and my dad paid him $5.00 for mowing the lawn and I still had to trim it, but of course, he was a boy so he needs to make more.

I think someone's work is worth what another is willing to pay for it. EVERYONE should have the chance to earn what they can. Your minimum wage prevents many from having any chance to work...and that's especially true for the most vulnerable in our society. I find that particularly cruel.

I really don't give a shit what your dad paid you to mow the lawn. A decent child would not have expected any pay for such chores. Entitled much?