Charles Koch’s Plan To Fix Economy: Destroy Minimum Wage & ‘Addictive’ Welfare

[big_dog]

Source: The Raw Story & USA Today

The chairman and CEO of Koch Industries outlined his economic plan published Monday by USA Today, where he expressed deep concern over chronic underemployment and diminished opportunities for younger or disadvantaged workers. “The effects of underemployment are not just economic, they are also social and psychological,” Koch said. “Real work is an important part of how we define ourselves. Meaningful work benefits both us and others. Those who lack real jobs often end up depressed, addicted or aggressive.” Koch argued that welfare benefits provided “addictive disincentives” to work, citing a recent Cato Institute study that found low-income assistance paid more than a minimum wage job in 35 states, and he claimed Obamacare encouraged business owners to hire part-time workers instead of full-time employees.

The heavyweight political donor also complained that food stamps no longer carried work requirements, although workers for companies such as McDonalds and Walmart earn so little they cost taxpayers billions of dollars in assistance. Koch cited Martin Luther King Jr. to suggest Americans should be willing to work as street sweepers – and do their best while on the job – if that’s the only work they can find or perform.He said “government’s decades-long, top-down approach to job creation has failed,” arguing that these policies had left millions underemployed or unemployed and reduced the supply and quality of good and services.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/11/charles-kochs-plan-to-fix-the-economy-destroy-minimum-wage-and-addictive-welfare/

[Vincent Merkel]

1. Koch The true anti american

How many people know that Koch's daddy was the man who placed an ad in all the dallas newspapers the morning JFK was murdered.....not many. These two men are the biggest anti americans this country has ever seen....I would not be surpprised of their daddies involvement with the JFK murder.....we will all be dead before all the Kennedy Documents are released .....most will not be released till 2036 and 2050......by then all those involved with the murder will be dead and have got away scot free.....I bet some of the names involved LBJ, Koch's, Bush Sr. was CIA operative when asked where he was that day claims he can't recall.......these are just a few ...and folks we allowed them to get away with it ...There was no outcry when the Warren Report came out with its stupid findings( bullets that stop in mid-air and make left turns..... my ass) ....okydoky

[Iliyah]

2. STFU

[Enthusiast]

31. +1

[davidpdx]

3. Shakes head

[KansDem]

4. Sorry, Charlie, you got it wrong...

Those who lack real jobs wages often end up depressed, addicted or aggressive.

[mehrrh]

5. Koch welfare

Let's talk about hisneed to hurt the most vulnerable people in the country AFTER we discuss the corporate welfare enjoyed by the wealthiest Americans, including the Koch brothers.
Welfare benefits sustain many people who have few employment opportunities -- and the few they do find are those of minimum wage, which keeps them below the poverty line and in need of public assistance for food, rent, and other subsidies.
Corporate welfare, however, is rampant, and into the billions of dollars from subsidies to the oil companies, to tax shelters for hidden assets in foreign banks, to corporate loopholes, all the way down the line to a lower tax rate for unearned income for the wealthy as opposed to income that is earned through individual effort.
Those of us struggling to save a few dollars for a rainy day are offered nothing, pay tax on everything, and yet the cost of living reduces the value of those precious dollars. Those wealthy enough to have large investments pay a lesser tax on that income and reap dividends as well.
The guy in the middle is being pushed down the ladder while the rich and selfish like Koch step on their necks as they gain higher income, unearned, yet they criticize and want to further punish those whom they pay a less-than-living-wage

[big_dog]

9. Koch Brothers Take $88 Million in Corporate Welfare

Koch Brothers likes to champion themselves as crusaders against the welfare state. But a new report shows that they took $88 million of your taxpayer dollars while demanding that governments stop wasting taxpayer dollars. In total, $110 billion goes out to corporate welfare projects from state and local authorities. This does not even include money coming from federal sources. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/09/1283390/-Koch-Brothers-Takes-88-Million-in-Corporate-Welfare#

[tridim]

6. Their plan is to steal all the money and all the power for themselves.

Anything else that they do along the way is just part of that process.

[TxVietVet]

7. It's only going to get worse before it gets better.

I'm predicting that if the conservanazis take over the House, Senate and the Office of Presidency, they will finally destroy what's left of the US.

That will be because people are not aware of the issues and don't vote.

Tell your friends and neighbors to VOTE!

[LittleGirl]

8. Koch brothers are idiots

Wealthy idiots but I digress.

How about corporations losing their 'profit' only means of doing business? I know for a company to make money they have to sell something for a profit but what is wrong in this country is that the PEOPLE doing those jobs are the ones losing. Now it's profits over people. Always.

My brother in law has been laid off again (last Thursday) for the THIRD time in 5 yrs. The last two positions were only contractor positions way below his PhD education and work experience. He's got pre-teens and a wife with a PhD and they live in Silicon Valley and yet, he can't find a job as a physicist. He was unemployed for 2 yrs of those 5.

It was supposed to be like this: If you got an education, you were set for life, right? Not so fast.

My spouse has an MBA and he fears EVERY FREAKING DAY that it will be his last day. Why? Because of this insane profits over people that corporations live by these days. And no, he's not paranoid. His boss is an ass and demoted him a month ago and yet, his boss doesn't have an MBA and isn't qualified to be his boss. My spouse is more qualified for the boss's job. My spouse's last job was eliminated. 2 yrs ago so he spent 7 months looking for work. We moved cross country and don't know a soul in this town and yet, 18 months later and he's looking for another job. This time we're leaving the country.

This economy is screwed even if you do all of the right things; get educated, with honors no less, and work 60 hrs a week. Forget it. We're worthless now. It's all about profits.

[Half-Century Man]

24. Here is a little truth about profits.

If you make $0.01 over the expenses you had running a business for a year; you made a profit. The profit most of these corporate entities talk about is percentage they wanted to make over the cost of business. This percentage they want to make is often enough multiples of 100% profit. Big Pharma is well know for this, with some medications costing pennies per pill to make and being sold in excess of $50.00 apiece (Lipator comes to mind).

Deciding a business or a division of a business is unprofitable based on a projected number is disingenuous, at the very least.

If you spend $150,00.00 dollars on an education to study the financial prediction techniques of well known successful financial predictors. You are still yanking numbers out of your ass. Granted with a better than normal chance to be correct, but still just a guess. There are people who will be less successful at guessing than others even with a carefully structured education.

The onus should not be on the business that fails to reach a projected arbitrary number, but on the over reaching predictor of the number.

[LittleGirl]

32. but the humans

need things too and that's where this profit models fails. The only people surviving are the money masters who don't make anything and they are doing fabulously well while us little guys are insecure with not just the loss of a job, but surviving period. We don't have trust funds of billions of dollars to fall back on. Lose your job, can't pay the bills, lose the house, the car, the credit rating and your life is spiraling out of control. Humans matter more than profits.

I know, idealistic but as real as I get.

[Blue Idaho]

10. Best way to fix the economy?

Break up all the monopolies that have resulted in too few real companies competing for the attention of consumers and their money. Screw all these robber baron fat cats and their stranglehold on the marketplace. It's time to roll back the Reagan era changes that left too little competition and too much money in the hands of the 1%.

[Enthusiast]

30. PLUS ONE!

An entire shit load.

[LittleGirl]

33. first thing we need to do is

shut down right wing media corporations with agendas against the common man.

[closeupready]

11. According to wikipedia, he co-founded The Cato Institute.

It's interesting to consider that in light of the Onion thread from earlier today. K&R

[ymetca]

12. He makes the most ridiculous, simple-minded claims like

Federal rules cost America an estimated $1.86 trillion per year, calculated the Competitive Enterprise Institute. At Koch Industries, we've seen how punitive permitting for large projects creates years of delay, increasing uncertainty and cost. Sometimes projects are canceled and jobs with them.

Sure, and that $1.86 trillion "cost to America" supposed to be "saved" by more deregulation of his polluting industries will surely be passed as wages to the employees, right? Ha! Ha! Suckers!

Meanwhile, 30% of U.S. employees need government licenses to work. We need a system that rewards those who create real value, not impedes them.

As if THAT is why businesses don't pay employees more. This is basically just whining that he can't build his tar sands pipeline using near-slave wages labor.

But this one is a REAL gob-stopper:

Too many businesses focus on getting subsidies and mandates from government rather than creating value for customers. According to George Mason University's Mercatus Center, such favors cost us more than $11,000 per person in lost GDP every year, a $3.6 trillion economic hit.

Here he is cleverly using a left-of-center criticism of economic policy to argue... what? Nothing. Just "yeah those politicians are corrupt." But he certainly doesn't say, "and that's why Koch Industries takes absolutely no government subsidies or tax breaks in any way shape or form, and lobbies relentlessly to end all corporate handouts." Give me a break!

He is basically F.O.S. A silver-spoon-fed scumbag who earned his billions "the old fashioned way" --from daddy's ill-gotten gains.

[Enthusiast]

29. Precisely.

The worst advocates for this shit® are those that inherit their wealth.

[starroute]

13. Street sweepers? What was the last time you saw a street sweeper?

In my case, I would say around 1952, when New York City instituted alternate side of the street parking, bought a bunch of street sweeping machines, and put all the little old men with brooms out of work.

Out of touch much?

[sakabatou]

18. Around here, we still call the machines "street sweepers"

[onehandle]

14. Onehandle's Plan To Fix Economy: Destroy The Unproductive 1% Of The 1%

[Jack Rabbit]

15. I agree. We should end the era of top-down econmoics

It's called trickle-down economics for a reason, and it just doesn't work.

[Half-Century Man]

26. Urine trickles down.

Money just lays there, accumulating but not doing anything useful to society.

[Enthusiast]

28. Historically speaking, the well off always try to pull this. Until the 20th Century

they were 100% successful. Then, after a while, their upper "middle class" allies find themselves in the position formerly occupied by the worthless underachievers (useless eaters).

The prosperity we enjoyed in the late 20th Century was a historical aberration.

It existed mostly because of the labor movement.

Another reason for the high standard of living during the late 20th Century was that our government felt the need to prove capitalism superior to the red menace. At no other time in history were there living standards approaching that level for "ordinary" people.

No more communist threat, no more need to prove anything.

[Jack Rabbit]

35. Those in the middle class who still vote Republican should get a Darwin Award

Your historical analysis lacks a couple of of facts. First of all, I don't think American capitalism, for all its flaws, had to work too hard to prove it was superior to a system that tried to fix a perfectly good agricultural system for purely ideological reasons and starved millions of peasants. As if to drive the point home, Chairman Mao did the same thing in China starting in 1959 and got the same results. Second, the American economic boom after World War II was set up by the New Deal. FDR was not trying to prove anything. He was trying to alleviate the Great Depression. In spite of what Charlie Koch, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand and other right wing morons try to tell us, the New Deal was a success and the economic boom of 1945-c. 1973 (the Arab oil embargo) is proof.

The high standard of living would have been achieved without a need to prove anything to Soviet Communists.

[geretogo]

16. American jobs are meant to be exported to slave wage countries . How dare this useless eaters stay

addicted to having a job they can stay alive on .

[SoapBox]

17. Let Them Eat Cake!

...just starve them to death.

p.s...fuck this asshole.

[jmowreader]

19. When was the last time Charles Koch hired someone he didn't need?

There are three reasons to create a job: you started a new business, you want to offer a service or make a product no one in your employ can do, or business has overwhelmed your current staff. (This is different from simply replacing a worker who quit, got fired or died in your factory.) Charles Koch knows this better than anyone: if he sells a million rolls of paper towels a day and he has enough staff to make that many, he won't hire.

Similarly, government regulations won't deter a competent businessman from hiring, for he knows they affect all companies equally and he can pass the costs along to his customers. If you need five people per shift to run a carpet machine in your Invista factory, Charles, you have to employ five. We know that as well as you.

A man who creates jobs telling people they're lazy bums because they won't get jobs that don't exist - or worse, won't take jobs that won't support even a minimal lifestyle - is more than disgusting.

[newfie11]

20. Surely people can see through this sh*t

If not, their either rich, totally brainwashed, or mentally challenged. The last one I can understand.

[Enthusiast]

25. Totally brainwashed and mentally challenged.

Ever talk with one of these knuckle draggers? It's enlightening. NOT!

[Shrike47]

21. Oh, he's right, you know. Starve 'em for a while, and people will try a lot harder to find work.

The middle class might be able to afford servants again!

[calikid]

22. Destroy Kochs addictive welfare? n/t

[Enthusiast]

23. The government seems to be going along with the Koch plan.

At least many elected Republicans voice their support for the policies advocated by the Kochs.

They should try to find a good paying job in this job market. Especially in an area with no opportunity like the inner city where the only opportunity is in the drug trade.

These fuckers should live in the Rust Belt® for a while without their cushy jobs just to see how they fare.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

27. "‘Addictive’ Welfare"

No more oil and gas subsidies.

[big_dog]

42. here here!

k&r

[cstanleytech]

34. Actually at this point I kinda agree with this guy in that that we need to stop this.

Of course I dont think he would like my solution which is to get companies to pay a more fair wage they should make it so the more employees a company has that earn say less than 150% above the poverty line then a company has to pay higher and higher corporate taxes.
After all right now alot of companies like walmart and mcdonalds are essentially living off of the government dole by paying workers a poverty wage and they have zero incentive to pay them a living wage and raising the minimum wont really help much because eventually we will just be right back where we are now unless of course the power to raise the minimum wage is taken away from congress and moved say to the CBO or some other non partisan part of the government that cannot be bought off with a campaign donation to screw over the american people.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

47. Actually, Unions get full access to the books and can demand a piece of the pie.

[cstanleytech]

48. Oh that would make the scream even more lol

[blackspade]

36. Koch is so full of shit.

Nothing he said was true.
But will the media do its job? Nope.

[blkmusclmachine]

45. What media?!?!

[onecaliberal]

37. The only unnecessary welfare is

The tax cuts loopholes and subsidies given to the very wealthy in this country. Where does it end.

[ck4829]

38. When low-income assistance pays more than a minimum wage job...

First off, that would be just sad.

But who goes to that and says the solution to that is to eliminate the assistance?

Really, we should take the amount of the assistance that is more than the minimum wage and make that a guaranteed minimum income to all Americans.

[strategery blunder]

40. But that wouldn't line the Kochs' pockets

Therefore it cannot be done (at least according to our resident oligarch$.)

[JackRiddler]

39. Surely he refers to his own rent incomes -

and to the corporate welfare his outfits receive.

And ha, where are these unfilled street sweeper jobs, you monster?

[Saviolo]

41. I've said it before and I'll say it again:

The Koch brothers are the closest thing the USA has to a true supervillain. And their major superpower is a never-ending avalanche of money.

[rickyhall]

43. The Fix is in, nothing new there.

[blkmusclmachine]

44. CHRISTIAN DOMINIONISM

[moondust]

46. In a true meritocracy

that had a reasonable cap on inheritance, the Koch boys would probably be street sweepers or something else that doesn't require much brainpower or talent.

[daleo]

49. Excessive corporate profits and managerial pay are also demoralizing

The affected people often lose their grasp on reality, especially social reality. It leads to bizarre economic theories.

[lonestarnot]

50. Can't this motherfucker just die.

[TexasTowelie]

51. Says the man who never did a day of real work.

Charles Koch is a useless pile of doggie poo.

[HoosierCowboy]

52. "Real Work"

Tell us, Charlie boy about all the you spent shoveling money into your daddys' bank vault. Real work? Yeah Right. I'll tell you about shoveling limestone into an open hearth steel furnace.
You and the horse you rode in on...