Top U.S. Chamber Official: The Minimum Wage Is 'Counterproductive' And 'Doesn't Help'

[Joanne98]

Run time: 01:51 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS3zG575Cpw   Posted on YouTube: January 11, 2011 By YouTube Member: ThinkProgress2 Views on YouTube: 213   Posted on DU: January 12, 2011 By DU Member: Joanne98 Views on DU: 498

 

You would think the Chamber could take a vacation from trying to make Americans poorer for just one day. But NO!

The Chamber needs to GO!

[fascisthunter]

1. Expect the Tea Party to Make the Same Argument

they are their brownshirts.

[liberalmike27]

5. I've always been willing to admit

that with the current situation regarding no tariffs to keep jobs here, a minimum wage will, in effect, cut the number of jobs here in the U.S.

But we always need to follow the thread. So we get more jobs, making two bucks an hour, $80 a week. The minimum, really crappy apartment rent here is $500 a month. So after taxes, you've got less than half the rent. Who needs clothes right, or transportation, or utilities, or even food?

So what is the plan, what does the right expect when folks start making two bucks an hour? Do they plan for us to do like Mexican immigrants, who live 14 to the shack? Are we expected to walk to work, from our little patch of woods?

Honestly, I just don't know what the plan is for those who earn so little? Fill me in on how that works. Will we suddenly have price drops to next to nothing for shelter? I know we're already being encouraged to build 10x10 houses, live on trailors pulled up into the backyards of our releatives, moving on when they are tired of the eyesore in the backyard.

Maybe the plan is to pay two dollars an hour, and expect 16 hours a day with no overtime, so none of the poor folks can even bother to vote, and wouldn't know who to vote for even if they did manage to get a little time off from their 16 hour sweatshops. Most of us work jobs, and I just keep wondering who is supporting these assholes who want us all to work for two bucks an hour.

Some reality has to enter into policy-making here. I just don't get how the conversation continues to revolve around cutting the pay of the most lowly worker, when we've got people last year who got paid 4 BILLION dollars by betting on our government bail-out of the real estate and banking industries? How does this conversation, instead of the one that takes 90 percent of their money to create jobs, not make any worker's head explode? Stupid Americans are what they do I guess.

[Roy Rolling]

2. minimum job

If business creates a job that is not worthy enough of paying a minimum wage, what kind of job is that? The business that relies on below-market wage rates needs to just "man-up" and go out of business because they are not providing an economy-worthy product or service. The marketplace has said so---the business is a failure. But, funny, the chamber never believes in the wisdom of the marketplace when it means an exploiting or inefficient or just plain bad business is a failure at turning a profit. In their strangely socialistic business concept, every business is deserving to continue even if the markeplace has said it is a failure.

That is the failure of the business management to create a job. Those are not jobs, they are busy-work.

[OHdem10]

3. Of course not, he prefers "slave wages" in "Free Trade".

[fasttense]

8. Sounds to me that the US Chamber of Horrors is advocating "free wages" and "Slave Trade".

;-)

[bulloney]

4. That's the fallacy of the Chamber's arguments on taxes and wages.

They argue that tax cuts for businesses will create jobs. If you're running a business, you're not going to hire someone because you saved some money on your taxes. You're going to hire when there's more demand for your products or services. You don't have much of a consumer base when people are making less than a livable wage, no matter how low your taxes are.

[liberalmike27]

6. Got Some Cable Channels

I wasn't due, and for a few mornings as I awakened slowly, I'd put it on C-Span and listen to these free-trade, Milton Friedman wage-slavers. I found it was like taking speed, snapped me to the waken world quickly, usually spitting with anger.

Milton Friedman's Chicago boys policies are great for impoverishing huge segments of the population, enriching a small slice, and creating massive unemployment and numerous suicides. Add to that a very unhappy population. And he's been spreading around that shit all over the globe.

[grahamhgreen]

7. The "war on wages" I guess.....