Just thought I'd update you on the election and how it came out here....
U. S. Senate. Claire McCaskill won, helping the Dems take over Congress. Feh. My candidate, Libertarian Frank Gilmour, got 2.2% of the vote.
Amendment 2, the Stem Cell initiative. Passed by a narrow margin, 51.2%. Oh well, but no biggie.
Amendment 3, the Tobacco Tax Increase. Failed by a narrow margin, 48.5%. Yea!!
Amendment 6, Tax Exemption for Non-profits and Veterans groups. Passed by a wide margin, 61.3%. Yea!!
Amendment 7, State official pension cut-off (if impeached, convicted of a crime, or removed from office for misconduct, cuts them off from the state pension). Passed by a gigantic margin, 84.1%. Yea!!
Proposition B, Increase in state minimum wage. Passed by a wide margin, 75.9%. Oh well.
All told, not a bad election for my votes. As for the Democrats in charge of the Congress, we'll see I suppose. At least it will be different.
U. S. Senate. Claire McCaskill won, helping the Dems take over Congress. Feh. My candidate, Libertarian Frank Gilmour, got 2.2% of the vote.
Amendment 2, the Stem Cell initiative. Passed by a narrow margin, 51.2%. Oh well, but no biggie.
Amendment 3, the Tobacco Tax Increase. Failed by a narrow margin, 48.5%. Yea!!
Amendment 6, Tax Exemption for Non-profits and Veterans groups. Passed by a wide margin, 61.3%. Yea!!
Amendment 7, State official pension cut-off (if impeached, convicted of a crime, or removed from office for misconduct, cuts them off from the state pension). Passed by a gigantic margin, 84.1%. Yea!!
Proposition B, Increase in state minimum wage. Passed by a wide margin, 75.9%. Oh well.
All told, not a bad election for my votes. As for the Democrats in charge of the Congress, we'll see I suppose. At least it will be different.
[Originally commented by elmegil on 11/13/2006]
ReplyDeleteWhat, you don't think minimum wage should track inflation?
It's bad enough that *my* salary is lower in real terms this year than 5 years ago thanks to wage stagnation and inflation, but at least I make enough to stay afloat. I suppose if corporate "leaders" weren't making record salaries, I could see that the whole economy was weak and things ought to stay status quo, but they are, and it's not weak. Everyone should be able to share the benefit of the improvements.
[Originally posted by buzzchick on 11/13/2006]
ReplyDelete"In 2005, an average Chief Executive Officer (CEO) was paid 821 times as much as a minimum wage earner." http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060627
i always wondered why shareholders weren't a little bit more outraged.
[I originally commented on 1/7/2007]
ReplyDeleteProblem is, having the minimum wage track inflation causes inflation. It's a chicken or egg question.....why does inflation occur? Because money gets devalued. Why does money get devalued? Because the poor have more of it. So what happens is that the definition of "poor" creeps inexorably upward.
There will always be poor people. This is not a value judgment of them -- I'm not saying people *deserve* to be poor, by any stretch of the imagination -- but people will be poor nonetheless. Because of social inequity, lack of education, bad luck, bad decisions. Plus, we tend to define "poor" in relative terms. While there are obvious differences in expectations and practices in America vs. elsewhere in the world (e.g. it's practically illegal to be *really* poor in the U.S.), our poor are nowhere near as bad off as, say, Bangladesh's poor.
I'm not speaking from a superior, insulated position, either. I've taken 2 large paycuts in the last 6 years (each about 15 percent). I'm downright jealous of my sister and her husband, who have far less education than I do and have a bigger house, bigger property, more cars, and generally more "stuff" than I do, in spite of essentially working union jobs.
This is a capitalist country, and the economic philosophy of capitalism is essentially the barter system. In lieu of pure barter, we have currency, where we can "store up" the value of goods or labor, thereby making it fungible. The value of that is determined by mutual agreement. If you take a job that pays crappy, you still agreed to take it, in the light of other consequences. Perhaps a bad job is better than no job and you have financial obligations. But you still agreed to it because the consequences of not taking the job are less desirable.
Nobody ever said it was required that you have *good* choices to pick from. While it can be argued that it's not people's faults that they are in the situations they're in, and that they should have better, than is an emotional argument with the fatal flaw that values of goods and labor are now no longer mutual agreement. There is now a third party dictating what is "fair" or "unfair".
The end result of all of this is that we might have fewer "unfair" situations, but most of the "fair" situations now become mediocre. There are no "good" situations when someone, somewhere, deems it unfair for one person to have a "good" choice at their disposal and others do not.
To view real world consequences of this, compare the economic prosperity of the United States with that of most Western European countries. By all measures, standards of living in Europe are lower than here. There may be fewer people in situations we deem "unfair", but we also undermine economic growth by dictating to people what is fair and unfair instead of things working out for themselves.