$15/hour minimum wage

[opebo]

Say, do any of you scions of privilege remember that I used to vociferously advocate a minimum wage of $15/hour for america?  I wonder how many of you know that the Australian federal minimum wage happens to be $15/hour?  That's Australian dollars, but those are worth slightly more than American dollars now anyway.  It is time we caught up.

[opebo]

At 15 dollars and hour, there would be no legal employment in the US for a huge chunk of the population. Australia has chosen to keep those people on the dole, but this doesn't fly in the US politically.

Obviously a generous and comfortable dole is the other side of the coin to a high minimum wage in a 'capitalist' economy, and is even more economically beneficial.

[opebo]

And further entrenching the underclass, incapable of ever getting off the dole. Your lordship, really, hates the poor, unless the satisfy his sexual needs.

No, ag, it is your capitalist system which entrenches the underclass.  (not that this issue is important vis-a-vis the macroeconomic benefit of a dole).

[opebo]

Social economic engineering is an utter myth.  Many people in the underclass cannot function but in the underclass economic system, and there's little anyone can do to adjust that behavior.

It has nothing to do with behavior, Glob!  It has to do with power.  In fact the US mostly only provides WalMart and McDonalds type jobs (underclass jobs), so inevitably more and more people will be underclass in future, till soon it is the majority. And they all wake up early and live in fear and don't enjoy anything, and work like dogs.   

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There is a total lack of dignity for not only the underclass of Walmart and Mcdonalds level workers, but also the 'middle class' (if it still exists at all), of $20-/hour or $500/week whatevers (to be honest I cannot even imagine what is a 'middle class job' nowadays).  Basically anyone who works for a living has no dignity, but is a rat in a wheel or a slave in cotton field - anyone who has no union, no constantly increasing leisure time and pay, is hopelessly undignified.

By the by, you mention the rose gardens and cafes - these are only for a very, very tiny and shrinking minority of Americans.

[opebo]

As someone who until recently lived hip-deep in the underclass (south Baltimore), I can tell you that the above in no way reflects my experiences, at all, with the "underclass".  The underclass in Maryland is a direct result of behavior, and the attitudes that the urban poverty culture inculcates into the youth.  In my neighborhood, there was trash all over the streets, people screaming and fighting and pissing everywhere and acting like fools at all hours of the day.  Women farting at my front door, junkies vomiting in the street, teenage girls with strollers out at 1am, vandalism, petty crime.

Well it certainly sounds like you have some issues with your people.  I like the 'women farting at my front door' line, though.  Is that like the Big Bad Wolf trying to blow it down?  Or just a kind of self-supplied doorbell?  "I's a come-a-callin', phoot phoot!"

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Um, self-hate alert.  Those people are not 'acting', they are like puppets on a string - every action they appear to be doing is being caused by their owners, who live far away in the Hamptons and such places.

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No, the working class and the under class are identical.

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No, no one would love that job.  They love not starving to death.  But they hate that they're forced to work at Walmart to be allowed to eat.

[opebo]

     Eh, for the time being that would be true. But small businesses would get crushed & inflation would do its dirty work, so that $15 in several years would be worth $7.25 or whatever the federal minimum wage is today. In other words, small businesses would suffer, the rich would benefit, & the poor would, at best, experience no real change. Why am I not surprised?

You make a reasonable point - it would be better to seize all the property of the rich than just try to blunt the brutality of the system.

[opebo]

In a sense in some cases, yes, although it's a bad way of putting it.

It can't be the case, since 'worthiness' has no bearing on class.

[opebo]

Better idea is to stick to a high minimum for everyone - at least $15/hour - and then provide free training at community colleges for teenagers.

[opebo]

Said another way, if you want to succeed, work hard. 

I'm sure opebo thinks that Walmart workers "work hard" -- maybe some do, but most of time I'm in a Walmart, the workers can't be bothered to do much of anything.  They hardly have my sympathy.

So.. the 'hardness' of work is determined by how much sympathy the toils elicit in an observer?  Hardly what I would have expected from a tough guy social Darwinist such as yourself.