If you think pursuit of self-interest or mutually-beneficial voluntary contract are ideology, you've sacrificed your brain at the altar of partisanship.
Communism/socialism are inventions. Market-based economic theory is a discovery.
Someone who makes $7.25 an hour wanting to legally obligate their employer to pay them $10+ an hour instead sounds pretty self-interested to me.
What does the employer receive in return? It's not self-interested because no mutually-beneficial exchange exists. It's just selfish. [/quote]
Bottom line. Your true motives exposed. PLEASE stop acting like you actually give a flying $hit about the economic underclass or lower middle class. Your concern is truly reserved only for large corporate interest who are oh so sadly being forced to pay sub-substistance wages by the "selfishness" of employees who want to be able to pay food clothing and shelter without going on welfare.
Your view of working class stiffs, particularly those people of color, as being too stupid to understand basic economics---otherwise, well, they wouldn't be poor, of course--is at once fantastical and execrable. Perhaps, just perhaps, they understand Far better than you that 95+% of minimum wage jobs in the food service and Wal-Mart industries are they type inherently tied to a local economy of demand are (sadly) a growth sector in our post-industrial economy; and as such businesses have minimal to non-existant chance to increase profits by relocating to another state, let alone country. Therefore they (and most sentient individuals) realize the theoretical risks of increased wages costing them their employment (even SSIBLY risking employment agt their current lousy job, there would almost surely be another job available elsewhere at the now-increased minimum wage.
Not to mention the very clear case that increased wages at a broad level increases purchasing power--dare I say it? Aggregate Demand!
--to increase production and employment. This is a point I previously eviscerated you on without coherent response, and yet you've learned nothing from that, sadly.
Your view of people of color makes it clear you've never known one outside of a tipping relationship. Your sympathies are clearly only with a tiny number of portfolios heavy on fast food and convenience stores, and those ivory tower intellectuals that who are offended by violation of their sacred free market (as in not just mere capitalists, but outright FTW type) principles.
Your arguments in this and every other thread are a bizarre gumbo of believing that. Every government effort to alleviate a social ill--not merely can have unintended side effects or by inefficient--actually CAUSES the problem it's designed to address. "Poor people aren't eating sufficiently and suffering from malnutrition? Food stamps are clearly the root cause!" "The elderly's inability to afford health insurance is inhibiting their access to medical care? Medicare clearly needs cut back!" It's goes beyond mere valid conservative thought to an outright Through The Looking Glass type of fantasy world.
But why bother? Your 'arguments' aren't even responded to by most people. And why should they? Your 'arguments' extend little beyond the above-referenced diatribes and content-lacking condescension of what is 'obvious' to anyone lucky enough to be oh so smart as you. Which, coincidentally, relieves you of the weighty burden of having to actually, you know, respond to conflicting arguments beyond wildly broad sweeping generalizations.
Like most right-thinking posters, I'm done with you. I say good day sir. I say good day!
