"...no one who works full time should have to raise his or her family in poverty."

[babylonsister]

[freshwest]

1. Agreed!

[dkf]

2. Problem is if you legislate raising wages for full time, you'll turn them into part time.

There's too many people looking for jobs. With this much unemployment employers have all the leverage.

[babylonsister]

3. So that's just giving up without a fight. There's got to be a solution. nt

[dkf]

8. Stop new immigration until the unemployment levels drop to at least 6%

Legal and illegal. We have to restrain the size of the labor force to build wage pressures. This is how labor unions used to create higher wages for their trades, by creating barriers to entry.

In all honesty I don't understand why we need hb-1 visas with so many college graduates looking for jobs.

We should also create partnerships to train our unemployed so they can fill the jobs that apparently can only be filled by international workers?

Enforcing labor laws and giving Citizens first crack at jobs are the way to improve the standard of living for our families and kids.

[1StrongBlackMan]

4. The minimum wage doesn't just apply to full-time workers.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

15. +1 n/t

[Newest Reality]

5. Nobody

who reads that should construe it to be anything more than a useful, rhetorical device that has very little basis as a concrete reality that will be acted upon.

Nobody who reads what I just wrote should construe that to be anything more than a series of symbols represented as black pixels on a white background in order to represent an opinion or view by me based on my own processing and parsing of words, sounds, and thoughts.

There is no nobody because that is an erroneous universal generalization that represents a distortion for the sake of impact and perhaps, brevity. I can say that most people would agree, everyone knows that, and any reasonable person would agree, but I would be manipulating you by symbolic means in ways you may not have investigated. I could use all kinds of logical fallacies that, unless you took the time to learn them and spot them, (and you should have, early on, in school) would easily persuade, confuse or refute you. Either way, I win.

When you were a little boy or girl, big people who had already learned the game of symbolic abstraction, taught you games that you were cajoled and forced to play. This was done on the game board called survival. Now, since you are older, have you noticed that, no matter how high we place being literate, logical and learned on a pedestal, all of that was mostly used to manipulate and control you all along the way. Loving parents, pastors, teachers, friends, etc., were using words and symbols to get what they wanted. Now, corporations and politicians are capitalizing on that in order to get what they want for themselves and those they hold to be worthy.

Take some time to investigate the distortions and deletions that are an aspect of language itself and you might just find yourself realizing some deep insights and wisdom in ways you could never imagine.

[babylonsister]

6. WHOA! So that could apply to every avenue in life.

Sounds exhausting.

[Newest Reality]

7. Maybe so ...

But relax first! Deeply. Into it. Just as it is.

What is exhausting is what I see most people doing everyday just to survive.

[IrishAyes]

20. Sounds like you have a god complex, child.

Should we genuflect in your direction?

[Newest Reality]

21. Heheh!

Well, maybe you could be more specific as to how that would be the case.

What is "god" to you and what is his or her complex?

Child?

[OnyxCollie]

9. Unless you live in Haiti.

Wikileaks Haiti: U.S. pushed to lower minimum wage
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20068872-503543.html

However, the Columbia Journalism Review has written up a summary of the Nation piece, recounting how American clothing makers with factories in Haiti were displeased after the government raised the minimum wage more than two and a half times the previous minimum 24 cents an hour.

WikiLeaks: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-06-03/news/30003110_1_minimum-wage-haitians-garment-workers#ixzz1ywY2AXZY

This infuriated American corporations like Hanes and Levi Strauss that pay Haitians slave wages to sew their clothes. They said they would only fork over a seven-cent-an-hour increase, and they got the State Department involved. The U.S. ambassador put pressure on Haiti’s president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies (the U.S. minimum wage, which itself is very low, works out to $58 a day).

Haiti has about 25,000 garment workers. If you paid each of them $2 a day more, it would cost their employers $50,000 per working day, or about $12.5 million a year ... As of last year Hanes had 3,200 Haitians making t-shirts for it. Paying each of them two bucks a day more would cost it about $1.6 million a year. Hanesbrands Incorporated made $211 million on $4.3 billion in sales last year.

Thanks to U.S. intervention, the minimum was raised only to 31 cents.

Washington Backed Famous Brand-Name Contractors in Fight Against Haiti’s Minimum Wage Increase
http://www.haiti-liberte.com/archives/volume4-47/Washington%20Backed%20Famous.asp

The U.S. Embassy in Haiti worked closely with factory owners contracted by Levi’s, Hanes, and Fruit of the Loom to aggressively block a paltry minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers, the lowest paid in the hemisphere, according to secret State Department cables.

The factory owners refused to pay 62 cents an hour, or $5 per eight-hour day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. Behind the scenes, the factory owners had the vigorous backing of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Embassy, show secret U.S. Embassy cables provided to Haïti Liberté by the transparency-advocacy group WikiLeaks.

The minimum daily wage had been 70 gourdes or $1.75 a day.

[aquart]

12. Knock $10 million off executive compensation.

Use it for labor, not parasite.

[Cha]

18. The President of the USA wants the minimum wage raised.

Good Luck getting that done with a republicon congress.

[Number23]

11. What on earth does your post have to do with this OP?

[Lady Freedom Returns]

14. Did you read what this group is about?

safe haven for members of Democratic Underground who support the president and his policies.

If you wish to bash our President, please go someplace else.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

17. He is trying.

But far to many have retracted their voice, their power away from him.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022643318

If you want for him to stand up to Wall St. Then help him!

[Cha]

19. Yeah, he's backing up what he's saying..