Phi for All

But this has been happening for many years now, and unemployment has fluctuated but remains at an acceptable level. And some service industries can't be affected by offshoring because they need a labor force in situ. Fair wage is relative. Taking advantage of differing market and economic values is called arbitrage and has been a staple of business since the first trader said, "Buy low, sell high!". Except this has not been the case. Remember the big sucking sound Ross Perot kept telling us we would hear after NAFTA? It never happened the way he said it would. Well... yes, you're absolutely right. Education is the key. We can't afford to have such a poor learning system if we want to show the world what a democratic free market society is all about.

We've come a long way in the US since minimum wage was adopted, and with news coverage being instantaneous, if minimum wage was done away with how long do you think a tuna canning factory could get away with paying children $2/hour? Minimum wage is no way to breach the poverty line since it drives prices up enough to make any raise in minimum wage pointless. This is not true because the business owners have complied with the law and it's not their fault that employees who took the jobs they were offered don't have a better standard of living. The business owners will pay the lowest amount the employees and the market will let them get away with. The market always figures a way around obstacles when costs get too high. If a job pays so little or is too hard that no one will do it, something will change or the business will die. Minimum wage puts all the pressure on the business owners and none on the employee to get a better job. Education and training are better options but you can't expect the business owner paying minimum wage to foot the bill since he's the one losing his labor base. I wish public schools had a course for getting above minimum wage jobs and made it mandatory. Poverty is a tough problem because there is no single cure since there is no single reason for it. Most federal subsidies are forced to look at a "poverty line" that offers a single welfare solution to a variety of different circumstances.

There once was a guy from the West,who was given a poetry test. Miss Perfect said, "Rhyme!" and since she's so sublime, he wrote a poem to show 'em his best!

Actually that was meant for all the ladies who found me irresistable (according to your "what if" parameters). I felt it lost romantic strength to say, "...and then return to [insert name here] for a kiss." Marlowe was good, but not THAT good.

I would pick (and I would suggest that everyone can do this at this point) either: Both of these got a Spit-take rating in my book.

I think it was made very clear in the last few posts that we were indeed talking about minimum wage for kids. And for the others working for minimum wage, posts 4-6 still hold true. What good does it do to raise the wage when costs will go up to compensate?

I will be Paris, and for love of thee, instead of Troy shall SFN be sacked; and I will combat with weak Menelaus, and wear thy colors on my plumed crest; Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, and then return to IMM for a kiss. O thou art fairer than the evening air, clad in the beauty of a thousand stars. Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter when he appeared to hapless Semele; more lovely than the monarch of the sky in wanton Arethusa's azured arms. And none but thou shall be my paramour. What if life was a musical?

Great story! I'll bet your boss loved your approach. I'll also bet you earned every dime you made. In my old neighborhood, two kids came to my door asking to cut my lawn. They wanted $20. I said, "You're crazy, I can mow it myself in less than an hour. With the two of you it'll take even less time. I'm not paying $20 an hour for lawnmowing!" Then I told them I'd make them a deal. I offered to call the two neighbors north of me and the two neighbors south of me and get them to let these kids mow their lawns for $10 each. "You can mow five lawns all in a row and make $50," I told them. I explained that they might even get our business weekly because all five houses would get mowed together and look mighty nice instead of being cut individually at different times. They could make $200 a month during the summer if they did a good job! They turned me down. It turns out they only wanted $20 to buy something at the mall their parents wouldn't buy for them and they really didn't want to work all summer.

Raising the minimum wage does nothing to teach kids what their time is worth. If you want to teach them what their time is worth, teach them to work harder and smarter. They are at the beginning of their work lives. Set the bar too high and they'll expect higher wages to be handed to them. If they want a job where they can get by with a minimum amount of work, the minimum wage is fine for them. If they want more they should believe their time is worth more and work to get it. Arbitrarily saying their time is worth more helps no one, employer or employee. Everyone thinks their time is worth more than they make, but few are willing to put in the smarts and the effort to make it so.

It was my understanding that dave almost brought the server to its knees with his tremendously immense high score in Chopper. There are only so many digits the bandwidth can handle.

I think snorting fiberglass would be considerably more dangerous than using, say, an asbestos snorkel, and would tend to decrease your clientele through attrition.

Atheist would wake up, look around his bedroom and swear in German. What if one out every thousand golf balls exploded when you hit it?

There would be a cream for that. What if love really made the world go around and bad attitudes caused tidal waves?

Garages bigger, driveways longer. What if the color fuschia was illegal?

Like DV8 2XL, I'm on budget billing and pay an averaged amount every month, $112 currently. I wonder what my adjustment is going to be like? Is that like an equity account? Who receives the equity? Spreading a refund of your own money over a three month period seems criminal. Something only the Internal Revenue Service (or Inland Revenue) could get away with. Is the £100 less than one month's bill or more? Would it constitute giving you a £0 bill for a month or more?

And it will earn you a ban if it's ever repeated.

Sounds like someone smuggled some across the border in a side panel of their car and got some insulation mixed in. Drug dealers are probably not really meticulous about quality control.

I'd have to wear slacks instead of the pretty skirts In My Memory is making me wear (at least I could stop shaving my legs). What if your sneezes shattered all glass within twenty feet of you?

You'd never stop laughing long enough for us to kiss you! What if we all had little wheels instead of feet?

The Admins may ban me for not banning you sooner.

We'd all count in base fourteen. Math would be an even bigger bitch. What if, by simply concentrating, you could "see" what anyone you had ever met was doing at any given moment?

Any application? I try not to generalize. This isn't an either/or situation. My post was perfectly clear. I read it several times before concluding that you're probably just a troll. You're mixing terminology and you really don't have a enough of a grasp of either side of this debate to make a good stand. What I've said (and you can read it in the stickies in the Evolution, Religion/Philosophy and Pseudoscience forums) is that it is futile to argue against faith-based religions using the tools of scientific method. It is not equipped to handle such arguments. It is not a weakness of science, any more than it would be a weakness for your computer not to be able to drive a nail into wood. Scientific method is the wrong tool to use. AND if you try, you give creationism an almost equal footing with science. If you showed any willingness to actually discuss rather than to preach, you would have found many more people interested in this thread. As it is, it's just you trying to preach to a choir and offending those who try to offer up a dissenting view (and I'm not talking about me). Is this you being clever? Stick to glassblowing. It is my position that you should not use this forum until you figure out how to post on controversial subjects without making a total ass of yourself. Any more trolling will incur warning points leading to a temporary ban.