Comments

1
“soft skills” like showing up to work and respecting people"

Having been in hiring, you'd be amazed at how few people, young AND old even have those skills.
2
I saved for college and move out costs and paid for everything after moving out of my parents house. I couldn't even imagine being hamstrung by morons like this. I think these A holes just don't even understand that some peoples parents don't pay for everything and bail them out of every little tiff.
3
I worked as a grocery store clerk from the time I was 16-19 and I used the money to finance two summer language immersion programs and build up savings for college. Having a 15% wage cut would have probably meant that one of the language trips or the college savings would have disappeared.

Yes, I was not desperate and living on ramen noodles, but are you going to tell me that I did not deserve to earn enough money to be able to invest in my education? And for what? To give the grocery store a higher profit margin?
4
I think we should pay them less than minimum wage.
5
WTF!

If you work 40 hours a week, you should be able to live decently AND be able to save a little bit each month.

Period.

No one should be paid less on account of there age.

These people are idiots. They are hurting basic Capitalism 101.
6
Except for Senator Braun, I do admire their hair game.
7
But people, this will encourage them to unemploy older people, sticking it to the working poor even more, by making them properly not working, and then we can call them moochers!!!
8
Also, it may seem trivial, but... Yes, $7.92 is 15% less than $9.32, but starting at $7.92, you need 18% more to get back to $9.32/hr. That's just the way percentages work.

Everybody got at least 5.6% raises for each of the last three years, right?
9
I worked three jobs in college and still ended up homeless for a while. Fuck those entitled fucks.
10
They're probably among the people who argue against increasing the regular minimum wage, basing their assertion on the "fact" that only teenagers have minimum wage jobs, therefore nobody is supporting a family on one.
12
How would all today's Cathy McMorris-Rogers youngsters pay their way through college, as she did, just flipping burgers at the local McDonald's for LESS than minimum wage?
13
While everyone else is talking about raising the minimum wage, these clowns want to lower it? Yikes.
14
Republicans really are shits. I'd like to be able to say otherwise, but I can't. Republicans are assholes. If you are a Republican, you are an asshole - it's up to you to prove otherwise.

God, I hate Republicans.
15
I can see a lower wage (say 85 %) for kids under 16. After that, they're doing the work of adults and should be paid accordingly.
16
They should just lower the minimum wage to zero--that'd fix the economy and unemployment right away.
17
My high school wages went towards college application fees, AP test fees, SAT fees, fees to do extracurriculars, a beat-up car to help take care of my siblings, etc. The idea that teenagers don't deserve the money is rooted in some assumption that it is pin money, which ignores anybody (non-wealthy) for whom the money makes a difference.
18
Actually, in many of the "socialist" countries the SStranger and its readers admire, like Australia, have a youth minimum wage that is lower than the adult minimum wage. The result is that employers have more incentive to higher young people and if they work out, they get a raise to full minimum wage when they turn 18. I don't understand why this is deemed "unreasonable."
$7.25/hour is usually not enough to life off of and pay rent...how many 16 year olds do you know that have to pay rent? Let the teens get a job to save up for their first car.
19
Not surprising.

Republicans would gladly re-legalize slavery if they could get elected on it (and some of them probably could).

Anything and everything to give their corporate overlord masters more power, wealth, and immunity.
20
18: Depends on your parents. Mine made me pay rent. And for my own healthcare.
21
@20
And that's why we need better child protective services. Instead of wasting tax payer dollars on art and minimum wage studies it should be spent protecting children and fighting real crime.
22
@18
how many 16 year olds do you know that have to pay rent?
A lot, actually. I knew many families where everyone who could work, did work, just to be able to support the family. There were a lot of reasons, but the two most common were, 1) The father left the mother, and 2) someone in the family was very ill and medical bills cost a fortune (even after getting charities and hardship-reduced bills).
Getting at least minimum wage would help immensely.
23
@21: Want to protect children? Support a higher minimum wage for their parents.
24
@23
Anyone working a minimum job should wait until they get a promotion or a raise to have kids. The government has no business interfering in the affairs of workers and their employers. If they want higher wages form a union and work towards it through direct actions and boycotts or just get a different job.
25
@24 I think you'd find Somalia to your liking, you should move there stat.
26
@24 "Anyone working a minimum job should wait until they get a promotion or a raise to have kids."

You must be Christian because you believe in something that obviously doesn't exist. People have sex. Without widespread contraception and sexual education, sex leads to unplanned parenthood. Using contraception and sexual education, people can plan to have kids when they have adequate resources (such as a promotion). Conservatives, such as yourself, hate having widespread contraception and sexual education. Therefore you must support unplanned parenthood and people having kids before they get "promotions".

Also, obvious fuckwit is obvious.
27
@24: Hm. Okay, so, wait to have kids until I make more money.

Wait, what happens if I lose my job after I have the kids? Should I drown them in a sack and wait until I have another job to try again?
28
They are republicans. They are not with the program. They live in another world, they move about and interact among us but they don't have a fucking clue about life. They give money to to the Mars Hill idiots, they don't believe in evolution, they probably still think sarah palin is smart and G.W.Bush was a good President. This country needs an aggressive Democrat to run these republicans out of office. Vote for Hillary in 2016.
29
@25
I'm a minarchist and believe in a government that only protects people from harm. Somalia has no government. Nice strawman.
30
@27
That doesn't happen often in Australia, a place so many "progressives" taut as a fine example of high wages working. I love how the Marxists cherry pick their ideas.
31
@26
I am not a Christian and do not believe in a personal God and I find Christian fundamentalists, like the ones pushing abstinence only sex "education" and "creationism" to be just as disgusting as Marxists. Nice strawman though.
Anyone can afford a pack of condoms. Anyone can go online and figure out how to use them. If you have no money, just don't have kids. Simple as that. And if you get pregnant, there's always Planned Parenthood.
And I don't have that problem myself. Why? I mostly sleep with other men.
32
@30 ...the fuck? Are you high? What does that have to do with anything I said @27? Australia? Marxists?
33
@32
I'll try to use smaller words that you can hopefully understand.
If someone has children and a good paying job and loses it, the best thing for them to do is to find another job that pays just as much. If they had the qualifications for said high paying job in the first place, they should be able to find another job that pays a similar wage.
If someone doesn't have the money to have children, the best thing to do is not have children. Use birth control to avoid having them, and if anyone has any job, they can afford condoms.
And yes, Marxists are more often than not pushing for these horrible minimum wage laws, like the one they're trying to push for Seattle where it will be essentially impossible to run many small businesses, like restaurants. If that 15/hour thing does past, I will be forced to move when my job closes down because they won't be able to pay me.

I will move to Texas, a place where a socialist will NEVER get elected and they will NEVER force a high minimum wage on small businesses. And if any Sawant voting moron has an issue with that, they can feel free to follow me to Houston and try to get a socialist elected there...I would love to see them try. :)
34
@29: Define harm?
35
@34
Harm means any injury to a person or their property that is against their will. Bodily harm is obvious, but I agree to some extent emotional harm also exists, so in a minarchist society there would be a fine line between free speech (someone saying you have an ugly shirt) and harassment (following someone around every day to remind them their shirt is ugly) However, this won't mean little things like an occasional insult, otherwise, we'd have to ditch the whole internet, starting with 4chan...
Harm doesn't mean something consented to. A little S&M doesn't qualify as harm.
Harm also means fraud, as it is taking advantage of someone's lack of knowledge to hurt them and/or take their property (their money) for personal gain. Likewise, child abuse is harm, not just physical but also sexual and emotional. A child is less knowledgeable than an adult and hence anyone sexually abusing a child, who doesn't know what sex is about, is guilty of the worse kind of fraud for taking advantage of said child's lack of knowledge.
Also, it is wrong to harm someone's property, including nature, which is everyone's property.
So, if we agree not to steal, than most involuntary taxation has to be done away with. Just as it would be immoral for someone to break into your house, steal from you and leave you a basket of fruit that they paid for with a portion of the money they stole, it is also immoral for the government to take your money and give you things that you may or may not use or want in return without consent. Instead, programs beyond public safety and environmental protection will be funded through voluntary taxation and slowly control of said social programs will be handed over to those who choose to donate to them. That way, we go from being a "welfare state" to a "welfare society."

I would GLADLY pay for food stamps, welfare, education (even though I have no kids) and other such programs, as would most libertarians. The issue is how its done. I would rather be allowed to give voluntarily than have that money taken by force. That, and the little issue of that money also going to fund endless wars of aggression makes my blood boil.

Saying "libertarians hate the poor" because we are against most involuntary taxation is like saying people who are against rape are anti-sex. Just as one can be anti-rape but for CONSENSUAL SEX, one can also be anti-big government but for CONSENSUAL public welfare.
36
Republicans, at all levels of government, have some weird ideas about how businesses work. This is particularly odd given their close relationship with so many business owners.

They seem to believe that business owners who may their staff the minimum wage will hire fewer people if the minimum wage is higher and will hire more people if the minimum wage is lower. There is no data anywhere to support these beliefs. None. Moreover, ordinary logic does not lead to these conclusions.

Presented with a lower minimum wage, business owners who pay their staff the minimum wage will simply pay the staff less and pocket the difference.

Presented with a higher minimum wage, business owners who pay their staff the minimum wage will simply pay their staff more and have a little less in their own pockets.

Staffing decisions are not based on the minimum wage.

Republicans seem to think that if you give money to rich people that those rich people will spend it by hiring people. They don't. They just save it.
37
@33: "If someone has children and a good paying job and loses it, the best thing for them to do is to find another job that pays just as much. If they had the qualifications for said high paying job in the first place, they should be able to find another job that pays a similar wage."

I'll just leave this here.
38
@37
So the answer to a recession created by the corporate-state (i.e., the federal reserve) is to give the corporate-state more power to interfere by imposing an unpayable wage on businesses? Okay...
Would you also attempt to put a fire out with gasoline?
39
@38 No, my answer to your glib "well, if you lose your job just find another one that pays as well," is that it is not always that easy.

Please wait...

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