I think the hard part is figuring out the extent to which the society should value empathy vs. how much it should value individual responsibilty. It seems to me that we need both. Only a radical believes that we should be all one way or all the other.

My own take is that we have moved to far in the direction of empathy which has resulted in massive enabling of irresponsible financial behavior. Yes, sometimes stuff happens. But if we create an incentive system whereby welfare is better than work, and people can make excuses for any type of failure, we will create a society that will collapse under the weight of its empathy. That's the lesson of Greece.

It's human nature to blame others for ones failing. I'm also a parent so I get that the way that Brad does. The trick of parenting is to lovingly teach your kids that they can control their lives, and if things go wrong, they can do better next time. Blaming others or institutions or Walmart or whatever is not going to lead to success.

The only reason Walmart does not currently pay less in most regions is because of laws making them pay a minimum. They would pay less if there were no minimum.

Evidence?

Any reading of employment practices during the industrial age, and the gilded age etc. will provide plenty of examples of what happens when businesses operate without restrictions and limitations. WalMart would exploit their work force even more, if there weren't legal limits...

Evidence?

RJ, the problem in Greece was tax evasion and easy tax avoidance, with governments spending (and secretly borrowing) unsustainably. Welfare in Greece is low compared to the rest of Europe.

Would you say they've gone too far in the direction of empathy in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France? (BTW, the empathy is often hijacked by various individuals and institutions -- that's the nature of individuals and institutions. There is nothing wrong intrinsically with empathy.)

The Walmart a mile from my house pays more than minimum wage ...not much mind you, but the claim they would if they could seems to be nothing more than a poor assumption only. (and the McDonalds across the street pays even more than Walmart, both are low wage paying jobs but to claim these types of places will ONLY pay minimum is a myth)

Ray Jay wrote:It's human nature to blame others for ones failing. I'm also a parent so I get that the way that Brad does. The trick of parenting is to lovingly teach your kids that they can control their lives, and if things go wrong, they can do better next time. Blaming others or institutions or Walmart or whatever is not going to lead to success.

I'll take it a step farther. Blaming others is what leads to failure and even incarceration. Very few criminals take responsibility for their own actions.

We, as a society, need to move away from finding a way to list ourselves as "victims" and then wait for the government to solve our problems. Frankly, that is un-American.

Before anyone pounces, there are genuine victims, genuinely helpless people who need help. There are people who are not helpless who need a hand. However, there are an increasing number of people who can help themselves but see no point to it because it's easier to claim victimhood.

and still others who simply want to scam the system, to make that even worse, it used to be "taboo" to be on welfare, nobody talked about it, some would even refuse it when needed. Not now, now we have an entire culture built around it. Scamming a socially accepted "way of life" is all the easier to do.

Around the time that the young Sam Walton opened his first stores, John Kennedy redeemed a presidential campaign promise by persuading Congress to extend the minimum wage to retail workers, who had until then not been covered by the law. Congress granted an exclusion, however, to small businesses with annual sales beneath $1 million -- a figure that in 1965 it lowered to $250,000.
Walton was furious. The mechanization of agriculture had finally reached the backwaters of the Ozark Plateau, where he was opening one store after another. The men and women who had formerly worked on small farms suddenly found themselves redundant, and he could scoop them up for a song, as little as 50 cents an hour. Now the goddamn federal government was telling him he had to pay his workers the $1.15 hourly minimum. Walton's response was to divide up his stores into individual companies whose revenues did not exceed the $250,000 threshold. Eventually, though, a federal court ruled that this was simply a scheme to avoid paying the minimum wage, and he was ordered to pay his workers the accumulated sums he owed them, plus a double-time penalty thrown in for good measure.

Wal-Mart cut the checks, but Walton also summoned the employees at a major cluster of his stores to a meeting. "I'll fire anyone who cashes the check," he told them.

http://boingboing.net/2009/09/11/story- ... -mart.html

A pretty detailed description of Walmarts employment practices can be found in google Books. Below:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=ot0-dSu ... ge&f=false

if the link doesn't work, just google Sam walton on minimum wage....

And bbauska.... there's so much available on employment practices before labour laws and minimum wage laws I would't know where to start. I can only assume you are being willfully obtuse.
The original reason governments had to pass all the labour and wage laws in the US was because of violence during the gilded age, Workers had become so fed up with 14 and 16 hour work days, lousy conditions , and no protections that violence was breaking out all over the US. It was industrys' stubborn resistance to things like collective bargaining and worker protections that attracted so many to socialism and communism. Without the abundant violence and the danger that communism attracted, resistance to the laws would have been greater. But there was a sufficient fear that the masses would revolt that changes were made.

Google "History of employment standards in the US" and there's tons of evidence that without minimal standards many companies would seek the lowest pay rate and policies they could... Because, thats always been thee case...

Or look to countries around the world where there are no standards. The average hourly rate for a Bangladeshi garment worker is 14 to 21 cents.. For 13 hour days... In factories that are often fire hazards or worse. Several hundred were killed in a building collapse there just yesterday.
The trend now is for Chinese factories to move production to Bangladesh. Because of new minimum wage laws in China

tom
The Walmart a mile from my house pays more than minimum wage ...not much mind you, but the claim they would if they could seems to be nothing more than a poor assumption only. (and the McDonalds across the street pays even more than Walmart, both are low wage paying jobs but to claim these types of places will ONLY pay minimum is a myth

Tom. WalMart and other companies will always pay as little as they can. Their whole business model is based upon low labour costs. The only reason they pay minimum (or slightly above) is that the bar has been set by the law.

Now people are branching off taking about empathy and other such BS. The point is that if you've created a system where the minimum bar (in hours or pay or combination of the two) still doesn't prevent a family from hunger....then the minimum is too low. Because government support for those people is nothing more than a labour subsidy.
Since society has already made the decision, based on empathy I suppose, that no one should starve....the only question is why use this program to subsidy cheap labour for extremely profitable corporations?

RickyP,
What do you want the minimum wage to be? $12? Maybe $15?

What do you think the impact of raising the minimum wage 33% would be on a small company that hires 3 people? What choices will that employer have to make?

Raise cost of items? Then you lose market share because people will go elsewhere.
Fire one employee? Great, that always helps the economy.
Cut quality of product or service? Then you lose market share because people will go elsewhere.

Perhaps you only want LARGE employers to have to pay higher wages.

No, I am not willfully being obtuse. We have a different world view and value system. Not everyone is equal. Perhaps you think everyone should be equal? Even in the most "equal" system (that which you appear to be advocating), there are those who are "more equal".

I am interested in the answer to my question above. Which employee do you fire?

bbauska wrote:Raise cost of items? Then you lose market share because people will go elsewhere.
Fire one employee? Great, that always helps the economy.
Cut quality of product or service? Then you lose market share because people will go elsewhere.

Well, one choice is to make less profit, at least for Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart had $21,500,000,000 in operating income in the US last year only. Let's say it has 1,000,000 employees in the US, who work, on average 1,000 hours a year. Let's go ahead and raise their wage by $1.00 an hour. Add in the employers share of SS and Medicare, that would cost Wal-Mart 1,078,500,000 a year, which would result in a less than 5% decline in Walmart's domestic operating income. No one loses a job, no decline in service, even shareholders keep their dividend, Wal-Mart makes what it made in 2011.

Now, I should say I'm not advocating for this, but they way you present the options are a completely false choice in a profitable operation. They could pay their employees more, they just don't.

Another one I like to quote: Harvard makes so much money that they could waive all student tuition and fees, and still be a very profitable corporation, but they choose not to, because they can. People will pay to go to Harvard, so why not benefit from it?

For Walmart that is a viable option. Of course, it affects the investors (many of which are the middle class, but ok...)

What about the small business? Does it charge less for it's services, and takes the hit in the bottom line? Does that help the entrepreneurial business owner?

I have another question. The department manager makes $1 more than the associate. Does the department manager get a pay increase as well? Now the department makes as much as an assistant manager, does the assistant manager get an increase? Ad infinatum... Now everyone gets a pay raise, and other companies workers see what Walmart is paying for being "treated so poorly", and they want to get better wages than Walmart. So their pay has to go up.

My point in this example is you can raise the wage, and take away the desire for going up the ladder and bettering your position in the company. You get paid the same for doing a higher level job. How is that for the "fairness" that is wanted? Class envy? Really?

As for the Bangledesh factory... I am all for having every all products made in the US only, and exporting our products. Let's tariff the incoming items so high that it is not cost effective to have factories elsewhere. Let the other countries deal with the unemployment themselves. If other countries want to raise the tariffs on us, I am ok with that as well. I feel America is much more self sufficient than Bangledesh, and they can make that choice. Damn... There is that word again!