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Minimum wage laws make sense! In the comments for this article, someone said:
“Minimum wage laws make sense to me”
Quite so, the least productive elements of society are better off on state welfare, essentially making them perpetual wards of the state by removing the only basis upon which they are employable: low cost. It is foolish to think otherwise.
Likewise there is much to be said for government incentivisation, via minimum wages and other regulatory measures that increase the cost of labour, for the development of fully automated fast food and janitorial jobs, given that this is now increasingly plausible technologically.
These sorts of things also have the added value of adding to the pool of citizens with a vested interest in maintaining the welfare system, without risking perverse incentivisation that productive economic activity sometimes causes, which may lead to socially inappropriate activities, such as increased carbon footprint or voting for incorrect political parties 😀
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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I hope you realise someone is going to either accept this at face value or actually agree? 😛
If the least productive members of society choose to live out their days on welfare, junk food and subscription TV, it should be in exchange for sterilisation and a contractual obligation to abide by the laws of society ie no antisocial behaviour, no shoplifting, no drugdealing, breach of which maroons them to a tented camp on an unfrequented Scottish island. If they don’t want this deal, then they should take whatever job, at whatever rate appropriate to the value they add.
Minimum wage legislation has removed the menial jobs which gave meaning and structure to the lives of people with limited skills or intelligence as well as a starter experience for school leavers and parttimers. The belief that performing simple work for small gain is entrenched in the minimum wage afficionado’s mindset and reveals contempt for those it keeps from work.
All progressives understand that 2+2=5, for sufficiently large values of 2.
Therefore minimum wages increases exist in a vacuum and have no impact on expenses or productivity for the wage payer. A person making minimum wage has the right to stay at that minimum wage and purchase housing and clothe and feed a family. It’s only fair.
/sarc
oops last sentence should read:
The belief that performing simple work for small gain is demeaning, is entrenched in the minimum wage afficionado’s mindset and reveals contempt for those it keeps from work.
Yes indeed – supply and demand do not exist, or can be ignored without any bad consequence.
Now all you have to do is actually convince yourself of this and you will be a success in politics.
Well I can think of one effect of minimum wage laws that would be approved by many (not all) voters.
Minimum wage laws reduce the number of jobs on offer to low skilled people. People with a poor grasp of English (e.g. foreigners) are, in the context of Britain, low skilled. Therefore the minimum wage reduces the number of foreigners employed in Britain.
If reducing immigration is sufficiently desirable to you then you should applaud the minimum wage as the the only means in operation to keep foreigners out, and put up with the unemployment it causes to low skilled Britons.
Of course you may have other priorities!
You know what LJH? I’m bloody sick of people like you. You talk about a commitment to liberty and then you start going on about compulsory sterilisation and the creation of what are essentially gulags. It’s always the same old argument: “It’s not ideal that I have to pay for it, but since I have no choice but to pay for it, by way of compensation I should be made emperor over the lives of those funded by my largesse.”
The only thing you have the right to demand is the return of any stolen monies. You can take the rest of your demands and shove them where the sun don’t shine. You don’t fix crazy by adding to it.
I agree with Jaded – unless Ljh was being sarcastic, which I was hoping for and chose to believe.
Jaded: you seem to have ignored the word “choose” ie become a lifestyle welfarist not someone who has hit hard times and needs a hand. There is a subclass of the perpetually idle, working the system, whom my taxes protect and who are unlikely to raise good citizens often making their neighbours lives miserable: if they wish to be fed and housed without lifting a finger, I do not wish to subsidise their reproductive activity when I have struggled to afford children. I think it’s a fair choice, might even incentivise some to make an effort. Individual effort brings independence from the whims of others. If you wish to maximise that then you should not be encouraging dependency with unconditional welfare. It is not fascist to place conditions on choice. I guess you don’t live anywhere near ” a problem family” and are happy paying for their social workers, probation officers and rehab.
My point about minimum wage is that it deprives a lot of people of a job, routine and social contact who in earlier times were able to participate: unlike the layabouts these people want to work and deserve jobs but are trapped in welfare because they can’t add sufficient value to justify the minimum wage.
And who, pray tell, will be the judge of that?
JV, it’s quite clear to me that Ljh was offering a contract of sorts. Trostsky said something like ‘In a society where the State is the sole employer, opposition means death by starvation’.
Here Ljh is offering a deal, which the parasitical class would be free to reject. Of course, to reject it would entail a terrible cost, viz. to live an economic life, to work, to be civil, to be adaptive and to co-operate, or perish. To accept it would be to run a terrible risk, of being in breach of contract with the agreed penalty set out beforehand. But it would be a risk of choice.
Of course, for most of us, we just get on with things, and if we did not, those of the parasitical class would perish.
And JV, you fall into an obvious error, showing an error in comprehending simple statements, by referring to compulsory sterilisation, Ljh said no such thing, he referred to it as contractual.
Why do you not seek to comprehend that which you criticise before you write?
With all due respect Mr. Ed, bullshit. And I really do sincerely mean that about respect by the way. Most of what you write I agree with wholeheartedly, but not this I am afraid.
I’m willing to wager that I know more about life at the bottom of the social heap, on council estates and dependent on benefits, than most Samizdatistas. I’m one generation removed from probably the worst housing estate in the whole UK and I’ve lived on some estates that were almost as bad as what my father knew. I’ve had to let my children sleep in my room because there were drunken idiots screaming right outside their bedroom. I’ve spent nights propped against our front door, clutching a big stick, praying to God that the feral animals outside didn’t try to come in. I’ve lived beneath junkies and dealers, criminals and thieves. Around the corner from my flat a man attempted to immolate his girlfriend for no particular reason. I’ve had to ban my children from playing in the garden because of the used drug paraphrenalia that was continually thrown in there.
I’m a descendent of Irish tinkers and Scottish bards, and my family have been on the breadline going back multiple generations. I’ve taken state handouts. I’ve lived in social housing. And I’ve reproduced with my wife while doing this, and never lost any sleep over it because I always thought what choices I make regarding my family are none of anyone’s damn business. I never asked for this life, and I never asked for the situations we had to face. And you come to me and say I should have been sterilised on top of it all? Once again, with respect, screw you. Don’t talk bollocks about “contracts” since there is nothing consensual about a life on the welfare state.
If you find yourself in that situation, you can be proud and starve, or you can join the bloody queue for a handout like everyone else. Every time you turn up at the government offices, you get treated like something they stepped in. The people who work in job centres are, by and large, civil servants who are themselves “failures” and they relish the opportunity to pick on someone who is beneath even them. Every day a little bit more of your self-worth gets stripped away. Some people become inured to this, indeed have lived through it for generations. Many of those people are almost beyond helping since you can’t help a person who has given up. If they have their “benefits”, their huge Brighthouse telly and their shithole of a flat, they’re content. They don’t dream of anything more. They will never leave. But even amongst such people there will always be a proportion who will fight to get out and have a better life. I am one of them. Not everyone on a council estate wants to be there. Indeed most will do anything to get out. Your talk of a “parasitical class” denies those people their humanity.
I did everything I could to get my family out of that life. And you know what? It didn’t happen all at once. My father got part way out for one thing. In my case it involved applying for hundreds of jobs, eventually deciding no one was going to hire me as I was and going back to Uni to study for a PhD. I was only the second person in my whole family to go to University and the first to obtain a doctorate. I no doubt consumed a great deal of taxpayers money while doing so, but not once did I feel I had an entitlement to it nor was the transaction in any way consensual. I was driven by neccesity.
I am a libertarian because I believe that if you got the state out of people’s way, then those who wish to advance themselves would be able. I’m in favour of free markets because I believe a genuinely free market would all but end unemployment. I am against the welfare state because it sucks out your soul little by little, and makes psychological cripples out of those who could have been proud and decent. As for the others, society has always had those who were beyond help. But the welfare state has manufactured such people at a rate hundred times what nature produced. Their needs would be better served by voluntary charity, because charity (in the traditional Christian sense of the word) is interchangeable with love. The state on the other hand doesn’t give a shit how it’s giving actually affects you. They give you money because of policy, not because they give a damn about you.
And all this brings me to my final point. By all means dismantle the state. Stop all benefits. But don’t pretend a brutal fascistic state can be a stepping stone to libertarian utopia. It can’t. Punishing people for taking handouts when the apparatus which drove them to it is still in place is, quite frankly, evil.
JV, you misquote someone, then attack him for what you say he says. You are, at best, unwise to do that. I thought that you had a semblance of a scientific background, but you make up data, that’s all I need to know about you. You are imprecise, and loose with truth.
No doubt true compared to me, as my lot have been clinging to the top half of the heap ever since arriving with pointy sticks and axes in 1066.
So I try to take a nuanced view of the people who get thrown under the cart by the political class, whilst taking a rather less sympathetic view of the people who actually vote for their own misfortunes. My transcendent loathing of the welfare state comes from the inescapable conclusion it is designed to subsidise and extend poverty, rather than alleviate and eliminate it, hence the sarcastic article above.
My personal experience with the bottom of the heap is confined to a few years of observing poverty in Africa in the 1970’s/80’s 😉
Life on public welfare can be considered a modern manifestation of the primordial hunter-gatherer lifestyle. In that lifestyle, people moved to where there was a source of food, consumed that while it was available and then moved to a new source of food. If there was a drought or a disaster and therefore insufficient food, the weaker members starved. This is a pattern of life which has been widely used throughout history and is still extant in some places. Public welfare can be considered similar to a good fruit season or a good rabbit season. Everyone gets enough to eat and doesn’t starve. This is the root cause of the disfunctional remote aboriginal settlements in Australia and also of many long-lasting refugee camps. It is logical for people who are living in that mind-set to move to the place with the best welfare system which is the cause of the current great migrations. If a person’s ambition doesn’t extend beyond avoiding starvation, then this is a completely satisfactory lifestyle, and many will settle for it. I suspect that as long as public welfare exists, there will be a large cohort content to stay on it.
Avoiding this will require the withdrawal of both the minimum wage and public welfare. This will necessarily result in some people starving in the streets. To avoid this unpleasant sight and to exercise their charitable principles, some people will then set up private charities and workhouses. A bit later there will be pressure for government provision of charity… and that’s how we get to here.
Once the government is supplying the means of life, then it is reasonable for the government to control how people use that life, possibly mandating birth control or enforcing work requirements for the good of the people… Oh oh! Russia tried that for quite a lot of last century and that didn’t work either.
Essentially we are stuck in Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper.
If anyone has a third way I would love to hear it.
Jeremy wins.
I have always subscribed to the deeply unfashionable Victorian notion of ‘deserving poor’ and ‘undeserving poor’. And that it best managed with private charities unfettered and unfinanced by the state, who can help those incapable whilst telling those unwilling to fuck off and get on their bike. I’d rather spend money on riot cops than on dole bludgers.
Of course you also need an economy not regulated up the wazoo to squeeze out the least productive with bullshit minimum wages and employment taxes, ie an economy where jobs actually get created, rather than crony capitalism (tough shit if you dislike that term) that crowds out small businesses.
Overall, I think Perry’s solution would be the best for society. Unfortunately, like most bitter tasting medicine, it is unlikely to be used in sufficient quantity.
Perry wrote,
About a year back, I was sitting in Panera Bread when this deaf begger came in handing out notes. People were handing him folding money. (saps). I walked to the counter and told them that they have a begger harassing customers and they need to throw him out. I sat back down and he worked his way over to me. I shook my head at him, and he continued to stand there. I looked at him and told him to fuck off. He actually argued. I told him, “I know exactly what you are, you fucking bum. You better get the fuck away from me”. He mumbled something and then went to the table behind me. Others that handed him folding money looked at me like I just farted at the dinner table. ‘Just then, as he worked his way over to the table behind me, one of the ladies at the table read him the riot act worse than I did. She stood up wagging a finger at him and said that she has two deaf children in college and that he should be ashamed of himself. At this point, he left. I eaves-dropped on their conversation after that and the lady explained to her two (not so sympathetic) friends that, having worked with social workers and those that help the deaf, she’s well aware of this fellow who works his way around town begging. They (the social workers) have given him chance after chance, and he remains a begger because that’s all he wants to do. Now, after THEY left, (five minutes later), the manager of Panera Bread came over and asked me if there’s a problem. I told him, “not anymore, you can come out of hiding now”.
End of story. 🙂
Perry wrote;
You mispelled crony fascism.
Alisa, if you can’t tell a permanent bum who doesn’t want to work from a person who wants only what he or she has earned, then you’ve led a very sheltered life indeed.
Thailover,
I think you missed the trap that Alisa was pointing out. Somebody must make the determination of who wants to work and who doesn’t want to work. What you and Ljh, etc are calling for whether you are aware of it or not is for the state to make the determination. The only thing more destructive of individual identity and liberty than a liberal welfare system is a tightly conditioned welfare system. You are, hopefully inadvertently, advocating for changing a system where people get the means to live without being compelled to work for it to an ‘improved’ system where people work at the direction of the state. As Jeremy pointed out above:
What most people here are inexplicably missing is that “controlling how people use that life” is the entire purpose of the system. A substantial portion of the population, now going on several generations, has been completely deprived not only of the opportunity of an alternative, but of the knowledge alternatives even exist. Expecting multi-generational dependents to miraculously learn economics and vote wisely for their own long term benefit is at best naive, at worst justification and absolution in anticipation of things best not discussed.
Aside from Jaded Voluntaryist, it doesn’t sound like many here have given much thought to how to unravel the social welfare state. In the US, for example, almost all assistance is conditioned on “asset stripping”. If you lose your job and need assistance you must first lose all of your assets before you will be assisted. Every single facet of the system is designed to move people into “the system” and keep them there.
If you really want to end this horrific system, listening to thoughtful people who have been on the receiving end of it would be a place to start. I would start by eliminating asset stripping and providing secure storage for people to keep possessions during difficult times. The comparatively small cost of provided storage would greatly reduce the cost of keeping them on welfare by allowing them to pick up where they left off as soon as they could find another job. Of course eliminate minimum wage and employer health mandates that cause the destruction of entry level jobs.
I worked with an extremely hard working man who lost his job. Being a strong work ethic sort of person, while unemployed from a “real” job, he took a part time job as a gas station attendant. During that time, he had a heart attack, not bad enough to end his ability to work, but enough to cause him to lose his small but well cared for and fully paid off house. He had put all of his savings into paying off the house. In hindsight, maybe he should have taken out a mortgage against his house in order to make his health insurance premiums while he was unemployed. The first question they ask when you apply for a mortgage is “what is your income?” Well meaning people have prohibited banks from writing mortgages for people without an income of regulator stipulated size. So he was caught in a trap and completely lost all of his life savings because the system prevented him from caring for himself.
Post Obamacare in the US, the health care trap is even worse. Lavish coverage requirements and prohibitions against actuarial adjustment of premiums have driven the costs of premiums up tremendously. And yet the same trap still holds. If you need medical care and you don’t have insurance, the first thing they do is strip you of all of your assets.
While the specifics of healthcare, etc are different in the UK, the purposeful intent of the system to trap people and turn them into wards of the state is the same. It would help if there was less talk about throwing people into the woodchipper of a government controlled economy as a viable first step towards dismantling the welfare system.
The prelude to dismantling the welfare state must be the dismantling of the regulatory state. Ending welfare before ending the regulatory state is poorly disguised eliminationism.
What Mid said, but here is the short version:
I sure as hell can tell, Thailover – would you like me to be the one who decides who’s to be sterilized, and who can go on and procreate?
The lifetime of welfare in the West is measured in years.
not decades.
not centuries
years.
Come 2030 there will be no welfare as we know it!
“I know exactly what you are, you fucking bum. You better get the fuck away from me”.
Exactly why every state needs Stand Your Ground laws.
I have always subscribed to the deeply unfashionable Victorian notion of ‘deserving poor’ and ‘undeserving poor’.
How quaint.
Miswesterner.
You post was so long and thought out, I’m almost hesitant to point out that you’re reading far too much in my ‘one-liner’ comments. I don’t advocate anything for welfare, other than complete abolishment of the welfare system. IMO, poverty is not lack of money. Lack of money is merely a symptom of poverty. Poverty is the lack of knowledge (or willingness) re: the art of creating and keeping one’s own wealth. Giving people (other people’s) money because they’ve FAILED at XYZ is merely monetary incentive to fail at XYZ. Fail your family, get paid. Fail your community, get paid. Fail yourself, get paid. Obviously, this is a prescription for the destruction of cultures and subcultures. Here’s one predictable “unintended” consequence of the welfare system in the states. Unwed mothers with no man (breadwinner) living in the home qualifies for more welfare than the alternative. Ergo families with children in the black American communities in the states with single mothers and no man in the home as a fellow bread winner or father figure is above 70%. This “working the system” has obvious effects. Asians and Jews were relegated to ghettos and restricted from businesses within my father’s lifetime. Now they DOMINATE both the professions and academics in the states. Asians are actually discriminated AGAINST in college entrance applications today simply because they’re Asian and they’ve done too well according to the racist progs who implemented their “minority helping” anti-discrimination laws; (Leftist Orwellian terminology alert). However, the same cannot be said for American blacks who are, generally speaking, as bad off as they were in the 1970’s. Perhaps the largest distinction between these subcultures is the unwillingness for Asians and Jews, in general, to avoid “the dole”, and to have a very strong emphasis on the family unit and education…the opposite of what happens on the dole.
Peace and be well.
Whoops, correction for the above post. Make that “unwillingness for Asians and Jews to GO ON the dole. (If there is a way to edit posts, I’m unaware of it).
Jaded Voluntarism,
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be advocating the the right to have kids that one can’t take care of safely and well. While you certainly don’t require anyone’s permission to procreate, one can’t help but ask, WHY would you make such an argument, as it certainly isn’t a rational position. The wise approach, it seems to me, is to not have kids, buy cars and houses, etc…that one can’t afford. Correct me if I’m wrong, and, nothing personal and therefore ‘no offense’, but why, pray-tell, should I be forced to take care of other people’s kids? ‘Volunteer to help is one thing, but being forced by the state is a other thing all together different. The latter is a general question, and not implying that this is what you’re advocating for.
Peace and be well.
Dear Alisa.
I said nothing about sterilization, and I suspect you know this. The comment YOU quoted and responded to, was “you seem to have ignored the word “choose” ie become a lifestyle welfarist not someone who has hit hard times and needs a hand.”
Peace and be well
Midwesterner wrote,
From what I understand, in the US, wealth is judged by the gov as one’s net worth, and poverty is judged by lack of regular income or by one’s anual income. (Yes, of course this is inconsistent…we’re talking about the state here). Which is why there is a “problem” of welfare recipiants winning the lottery and yet legally REMAINING on the dole. Or people who have a million in the bank, but no job who qualifies for welfare. From what I undersand, lottery winnings are considered liquid assets rather than earned income, and therefore not a hinderance in re: to being on the dole. Asshole opportunist politicians address this problem with additional specific legislation rather than correcting the stupid way in which “need for welfare” is assessed to begin with.
Peace and be well.
Ah fuck, goddamned computer clipboard. Ignore the quote in the post above. My appologies.
hailover,
Responding to your comment at 10:34, I don’t disagree with the observations you make. My problem with the generally implied prescription in this thread is the order of business in addressing the problem. Yes, Asians and Jews in general avoided the welfare trap and its inevitable consequences. There is occasionally an up side to being in a politically not-favored group when the government is giving away OPM.
But that said, the people who government did and is continuing to “help” are utterly ill equipped to compete in the bureaucratically manipulated corporatist state as it exists. The first order of business must be eliminating the regulatory state, at which point addressing welfare dependency will become a much more manageable problem.
With respect to your statement “wealth is judged by the gov as one’s net worth, and poverty is judged by lack of regular income or by one’s anual income.” Not exactly. The US still bearing a small few features of federalism, it can vary from state to state however it is completely possible to have little or no income, and fail to qualify for assistance as I described in the case of the person who had a heart attack while uninsured and lost his life savings.
I encourage you to give thoughtful consideration to the structural consequences of these policies. As I described in my comment above:
The asset stripping conditions of government assistance programs are almost malevolent in the way they bind ‘beneficiaries’ into a life of dependency. While those asset stripping conditions could be undone at any time, before anything more than superficial changes can be made to welfare dependency, the bureaucratic regulatory state must be undone. Particularly where its onerous demands obstruct free and spontaneous employment.
Thailover: of course I know that you said nothing about sterilization – Ljh did. I was asking him how he would go about determining who is deserving of sterilization and who is not, at which point you responded to me with:
To which I responded that I indeed can (regardless of the kind of life I have led – would you like to hear about that? How much time do you have?), and that I’m willing to volunteer for the task. So far so clear?
Now all that aside and to avoid further confusion: do you or do you not support the suggestion made by Ljh with regard to sterilization?
Alisa, I’m refraining from being rude right now, because you’re either being unforgivably sloppy, or intentionally misleading.
Hell, I guess I need to spell it out in full since you didn’t get it the first time.
In a post, all your own, you quoted LJH as saying, “you seem to have ignored the word “choose” ie become a lifestyle welfarist not someone who has hit hard times and needs a hand”, to which you responded in that same post, right above in the thread,”And who, pray tell, will be the judge of that?”
In my own reply to that one single post of yours mentioned above, I responded, “Alisa, if you can’t tell a permanent bum who doesn’t want to work from a person who wants only what he or she has earned, then you’ve led a very sheltered life indeed.”
Now, this is extremely clear, please don’t pretend it isn’t. I have an extremely low tolerance for intentional bullshit. Note that the patience and civility I owe Samizdata has been expended. Thanks.
Well, I guess if you do indulge the audience with a simple yes/no to the simple question I asked, it will show up on the RSS feed – in the meantime, have a nice whatever.
Midwesterner, re: your post at May 14, 12:56am (you must keep vampire hours, as I do.)
Yes, I don’t pretend to know the in’s and out’s of the dole and the 80-odd different and often redundant safty net (or hammock) programs offered in the US. For example, I think it’s the case, and often people don’t know this…one must have children before one qualifies for foodstamps. (I briefly purused an application in Tennessee out of curiosity).
I agree with you wholeheartedly that perhaps the most draconian measure of statism, the aforementioned bureaucratic regulatory state, should be the first addressed and “undone”. Once upon a time in the states, if you wanted to be a cab driver, you merely slapped your improvisational name on the side of a car and you were in business. My own father started his own dump truck company by buying his own truck, opening a checking account in the name of “X” Trucking Co. and then contracting business himself with various trucking companies hauling asphalt, gravel, etc for road construction, etc. He never incorporated, not even with an LLC. That can’t happen today. I know a guy who came to the US and is trying to open a car repair shop. He’s spent over 200 grand already trying to comply with state bullshit, such as making the sidewalk in front of his business (that he does’t own, the state does) wheelchair compliant, etc. It’s been a year and a half and he’s still hasn’t opened his doors because of the bureaucratic ass-dragging (and knuckle-dragging) by the statists who want nothing more than to have people by the balls. They crave petty power more than personal wealth, that’s how pathetic they are.
Peace and be well.
Alisa, your stuborn insistance to remain disingenuous is noted. Not only have I not commented on sterilization, I didn’t even read his post to begin with, and I don’t do homework assignments, thanks. So you can pretend that I’m dodging something or other all you want, but you’re the one out of order here, just for the record. I addressed your comments and quotes from the very beginning, which is what I just exhaustively pointed out in a play by play. Have a nice evening.
Ljh wrote:
I’ll spin-off this comment rather than argue against his post. (As I have no qualms with his point).
I agree that the biggest problem with minimum wage is that it hinders the very demographic that it’s purported to help, and that it also heavily impacts businesses that rely on offering jobs to unskilled (often uneducated) workers. (And ex-inmate felons who can’t work elsewhere).
Ask the typical innumerate Prog what percentage of the labor force is making minimum wage, and they’ll typically guess something ridiculously absurd like 15-25%. (Try it yourself). The actual rate is about 2.5 to 3%, and 80% of that 2 1/2 to 3 percent are people working second and third jobs as supplementary income. Much of the rest of that 2.5-3% is comprised of people for whom tips make up the lion’s share of their income, like wait staff, skycaps, etc, and their actual income is far in excess of minimum wage. And virtually all the rest of that ~3% are public school attending teens living with mom and dad, and retired elderly on a fixed SS income who have an income ceiling they can’t break without having their social security garnished. The truth is, the median income of MW earners in the US is about 50 grand/yr. (No doubt due to the primary income of the 80% mentioned above). So the prog poster vision of the brave single mother earning minimum wage as her sole means of income and dreaming wistfulness of a “fair living wage” is about as rare as hens teeth or Bigfoot sightings. It is, for all practical purposes, a leftist myth. It’s about as mythical as the “war on women” or the economic need for government stimulus spending.
So what were you doing remarking on my reply to him?
DING! Comment deleted by the management for exceeding the insult threshold.