Also, some people are put in a position where they can't go to college. Some people had to drop out in the middle of their second year because their parents died and all of a sudden they have to work two jobs to support their family. Those people are certainly not lazy, but mommy and daddy didn't pay for college, and they didn't have the chance to not work 100 hours a week so they could get a degree. They shouldn't be penalized. I'm certainly not a bleeding heart, but I don't think those people should starve.

 

Don't preach. I WAS there. At one point it was me and my now wife living less than paycheck to paycheck and this was at a time when cell phones weren't around and the internet hadn't broke free from the military yet. We lived in an apartment that was literally the size of our current bedroom. We had less than 200 sq/ft. Rent included heat, water and cable and was all we could afford. We didn't have money for many things we needed. Hell, I couldn't even afford to buy clothes from the Goodwill. I've been at the bottom. I decided to change my place in life and I busted my **** to do it. Through hard work and perseverance I have obtained two degrees, live in a decent neighborhood, drive two nice cars, send my kid to the best private school in the area, and have enough money to buy everything I want. I did it without assistance from friends, family, or a government giveaway.

Don't tell me it can't be done. It has always been able to be done. All it takes is the desire and motivation to do whatever it takes to succeed. If you are working in an industry that doesn't pay well change your industry, as I did. If you don't believe me that it can be done, ask Marco Rubio, or Herman Cain or any one of the millions who have done it.

Pickup man--losing parents sucks. In my case my parents didn't have anything to help me, because they were too busy paying my siblings' way through college while I wore old clothes I found in the garbage that didn't fit. Yeah, I've been so poor I couldn't afford to pay attention.

 

Minimum wage jobs are for the entry level group of people, High School kids and some College kids, period.

Part of the problem is alot of those jobs are being taken full time by people who shouldn't even be here. I know out here in Cali you can't go through a drive thru with out hearing something like Que, you want hombooger. And the local Baseball team is the Doyers. I remember how hard it was for my kids to land their first job compared to when I was a kid, I had 2 jobs and was trying to get a third when I was 16.

Fixing one problem won't cure all that ails this country, as stated earlier by some one else, everything needs to be on the table.

 

The term minimum wage has lost its meaning somewhere through the years.

[soapbox]

Minimum wage ( and other labor laws ) came about to set a MINIMUM standard for workers, so the US would not have unsafe sweat shops as were common prior to the fire at the factory in NYC in 1911.

Somehow this concept of people need to be able to live on minimum wage was pushed on the American public, and bought into it hook, line and sinker.

Heck why not raise minimum wage to $ 16.75 / hr, that way nobody without a job would make less than ~32.5K/yr.
That is not too bad, everyone could afford to buy their own health care, so we can repeal the health care law.
Think of what would happen with the federal income taxes, the marginal tax bracket would be in the 15% range for every entry level worker, the effective taxes collected would be ~ 6.5%, the 10% tax bracket would be all but unused, great for the debit.

Wow, look at that, he was right
Just keep in mind your Double Whopper with cheese now costs 11.79, fries are an additional 6.35, and everyone not at minimum wage is going to be applying for food stamps....

[/soapbox]

 

With that idea, you may as well have Socialism/Communism as that is what you would essentially create.

I understand that some jobs pay less for good reason. Certainly most people don't go to McDonald's for gourmet meals. It is fast and cheap...their workers often screw up and have minimal competency. Many speak broken English at best (I assume they are legal).

That said, I don't like the idea of uprooting many things that help people.

Pell grants/student loans are an excellent way for people to have the chance to change their lives. Certainly there are those in schools that take them solely for the refunds over and above tuition. I have seen students that have hit the maximum loan amounts (which is around 50k) and not even have as much as an associates degree.

LIHEAP helps the poor pay for lights and gas bills. Again, you can be stoic about turning off unused lights, keep the heat a little lower and use blankets, keep the air conditioner off but these bills are huge chunks of many people's budgets.

If you have any give away program, you are certain to have those that will try to defraud it. It is just the way things are. You are never going to stop it but certainly we can try to curb it as much as possible.

One thing I do see as a huge problem is the same companies that are slashing workforces are paying their CEOs 500-1000 times the average worker and reporting record profits. There was a time in history that CEOs would be ashamed to cut workers. Today it is just a business transaction much like bankruptcy. Shareholders should profit but all stakeholders need to be considered in decisions.

 

That was one of the points being made, thus the sarcastic rolleyes at the "he" was right part ( the quote is from Obama ).

1. Where are these record profits you keep posting about ?
I have yet to see any records profits for 09-10 or the 1st Qtr of 2011.
- This seems to be your default statement about any company as this is not the 1st time you have made this false statement. You have done it a few times in the past 6 to 9 months.

2. I would like to see your statement about your 401(k) if the company did anything different.
- Most if not all people who complain about not doing "right" by the workers also are the biggest complainers if their investments drop.
Earning impact a lot of things, aside from if dividends are going to be paid, or if the stock price goes up. Earnings also impacts the interest rate that a company pays from bond auctions and what they pay in insurance costs to name 2 big ones that would impact the bottom line of a company.

The top guy might make a lot these days, but with share holder law suites ( naming the top guy as an individual in addition to the company, and the accountability of the company earnings ( with the threat of big jail time ) now days, makes the job a lot different compared to when "CEOs would be ashamed to cut workers".
Who gets 25 years in federal jail when things go south, the guy at the bottom making 1/500th of the CEO, doing the wrong thing or the CEO ?

 

For private sector jobs, pay is based on the responsibility carried and the scarcity of the skill set needed to perform the job.

Running a large company with thousands of employees is a huge responsibility, requiring skills that most people will never possess. Therefore, it deserves a huge pay check.

 

Did you ever notice that even though they raise state and federal minimum wages, the rest of our wages never follow? The redistribution of wealth has been going on for years. It's not the rich who are paying the price either. This constant increase in the minimum wage actually devalues those of us who have legitimately earned our pay increases.

You guys who want to give away the farm have obviously not spent a whole lot of time working on it. Yes, some people work hard on this farm and still can't get ahead. We see them, we respect thier effort, every day and gladly extend our helping hand to them. You "compassionate" types advocate for the people who we never see on the farm but expect to reap the rewards of everyone elses hard work.

Some people will never get it. They will continue to inadvertantly exploit minorities and the downtrodden to continue to push for the redistribution of wealth from the people who earn it to the people who don't/won't.

 

The poor CEO doesn't get trucked off to jail for a company failing. He gets 25 years for being crooked. These cases like Worldcom and Enron had guys cooking the books and doing illegal actions to make the stock look good and make themselves a ton of money.

You can just as easily go to jail if you are a lowly cashier and get busted stealing from the till. You may not get 25 years for it but I doubt that you are going to be able to steal billions of dollars while ringing people through at the local grocery store.

There was a time that people bought investments and held them for decades. It wasn't about what it did this quarter. Access to information and technology has created this phenomenon and now stocks pass around like a cheap hooker

Yes they have to run a company to be profitable but the biggest problem we have is that there is no loyalty to companies any more so workers slack off and companies chop them like a commodity. We would be in a better situation if both were loyal to each other and productivity would be much better for it.

The numbers that ExxonMobil posted were pretty darn good for the 1st quarter. Caterpillar is projecting record profits in 2011. Apple is projecting record earnings. Corporate America isn't doing too bad for itself. Main St. is still suffering.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3d32d17c-2...#axzz1Lzw2PW6X

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_840538.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20028797-260.html

http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/ar...EPS/1296163383

 

I really don't want to go off on a rant about the common words from leftists that "Corporate/rich are doing well and the middle class is 'suffering' 'left hanging' 'losing' ect, but I have to.

In the last 10 years. Almost everyone now has a smart phone, cars are getting so much better, electronics are cheaper, healthcare is much improved, there are more forms of entertainment, internet and communication is a million times better, and the list keeps going.

Please, KMac. Tell me how the middle class is suffering. Who brought about all this good stuff that we enjoy?

Wealthy corporations, wealthy investors, and wealthy inventors.

When people can pop out babies for money, drive their cars to the welfare office, get free healthcare by just walking in, have your food paid for, free housing, and all these other programs that are funded by the WEALTHY... I don't want to hear one single complaint about how the middle class is 'suffering'. A middle class person has it 100x's nicer than the wealthiest person did not that long ago.

 

Forgot to add 'again', class warfare is BS.

 

OR the guys working for him... He still gets to take the blame.

Also, as posted above, it takes a bit more talent to run a company than a fork lift.
You yourself claim that due to someone making the investment in a higher degree ( as yourself ), they should be rewarded for it. Why not the CEO ?

And back then cars burned fuel with lead in it, and there were not cell phones. Things change...

So not a record.

Record PROFITS or earnings. Most take the 2 to be the same.
Also make note of the SWAG word ( that you seem to overlook ): projecting ( not recorded ).

Make note of the URL on Apple you posted :
If apples gross margins drop over 2% the past year, how much increase in sales would they need to post the same profit as the previous year ?

How many did they lay off this year ? I see plans of a layoff back in MAR-2011, but no confirmation of the 50 that were rumored about.

Good old Huffington lets readers infer something from what they write :
I do not see the word record for these 2, just that the profits are up from some period ( they do not even note if it is the same quarter from the previous year, or annualized estimates for this year versus last ).

The proof of record profits you provided are just water cooler talk at this point.
Wasn't GE one of the companies that did so poor last year that they got a tax credit for this year ( someone posted that overseas tax URL that was written to make people mad at corporations rather than the representatives ) ?
Not too hard to post a "massive increase" when you had a net loss for the previous year.

 

Yes technology has made everyone's lives better and worse.

My Android phone will do more than my Commadore 64 did 25 years ago.

I don't have to feed the horses that took me to town...although it may be cheaper than filling the gas tank.

Still the middle class is largely funded by credit and the hope their job is there. Most people don't have anywhere near enough money socked away to survive past a paycheck or two if they lost their job.

There are many people that went from middle class to homeless in a pretty short time.

I have little sympathy for those that are generation after generation living off of welfare. I know they are out there and that is something that needs fixed. Every once in a while you hear of a success story but there are a greater portion of them that end up mooching off of the state or guest of one of our fine chain of Gray Bar Hotels.

The reality is that things are pretty decent for most but this has eroded over time and things are getting worse. At some point we do have issues that have to be met. Cutting everything isn't going to bring down this debt we have as a nation. It may stabilize it a bit but at some point we need to raise taxes before it hits the point that everyone can pay 100% of their income in and we still run deficits.

If you are seeking to shore up your finances, you look to lower your expenses and increase your earnings. Doing one but not the other will rarely get you to the goal you need to reach.

 

If you are concerned about how people are doing financially, just remember they need to look in the mirror. They are the people responsible for their spending, not me, not you not Uncle Sam. Until last year Uncle Sam could not tell us how to spend our money it was entirely up to us to determine how and what we spent our money on. My family was one of the last on our block to have cable, because it was too expensive. Now we don't have a data plan or have the ability to send texts from our cell phones. Yet my broke brother-in-law and his wife has every possible option on their phones. They can't even pay to fill up their cars with gas, but they can make sure they have all of the options on their phones. The have direct tv and spend over $120 per month for it. He even admits they don't watch even a quarter of the channels they have. If they opted for a lower package then they wouldn't be able to brag about how many channels they have. I see this played out over and over with the many people I interact with. They spend way too much then complain that they can't afford to put anything into savings. It really is the lack of financial education for the populous that is destroying the middle class, not the desire of the wealthy to be more wealthy. Continued later.

 

Not too sure if this is reality or not. Quite a few people I see did not buy into the McMansion BS, and still stayed the same from 1994 to 2004, same house, same class of car ( did not go BMW to try to keep up with the jones ), no large expenses. I would image they had more than a few wage increases in that time frame.

If people are funding the "American dream" on credit, they are doing something stupid.

I see stories in the media where they describe the family I made note of above, but the images with the story are the McMansions. the typical thought of middle class does not have a 4,500 sqft house.
I see this as the start of the polarization of the public against each other, by making the "family of simple means" out to be a victim of the evil corporate banks.
I am sure there are the case of those just starting out, but this gets back to you do not hang yourself at the end of a rope on a rickety stool, and hope all turns out well.
Americans over time have given up on saving, it is all about consuming. What happened to 3 months of expenses in a safe liquid investment ?
You do not give this up as the down payment on a house.
If you have a kid, and this is hard to do, you should have thought twice about having kid(s). Procreation does not remove being responsible for yourself, it adds to it.

No cutting alone is not going to fix everything, but it would be a good place to start. Saying cutting alone won't fix it, and keeping things status quo only makes the hole deeper. That is what is going on for the past few years, only the revenue keeps dropping and the spending keeps going up.

True, but seeing the problem at the start is a better idea.
Why did the country need to borrow billions of dollars to do a lousy job of repaving the roads ? This was wasted money, that the interest is killing us now.
It did get a ton of union members off the bench earning for a short time again, to allow them to restart unemployment. Great idea, borrow money to allow a large block of people to start pulling off a give away program.