(04-13-2021, 02:24 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(04-12-2021, 11:35 PM)Einzige Wrote:True, it's nothing more than an alternative means that's being used by the left to achieve the same result. I'll give you credit, you don't mince words and you're more honorable and a bit smarter than the typical Democratic minded Progressive these days. So, what are you going to be doing during the cultural war that's coming soon. Are you going to be living like a renegade Indian while we're settling our obvious differences with the Democratic party? You're right, the only thing the Democrats and us have in common is that we are both directly related to capitalism, currently related to the same country and we are humans. The Democrats think they're God like but in reality, they're just humans among humans.(04-12-2021, 09:54 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(04-03-2021, 09:43 AM)David Horn Wrote:I think you should go big and impose 60$. You won't have much of an economy left but whatever, that's beside the point.(04-02-2021, 12:21 PM)Anthony Wrote: Not surprisingly, I agree with Joe Manchin. Let's go to $11 an hour for now - so long as the minimum wage is thereafter indexed to an "unchained" CPI once the minimum wage does reach that figure.
And the Democrats have only themselves to blame - because of the Culture Wars, which they started - for being forced to compromise on this, and so many other issues.
$15 is low today and far outdated by the time it finally arrives. $11 is an insult. If the minimum had kept pace since 1973, it would be $20+. I do agree that the laser focus on culture issues has been much of the problem. It seems to be that advancement on trend line A must be offset by stagnation on trend line B. It’s not right, but it seems to be the case. And no, I don’t have a solution for that.
The fact of the matter is that wage labor and money are almost entirely arbitrary. Why do cooks make ten an hour? Why not fifty, or fifteen, or five hundred? If adjusted radically upwards l, would not everything else adjust itself according to the "natural laws of the market" given time?
But this isn't an argument for increasing the minimum wage. It's an argument for the abolition of wage labor.
There's th Left-Wing Of Capital, i.e. Democrats (even very liberal ones like Sanders etc.), and the Revolutionary Left. And the two want entirely different things, even if a lot of the rhetoric sounds superficially similar.
I don't want a minimum wage hike, not necessarily because I am concerned with prices (there is very little evidence that controlled minimum wage increases correlate to price inflation) but because it reinforces wage labor, which is a social relationship with a definite history (e.g. most Egyptians, Roman's etc. did not work for wages as we understand them except when they worked for the State in various capacities) and therefore a definite end.
Money, again, is illusory. This is why e.g. I can go to a place like Laos or Vietnam, rent a very modest (<100k) American house out here while I'm gone, and live an upper middle class life - why will $700 a month get me a hovel in the U.S. and a normal middle class life (except for some high end consumer electronics or cars, neither of which I care about) in Hanoi? I can literally pay for all my needs and a good few wants from one low end rental property here, whereas I'd need to own dozens in Vietnam or Indinwsia to finance a life here. Why is money valued differently in different places if it expresses timeless universals? Is being in Vietnam really that much worse than being in America? No, almost certainly not, unless you are bourgeois and have business interests here.
Because money is not real. It is a social abstraction. You'd probably agree to the extent that fiat money is a thing - to which I would remind you that money was backed by all kinds of shit before the implementation of the gold standard in the nineteenth century.
The Democrats etc. are not about to abolish it. They just want the illusion of money to appear a little more pleasant.