Higher minimum wage will kill entry-level jobs and economic growth

[pbrower2a]

(04-27-2021, 02:34 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [quote pid='76804' dateline='1619457901']

(04-26-2021, 10:54 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Arguably the worst bilge of the time. 

Surely the Nazi or Communists put out something worse?  . I suspect it is somewhat objective.

1920's in America, when the Soviet Union was sorting out its chaos on the way to the consolidation of power by Stalin, and of course while the Nazis were seen as cranky losers after the Beer Hall Putsch. 

The Second Klan (1915) had many of the characteristics of fascist movements. Just because it never got the chance to do large-scale genocide does not mean that it is not parallel in many ways to fascism and Nazism.

I found the lyrics at an academic site, and with some difficulty:

     The song “We Are All Loyal Klansman” was published in 1923. The lyrics are below

Quote:Verse 1

Long ago when our forefathers
In the cause of freedom spoke.
First they pleaded then demanded
Freedom from a tyrants [sic] yoke,
Finally the scales of justice,
Hung to rule the rights of man,
Proving not for self but others
Was the motto of their Klan

Chorus

We are all loyal klansmen,
And klanish as can be
We love our home, this country,
And its flag of liberty,
Its constitution handed down,
Approved by Uncle Sam,
Will always be defended
By the Ku Klux Klan

Verse 2

Selfish thoughts with idle visions
Klansmen set aside as naught
Knowing well t’wass [sic] not for these
That there [sic] fathers bravely fought,
Inspired by a kindred thought,
Each played a noble part
And left to us this native land
Dear to a klansman [sic] heart.

Chorus
We are all loyal klansmen . . .

Verse 3

When the fiery cross was burning
Sending forth its ray of light,
We pledged our life and honot
To maintain the cause of right,
And while the radicals may tremble.
At the gath’ring of the klan,
Undivided we’ll continue
One and all with Uncle Sam

Chorus

We are all loyal klansmen . . .

The distortion of history should be obvious. Clearly there was no KKK at the time of the American revolution. Both the first and by the 1920's the KKK relied heavily upon terrorism including lynching, both of which are antitheses of the justice for which the KKK claimed to stand. The emancipation of slaves and the recognition of ethnic and religious minorities are often expressions of selflessness during the Civil War, the Second World War, and the struggle for the rights of Southern blacks; bigotry against Jews and Catholics was clearly for selfish purposes (including the maintenance of the power of white Protestants, and such events as the Tulsa riot of 1921 and the destruction of Rosewood, Florida were antithetical to freedom, decency, justice, and domestic tranquility.  That's the first verse. I am sure that you would largely agree with that assessment.   

Loyalty to America requires the recognition of the God-given or inherent rights that all Americans have.
   
"Selfish thoughts with idle visions" -- well, that is capitalism for you. For the Klansman, a Jew or a Catholic operating a business was not his model of capitalism. Without the acquisitive desire, almost nobody ever starts a business. Of course, neither the American Revolution nor the Civil War was waged to protect the right to form a business, but it is safe to say that the Tulsa riot was about as pro-business as the Night of Broken Glass would be in Germany seventeen years later. Klan ideology obviously sought to negate the emancipation of blacks, so Klan pretension to stand for liberty is a clear exercise of hypocrisy at its worst. Such is the second verse, and I am sure that most of us would agree with that assessment even if refining it some.

As for selfish thoughts... I can hardly think of anything more selfish than slave-owning planters sacrificing large numbers of cannon fodder in the defense of chattel slavery.  Obviously, self-delusion is essential to fascism of any kind. The KKK had most of the features of fascism as would appear in Germany, Italy, and Japan before Mussolini even created the word fascism and before Adolf Hitler could give meaning of his choice to "National Socialism".    

"When the fiery cross was burning"... Around that time Adolf Hitler was writing Mein Kampf, and he made much of the importance of having  rallies at night. Fire is impressive, but it both illuminates and destroys, as in the book-burnings that Nazis so relished. Fire illuminates selectively and destroys wildly. Human dignity is for us all lest it be a sham -- a privilege to be abused.  This was the time when blacks had the highly-creative Harlem Renaissance, one of the few honorable trends of the 1920's.  The KKK was in no way moderate. It tried to put many moderates in the same group with the anarchists and Communists that Americans knew just after World War I. What could have been more distinctly American than the Harlem Renaissance? It may have been American by default, as it certainly did not originate in Africa. Note well that religious bigotry has never been enshrined in the Constitution of the United States, and anyone who thinks that it has an honorable role in American life can consider this:

Quote: George Washington, expressed his founding vision for America in a letter he wrote to the Hebrew congregation at Newport, Rhode Island in 1790. In this letter, Washington assured the Jewish community that “the Government of the United States...gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” and that those of all religions “who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.” 

George Washington may have not been the most learned man in America, yet he was certainly wise. One refutes the benign vision of the Founding Fathers (well, everything but slavery and male chauvinism) at grave risk to credibility as a loyal and decent American. Religious bigotry is for schmucks. 
I may not be the brightest person around, but I certainly have the will to read between the lines. Many traitors have thought  themselves the definitive patriots. Their delusion has always proved wrong.
[/quote]
(I had more to say).

[willa2]

Part of the reason that the USA is a police state now is because Americans believe that they are exempt from tyranny and freedom doesn't benefit them.

Americans don't care if coffee is illegal if they don't drink coffee.

Americans don't mind unconstitutional NSA surveillance if Americans think that only Muslims and negroes are being wiretapped.

[Eric the Green]

Lower minimum wage will kill entry-level jobs and economic growth

[pbrower2a]

(04-29-2021, 09:15 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Lower minimum wage will kill entry-level jobs and economic growth

Yes.

There are people who can work, but their productivity is so low or difficulty of managing them is so great that they could never qualify for the minimum wage. This might be so with people with extreme physical or mental impairment. Maybe they are the sorts of people that the overall society can meet their needs (and they often have other problems related to mental or physical disabilities) while they pretend to do productive work. Such people may belong in sheltered workshops where they may be protected from hucksters and disreputable people. They are gullible and must often be kept away from people who would exploit them for criminal purposes, as in offering the "fun" of participation in a crime such as armed robbery.

Let's recall that the high-tech capitalists of their time -- when those were the likes of Rockefeller, Edison, Westinghouse, Ford, and Bell -- sought to offer what were then luxuries to a mass market for their wares. They needed a market for their fuels, electrical goodies, and vehicles. The found that the sorts of people making their products would have to be the people buying their products. 

I know more about Henry Ford than about any of the others. He was not a nice person, and he was not generous toward workers out of charity or idealism. He offered a $5-a-day wage about 100 years ago for people to work on his assembly line to make his cheap cars. Those workers (the $5 a day is in fact higher in real terms than a recent starting wage at a Ford plant) of course were expected to work hard at difficult, often numbing work. They were doing better than such people as middle-class schoolteachers and clergy of the time. They were also expected to become full participants in the consumer society that $5 a day would then allow. 

OK, work as Ford demanded of you, and you certainly did not deserve poverty. Working at a Ford plant meant that you could afford a Ford vehicle... and you were expected to own one. Had capitalism stuck to the norm of Marx' time in which industrial toil had destitution as a perquisite, then Ford would have  had no market for his dreadful cars. And, yes, the Model T Ford really was an awful car.

 

Its engine was one of the least powerful on the market. It did not have safety glass. It originally had a carbide light that one had to stop the car to turn on. It infamously had no fuel pump, so people often had to drive in reverse to go up a hill. A car like this would not be street legal after about 1935, when highway speeds were close to those of today on all but rural superhighways... and the Model T could not meet those speeds. Just look at the car shown above and ask yourself whether even in a low-speed collision you had a satisfying chance of survival. It was basically the Trabant of its day. 

But for many people the choice was between the Model T Ford and no car at all.   

There always was a conflict between employers who sought to pay workers badly and those who saw the need to give workers strong incentives to their jobs well and at adequate pace.

[DettoLalo]

What will supporters of the police state say when their beloved police come to arrest them for racist hate speech, confiscate their guns, and force them to board trains headed to the concentration camps?