by Sixstrings » Tue 29 Mar 2016, 16:56:14
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', 'S')o clearly $35.00 an hour isn't enough. But we know this from experience -- the liberals are NEVER satisfied when it comes to such policies.
So okay, let's just raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and get some Australian / Canadian type polices and then we can STILL have liberal vs. conservative arguments.
But your family would be better off for it (surely you have kids or nephews or nieces or extended family that are struggling).
I wonder what conservatives and liberals argue about, in Canada and New Zealand and Australia.
They don't have as much poverty as we do, I know that much.
So why can't we just raise all the boats just a bit, and then we can still have conservative vs. liberal arguments like they do in Canada, yet there wouldn't be so many poor people and things like diabetics going without insulin.
(In places like Canada and UK, the conservatives and liberals argue about little things like whether to privatize a bit of their healthcare or not.. but the arguments are not about whether people should have basic healthcare to start with, or basic things like overtime pay and minimum wage, their line of debate is further left than ours.. but yet they still have conservatives and their conservatives do just fine, and they still get to have arguments between liberals and conservatives.. all I'm saying is we ought to move our sliding scale a bit left, in the US.
I'd rather have conservatives like Stephen Harper, that don't think diabetics should just go without any kind of healthcare at all, etc. etc.)
P.S. Let me tell you the kind of think that influences my opinions. A lot of it is local. I saw this on my local tv station one day, it was a guy from Doctors Without Borders. A British volunteer doctor. And they did a free healthcare day in my county.
And the guy said that it's funny, they used to just go to places like Honduras and Guatamala etc. And the issue there is that often, there is no doctor or hospital at all, within a hundred miles.
But yet in the US, there are doctors and hospitals all over the place.. *but yet they may as well be a hundred miles away*, to the people that have no insurance or money to pay for it.
So isn't that kind of sad, no? That we have to have that kind of thing in this country, Doctors Without Borders camps?
2nd P.S. -- I'll admit to some hypocrisy though. Just to be fair and objective.
Me being so much into this issue is really LOCAL, for me. My state has one of the highest income disparity levels. And I've seen my area go downhill over the years, it used to be a lot nicer.
I get panhandled for spare change, just when I try to go out and about.
I have to drive out of my way, to get to a better part of town where there aren't so many poor folks.
I live in a Republican governed red state, and ALL the red states, are the worst as far as poverty goes, versus the blue states. You can just look at that poverty map I posted upthread, the red states are a sea of red. Brighter red on that map, is more poverty.
But anyhow having said all that --
I wouldn't vote to pay one penny more in property taxes, or raising the sales tax, or me paying a state income tax. So yeah, I've got some hypocrisy.
BUT JUST ON THE FACTS -- the top 1% and top 5% really could pay a bit more taxes, especially the top 1%. When you look at the wealth transfer that happened, it really did go from the working and middle on up to the very top. It wasn't the other way around.
Working and middle class is tapped out, the money is with the millionaires and billionaires.
I'm not all for socialism either, yes that can go too far, but it's just a balance. Things shouldn't be all far right OR all far left, and I guess we all just have a different definition of what that balance is.
ANYHOW this thread should be positive. This is a good thing California did, and you all will see in six years that things get a bit better in California. You'll see that business could pay that $15 minimum wage, after all, and nobody notices anything different except less poverty.
California has taken the first step, and New York state will probably be next, and then we all know how this goes -- congress will finally raise the federal to like $12 an hour.
And that extra one or two dollars really does help a lot of people out.