The only reason the far-lefties haven't already destroyed this nation is because the far-righties fight them tooth and nail.  AND VICE VERSA.
I am one of those useless, disqusting people in the middle (or maybe to the right of the middle).

You mean you actually think for yourself and examine the issues on your own??!! Tisk, risk... so sad for America.

Clarke sucks! I admit he talks a good game, but his agency is so screwed up under his leadership. I work/deal with his agency on a daily basis. There is no way in hell he would be a good president or anything bigger than a sheriff of a medium sized city.

Are you telling me that YouTube sound bites aren't enough support somebody for president??!! What??!! This is shocking!! Oh dear... how in the world will we ever decide on a president?? I'm so confused and lost now... 

Raising the minimum has a snowball effect on all wages.  Union workers who have contracts for pay at some multiple of the minimum, supervisors and managers who won't work for less than the people they supervise, people earning more than minimum who won't appreciate the new guy getting paid the same as they are.  It also causes price inflation all down the line.  It isn't just a matter of paying the lowest paid workers a little more.

Really? So if they did raise the minimum wage (which for the 95th time I am not really advocating!) you're telling me your personal income will go up? You're going to get a raise? I doubt that very much. We have had a minimum wage for decades through numerous administrations and our countries inflation rate has stayed low and in check. Minimum wage has not caused a runaway inflation problem and history has born that out.

I'm just curious though, how much do you think a raise in minimum wage will bump the inflation rate up? I seriously doubt it would go beyond a quarter, or maybe a half of a percent.

You did say it in your earlier post but maybe you didn't realize that you said it.  If the minimum wage is tied to a fixed formula based on the cost of living AND employes raise their prices to pay for the new higher wages then that raises the cost of living, doesn't it?  Ergo, wages must go up again to maintain the living wage and it's an escalating cycle.  Eventually the higher prices will eliminate the need for the job unless it stabilizes before that.

This makes the assumption that the entire economy hinges on the lowest paid workers and that a change in the minimum wage makes a huge... in Trump speak, YUUUGE difference. This is just not the case. While it is true that the cost is passed on to the consumer and raises the price, the amount of money is negligible in the overall economy. There is no need to fear a "critical mass" and runaway inflation. If you're worried about inflation, pray we never get any significant tax cuts for the middle class!

A Happy Meal is gross and I don't care whether it's cheaper or not.  If we get rid of guest workers, we will have to fill in with American workers.  We have close to a million foreign workers in the US, doing jobs that Americans could do.  We are paying people not to work while we bring someone in from another country to do a job.  It would be a more moral use of government to encourage and train people in real job skills and not replace them with cheap overseas labor.  The government should operate to benefit the citizens of the country, not to screw them over.

So, it's simple and elegant plan. Get rid of the foreigners (including the high paid white collar ones too I assume), get rid of any kind of government assistance, get rid of the minimum wage, let the market find out how low we can go and then the lazy poorly educated Americans will rise to the occasion and become productive with little incentive other than they may not starve to death. Oh yeah, and hit 'em with a flat tax too!

There's just one yuuuuge problem with that plan. There is a middle ground between marginal employment and starving to death. That is crime.

If you push the marginal people to these extremes, they will turn to crime for sure. The worst that can happen to them then is they go to jail and get taken care of. If they think they can be good at crime they think they can work their way up and let's face it, everybody thinks they are smarter than the average bear but a very, very few actually are. Let's see... pay whatever we do now, or put these people up at the Holiday Inn for the rest of their lives... hmmm.

Now you might say, "Well, we'll make prison so horrible that they would never pick that option!!" Never minding international standards for prison standards, let's say that is implemented and prison becomes like it was in say the 18th century. This is the point at which you now have an insurrection and an uprising. This is where people like ISIS move in like a cancer. This is why most countries pay their worthless people to settle the hell down.

How do I say we fix it???

• Admit that we will always have poor people in this country. In fact capitalism demands it.
• Admit that it is worth the money to take care of these people on the front end rather than prison.
• Work to reduce the numbers of poor by breaking the cycle of poverty and by real rehabilitation.
• Pay young women living below the poverty line to not have children. Basically cash for no kids.
• Those women living below the poverty line that do have kids, you give quality free day care and primary education of their kids.
• Set up real education and work programs programs for those that apply themselves, that have guaranteed jobs after graduation for people in prison.
• Advocate and support trade schools, apprenticeship programs and specialized skill boot camps rather than just college after high school.

If we do these things we will shrink the poor population and the cost to support the poor population gets lower and lower. More and more people will have a better basic education and even a work ethic that can set them on paths to living above the minimum wage rather than just becoming career minimum wage earners.

The problem we have now is we have a whole class of people that are either totally unemployable, or are so learning impaired that pushing a broom is all they can do in life. Numerous studies have shown that this learning impairment that creates this cycle of poverty begins before a child even goes to the first grade. Basically learning impaired people are teaching the next generation of learning impaired people how to be useless.

Break this cycle and we have less poor people, less expense to support poor people and less need for a minimum wage. To put all this in the context of this thread, we basically need a minimum wage because we are now stuck with a whole group of marginal workers who's entire career is going to be at, or near the minimum wage because they are learning impaired and by the time they are adults, it is very difficult to change that.

Maybe I'm in? I don't know those guys. Who are they?

In the mean time, a high minimum wage presents an impediment to hiring young people to do low-skilled jobs, something that probably every single one of us did when we were young.  Today's unemployment rate among young people age 16-24 is in the 17-18% range. On 1/1/2000 it was 9.4%.

I personally said nothing about a high minimum wage. That is your assumption. When got my first paycheck in 1979, it was a mandated minimum wage. They somehow found the money for me. If it were much less, I never would have taken that job. Even then I could figure out ways to make money by myself.

Today's youth unemployment is because the kids don't want to work and their helicopter parents coddle them, support them and allow them to not work. In addition, many have learned that they are better off working for themselves with contract work under the table, so they are not tracked.

So what about the people who, due to the high cost to employers to hire someone, cannot get a job?  If i have to pay more then I either raise my prices, necessitating another rise in the minimum wage, etc...or I expect more from fewer people, which is where most companies head.  A higher minimum wage means fewer jobs and an ever increasing gap between the working and the indigent.

Before this, I would say a great start would be to remove temporary foreign workers from the job force.

France has this model. Youth unemployment is sky high.

I never said anything about raising the minimum wage, just that we need a minimum wage. For a person who is trying to survive and live as an adult, what is the point in having a job that you work at for 40 hours a week and you still can't pay your bills and you live in poverty?

Why do you think that removing the foreign workers will get you your Happy Meal cheaper? So the idea is to remove the artificial base wage, but then artificially increase demand for labor and thereby raise the wages back up?? Here again, the McDonald's owner now has to either hire less people because they cost so much, cut into his own bottom line, or charge the customer more.

The owner will do as they always have. They will hire the minimum they need to run the place and then if that costs more than it used to, they will raise the prices. Just because wages are lower does not mean employers will go out on hiring spree. They only need what they need regardless of what it costs.

France does not have this model. France pays people even when they are not working at all. I am not suggestion we do that at all. France does not suffer because it has a minimum wage. It has problems greater than that and yet notice how France does not crumble and fall into financial ruin. If you're going to go all straw man, at least pick some place that actually has failed like Greece as your example.

I think we should just go back to the old days. Whoever has the most guns and weapons wins.