Congress getting richer, again Options

[knucklehead]

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Without much fanfare, the House of Representatives last week voted to give members of Congress yet another pay raise, as it has done almost every year for nearly a decade.

For some reason, our elected officials decided against holding a news conference. Maybe that's because they didn't want to draw attention to the fact that they raise their own salaries almost every year while refusing to raise the pay of our lowest-paid workers.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/20/dobbs.june21/index.html


I guess $170,000 a year just isn't enough for the necessities of life... you know... upscale houses, expensive suits, yuppie luncheons, large freezers with which to hold large sums of money, etc.

[pebkac]

What you all are saying about people earning more and spending more is all well and good, but it doesn't work in a global economy.

Phil Knight's job isn't to make life good for Americans or to be a hero and make lots of political points, his job is to make a huge profit for shareholders. If you force him to pay an American $6 or $20 or whatever dollars an hour to do a job that a Chinese person can do, and is willing to do, for $2 an hour, why WOULDN'T he hire the Chinese person?

Spectrix make a wonderful point ... remember the labor riots in France a couple months ago? The European social model is basically minimum wage taken to the extreme ... the French (parliament???) tried to pass a law saying employers were free to fire a new (couple months) young worker for no reason, because currently in France it is almost impossible to do it; the reaction was so negative (HOW COULD ANYBODY ... *GASP* LOSE THEIR JOB?!!??!!?

But if you knew you were required to pay somebody more than they were worth and that you had no legal means to fire them if they were idiots, why would anybody hire anybody ever?

Europe has tried this and failed miserably at it, they tried it in the 1940's and 50's, that's the reason the United States enjoyed, basically, 50 years of uninterrupted prosperity -- Europe had no manufacturing sector (war damage) and they had the idea that everybody deserved free money from the government just for being them ... Americans worked harder, had more and better infrastructure, and thus we were the production and export capital of the world. We aren't anymore. Minimum wage and social welfare and compassion and OSHA and pensions make it too expensive to produce goods, so we don't. China does. Have you checked the trade defecit? I wonder who's next in line for world supremacy ...

Followup question: Can you name anything France manufactures and exports? If you can't, you now know why their economy is a disaster, and you've just seen America circa 2060.

I agree with you 100%. It would be best for the economy if everyone got paid $2 an hour just like they do in China.

BTW, have you seen the living conditions in China?