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I think you are taking my comments a little out of context but that is fine since it reinforces your ideas to do so. The iraq comparison is a little silly though isn't it?
Perhaps it sounds silly outside the context of my own discussions, but while talking about whether or not we should invade Iraq, many months ago with some of my friends, one of them said that no one was forcing the Iraqis to live in Iraq, no one was forcing them to support Saddam Hussein. Thus we could infer that they wanted a brutal dictator leading their country. I disagreed with him on reasoning (though I agreed with him that we shouldn't invade - odd how different motivations can lead to the same result). Your statement that Wal-Mart workers weren't being forced to work there reminded me of that conversation.
walmart and other "unfair" wage payers as you state it, are not holding a starvation gun to anyones head. They offer jobs at the wage they are willing to pay and they get enough people to sign up. If they didn't they would raise the wage until they did. As it stands there the market rate for stocking shelves at walmart is what it is. We all have choices.
I did not say Wal-Mart is paying an unfair rate. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. The point I'm trying to make is that simply because a person is willing to work for a given wage does not mean that it is right for our society as a whole to allow that wage to be paid. As I stated, there are people willing to work for only a dollar or two an hour. There are people willing to do reprehensible things, sell themselves into sexual slavery. They do this "willingly". Simply because they see no other alternative does not mean we should nod our heads and say that it is right and do nothing to stop it. Nor does it remove the blame and responsibility from those paying them.
I believe the mentally ill are not relevent to this discussion. because they are homeless has nothing to do with walmart. Getting welfare isn't supposed to be easy, if it were we all would be getting it.
No, if getting welfare were easy, then everyone who needed it would get it. That is not ALL of us. As it is, a lot of people who need it don't get it. I don't need it right now. I have a pretty good idea of how to get it too. However, I no longer meet the criteria. So I wouldn't be able to get it. And that's how it should be. However, when I **did** meet the criteria, I went without for months because I couldn't figure out how to get welfare. That's not how it should be. When someone needs food, they need it *then*, not three months later.
the minimum wage skews the labor market by not letting the price of labor move to an equillibrium point below it if the market so determines. This also inflates prices so what you gain in a false higher wage is lost in higher prices for goods.
True. So what? As we saw in the turn of the century in the US (that's 1900, not 2000) and as we see now in other countries, people are quite willing to work in dangerous conditions for less pay than they need to eat. Corporations are quite willing to gain profits by this. We've had the grand experiment of no minimum wage and no regulation of working conditions. Go read some John Updike. Go look in an unregulated factory or assembly line. Look at GSE or the compost heap here in St. Paul if you wonder what happens when an agency is exempted from regulation or enforcement.
We have the minimum wage because it was decided that we did not want the price of labor at the equilibrium point that corporations could force it to sink to.
there is nothing utopian about free market economics. what you listed are all choices. Choices we all have to make. You may feel forced to take an unfair wage at walmart but you really choose to work there. When I say workers move, I don't mean they sell their homes. walmarts are rarely the only employer in an area. Having children is a choice and responsibility we must deal with. this doesn't mean walmart must pay me more because i have them. They can't deny me employment based on that but they don't have to pay me more than the childless person next to me. As for transportation issues. I haven't taken the bus in years because I choose to drive but when i did, I found I could get nearly anywhere as most things were within a mile from a bus route. maybe that has changed since the transit authority is taking money from the bus service and pouring it into the stagnant light rail line. If you want to improve mobility, kill the lrt and put the savings back into busses. Busses can be routed wherever you want them to go. trains cannot.
Ah, and being alive to suffer these indignities is a choice as well. By your reasoning, no one has a reason to complain of anything at all, ever, because every situation is caused by a choice the person made. You remind me of a judge who ruled my husband was at fault for being hit by someone who ran a stop sign - he told my husband "You chose to take that route to work. It's a dangerous intersection. So you're at least partly at fault for getting hit."
I do not agree with your worldview.
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