Minimum wage & The cost of living

jay helfert said:
Less than 1% of the people control over 90% of the wealth. You figure out the math.

I have a theory that if everyone had the same amount of money to start with, by taking the $$$ away from the rich and give it to poor, in other words everyone in America would have the same size bankroll, in 10 years the $$$ would make its way to the people that have $$$ now,

I have seen so many people here in Vegas who make $35-$50K/yr make $100K-$200K on their houses with the realestate boom, and most of them one way or another blow the equity they made in the boom and now are at risk of losing their houses because they have higher payments and they are still making their 35-50K/yr witch sucks. And have nothing to show for the profit they made.

Its getting tough out there for almost everyone I know rich or poor, rich people have problems too, its not the rent but defending themselfs against bogus lawsuits or peoiple taking shots at them etc, I have been in both spots and while having $$$ is the nicer of the 2 it isnt the bed of roses that most people think it is, there is alot of responsibility and different problems you would never think of until you get there, i cant imagine what its like for the big guys, life is difficult at all levels, so enjoy what you can when you can.
 
td873 said:
Derek Curtis Bok -> "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." This quote has many implications, but financially: it might cost you $20K-50K to go through college. Assume that you only make 10K more per year with a college education (which is a really low number). In 40 years (when your retire) you will have lost out on $350K ($400K-$50K education) by not going to college. If you make 20K more a year, then you're out $800K. And if you take raises etc into account, you can figure the difference is more than a million dollars.

People can complain how hard it is to make a living, or get an education, or do this or do that. But the truth is, lots of people do whatever it takes to improve themselves. Even if it means sacrificing for a short time to make it to the "other side." If the will is there, they find a way.

If having an extra million+ dollars over your lifetime isn't motivation, IMO, $5.00 milk is the least of your worries...

-td <- worked for me


You're not kidding about it being expensive. I'm in my last year as an undergraduate, and w/o a full scholarship I probably wouldn't be able to attend the school I do. Even with the "full" scholarship, I'm still dropping a considerable amount of $ per year.. :eek: Next Fall I'll being going to law school and presumably be paying about $55,000 to $60,000 a year, when you include cost of living. I have no clue as to how I'll pay for it; I'll probably have to take out $180,000 in loans.:( But, assuming one gets through school, careers in law pay very well.

BTW, in my home state, milk is only $2.50, and regular unleaded gas is only $2.80.

-S
 
thyme3421 said:
I'd like to hear more on this..... oh, and no, I'm not attacking you, just the tv show. Oh, and one more thing... I mean the following in good humor, don't take me too seriously.
Ever

But I don't see how using Solar energy, or wind energy, or battery powered cars are going to reduce the amount of grass for the cows to consume.

Well, unless of course we're blocking out the sun with our huge solar panels and the grasses of the random fields that cows feed on are dying because of lack of sunlight. Along with this our massive solar panels from hell will be blocking the wind, not allowing the trees to grow thick strong trunks and rise into the skies above our solar panel apocalypse, eliminating the need for a balanced atomosphere... and then our alternate fuels were pretty much wasted researching into them. :)
And naturally the acid from the batteries are giving off so many fumes that our old fashioned fossil fuels can't keep up/counteract. lol

hmmm.... poor cows

stupid television.

Here's the answer that you want to hear more of:

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Lets get back to the topic of this thread - high milk prices linked to Ethenal Alky in the persuit of reducing global warming. It is going to get more expensive.

Nation
Milk Costs Surge Due to Corn
by Sarah McCammon

Weekend Edition Saturday, July 14, 2007 ? As high as gas prices are, milk is more expensive. And the high prices for both can be traced to the high cost of another commodity: corn.

Just a year ago, quite a few dairy farmers were calling it quits. The fuel and grain needed to run a dairy were getting more expensive, and farmers were getting such low prices for their milk that it was hard to make ends meet. So some cut back their herd sizes or sold off their cows and got out of the business altogether.

What a difference a year makes. Feeding cows still isn't cheap, but this year, milk prices are rising to near-record levels and farmers are hoping to see more income.

Higher milk prices mean customers are paying more at Amy Green's ice cream shop in downtown Lincoln, Neb. A small cone will set you back $3.50 before tax ? up from $2.95 just a few months ago.

Green said she's now paying an extra $150 a week for the rich butterfat she uses to make old-fashioned, slow-churned ice cream.

"I've been serving ice cream for 23 years, and it's really hard for me to say that it will be $16 to a family of four for, you know, four cones. It just feels wrong. But I have no choice," Green said.

The retail price for a gallon of whole milk tops $3, and experts predict it will soon set a new record.

Several factors are creating a sort of "perfect storm" for milk prices this summer. Americans are drinking more milk. Add to that, droughts in major milk-producing countries like Australia.

But another key factor is the demand for ethanol, according to Chris Galen, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation. Ethanol is increasingly being used as an alternative fuel for gasoline.

"Everyone is paying more for feed; and it's not just corn," he said, noting that the increase in corn plantings means there's less acreage available for soybeans and for alfalfa. "So the products that go into cows that make milk are much higher than they've typically been in the past."

One year ago, it cost about $2 for a bushel of corn. Now that price has nearly doubled.

Galen says when you pile that on top of high fuel prices and last year's low milk prices, it has been hard for the dairy industry to respond to the growing demand.

It's a warm summer afternoon on Lowell Mueller's dairy farm about 70 miles north of Lincoln. Wearing a red and white baseball cap and a short-sleeved plaid shirt, Mueller and a farmhand usher a new group of cows ? eight at a time ? into the small barn that holds his milking machines.

He considers himself one of the lucky ones because he grows his own corn, soybeans and alfalfa. But even he struggled last year to make back what he was spending to produce milk. Mueller says he's hoping things will improve this year.

"Milk prices are a little higher, but unfortunately our costs have gotten a little higher too. So it's always tough to keep up with all the escalating costs," he said.

Industry leaders predict milk prices could top out this summer at about $4.60 a gallon, which just might make a gallon of gasoline look like a bargain.

Sarah McCammon reports for member station Nebraska Public Radio.
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ShaneS said:
Next Fall I'll being going to law school and presumably be paying about $55,000 to $60,000 a year, when you include cost of living. I have no clue as to how I'll pay for it; I'll probably have to take out $180,000 in loans.:( But, assuming one gets through school, careers in law pay very well.
I don't remember law school and living being quite that expensive. And I went to law school in NY... But it was worth it ;)

-td
 
ineedaspot said:
I agree completely about the point that there is no objective measure about the good of society. My point of view, and my objection to the libertarianism, has much to do with flaws in the classical notion of economic efficiency via clearing markets. Based on your knowledge of the subject, you are likely aware of various critiques along these lines--e.g. the mathematical unsoundness of aggregating demand using representative agents, for one, and the inability of the market to optimize over longer time horizons is another--even if you don't agree with them.

No, I'm not really aware of those critiques. My knowledge of economics follows from the golden rule as top dog. If something is to be implemented by force, it won't work in the long run....that I know.

ineedaspot said:
IMHO how price controls and redistributionist policies affect the market, while important, is not the central issue. The ultimate goal is to improve the elusive "well-being of society", and the market is only one of many tools we have. Even though "well-being" is ill-defined, it's still the goal, and we are forced into a normative judgement: substituting "GDP growth" or any narrow definition of "economic efficiency" for "well-being" is no good.

This I don't understand at all. First you agree that objective measurment of societal value is impossible and then you argue for that very goal, just without a definition. confused.

ineedaspot said:
For obvious reasons, GDP is not a good measure of well-being: social inequality, happiness vs. wealth issues, "keeping up with the Joneses" etc. This is no secret: everyone knows about problems with the GDP, so the question is why is its use prevalent as a default economic objective? Why is the US GDP offered as a response to the issue of poverty, when it's trivial that high GDP does not imply low poverty? Why not use "gross national happiness" like in Bhutan, or at least use a concave utility function? The law diminishing returns, without which microeconomics basically grinds to a halt, somehow disappears from the discussion of high-level economic ends.

GDP is not the free market is it? Isn't it a measure of it all...a measure made by govt? My personal happiness is all I can control but I need others to trade with in order to do that. The less interference with that is good...for me.

ineedaspot said:
When faced with things that are obviously, prima facie, "bad" such as rampant poverty, why do we so often hear the excuse "that's the free market, the other option is Stalinist labor camps"? No serious person believes that the only options are Gulag or unregulated free market.

I see two reasons for this. First, the classical/libertarian theory of free markets is really simple to understand--supply meets demand, don't mess with it--in contrast to the complex intertwined realities of economics, politics, and society. It's a case of "every problem has a solution which is simple, elegant, and wrong".

The second reason is that it favors the wealthy, powerful and entrenched. History, as they say, is written by the winners, and so is economics. In particular, the US economy, when measured by more plausible "social good" scales, is no longer king of the world. "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." -JK Galbraith

Everything favors the wealth, powerful...not so sure about the entrenched as they are many times the first to fall to a new idea. Economics is and the writing of it matters little. What matters is the price of milk to me.

Selfishness is. Whether it is justifiable or not matters not. I do for me. You do for you. He does for himself.... It can be no other way. Even if I do for you, I did that to satisfy myself by helping you. The satisfaction was mine and the deed done for that. There is no other way for selves to act.

Jeff Livingston
 
ineedaspot said:
The government also does what we as a society grant it to; in fact, it's through the government that corporations are granted the power to do what they do.

The govt does not do what "we" grant it to. "We" don't decide anything. The individuals in govt act as do others: for the self. So, losing power to govt ends up bad for me in the long run.

ineedaspot said:
As for stealing, presumably you mean taxation, which is only stealing in a loose philosophical sense. You will admit that some taxation is necessary in order to protect private property, uphold contracts, national defense etc... zero taxation is impossible. Is it only theft if the money is spent in certain ways? Who gets to decide?

I won't speak for Shane, but who decides? Me, with MY money; you with YOUR money. What services do you want? Buy 'em. Yes, contract enforcement, etc. can be purchased on the market...unless some force prevents that.

ineedaspot said:
On the other hand, is monopolistic price-fixing or oligopolistic collusion not tantamount to stealing? If I own the only well in town and charge everyone $100 for a glass of water, is that just the free market doing its thing? Is it right that people are denied health care because they don't have enough money, while CEOs to sit on boards and grant themselves huge bonuses on behalf of shareholders who have essentially no say in the matter? Do CEO bonuses actually correlate to long-term performance? Is there any evidence to believe that CEO pay levels set by current market conditions are economically justified, other than the circular justification that the market set the pay, so it must be right?

Stealing means one is deprived, without permission, of property. CEO bonuses (where'd that come from?) have nothing to do with that.

Re your "only well in town" story... I, being a selfish, greedy person would immediately order as much bottled water as I could afford delivered asap and resell it for much less than $100 a glass. End of absurdity.

Jeff Livingston
 
Any time minimum wage is increased it messes with the value of an already slipping US dollar. Instead of raising minimum wage why dont we look at how some jobs dont even make minimum wage.
Minimum wage in MA is $7.50 set to go up to $8.00 in January, people employed by Dunkin Donuts make $5 an hour plus tips. Who tips and Dunkin Donuts where half the time your order is wrong because a bunch of high school dropouts work there?
I make more than minimum and I will be 19 on friday. Dont take the crappy Dunkin Donuts job if you dont want to make crappy money.

The price of goods will never exceed what the market can bear. We all complain about paying $3 a gallon for gas, but we all manage to.

Ben
 
railfirst said:
Any time minimum wage is increased it messes with the value of an already slipping US dollar. Instead of raising minimum wage why dont we look at how some jobs dont even make minimum wage.
Minimum wage in MA is $7.50 set to go up to $8.00 in January, people employed by Dunkin Donuts make $5 an hour plus tips. Who tips and Dunkin Donuts where half the time your order is wrong because a bunch of high school dropouts work there?
I make more than minimum and I will be 19 on friday. Dont take the crappy Dunkin Donuts job if you dont want to make crappy money.

The price of goods will never exceed what the market can bear. We all complain about paying $3 a gallon for gas, but we all manage to.

Ben
we all manage to? what choice do we have?
 
railfirst said:
get a hybrid car, ride a bike, carpool, reduce un-necessary travel...

Ben

My Yamaha scooter gets about 80 or 90 mpg. I ride it down to the beach on weekends, and once a month I put a gallon of gas in it. Terrible huh.
 
railfirst said:
ride a bike

On a funny, related note.....I saw a guy the other day riding to the pool hall on a bike.....he was in the same shopping center as the bar, headed in that direction on his bike, with a case on his back.......as he passed, I was trying to figure out what he had on his back.....sure enough, it was a pool cue case :D

Truth be told, he seemed to be staggering and so a DUI might have been the cause of his new healthy, cost effecient lifestyle :D
 
more and more cars today are made to get better fuel economy.
Im not saying everyone needs to ride a bike i was responding to the comment that there was no alternative to paying so much for gas (you could always get a motorcycle). I put gas in my car about every 6 days for right around $30.
As long as we continue to do this gas prices will be high. I dont like paying so much for gas but it doesnt break my bank account either. I also dont make minimum wage either.


Ben
 
PoolSharkAllen said:
If you think milk is overpriced, yesterday I had a coffee date with someone and paid $1.80 for a bottle of water at Starbucks. :rolleyes: Where's the outrage over the price of bottled water costing more than a gallon of gasoline? :eek:

Good point. I think it was AquaFina that just settled a lawsuit to disclose they are really just getting thier water from public water supply.
That's tap water.
People will spend $18.00 a gallon for Starbucks Frappacino and $10.00 a gallon for water you can get at home...but will complain about $3.00 a gallon gasoline that has to be shipped from the other side of the planet, refined, and then taxed to death by both states and feds alike. It might sound like I am justifying the oil companies, but I am not. Oil price is set by the free market. We are the victims of our own behavior on that one. Most people in this world waste a lot of thier hard earned money. We just all do it in different ways.
 
man, are gasoline prices HIGH! Those dirty rotten oil companies and their record profits make me SO mad. How much do they pocket per gallon??? I mean, all they do is either buy it from someone else (or drill for it in some cases), get it here, refine it (in antique refineries, I might add; can't build new one's - 'nother topic all together), and then get it to stations all around the country. How much $$$ do they get to do that? Alot less than our government gets for each gallon.....what do they do for their RECORD profits off of gasoline? They try to tax those same oil companies more for winfall profits....hilarious....drive up the price some more Congress. GEESH!
 
jay helfert said:
My Yamaha scooter gets about 80 or 90 mpg. I ride it down to the beach on weekends, and once a month I put a gallon of gas in it. Terrible huh.

OK but what do you do in the winter ? ... oh ya, never mind :o

Dave
 
DaveK said:
OK but what do you do in the winter ? ... oh ya, never mind :o

Dave

Winter? What's that? Where I live there ain't no Winter. When it goes down to 50 degrees at night in December, they put it on the news. Cold spell hits L.A.!
 
I apologize, I've only read 6 or 7 pages of this read. I'm currently "working" at the moment. I'm putting some time in at a hospital, helping fill prescriptions. It's somewhat slow at the moment.

Some of you may or may not know, I wrote my senior thesis on terrorism. It took me a year and 35 pages of work. I only talked about The collapse of Marxist left-wing groups in Europe and the rise of Sunni fundamentalism. Classical terrorism has existed since the French revolution. It's something that isn't easy to discuss in a paragraph or two. Although it's been very interesting reading. I won't comment on the war in Iraq, and how it relates to my academic pursuit. Simply, because I could ramble on for several pages. the current war on terrorism is definately going in an interesting direction. At the risk of oversimplifying, it's my opinion Al Qaeda is having trouble in Europe and parts of the Middle East, while slowly solidifying in South Asia. Although you can't judge the safety (or lack thereof) of the US in a 5 or 6 year span. It has to be judged over 10 to 20 years. Only because you need a solid data set.

Now, onto the minimum wage. When I was in high school. I was paid minimum wage. I was paid minimum wage because I was 16. I had no education, or skill set to offer. I quickly realized I wanted something more for my future. So I obtained a degree in political science. (smart I know.)

Here in Thailand all of my neighbors want to go to the United States. They want their kids to learn english. They want them to become doctors. As some of you can account for, it's an honorable profession in this country. Most of my neighbors are farmers and most will never see the world outside of Thailand. As a Peace Corps volunteer I hope their kids do.

I've learned not to get upset over little things in life. The price of gas or milk goes up, and soon enough it goes down. There are more important things in life, like family, or loyalty, duty, integrity. I'd like to take the opportunity to say I miss my family. I also miss Taco Bell.
 
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matthew said:
I apologize, I've only read 6 or 7 pages of this read. I'm currently "working" at the moment. I'm putting some time in at a hospital, helping fill prescriptions. It's somewhat slow at the moment.

Some of you may or may not know, I wrote my senior thesis on terrorism. It took me a year and 35 pages of work. I only talked about The collapse of Marxist left-wing groups in Europe and the rise of Sunni fundamentalism. Classical terrorism has existed since the French revolution. It's something that isn't easy to discuss in a paragraph or two. Although it's been very interesting reading. I won't comment on the war in Iraq, and how it relates to my academic pursuit. Simply, because I could ramble on for several pages. the current war on terrorism is definately going in an interesting direction. At the risk of oversimplifying, it's my opinion Al Queda is having trouble in Europe and parts of the Middle East, while slowly solidifying in South Asia. Although you can't judge the safety (or lack thereof) of the US in a 5 or 6 year span. It has to be judged over 10 to 20 years. Only because you need a solid data set.

Now, onto the minimum wage. When I was in high school. I was paid minimum wage. I was paid minimum wage because I was 16. I had no education, or skill set to offer. I quickly realized I wanted something more for my future. So I obtained a degree in political science. (smart I know.)

Here in Thailand all of my neighbors want to go to the United States. They want their kids to learn english. They want them to become doctors. As some of you can account for, it's an honorable profession in this country. Most of my neighbors are farmers and most will never see the world outside of Thailand. As a Peace Corps volunteer I hope their kids do.

I've learned not to get upset over little things in life. The price of gas or milk goes up, and soon enough it goes down. There are more important things in life, like family, or loyalty, duty, integrity. I'd like to take the opportunity to say I miss my family. I also miss Taco Bell.

Thanks for your post Matthew, and thanks for being part of the Peace Corps. You are highly qualified to discuss integrity, morality, loyalty and duty.
 
Think again about whingeing at $3 per gallon........you could be in Britain where it's $9 per gallon;)
 
jay helfert said:
Thanks for your post Matthew, and thanks for being part of the Peace Corps. You are highly qualified to discuss integrity, morality, loyalty and duty.


Thanks Jay, although I would like to add something to my post. I was in a bit of a hurry, and I didn't have time to edit it.

While I'm by no means completely driven by the acquisition of money in life. I do understand the value of a hard earned dollar, and the pride in putting food on your family's table. I by no means wish to insult someone's economic status. However, I think if one gets paid minimum wage, it's because of a lack of a specific skill set. There's a reason a surgeon gets paid more than a Mcdonalds employee.

Also, I"m not exactly sure why I didn't note this before. Within the framework for terrrorism there exists a broad spectrum of social, political and religious viewpoints. Some more extreme than others. As I'm sure many of you know, it's definately a field not limited to Al Qaeda style Islamic fundamentalism. Despite what's been dominating the news the last few years.

I've got to get back to the drug store. Stay out of trouble.
 
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