Victory Dance...
"I fixed my computer, I fixed my computer!!" It's true...I fixed it myself, and it's running like a champ.
Waka, you big shit....I'll remember that...it's only a bike fer christ sake....
You'll all be sorry when I'm gone...
Your gonna say, I shoulda let old Hammy ride the bike. And it will be too late.
Thanks WDKY for the advice. It really helped. You're an angel.....
FS5 you should link that pic. I figured you'd find it...ya smart little computer type dude, you.
Not that I feel sorry for her, working for the Bush Admin would give me a migraine too.
Firestarter, I have to say the photo's on yer blog are shitty as all hell and nauseating to the eye teeth, but I have to back Israel on this one. With all due respect to the truly innocent, at least Israel doesn't dick around. They give 'em a warning to cut the shit, and if they don't they rain bombs. Better than what we're doing: using your military personnel for cannon fodder and spending $300 billion and 4 years dip shitting around. Israel has always played it straight with terrorists. I'm sure this comment will ignite a shit storm but that's how I see it... It sometimes seems that in the Middle East, Israel can do no right, but everyone else is cut the slack. When was the last time anyone heard of Israel sending suicide bombers into other peoples countries? I realize it all stems back to the original 1917 agreement with Britain, which was a big jacked up deal, and the mess of the Balfour declaration. But the bottom line is every time Israel does a "land for peace deal" the other side gets the land and never manages to keep the peace. It's a lotta crap. Lebanon is as dirty as all the rest...
As for minimum wage (as long as I'm on a run) there is NO EVIDENCE that raising wages cuts jobs. NO EVIDENCE. Even among economists surveyed in 2003 only 46% agreed with the statement that raising minimum wage cuts jobs. People who work deserve to be able to live. There is no such thing as an "unskilled job" if you have to think, write, speak, or physically manipulate something then that's a freaking skill!! Christ almighty. Anyone who has worked as a waitress, a cab driver, a nurses aide, a tow truck driver, a short order cook, a store clerk or any one of the host of low paying jobs knows that you BUST YOUR ASS on those goddamn jobs and people deserve to be able to afford to live in decent housing and drive a decent car, as well as put food on the table and clothe themselves. When these fucking CEO's earn ten bazillion goddamn dollars a year, and these sports thugs earn Gazillions, and these fucking Hollywood numbnuts earn Tragillions a year then YES, the common working stiff deserves a fucking decent paying job!
Beans: $10 and hour (and you know you don't get a paid lunch with that, baby) translates to $375 dollars GROSS an week. Big Fucking Deal...and that's by the year 2010. Shit balls that's all that is....for a city as expensive as Chicago it's shit balls. What should minimum wage be? Oh, I don't know. Why don't we do something like....tie it to the salary of the CEO???? Yeah, that's a good idea. Tie it to the salary of the CEO. He makes more, they make more. Yeah, that'll work for me.
Do you all realize that these jobs are held by men and women in their 30's, 40's, 50's?? We aren't talking teenagers here. Next time you are in Walmart....take a look at who really works there. Not everyone is going to go to college and earn a degree as a Lawyer or Doctor or Engineer or Rocket Scientist. Not everyone is going to learn a trade and be an Electrician or a Plumber. Sometimes it doesn't work out that way for some people - for whatever reason. But they are still working for crying out loud. They shouldn't be PUNISHED for it by having to work for shit pay.
The top 6 richest Walton family members combined incomes total almost 1 trillion dollars.
That is a freaking sin.
And we need a national health insurance plan of some kind! Health benefits are not optional they are a RIGHT. This country needs to step up to the plate and TAKE CARE OF ITS CITIZENS.
Washington is owned by the wealthy and the powerful. The wealthy are greedy and distanced from the reality of the average man and womans life. The wealthy are concerned with increasing their wealth, period. Laws are not made they are bought. The only time something like this gets passed is when the cry and hue of the sin of not passing it has been ignored beyond what the politicians can even stand. And then what is passed is too little too late.
Sorry baby, but its PMS week...and like I once said, PMS for me means play mine straight...or as my ex once said, "PMS with you means pack my suitcase."
Jalepeno Ham
posted by Hamrose @ 7:18 PM
2 Comments:
Dearest Hammy,
Sorry about your PMS. I hope it passes soon, as I know you are otherwise a very pleasant person.
Let me tell you a little story. I began working at 16 years of age at a Wal Mart store. At this point in time, Sam Walton was still alive. Wal Mart was one of the few companies in the U.S. that did tie the salary of the CEO to the lowest paid employee. (Sam Walton was a die-hard Democrat.) I worked at Wal Mart until my last year of college, at which time I went to work in a factory on the night shift of the company that I now work for as an accountant. I was working for WalMart as a married man with a child. I agree with you. A man trying to support a wife and child cannot do so on a Wal Mart salary.
And I will agree with you concerning CEO's to the degree that CEO's have a tendency to siphon bonus checks from failing companies at the expense of lesser shareholders, as CEO's are often compensated in stock options.
The Walton family members are shareholders in WalMart, and the largest ones at that. Many of the people that worked with WalMart in the 70's and 80's, when the company really took off, as stock clerks, but were smart enough to take advantage of the company's offer to buy stock, retired in the 90's as multi-millionares due to their stock value. They were part owner in the company being a shareholder.
The real culprits, in my opinion, of fiasco's such as Enron are not the CEO's to the degree that they do not have enough interest in a company to sit on the board of directors, but it is the board of directors themselves. Boards of private held companies are elected by the shareholders. The more stock you own, the more your vote counts. Therefore the board through the controlling shareholders are to blame for keeping self-serving CEO's in a job. But the shareholders own the company, so...
But I digress. The point is, most people are in the situations that they find themselves in because of the decisions they make. I made a decision to get married while in college. My wife made a decision to stay home a raise our children rather than work and put them into daycare. We made the decision that I would finish college so that I could find a job in order to make a living to raise our family. I could make a lot more money, live in a bigger house, drive a nicer car, if I were willing to pay the price to do so.
Price, by definition, is how much one is willing to pay for something. More than one entity competing for a resource is a market. Within reason, my labor is worth a range of values for my skillset in the marketplace. I might make more some places, less others, but yet my wage will remain within a certain range because the competetors for my labor only find that my skillset is worth a value within that range. In other words, the price of my labor is only worth what those in the market are willing to pay me.
The problem comes when others claim a portion of labor without earning it. In the U.S., that entity is government in the form of payroll and income taxes. (You should check out the FairTax, Hammy.)
The fact of the matter is that wage rates are only relative to the presumed value of the job. You could increase the minimum wage to $50/hr, but the buying power of the lowest valued job or skillset would remain close to the same or actually decrease due to the increased cost of goods. Or else imports from places like China and Mexico would flood the market, and those people who would earn minimum wage would not have a job in which to earn money, since domestic firms could not compete. On the contrary, the absence of minimum wage (which, by the way, was a Richard Nixon policy) would actually increase the buying power of lower paid workers by decreasing the cost of goods and making the U.S. more competetive in the world market place.
No evidence of minimum wage, or wage controls if you will, decreasing jobs? Talk to some of the employees of GM and Ford here in GA who are losing their jobs due to plant shutdowns. The unions are to blame for that one.
And my recommendation for young people in regards to health insurance, retirement, or anything is this: do not depend upon the government for anything. The only thing that government is efficient at is inefficiency or corruption. Open a medical savings account, and contribute a set amount each pay period. Purchase a catastrophic hospitalization policy from an insurance company with the most competetive rate. Use you medical savings account to pay for your doctor visits and drugs. Open and IRA or 401K plan, and invest for retirement. Look no farther than Canada for an example of Universal Healthcare. And look no farther than Social Security for a government retirement plan. Even members of Congress exempt themselves from these plans because they know that they stink.
As for healthcare being a right, I must have missed that article when I read the Constitution last.
If you want to really help out working-class Americans, then support the Fair Tax, support the eventual abolition of Social Security and Medicare, and support the privatization of education.
I luv ya Hammy. I know I did not help your PMS with this post, but I'm giving you a big ole southern cyber hug anyway.
You're more than welcome :-)
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