The Right Side of the News

Then you are not looking and not talking with the kids. My experience is quite different. When I was there I had a good chemistry teacher and a most inspiring physics teacher. I can see where a lot of kids I talk with are getting interest. Given the politics of local schools, low pay and too large classes, it is not easy, but, at least they are being exposed to other than the three Rs and the fluff of glorified babysitting.It is not STEM that is the social problem in this society. It is the constant blare of a biased media. Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

From what I can find, the SS was intended as a pension for workers and that it would supersede the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI). This has in fact happened as the OASDI is now incorporated into the SS program and is administered by the Social Security Administration. Social Security (United_States) - WikipediaA pension is intended to provide a living income on retirement.You didn't say what you thought it was originally intended for. Agreed. That just means it would need to be regionally adjusted. We should also look into what causes these differences - especially when it comes to places like native reservations. So the complication of having several different bureaucracies at several different levels all doing essentially the same thing is preferable?We can go a step further and include taxation, so one bureaucracy handles the give and take.EnjoyEdited by Admin, : Fix link.

Curiously that fails to (a) follow my argument and (b) explain why you think that means raising prices. Is this how you get raised prices, by keeping CEO pay as a separate issue?No. It is the same issue: the issue of where the gross profit money goes. It doesn't reduce net profits to cut CEO compensation to a max of 10 times the lowest paid job and redistribute that to the workers. My mistake. Miss remembered.

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Mondragon Corporation - Wikipedia

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The Mondragon Corporation is a corporation and federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. It was founded in the town of Mondragon in 1956 by graduates of a local technical college. Its first product was paraffin heaters. It is the tenth-largest Spanish company in terms of asset turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2014, it employed 74,117 people in 257 companies and organizations in four areas of activity: finance, industry, retail and knowledge.[3] By 2015, 74,335 people were employed. Mondragon cooperatives operate in accordance with the Statement on the Co-operative Identity maintained by the International Co-operative Alliance.

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Tenth largest company and the leading business group in the Basque Country. If the Basque areas of France and Spain were a single country it would be the leading corporation and the primary provider of GDPShould we assume GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a valid comparison, when import/export are not included?Spain is near Greece in the EU problem basket, which means GDP alone is not a good measure, imho. You're confusing gross profits with net profits. Curiously I would say that the $$ economy is a part of the social economy rather than try to cram these aspects of the social economy into a $$ economy equivalent. The value of a stay-at-home mom is large in the social economy but neglected in the $$ economy. The social economy exists whether it is recognized or not.Social economy - WikipediaIt is poorly recognized in the US, well recognized in the Nordic countries.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .Edited by RAZD, : ..

My wife received a PhD in a Humanities field -- basically about as helpful as a course in underwater basket weaving. Couldn't find a job.... anywhere. Oh, wait, no she was offered a position in Dallas..... Dallas, Pennsylvania, that is... for peanuts. After seeing the writing on the wall she completely shifted focus and went into STEM at Stanford in a Masters program... has opened unimaginable doors.Humanities is great up to a point, but it just doesn't have very much utility. STEM on the other hand solves actual problems in the world... like the ability for us to communicate right now hundreds or thousands of miles apart.STEM fields create jobs and solves real-world problems.

I think you're missing the point. It isn't that STEM is a bad thing; it's that STEM shouldn't be the only thing.The original goal of public education was to make good citizens:

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"The objects of this primary education . . . would be . . . to form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend."
-- Thomas Jefferson

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(That would also include voters.)

Yup. Make workers.

I had a very well paid career with a Humanities degree. I know a few people with undergrad science degrees making peanuts.
Anecdotal evidence is not very good evidence.

I made no such claim.What I said was that a company in an industry cannot unilaterally increase employee compensation without detrimentally affecting its competitiveness within that industry. I earlier said that if an entire industry raised prices (in the old days this would happen when unions, company by company, renegotiated contracts) that it would contribute to inflation, thereby reducing the buying power of the higher wages, potentially setting off an inflationary spiral, which has happened in the past.But even your claim of what I said is not a "conservative economic truth." I don't think any economists, liberal or conservative, believe that "investing in human capital; wages and benefits; is detrimental to the competitiveness and success of a company." I think the vast majority of economists believe that a company's competitiveness diminishes with diminished capital, which is what a unilateral increase in wages would do. Certainly there can be positive factors contributing to competitiveness that spring out of increased wages, such as increased retention, but the general principle is that decreases in available capital diminish competitiveness. I didn't use the word "uncompetitive." I said that one result of unilaterally increasing wages would include, but not be limited to, reduced competitiveness. This isn't controversial but is something upon which there is broad, almost universal, consensus. One way companies increase competitiveness is by lowering costs, and employee compensation is one of those costs. None of us want lower employee compensation, but employee compensation is subject to economic forces that are very real. No economist would deny them. I went to the Fortune 500 list to see what company was at the top, and it happened to be Walmart. Others at the top are Exxon Mobil, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon, UnitedHealth Group, McKesson, CVS, AT&T and AmerisourceBergen. But more productive workers deserve higher compensation. Your quote is an argument for hiring a more productive workforce, not for increasing the wages of every worker regardless of productivity . Initially you provided no knowledge, just bald assertions. Thank you for providing a little information: Again, I did not say that higher wages and better benefits make a company uncompetitive. See above.What I would say is that if Holiday StationStores substantially increased employee compensation to match Kwik Trip that it would have a detrimental impact on their competitiveness. HS is a bunch of interlocking pieces involving locations, store format, product mix, wholesale suppliers, employees, compensation structure, etc. You can't do a major yank on one of these pieces without having an impact on the rest. The same is true of Kwik Trip.What you're seeing in the Duluth area with Kwik Trip is what we see played out across the country again and again: over time existing chains become tired and uninspiring, and then they are challenged by new chains with a fresh approach and more energy and imagination.New chains displacing existing chains is a story that is repeated over and over and over again. Subway moved into New England and is still here all these years later. Quizno's moved into New England maybe 15 or 20 years ago, and now they're mostly gone. Same with Blimpie's. Jersey Mike's is just now beginning to move into the region.Pizza chains have the same pattern (Pizza Hut, Unos, Papa John's, Domino's, Little Caesars, etc.), as do restaurant chains (TGI Fridays, Longhorn, Texas Roadhouse, Chile's, Applebee's, Ruby Tuesday, etc.). Eventually they all pass away, e.g., Howard Johnson's, Chi-Chi's, Horn & Hardart, White Tower, etc. It definitely cannot be claimed that the chains that displaced them all had higher employee compensation.It's possible to create from scratch a successful corporation with a higher compensation structure. It's harder to stay a successful corporation if you didn't originally have that higher compensation structure already and then try to add it. No, I'm not, but why would I have any idea whether they're successful? Naturally I've heard of Costco and not Kwik Test, but why would I be aware of how they're doing competitively? Why would any random person? You made the claim, you support it.But again, I wasn't questioning whether they're successful. I was taking you at your word regarding their success. What I said was that you've provided no evidence of your claim that Costco's and Kwik Trip's higher employee compensation is a contributor to their success. You can't nuance the definition of socialism away: "Social ownership of the means of production."Even if all you mean by socialism is employee ownership or cooperative ownership, politically it's not possible to change what most people already think about socialism. When most people hear socialism they don't think Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare and healthcare. Older people carry with them the image of countries behind the iron curtain, while younger people think of the government taking over their lives. Bernie Sanders is embracing it. He was on Sunday's political analysis shows. He called himself a democratic socialist, which as you know since you've read the Wikipedia articles, is not all that different from plain old socialism. But it doesn't matter what modifier you put in front of socialism. Most people have a negative reaction to the word "socialism," and that isn't going to change in the few months left before the election.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

If you read the first sentence of your link you'll see that this is incorrect. Social Security *is* the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI). While that would be the hope, that may or may not be the eventuality. People who work their whole life for a company with a pension plan have the best chance of receiving a living income, while people who only work part of their life for such companies likely will not receive a living income. Social Security was originally intended, and still is, as supplemental. The first recipient of a monthly Social Security check was Ida May Fuller - Wikipedia in 1940. Her first check was for $24.75, which would be around $450/month today, or $5400 annually, not a living income. Social Security benefits have improved, and the maximum one can get today is $3790/month or $45,480 annually, which could be a living income in many parts of the US. But that's if you were maxed out on your Social Security income during your working career and retired at age 70. The average Social Security benefit is $1503/month or $18,036 annually, not a living income. And those who reach a point in their life where they have to enter assisted living will find that $1503/month is far from enough. Even $3790/month is not enough for most facilities. I'm not sure whether or not it's preferable. I just don't think it's possible.--Percy

The paragraph you questioned didn't mention raising prices, but raising prices would be one way to deal with increased costs such as increasing employee compensation. This issue is beside the point, but employee compensation is not paid out of gross or net profits. In the view you seem to be advocating, if a company had no gross profits and no net profits but instead had a loss, then they could not compensate their employees because there would have been no profits out of which to pay them.But companies that lose money in a fiscal year do compensate their employees, so the way you're looking at this must be wrong. The way in which you're wrong is that companies do not pay their employees out of profits, neither gross or net. The article you cited makes it pretty clear that the social economy is part of the $$ economy. The word profit appears 22 times.--Percy

Its not a mystery or a secret that humanities funding in colleges around the nation and even the globe are drying up and that interest in them is waning. Google humanities losing funding and there are tons of articles about it, mostly describing why its happening and what the implications are.This isn't a knock on Humanities by any stretch, simply an acknowledgment that because there is such little utility to them that they aren't serving a function outside of schooling. I think of the massive importance of something like Philosophy, but turning that into some kind of useable trade is difficult.This is exacerbated by the fact that schools are transitioning away from tenured positions in favor of adjunct faculty that work for half the cost -- which I think is a dangerous proposition. College, in general, just isn't what it used to be. It doesn't carry the same weight that it once did. Some say that's a good thing, that its outdated and a stupid way to determine someone's actual worth, and others say that its detrimental to a well-balanced education.What I am saying is that STEM is highly funded because it has much more practical application. It generates revenue, it solves engineering problems, and is in ever-increasing demand.

Reading your responses to Theoderic I see that you saying unilateral raises to employee compensation, and this is not what I have said, only that the lowest paid worker should earn a living wage for 40 hours work per week. To achieve this does not require unilateral raises for everyone, but a modification to the pay scales such that the net cost is the same. It provides a more balanced pay structure, especially when it comes to CEO pay. Whatever. You still miss the point.

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Net income - Wikipedia

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In business and accounting, net income (also total comprehensive income, net earnings, net profit, bottom line, sales profit, or credit sales) is a measure of the profitability of a venture. It is an entity's income minus cost of goods sold, expenses (e.g., SG&A), depreciation and amortization, interest, and taxes for an accounting period.[1] It is computed as the residual of all revenues and gains over all expenses and losses for the period,[2] and has also been defined as the net increase in shareholders' equity that results from a company's operations.[3] It is different from the gross income, which only deducts the cost of goods sold.

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The lowest wages can be increased without changing the net profit, by decreasing the top level pay/salaries/compensation/etc. Those changes can be prorated for all workers in between. The end result is higher minimum wage with no net increase in cost, no loss in profit. Not everybody gets a raise as you seem to imply.In a standard business model company the pay rates for all people are set by the top management in an authoritarian manner. In a Cooperative Worker Owned venture the pay rates are voted on democratically by all the workers. That is the essence of democratic socialism vs un(der)regulated capitalism. Wow. Profit can occur in socialist economies, so that is a non-starter. The social economies also include things not in the $$ economy, such as volunteering and such as arts and entertainment. Sure you can make up $$ values for these, but they rarely represent the time spent perfecting the arts etc. Ask a musician how much he gets paid for gigs and whether they think it is adequate compensation. Ask a painter, a dancer, etc.But that aside, the biggest problem facing people is automation and who benefits. How long before long lines of unemployed people displaced by automation start showing in the employment documentations (we already ignore many people in that "calculation" ... how many more will happen) is not tolerated. They are forgotten by the $$ economy but are part of the Social Economy ... because they are people. How do we as a society provide for them?Enjoy

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Social Security - Wikipedia(United_States)

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A limited form of the Social Security program began, during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term, as a measure to implement "social insurance" during the Great Depression of the 1930s.[14] The Act was an attempt to limit unforeseen and unprepared-for dangers in modern life, including old age, disability, poverty, unemployment, and the burdens of widow(er)s with and without children.

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Social programs in the United States - Wikipedia

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Prior to the Great Depression the United States had social programs that mostly centered around individual efforts, family efforts, church charities, business workers compensation, life insurance and sick leave programs along with some state tax supported social programs. The misery and poverty of the great depression threatened to overwhelm all these programs. The severe Depression of the 1930s made Federal action necessary,[12] as neither the states and the local communities, businesses and industries, nor private charities had the financial resources to cope with the growing need among the American people.[13] Beginning in 1932, the Federal Government first made loans, then grants, to states to pay for direct relief and work relief. After that, special Federal emergency relief like the Civilian Conservation Corps and other public works programs were started.[14] In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration proposed to Congress federal social relief programs and a federally sponsored retirement program. Congress followed by the passage of the 37 page Social Security Act, signed into law August 14, 1935 and "effective" by 1939just as World War II began. This program was expanded several times over the years.

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Economic historians led by Price Fishback have examined the impact of New Deal spending on improving health conditions in the 114 largest cities, 1929—1937. They estimated that every additional $153,000 in relief spending (in 1935 dollars, or $2.2 million in 2018 dollars) was associated with a reduction of one infant death, one suicide, and 2.4 deaths from infectious disease.[15][16]

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The intent was to save lives, improve health and reduce misery. Maybe not a "living wage" as currently defined, but enough to limit deaths. Initially. We might call that a starvation wage (matching your annual numbers) today, but we have grown since then with our awareness of human rights.The biggest challenge ahead is automation reducing jobs dramatically with no replacements.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

You have interesting views.--Percy

As reported in White House budget: Trump proposes deep cuts to health care and safety net programs - CNNPolitics, the Trump budget proposes cuts to Medicaid while preserving Social Security and Medicare. The cuts would total about $500 billion over ten years, so the cut is actually modest.But seniors should not relax. First, Trump has stated that they are still looking for ways to make cuts in Medicare. And Medicaid is the funder of last resort for seniors who have to enter a nursing home. This should actually be the biggest worry for seniors.For a retired senior who has saved enough away for living expenses and for Medigap insurance (at least $4000 annually if dental and vision are included) so that there are no healthcare expenses it would seem that there isn't much to worry about.But many seniors who live long enough eventually end up in nursing homes because they require too much professional attention and care to continue where they were. If they had been "aging in place" at home then their healthcare requirements exceed what can be provided by family and friends, and assisted living only provides onsite nursing staff, not professional healthcare. Assisted living will also expel residents who begin experiencing too great a degree of cognitive or memory deficits. At this point seniors have to enter a nursing home or a special memory facility, each of which costs an average of about $10,000/month, or $120,000/year.$120,000/year quickly exhausts most people's retirement funds and their assets should they have any, such as homes and cars. When a senior has less than around $5000 (I forget the exact figure) a senior qualifies for Medicaid where the state and federal governments pick up all expenses.Trump's reductions in Medicaid are focused on the recent expansion of Medicaid benefits (e.g., benefits for low income adults) and so shouldn't affect seniors, but seniors should still view these cuts fearfully. With Trump no program is sacred when it comes to funding his tax cuts and budget increases. Tax revenues have actually increased modestly the past few years, the huge increase in deficits being due to increases in spending, mostly for defense. Trump will be looking everywhere for ways to reduce his deficit, and since he doesn't care about human suffering no program will be sacred.--Percy