The Associated Press is reporting that Minnesota lawmakers are nearing a deal to increase the state’s minimum wage to $9.50. The deal does not include the more controversial indexing of the minimum wage to inflation, though that is still being negotiated.
UPDATE: The deal is done, and there is a provision for indexing (see bottom of the post)
Minnesota currently has a Democratic Farmer Labor party House and Senate (the DFL is our unique version of the Democratic party). Gov. Mark Dayton is also a DFLer. Thus, heading into a midterm election where more conservative winds are blowing, this session becomes the best hope for the DFL to address this traditionally liberal cause.
It’s possible that a final run at adding the indexing provision later could be made, but if the wage and the indexing are decoupled from one another, it’s easy to see the inflationary matter getting dropped. Lawmakers could also put the inflation increase on the ballot as a constitutional amendment, but there has been rather strong headwind against using the constitution for policy changes so far. (UPDATE: Never mind, though the deal struck does include an escape clause)
I’ve expressed my own opinion on all this (scroll to bottom of this link). It’s unfortunate that more people don’t recognize the importance of giving the working class more spending power. Every economic boom we’ve had (except for the ones funded by wars) has come from people moving up the economic ladder from the bottom, buying houses, cars and goods. Minimum wage, unlike other social programs, is directly tied to work; something that most people seem to agree is a good thing. But the influence of business forces to keep wages down is evident in the difficulties of passing a reasonable minimum wage.
When it comes to lifting people out of poverty: if not this, what?
UPDATE: A deal has been reached, and it includes an index. Here’s the press release:
House and Senate agree on legislation to increase the minimum wage
Vote expected in House and Senate this weekSt. Paul, MN – Today, House and Senate DFL leaders and key legislators announced they have reached agreement on legislation to increase the state’s minimum wage. The agreement would increase the minimum wage to $9.50, phasing the increase in by 2016. The minimum wage would also be indexed to inflation beginning in 2018 under the oversight of the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, helping to ensure workers earning the minimum wage will not fall behind as the cost of living increases in the future.
“We are pleased to reach agreement on a strong minimum wage that will help Minnesota workers, and in doing so, strengthen Minnesota’s economy,” said Speaker Paul Thissen. “While Minnesota’s economy is improving there are too many Minnesotans who work hard every day but cannot make enough to make ends meet. It’s time to raise the wage and make hard work pay in Minnesota – now and into the future.”
“Achieving a meaningful increase to Minnesota’s minimum wage has been our priority from the start of session, and today’s agreement puts us very close to passing $9.50 on to Governor Dayton,” said Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk. “We value work in Minnesota, and our minimum wage ought to reflect that. Lifting up our lowest paid workers is good for families, it’s good for our communities and it’s good for our economy.”
The agreement to raise the wage is the product of work by House and Senate bill authors, minimum wage coalition supporters, and House and Senate DFL leaders.
Details of the agreement include:
- $9.50 minimum wage for businesses with gross sales over $500,000 in 2016. $8.00 in August 2014, $8.50 in August 2015.
- $7.75 minimum wage for businesses under $500,000 in gross sales in 2016. $6.50 in August 2014, $7.25 in August 2015.
- The $7.75 minimum wage rate would also apply for large businesses in the following circumstances: 90 day training wage for 18 and 19 year olds, all 16 and 17 year olds and employees working under a J1 visa.
- Beginning in 2018, all wages would increase each year on January 1st by inflation measured by the implicit price deflator capped at 2.5%.
- The indexed increase could be suspended for one year by the Commissioner of DOLI if leading economic indicators indicate the possibility of a substantial downturn in the economy. The suspension could only be implemented after a public hearing and public comment period. In better economic times, the suspended inflationary increase or a lesser amount could be added back into the minimum wage rate in a subsequent year.
House and Senate DFL leaders said they expected to pass the bill this week.
If you want to raise working class wages restrict immigration. Raising the minimum wage kills entry level jobs.
“It’s unfortunate that more people don’t recognize the importance of “giving” the working class more spending power” – Aaron Brown, 2014
Being charitable results in nothing but good, to both the giver and receiver.
The minimum wage however is not charity, it’s evil and destroys human initiative. There are three problems with people being forced to “give” anyone something for nothing. The receiver becomes lazy, unproductive and inevitably ungrateful. The giver feels nothing but resentment, having been stolen from. All outcomes are evil.
Always there to stick up for the little oligarch, eh Bob? Contrary to what you and Daddy Warbucks think, wages are not charity. Wages are fair pay for services rendered. Places where people want to live generally have higher minimum wages and worker protections. Places we call “backward” let the market exploit the poorest people. The sad thing is that people would require less charity if they were rewarded for working hard. We tend to reward hard work only if coupled with pre existing capital and access to higher education in this country, things millions of people don’t have, by matter of birth. And if people make money, they spend money … Especially at the bottom rungs, where people aren’t passing paper and changing money. The oligarchs still get paid, Bob. More than ever.
You’re rambling Aaron but…You say “wages are fair pay for services rendered”. Right on. So let market forces work and the inherent result is fair pay for services rendered.
You do not get “fair pay for services rendered” when a third party (government) plays favorites by predetermining a wage REGARDLESS of how smart, how hard or often a person is willing to work…you get good people inherently turning lazy, unproductive and ungrateful.
Just look at the bottom end performers in your profession, you know who they are. Should they be paid the same as you just because they show up for work?
A minimum wage increase only looks great to those who receive minimum wage. Unfortunately it’s smoke and mirrors. It’s time our country removes minimum wage as the indicator of wealth or lack thereof. Truthfully, dollar VALUE is the true indication of the health of our society. Doesn’t it seem weird that in the days of trading posts people still “bought” things. They used furs and hand made items. Like said items,each had a perceived value, money is perceived to be equal to its face value. Wouldn’t it be awesome if that was true? Unfortunately, our dollar is only worth a fraction of what it once was. Great idea – lets make the minimum wage 100.00 an hour. We can tell ourselves that by having an entry level job working 40 hours a week we’ll still make 208,000 a year. Granted a cheeseburger will cost $400.00 dollars but at least we’ll all be millionaires in five years. Really, what’s the difference? If you think I’m wrong, think about it – A business owner has costs, the cost of items sold, the bank note, the bills and of course labor cost. All of these numbers go into a spreadsheet which dictates how much the business must make to stay open. Well, if the employee cost goes up by 20% doesn’t the cost you pay go up accordingly? OF COURSE IT DOES. Not only that but often times the small business owner is unable to pay the employees who have actually earned raises the additional amount of increase to make them feel as valued as they truly are. Face it, the only entity making more revenue is the government who obviously tax according to pay. Once again, we have built another cash cow for the government to exploit. Personally, I’d rather see good ol’ uncle sam stop printing money and let this country have value to our dollar, let our country be the strongest in the world. I was in Brazil in January 1990 and saw first hand how a wheel barrel of currency has almost no value. They were transitioning from “old money” to “new money”. With the old money, a loaf of bread cost something like 230.00 real’s (basically Brazilian dollars) but with the new it was like $3.00. Now this is more of an inflation thing than a wage thing but the outcome is the same because upping the wage will only cause unnecessary price increases otherwise known as inflation. It’s obviously too late to do anything about it this time around, but maybe next time common sense will step in. Somewhere along the way common sense will have to be taken off the shelf in the back of the closet and dusted off.
I make $10.50 an hour…in entry level health care. I work hard, and am required to take regular education. I have a lot of responsibility in my job, which involves monitoring the safety of vulnerable adults and making regular reports to nurses/social workers. I have not received a raise since I started my job…because I need more education and training, and will move up in position, to EARN that raise.
Thanks to the loony lawmakers I will now make barely above minimum wage! People who have done nothing to earn a pay increase will get one just because. People with entry level jobs, less education, and less responsibility will earn just as much as someone who has invested in an education or who is required to take on more responsibility or someone who actually EARNS their wage.
I will now be living in poverty level wages, raising 3 kids on barely above minimum wage. This means more people will be eligible for government assistance, and the base of poverty will expand because those making above minimum wage now make the new minimum wage. It teaches our children that hard work, education and using your brain to succeed in life does not matter…to succeed you just need a hand out.
A single full-time Minnesotan worker paid $7.25 per hour gets $290 per week, paid $6.15, $246 per week, before taxes I think. MN minimum wage hasn’t been raised in about 8 years while costs of living keep rising making the struggle even harder for min wage earners. How many people can’t even find full -time min wage jobs and work two part time jobs? If an adult minimum wage worker has one child or more, how does he or she pay for child care which is very costly while at work? There can’t be much money left, if any, at the end of the month to pay for rent, heat, utilities, car maintenance/gas, clothing, food and all the rest. The big increase in numbers of people having to use food shelves to eat over the last several years, some families for the first time, doesn’t surprise me.
“Lazy, unproductive, ungrateful” are not confined to people making below poverty level. They exist in all economic levels, middle class to the very wealthy. I’m sure we’ve all had unhappy experiences working with lazy unproductive co-workers at one time or another. A whole lot of minimum wage jobs are exhausting, physically draining, dirty jobs. I know plenty of good people who work very hard at these min wage jobs while raising families and have for years or decades and I’ve never thought they got paid what they were worth or that they were lazy or unproductive. To say that raising a barely survivable wage is evil charity and inherently destroys initiative is your opinion, Ranger 47, but it’s a blanket labeling that discounts all the min wage earners, good people, that keep plugging away despite the economic hurdles. However, I do believe you feel nothing but resentment and you have been “stolen” from.
Open your mind kissa…
Government wage-setting is immoral. It simply is unfair and wrong for politicians to posture as philanthropists while arbitrarily forcing other people to pay higher salaries. As we all know, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. 70 years of studies have shown that arbitrarily raising the cost of labor (and there’s no basis for choosing any particular government minimum) will increase prices and cut employment levels.
In essence, the minimum wage is a tax on labor-intensive companies. So, the government is penalizing firms that employ lower-skilled workers, the same workers they claim they’re trying to help! I swear those we elect to represent us are either incompetent or take us for fools…or both.
If government can hike wages without harm, why stop at $10 or $15 an hour? Why not go to $100 or $150? Or to $1000 or $1500? Then everyone in America could be rich.
For those well-off like you, Aaron, Anzelc, Saxhaug, Bakk, Melin, et.al who support arbitrary government wage-setting, I’d ask, “What are they doing personally to help the economically disadvantaged?” And raiding the wallets of others does not count.
Calling the min wage “evil” and “immoral” is very hyperbolic. The resentment is deep, very deep.
That old canard, why not raise min wage to $100 or even $1,000 an hour?! That doesn’t even qualify as any kind of logical argument, although similar ridiculous arguments have been used by some who call themselves economists who then advocate for reducing the min wage saying a min wage doesn’t help those workers. The $80 billion Koch brothers are actively working to eliminate the min wage entirely to “uplift mobility” of min wage workers. (They want to eliminate SS and Medicare too but that’s another story). Seriously? I suppose making people poorer, hungrier, having their children go without even more basic needs will magically increase their initiative to climb out of even deeper holes.
Henry Ford has often been credited with raising his workers’ wages so they could actually afford to buy cars they made but what is not commonly known is that Ford raised wages to reduce costly employee turnovers.
Workers getting paid a minimum wage for their labor isn’t charity. Raising the min wage so they can live without running out of money and food from month to month isn’t charity either and would take a lot of people off food stamps and other assistance programs. More worker buying power in the local economy and less government assistance for min wage workers sounds likes a good return on investment to me, a lot more direst savings for all of us than not raising min wage and keeping people sliding backwards. Just think how much less would be “stolen” from you.
Sigh 🙁 Stay focused kissa…
Tell me why $11.25 is not better than $10.10? (And please, quit whining about Charles Koch, the guy who was honored with the William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership in 2011. The award honors living philanthropists who have exhibited leadership through charitable giving and recognizes the power of philanthropy to promote positive change).
Again, let’s handle an issue at a time. Why not $15.47 vs. $10.10?
Once you answer that, we’ll move on to – “What are you doing personally to help the economically disadvantaged?” Anything proportional to Charles? And again, raiding the wallets of others does not count.
But first, why not $24.77 vs. $10.10? Go…
R47,
$100.00, now $11.25, $15.47? You change the numbers so fast, one could get whiplash. Obviously, it’s not going to go higher than $9.50 by 2016 if this bill is enacted which is still less than $20,000 a year at full-time.
Still, 357,000 Minnesotans will have to struggle less, have more spending power paying the bills with an est over $400,000 going into our economy. When family incomes increase, childrens’ outcomes improve and we should all want that for the 137,000 MN children affected. And if a min wage increase helps people need less assistance, SNAP, heating, etc, that’s a plus, isn’t it?
I’d like to see a subsidy for child care in this country that would range in amount depending on lower income to middle class yearly wages. Licensed child care costs about $6,000 a year in outstate and $8,000 a year in the twin cities area. That’s a huge chunk out of a family income even for those who make $60,000 a year and puts a lot of stress on families.
The Koch brothers have an unimaginable amount of money. Anything they toss to charitable causes is peanuts to them as well as the hundreds of millions they plow into ALEC and other groups that write bills for legislators to solely benefit Koch Ind aiming for no taxes, no regulations and intrude into our personal lives with anti-contraception bills. The Simon Foundation was founded to promote “free” enterprise and according to the Philanthropy Roundtable, Charles Koch got the “Philanthropy” award for promoting “free” enterprise, “having benefiting from the capitalist system, he wants others to prosper in the same way.” The Koch’s and 1% others do feel they are the economically disadvantaged and are outraged that they should pay any taxes at all and many of them don’t. Several of them have had such hurt feelings that they have written “poor disrespected me” letters to ed. The Koch brothers inherited a vast fortune and businesses from daddy Koch, a founder of the John Birch Society, and they didn’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps in any way. It would be the rare one of the rest of us that has any chance of becoming a millionaire or billionaire from nothing. I don’t know who believes in that “trickle down” baloney anymore unless one thinks the Gilded Age was a glorious “trickle down” era.
R47, it’s very presumptuous to make assumptions that people you don’t know personally are well-off or not.
Why should families that make the sacrifice to have the wife stay home with the kids (and yes, 99 out of 100 it is the wife) subsidize people who invest less in raising their children through childcare subsidies?
DG
Tax breaks for families when a parent stays home with the kids.
France has a very successful system that the French people and American families living/working there are happy with.
1. Inexpensive municipal day care beginning at 3 months old with an hourly rate on sliding scale based on income.
2. Tax breaks for families that hire in-home child care outside of the gov’t program.
3. Universal free pre-school beginning at age 3.
France put this into place partly due to the falling birthrate and to allow women who wished to go back to work but needed child care to do so. Other European countries have similar systems.
Here a parent’s job may allow time off, perhaps up to 12 weeks, to stay home with a baby but very few jobs offer paid baby leaves. Here there is a lot of talk about how important family is but when comes to actually doing something to strengthen and honor family life crickets.
I wish we could see something like this happen in this country to make my kids and grandkids lives less stressful and expensive but I don’t have much hope, not when we treat everything as a zero sum game.
The French system wouldn’t address the situation I mentioned, which is very common. If you were suggesting separate tax breaks for at home parents that would make it more equitable but a refundable tax credit would probably be more appropriate. However given the adverse effect of extended day care exposure it is questionable whether we should want to subsidize it in the first place.
The French system wouldn’t, but the Swedish system would. There parents are compensated for the social value of staying home to raise children. They provide day care as well, but the program is designed to encourage the mother or father to stay home during the crucial years of early development. I’ve talked to a couple Swedes who did this. Is it expensive, sure. But when you see the expense that Americans go through now, and the difficulty for single-income families, I’d argue its worth consideration. But as Kissa said, we’d all love to have an open conversation about what would work best, but if those ideas involve pulling money into a government program there are those who would say no, nyet, never no matter what. And that crowd has more or less gotten its way for 30 years.
“Those ideas involve pulling money (increasing taxes) into a government program..” – Aaron Brown 4-14-2014
Your premise is flawed if you really believe another government program, another government tax or another government redistribution system (tax Peter to give to Paul) is the solution to any of our “problems”.
As one speech writer so aptly put it – “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem”.
It can even be a very difficult decision for two income families that are making $50-60,000 or more together to decide if one parent’s full time job is worth paying a big portion of that salary for child care or how to scale expenses way, way back if that parent stays home. Major sacrifices either way.
Tradeoffs for sure but we could do a lot better here than we are now. Whether it’s tax breaks for child care, minimum wage increase, health insurance coverage, it’s always no, no, too much money. Banks got bailed out, they and corps, !% are doing fabulous, better than ever and globally tax cheating hiding $32 billion in other countries. Yet raising minimum wage or funding SNAP is going to bankrupt us and must be “offset” by lowering taxes for the wealthy. Begrudging of crumbs.
R47, Surely you have noticed the massive government redistribution system that has been taxing the majority of us to give to the 1% fat cats. There has been a concentrated effort for decades to direct blame toward poor and lower middle class Americans calling them takers, moochers. They even get blamed for the real estate bubble bust instead of the banks and wall street fund bundlers who knowingly orchestrated the schemes. That effort has been quite successful in turning average Americans against average Americans and deflecting attention away from the wolves fleecing the flock.
“It’s not going to go higher than $9.50. When family incomes increase, outcomes improve and we should all want that for the affected. And if a minimum wage increase helps people, it’s a plus, isn’t it?” – kissa 4-14-2014
If it’s a plus as you say dear kissa, why not $32.81??
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. Move in the opposite direction kissa and tell me why “if increasing the minimum wage helps people”, why stop at $57.98??
Use your genius now kissa…answer the question. Why stop at $9.50? Wouldn’t we make a tremendous impact if it were $57.98? (What difference does it make?) And keep it simple!
R47,
Closer to keeping up with the cost of living would be more helpful like SS. Some advocate for $10.70 or whatever amount is close to 1968 minimum wage spending power. Many feel that SS is keeping up with the cost of living and are understandably worried. I’m not there yet but not far away and I’m concerned about that too. Why shouldn’t minimum wage increases correlate more closely with cost of living increases?
My question is what do you feel is the right minimum wage amount or do you think minimum wage is unnecessary?
iI’ll say say again, imo raising the minimum wage is a much smaller cost impact on taxpayers than not raising it and having more people forced to rely on government assistance of some kind.
You still didn’t answer the question kissa…if there’s benefit to moving the minimum wage from $6.50 to $9.50 or $10.70…WHY NOT HIGHER YET? At what point is a minimum wage no longer good?
Answer that and I’ll answer your question..
Kissa, you stated increasing minimum wage increases buying power. Star tribune did a story before and after the last minimum wage increase. I wish I had the time to find it but I’m one of those who pulls up his bootstraps in hopes of some day supporting my family and not waiting for the government to do it for me. Yes I own a small labor intensive business which will require me to more carefully screen applicants and reduce work hours. Back on point – This story focused on a high school student working at a gas station and his manager (early 20’s). Student made 5.15, manager 8.00 per hour. Student understood it was an entry level position with very little responsibility and the manager felt appreciated because he worked to become a manager and was getting paid for it. The student was saving like 20.00 per check and the manager was saving 50 or 60.00 a paycheck PRIOR to the raise. After the increase the student saved nothing and the manager was only able to save 15.00 per check. While some numbers may be off (it was 7 years ago) the end result is the same. Labor goes up so does the cost of everything else. The fat cats as you put them won’t take less income they’ll pass it on to you and me. Lastly – While it may be true that 1% controls 39% of the wealth of this country I challenge you to find how many poor people employ millions. Every society has “those” people. It’s not a bad thing. It actually hurts my brain to think so many feel cheated by the system. Not all of those people have earned or even deserve what they have but some certainly do. It’s not up to you, me or the government to robin hood our way out of poverty. It’s up to us to work harder and learn the best way to make the most of what we have. Geez people, quit being jealous and appreciate all you do have. After all, you could be born in a third world country waiting on unicef to feed you rice and swat the flies off your eyeballs. And I’m not even being at all funny when I say that.
R47
“Why not raise minimum wage to $50 or $100 or $1,000 an hour’ is a completely nonsensical and non-serious argument I see trotted out often. The people who originally started that one know (or most know) it’s a silly argument but it makes for a great distraction from legit arguments. A simple analogy: if you wanted to maximize revenue to a football game, revenue is “cost per ticket” times the number of tickets sold. If you charge too little, $1 a ticket, the game gets sold out but price is too low yielding little revenue. If a ticket is priced too high, $500 a ticket, you might get a lot more money per ticket but sell too few tickets to get the amount of revenue you want.
$10.70 is cited often as getting min wage in line with 1968 cost of living level min wage. A $10.10 min wage is calculated as enabling 38,000 Minnesotans to no longer need SNAP alone saving fed government $55 million. I would have liked MN min wage to go to $10.70 but the current min wage increase passed was probably the best that could be politically expected.
Me
I and my spouse have been both employers and employees. Owning a small business is hard work and stressful even though some employees seemed to think that the bosses “had it easy”, lol. I guess it’s human nature to think the grass is always greener for someone else. As an employee, you can go home at the end of the day, leave a lot of the stress of your job behind until the next day or maybe get paid OT if you have to work extra hours. As a small business employer (and often manager) you have to work whatever hours it takes to keep the business shipshape and have to balance doing what’s best for the business, the employee’s issues and make a living. If you don’t pay great, trained, responsible employees enough, you lose them. Training in new employees no matter what previous experience they have can be very time-consuming and stressful in already hectic days. Most employees these days are working more for less money or raises that don’t keep up col or reflect the value of their training or expertise while at the same time taking on more responsibilities as businesses pare down the number of employees.
Work productivity increased 75% from 1979 to 2012 but our wages have stagnated or grown very little. Someone making $50,000 today would be making $75,854 at 1979 wage/productivity level. Since the early 80’s the top 1% has been steadily gaining more and more of US wealth. In 2009-2010, first year of the economic “recovery”, the 1% gained 93% of the wealth. 93%. 2013 the CEO’s (350 corps) to worker pay ratio was 331:1, min wage worker pay ratio was 774:1. Avg CEO compensation at these corps $11.7 million. Just read that ousted CEO at Yahoo got a $58 million golden parachute…for not creating more profit for Yahoo! EPI est taxpayers have subsidized $30 billion to corps for the performance pay loophole between 2007 and 2010.
Despite the massive profits the largest corps are raking in, earning $41,249 in profits per employee in 2013, they argue that can’t afford to raise wages . They are tax dodging, parking their profits in offshore tax havens, cheating federal revenues about $184 billion annually which amounts to a $1,323 share for each Minnesota tax filer. $1,323 is a lot of money our of my and most people’s pockets to robin hood gigantic corps out of paying their due share of taxes.
I don’t get the point of “poor people don’t employ millions” comparing apples to oranges.
My jaw dropped when I first heard that “jealous” line on some cable news show and then noticed it was the latest meme repeated elsewhere. Six figure salaried people can pretend people are just jealous when we point out how most americans are are getting the short end of the stick while the 1% are making out like bandits at our expense. As recently as 2007, 70% were satisfied with their opportunities to get ahead by working hard. Today it is only 54%. More people are noticing that 21st century finance capitalism is askew. They’re noticed that those .01 percenters who were boasting about the great stuff they were doing led us into a catastrophic financial crisis. They’ve noticed that many of the wealthy didn’t actually earn their positions, they just got rich at America’s expense. People are rightfully angry about that.
Envy is when you have negative feelings about rich people because of what they have; anger is when you have negative feelings about the rich because of what they do.
kissa – There are no “legit arguments” for a minimum wage, therefore $44.51 is just as logical as $10.70 which appears is your position, by default weasel words (you seem afraid to take a stand on a firm number because you know whatever number you pick is indefensible).
I’m not afraid to state a number. You asked and my number is $0. ANY minimum wage is evil.
You raised another foolish point – “Many feel that SS isn’t keeping up with the cost of living and are understandably worried. I’m not there yet but not far away and I’m concerned about that too”.
I ask you – What makes you think anyone should expect or deserve increases in SS payouts? I know many retired (once hard-working), people who are fortunate to have worked for wonderful fortune 500 companies (those evil capitalistic household name companies which have provided hundreds of thousands of jobs), and they’re not getting nor expecting ANY increase, EVER, in their pension payments. Why should you expect an increase in your SS payout?? If you didn’t like how much you’d receive upon retirement, you should have kept working.
I’m beginning to think you’re a socialist or worse yet, a commie.
In fairness people expect increases, for inflation, for their Social Security because that has been the law for decades.
Ding ding. Bob just called a position held by 60 percent of Minnesotans “evil” and “communist. “It’s all over folks. Thanks for playing.
Aaron, Aaron – Good and evil isn’t decided by popular vote.
As the guy who we (way more than 60% of the country), celebrate this Sunday said as he explained His own lack of popularity: “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil”.
Forcing someone to give more of their possessions than they wish for a given service to someone else is evil, plain and simple. He said so..
R47
If you object to SS and cost of living increases that vehemently, I assume if you are eligible to received SS you have opted not to receive it or will refuse to take SS or col increases when you are eligible. After all, a guy should stick to his principles.
kissa….you speak foolish socialist talk. I plan to take as much of my social security as the government sends me, including any increases. It’s my money, not theirs (and they have the gall to call it a “benefit”). If I ever reach the point at which they’re paying me more than I paid in, I’ll give thought as to whether I’ll accept the money or not. At this point, they’re still taking…and they owe me a lot. Considering the governments track record of managing money, odds are against me living long enough to get it all back, but hope springs eternal.
R47
I’m perplexed. You deserve col increase and will take it even though you say no one should expect or deserve col increase? That does not compute. I guess you didn’t know this but there are some people on SS now that take out more than they have put in, most people on Medicare. You may not fall into that category but hopefully you have planned for that possibility in case you have to cut a check for your overrun. It’s not so bad to be a little socialistic but you don’t want to get too carried away.
You wouldn’t be perplexed if you’d use your head kissa…It’s my money to begin with not theirs, not yours. Getting my own money back from these thieves whether a month at a time, an increase at a time (or in a lump sum if they’d give it to me) is not contradictory with anything I’ve said or believe.
Totally agree… it’s a essentially government maintained bank account. Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t they are supposed make that money work for us though? Through strategic investing like a bank. I mean, if i put 100.00 per check into a bank accountdI’d expect interest to grow that even more than my monetary contribution. In that case, I’d say we should see some type of yearly increase, however small. Just something showing appreciate for allowing the government to use my money. The real shame is an alcoholic or drug user gets deemed unemployable, they get to receive ss due to disablement. Complete government misuse of funds.
Correction – there should be more there than I contribute to my account due to earned interest not that I’d expect it to grow faster than my biweekly cash deposit.