Orathaic, I guess one thing that can clarify it: corporations are themselves creatures of the state, created and empowered by legal process. Of course groups of people have worked together to do things economically for a very long time, but the particular shape and power of modern corporations is closely tied to the legal structure surrounding them. That we're even discussing it in these terms indicates the degree to which the field is tilted. You might argue that this is good -- corporations make it possible to have all sorts of neat stuff, economic growth, and so on -- but it's not some organic or natural growth. It's a conscious artificial structure.

@2nd white line. You simply can't maintain focus on the study under discussion so you just keep posting irrelevant statements. The subject is the fact that at the bottom of the employment scale it now pays more not to work than work.

@ckroberts, that is not the subject of this study or this thread. It definitely deserves a discussion of its own absolutely, but not in this thread.

@Draugnar, excellent point and we've been there before, rewarding giving birth more than work. Perfectly on topic as well.

The study doesn't even account for the opportunity costs of being at work compared to being at home. You collect welfare and have all day to do whatever you want while the person working has less money than you and spends all day at work to boot. The person on welfare can't do anything productive with their day and get paid for it because making any money would endanger their eligibility. The welfare state in the West is simply fiscally unsustainable and also socially bankrupting and destructive because it traps people on government aid in unproductive lives.

"33 states offer more in welfare than full-time minimum wage work earns."

So maybe we should look into raising the minimum wage and making it more livable?

Hell no, Obi, it's much better to make people poorer because that's a great incentive to get them to go to expensive schools to get expensive professional degrees so that they can make more money!

^Coming from a rich brat in Indy.

Just do what I did. Do well in school despite the Podunk farming community or inner city ghetto you may live in then leverage your future for the next 10 years on student loans. Finally, go back when you have an employer that will pay for additional education.

Doing well in school is 25% dependent on individual students, 25% dependent on parents, 25% dependent on teachers, and 25% dependent on other students. In other words, students aren't smart on their own. It's not a coincidence that people in situations like mine are better off throughout their lives.

Of course I'm about to throw it away by getting into the messy field known as education.

Please provide citations for these 25% figures. I don't believe you can.

Citations? It's not like those are statistics. You went to school; what are the odds of the kid with the rich family being smart over the kid that grew up in a wooden tent? It's not rocket science.

Parents and the individual students collectively make up at least 65% with teachers/schools making up another 25% or so, meaning the other students only make up 10% if that. Otherwise, homeschooled kids would have significantly higher success rates than public or private schooled kids.

@bo - I was the smart kid. No one in my family had a degree and I had to pay for my own college because my parents couldn't afford to. I grew up in a 165 year old farm house and went to a school full of pot heads, drunkards, and trailer park trash. Lakota was not a great school district back then. Hell, that's why I went into the Marine Corps first when the Coast Guard Academy had to medically reject me for my crappy color-vision.

As Han solo used to say "Never tell me the odds".

The homeschooled kids I know are usually the smartest around.

You can tweak those numbers if you want, Draug. The point is that "smart" and "successful" and "professional" are nurture, not nature. If the dad belches at the dinner table and the mom is openly a prominent KKK member, you the kid is going to be a well-mannered sensitive person right off the bat? No, they are going to need teachers and other people to help them, maybe some counseling or things like that even. Same goes for school - if your family doesn't care, or if your teachers don't care, you're not gonna get anywhere unless some other greater influence comes about and pushes you in the right direction. Really simple stuff.

Draug ... no one ever said it's impossible. It's *less likely.* Something in your life pushed you in that direction and it obviously wasn't your pothead/drunkard/trashy friends.

"The homeschooled kids I know are usually the smartest around."

Exactly! And why is that? It sure as fuck *ain't* cause they are around other smart kids. They aren't around other kids, period!

But bo, now you are being elitist. you think money prevents dad from being an asshole or makes mom care about the kids education? The money influences one thing only, the teachers/schools themselves. But I put the onus of education on the home and the student as the homeschooling demonstrates. And that his nothing to do with who has money. I know lower income families who still homeschool *because* they care about their kids doing better than themselves. Money does not make for caring parents. In fact, it often makes for quite the opposite, parents who ar emore worried about making and having more and less about their kids future and current well being because they think "we've got money, so out kids must be doing fine" and never bother to actually spend time with them.

@draug, your stories about your childhood have some inconsistencies. You've mentioned several times that your family was well off and respected and you had congressmen and fancy attornies as friends of the family. Now you grew up on a farm and were dirt poor? And you've said in the past that your service in the Marines paid for your college but now you say you paid for college yourself.

Come clean draug, which was it? You can't BS a guy with teenage daughters, I have to vet the guys they bring home so inconsistencies stand out to me ;-)

"Of course I'm about to throw it away by getting into the messy field known as education."

please no

@Draug ... "It sure as fuck *ain't* cause they are around other smart kids. They aren't around other kids, period!"

I wasn't saying that hanging around other smart students makes you smart. I was saying that hanging around bullies (impossible for many kids to avoid in public schools) takes away from your education.

"But bo, now you are being elitist. you think money prevents dad from being an asshole or makes mom care about the kids education?"

Again, not what I said. I made a connection between two independent situations.

"Money does not make for caring parents."

Not sure where I said it does.

@PE ... what? Are you saying no, don't get into education, no, don't get into that subject, or no, you can make money in education? There are ways to be well off as a teacher, but I could definitely make more as a doctor or lawyer or something. I'll have to take the same time in school either way. Obviously the implication is that that isn't the biggest factor.

Raising the minimum wage increases unemployment, and the adding people to the unproductive welfare rolls increases the unsustainable obligations already on the books. A proposal that leads to insolvency isn't valid.

"A proposal that leads to insolvency isn't valid."

Guess neither capitalism or socialism work then.

http://aneconomicsense.com/2013/03/06/the-impact-of-increasing-the-minimum-wage-on-unemployment-no-evidence-of-it/

Except thats not true.

Data, people. Use it.

If it pays more to not work than to work, then why do people work?

lol Americans are funny. They want universal healthcare, living in Canada, I can tell you universal healthcare is the biggest piece of shit in history.

and, living in the UK, I can tell you that it's awesome.

The premise of the article is false on its face. If there is no impact of increasing the minimum wage why isn't it $1,000 an hour? There is no impact according to the article. Companies just completely ignore labor costs and pass any increase onto consumers without a total inelastic demand that never decreases.
As for dueling arguments from outside sources.
http://goo.gl/OGCEUS
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/14/opinion/the-right-minimum-wage-0.00.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

This entire thread consists of uninspired ramblings of privileged fools blaming problems that have existed for all of time on people they don't care about. Shut up and play diplomacy.