Thrift shops, Goodwill, Salvation Army

[denimini]

Yes, I think you did misunderstand. Goodwill is a huge nationwide tax-exempt charity. I am asking that the people who support it to help make sure it conducts itself ethically. Certain laws exempt disabled individuals employed by such charities from coverage under US minimum wage laws. These workers are often paid only one half the minimum wage, sometimes less, while records reveal that the charity's executives are salarying themselves and favored cronies at outrageous amounts. This is a blatant abuse of the public trust as expressed in the tax-exempt status. I think all that was clear in the links I attached; take a read of those.

A private business, i.e. a local consignment or second-hand shop must comply with wage and hour laws. I think Goodwill should do the same. The minimum wage in the US is already a disgrace; tax exempt charities should not be abusing their priveleges.

Thanks for clearing that up. I should have read all the links first.

[moonshadow]

This is a blatant abuse of the public trust as expressed in the tax-exempt status. I think all that was clear in the links I attached; take a read of those.

A private business, i.e. a local consignment or second-hand shop must comply with wage and hour laws. I think Goodwill should do the same. The minimum wage in the US is already a disgrace; tax exempt charities should not be abusing their priveleges.

I too am guilty of not reading the links the first time around, I did the second time (hence my slight realignment you may have noticed on my last comment on this thread).

Having said that, I stand with you on this issue Dillon. Minimum wage law needs to apply to everyone. And regarding the other issue about min wage in general, I think they should just raise it to $9.50 +/- like they have discussed and tie it to inflation hence forth. Raise to $15 per hour? NO! Because that's getting close to what I make, and I WONT get a raise to offset the sudden surge in cost of living. If skilled labor (what I do) can't do better then min wage then I have no incentive to try, and I'll just bag groceries and make the same amount, and NOT have to worry about being on call, or risking life and limb repairing dangerous machines.

I do have a question though, is this pretty uniform across all GoodWills? Or just some? In other words, I'm trying to find out if say employees of my local stores are paid normally. In all honesty, most of them don't look disabled. I've also heard that there are a lot of GoodWill employees that work behind the scenes.

[partlyscot]

Having said that, I stand with you on this issue Dillon. Minimum wage law needs to apply to everyone. And regarding the other issue about min wage in general, I think they should just raise it to $9.50 +/- like they have discussed and tie it to inflation hence forth. Raise to $15 per hour? NO! Because that's getting close to what I make, and I WONT get a raise to offset the sudden surge in cost of living. If skilled labor (what I do) can't do better then min wage then I have no incentive to try, and I'll just bag groceries and make the same amount, and NOT have to worry about being on call, or risking life and limb repairing dangerous machines.

And Why, are you only getting $15/hour for a skilled job? Because they can get away with paying you that. If you get realistic living wages for everyone, then the standard for the harder or more technical jobs will go up as well, because, as you say, I won't do the hard stuff if I can get the same doing something simpler/easier.

[moonshadow]

And Why, are you only getting $15/hour for a skilled job? Because they can get away with paying you that. If you get realistic living wages for everyone, then the standard for the harder or more technical jobs will go up as well, because, as you say, I won't do the hard stuff if I can get the same doing something simpler/easier.

And as those wages go up for everyone, so does the cost of goods and services, and before you know it, we're right back where we started from.

I basically mean's I'll have to find another job and start all over with benefits. As my "new" employer would have lost all of their help for not giving their former employees a raise to offset the min wage hike. They would finally cave and hire me at somewhere between $25-$30 per hour. My former employer would try desperately to fill my position at minimum wage to no avail and would finally cave and pay a new hire a similar wage. I estimate it would take a year or two for labor rates to stabilize. In the mean time, I, along with everyone else making the new $15 minimum wage would live in poverty as a loaf of bread goes from $1.20 to $5, and a gallon of fuel goes from $2 to $8. Rents go from $500 per month to over a thousand, and in general everything sky rockets.

A minimum wage job will ALWAYS be a minimum wage job. The only ones who benefit will be the ultra rich, because while their labor rates went up, they just increased the sales prices of their goods and services to offset it. So at the end of their day, their bottom line just increases...

And Moon Shadow is on food stamps.... and the rich just keep on getting richer.

It's just another middle finger to the middle class.

I will agree that we are overdue for a min wage increase though, which is why I support the current move to raise it to around $9 per hour and tie it to inflation from that point onward so we don't have to address this again. I don't think a raise of only a couple of dollars spaced out over a few years would shock the economy to drastically. $15 is unrealistic. High school baggers don't need $15 per hour. It doesn't cost that much to put gas in a car and run around. It's not like they have rent and utility bills to pay. Hell,they can't even legally operate a slicer or baler, or any other machine for that matter.

[Caultron]

Percent return-on-investment is virtually always higher than percent growth in the economy. This is because, among other reasons, no one would invest in a venture whose rate of return was less than the economic growth rate.

So when the economic growth rate is 2%, and ROI is 4%, the rich gain the 4% and everybody else loses 2%

In other words, it's an economic fact that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The end result is a small but fabulously wealthy upper class and a general population living in servile poverty. This generally leads to revolution, as exemplified in France, the United States, and Russia.

To prevent that, the general population needs to establish a government that to some extent and appropriately reverses the upward flow of wealth. Graduated income taxes are one means of doing this, but minimum wages are another.

Naturally, the rich don't like having part of their income redirected to lower classes, and scream bloody murder at the thought, and seek to use their wealth to control elections. So here we are today, with even middle and professional classes buying clothes at thrift shops.

[bobmoore]

The top 5% of earners already pay more than 90% of all income taxes. Only socialists think they aren't paying enough. It is the greed that lives in the hearts of men that makes one man think he has a right to the assets of another. Money is personal property, and forcible transfer of that property from the one who owns it to one who has no right to it, even if he thinks he does, is nothing but theft under color of law.

[bobmoore]

And all 'minimum wage' laws do is price many people out of the job market at the entry level, and uniformly force prices upward to recover the artificial cost increases.

Besides, wages are not a legtimate concern of government under the Constitution. See the enumerated powers if you doubt it. A basic economic principle is that a thing is worth what you can get for it. A buyer has no standing to dictate to a seller what a thing is worth. Labor is worth what an employer is willing to pay for a specific job, not what some social do-gooder thinks he ought to pay. That, boys and girls, is basic free market economics.

[crfriend]

The top 5% of earners already pay more than 90% of all income taxes.

This was, indeed, the case during the 1950s and early 1960s -- which were widely regarded as prosperous times. Not so any longer.

The tax codes started getting a mild "reform" in the late '60s and '70s, and then received a major overhaul in the '80s when the tax on unearned income dropped to way below the tax on earned income. This had the effect of rewarding gambling behaviour, which is how the economic elites make their nut, at the expense of the working class who makes virtually everything from wages. This has only accelerated in more recent years. And what do we have to show for it? A whole series of "jobless recoveries", the increasing impoverishment of those who work for a living, and concentration of wealth at the top in numbers never before seen, not even in the Gilded Age and the time of the Robber Barons.

I get to do my taxes every year, so I get to look at how things work on unearned income -- and the effects are stunning, and only multiply in magnitude the larger sums there are involved. It's pretty remarkable when one looks at it and runs hypothetical numbers through the equations to see how they really work -- and this doesn't even count the loopholes for outright dodging tax that only the economic elites have available to them.

All in all, my tax load verges on the 50% mark and occasionally exceeds that depending on what I've done -- or has happened to me -- in the prior year. This is an unpleasant, but bearable, burden and would be less so if I actually received benefit for the monies so spent. The percentage of take from an income stream in excess of 50 to 60 million is a pittance as a percentage compared to what I lose from my mostly wage-based income. It's not bearable for a very large number of people, and they see everything they've worked for all their lives going down the drain in tax, lower incomes -- which exacerbates the effect, and increasing joblessness. This is the destruction of what was the middle class.

I'm not against folks getting rich from their work and their ideas; what I am against is the unethical hoarding of wealth that one has not earned by the sweat of his own labours.

So, let's please get facts straight before parroting propaganda without doing at least a marginal amount of research.

[dillon]

And all 'minimum wage' laws do is price many people out of the job market at the entry level, and uniformly force prices upward to recover the artificial cost increases.

Besides, wages are not a legtimate concern of government under the Constitution. See the enumerated powers if you doubt it. A basic economic principle is that a thing is worth what you can get for it. A buyer has no standing to dictate to a seller what a thing is worth. Labor is worth what an employer is willing to pay for a specific job, not what some social do-gooder thinks he ought to pay. That, boys and girls, is basic free market economics.

Might I suggest you go work for seven bucks an hour for a year and then examine your standard of living before you make such an unsubstantiable pronouncement? The biggest gripe I have with people who start harping on free enterprise is that they equate it with laissez-faire, apparently oblivious to the fact that what you folks call competition and free enterprise exists ONLY BECAUSE of government regulation, which is the only force that creates a level playing field. Without that, so-called free enterprise is anything but free. It becomes a winner-take-all proposition, and a race to the bottom for everyone else. The best thing that government could do for increasing the standard of living would be to abolish "right-to-work" laws and stop protecting the rich from having to deal honestly with their employees.

[Jim]

The top 5% of earners already pay more than 90% of all income taxes.

Documentation please. I found this (attributed to the CBO, Congressional Budget Office) with a quick search:

It doesn't seem to agree with your figure. It indicates the top 20% of earners pay about 69% of the tax. The top 20% has about 84% of the wealth.
These are old data; I think it has become more lopsided since these figures.

[bobmoore]

Might I suggest you go work for seven bucks an hour for a year and then examine your standard of living before you make such an unsubstantiable pronouncement?

Please. The facts speak for themselves. Min wage jobs are entry level, not supposed to be family supporting. If one wants better pay, then earn it, don't legislate it.

Abolishing right to work does little bit empower unions. No thanks.

[crfriend]

These are old data; I think it has become more lopsided since these figures.

What is also missing is the percentage of wealth and percentage of taxes paid by the top 0.1% and top 0.01% -- that's where the money is, and even with just the top 1% highlighted it shows how the curve is already sloping downwards at a steep rate for tax burden and up at a steep rate for wealth. Those curves go exponential when the top 1% is broken down into deciles or centiles. Occupy Wall Street had it wrong: it's not the bottom 99% versus the top 1% -- it's the bottom 99.95% vs the top .05% -- but those sorts of numbers do not a "sound-bite" make.

Also, since 2010, things have gotten markedly worse for wage-earners because the job-market has continued to implode. Yes, there are jobs available, but the ones that are increasingly do not include things like health care or pay enough to cover one's living-expenses after taxes. Worse, more jobs are becoming of a "contract" nature which means that the individual gets taxed at almost a double rate to pay for the Ponzi scheme known as "Social Security".

Humans band into societies for reasons, and one of those reasons is so the enormously strong or powerful cannot run rough-shod over the overwhelming majority of the population. "Social Darwinism" has been demonstrated an abject failure in the past for societies as a whole, but, unfortunately it's a very appealing concept for the super-wealthy -- especially when one removes any notion of ethical behaviour from the picture. We're not supposed to operate under the "Law of the Jungle". Or are we?

For some of the grim news, see The London School of Economics on the matter, or the paper quoted therein from Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. Note that these are unpleasant reads for anybody in the bottom 99.9% of the wealth spectrum, nor are they easy reads -- that's why the problem doesn't get the attention it needs.

[dillon]

[quote="dillon

Might I suggest you go work for seven bucks an hour for a year and then examine your standard of living before you make such an unsubstantiable pronouncement?

Please. The facts speak for themselves. Min wage jobs are entry level, not supposed to be family supporting. If one wants better pay, then earn it, don't legislate it.

Abolishing right to work does little bit empower unions. No thanks.

Saying it's so doesn't make it so, Bob. The fact is that there are places where there is no upward mobility, and the available work begins as and remains minimum wage. And a lot of them. In this area, when manufacturing, mainly textiles migrated overseas over the eighties and nineties, a lot of people who lost work found a comparable living in the growing housing industry - subcontracting or doing grounds care. People down here commuted up to two hours to the Triangle or Wilmington, or out to the beaches to find work. But when homebuilding hit the skids, they were left with few options. For many people, min wage is the alpha and the beta, regardless of what conservatives believe its intent was. Come down to eastern NC if you don't believe it. If you divided the state down I-95, the counties to the east would instantly become the poorest state in the nation. If the so called free-enterprise conservatives believe their ways lead to prosperity for all, why do they need to hide behind legislators instead of bargaining with their workers? Right to work is just a tool to allow employers to intimidate workers. In lieu of the right to organize and strike, minimum wage is the last option left for many. They fall into that 6% that exists between the real unemployment rate and the claimed unemployment rate; people who have either stopped looking or live below the subsistence level, i.e. underemployed. If we just adjusted the min wage to reflect living inflation relative to where the min wage peaked in 1968, it would be above $10/hr. But in that time, inflation was calculated using the entire economy. Today we exclude "volatile" sectors, namely food and energy. Yet as far as what affects daily living costs, those should be at the forefront. So a reasonable minimum wage is more like $12 to $15/hour. The US has the lowest minimum wage of all the major industrialized economies. Ours is on a comparable scale with Slovenia.

[partlyscot]

My tongue is sore, I’ve been biting it so hard.

Walmart exists, and continues to function in the US, and is making the owners, probably the richest family in the US, if not the world, a huge pile of cash. That pile is bigger than it should be, because of the way they run their low level staff. As of 2013-14, Walmart cost the taxpayers, that's you folks! 6.2 Billion in assistance program.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconno ... af01367cd8
Yup, they’ve conned you into subsidizing their business for them. Walmart also functions in Canada and other places, despite having to work with more sane pay rules. It's still not a happy place to work, but at least they can live on the pay. You have all been marketed this idea that taxes are the bogeyman. You get it with the instant formula at birth, drip fed all day long as an adult. I'm sorry, but I have to say, that from the outside, the USA is from many viewpoints functionally insane. I have visited, and enjoyed my times down there, but at the moment I will not cross the border. At last count you have 563 billionaires. Who the F%$# needs a billion dollars? You couldn't reasonably spend it in a lifetime, that's a full lifetime not the 30-40 years most of them have left. And they still keep piling it up. The way the rules are written at the moment, (written by and for the oligarchs) the wealth concentration going on is higher than at any since the great depression. It's gone too far. This sort of thing is always a case of a pendulum, but for the last couple of decades the people getting the lion's share have been mounting a rocket engine on the other side of the pendulum. Time to do something about it.

[crfriend]

I'm sorry, but I have to say, that from the outside, the USA is from many viewpoints functionally insane.

Don't compare it to what you might think a "sane" state might look like. For a start, try comparing it to modern-day Russia. The comparisons are remarkably close. (At least Russia has a real strong-man for a president. +1 Russia)

Time to do something about it.

The time is already long passed. It's up to history -- and natural decay -- to run its inevitable course.