02-04-2016: half-day of rants & archiving (couldn't stand the weather...)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to minimum wage legislation as election interference

what would the minimum wage be now if it had been indexed to inflation in 1965? and was there mass unemployment in the 60s?

prices are not set by some physical law that entitles the capitalist class to a specific cut. we have some monopolies. like bananas. and gas. but, broadly speaking, they're set by market forces. they will charge you what you're willing to pay. and, if you won't pay what they're charging, the prices will come down.

so, you can't work this out using some simplistic linear model. producers will take any opportunity they can to maximize profit. sure. but, it's up to you whether you want to pay for it or not. and, it's up to business owners to set a fair profit margin, too.

some people will get greedy. they won't be able to compete. so sad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmrTrVA6jrA

se
minimum wage would be about 25 dollars per hour - workers in USA are being screwed big time

jessica
the system is reacting to some activism. that's a positive step. i mean, it's been a few decades since the union movement collapsed. there's a vacuum there on both sides of the class divide.

but, you need to be careful in preventing the systen from turning it into a wedge issue, like gay marriage or abortion rights. you can imagine this nightmare scenario where the democrats dangle $0.25/yr increases as a foil to scaremongering over the republicans turning it back by ten years.

in 2014, the liberal party up in ontario (canada) just out of the blue took the best position you can on the issue. there wasn't even any activist pressure. the pressure, rather, seems to have come from the party's economic advisers, who decided that the government needed to take steps to stimulate spending amongst low income workers. there was also talk about it eliminating uncertainty for business owners. but it was primarily a stimulus policy that came out of think tanks. this is what they did:

(1) boost the minimum wage to it's highest level, historically, relative to inflation.
(2) tie it to the cpi, to be recalculated on a yearly basis.

so, if there is 2% inflation in ontario over 2016 then the minimum wage for 2017 will increase by 2%. workers aren't losing out.

http://heavy.com/news/2016/03/new-york-election-fraud-voter-registration-not-enrolled-in-a-party-dropped-sanders-clinton-democrat-what-to-do-how-vote-suppression/

http://usuncut.com/politics/bernie-wins-nevada-democratic-caucus/

do you have an article from the 90s where you argue they'd never cut transfers to the provinces in order to save their debt rating?

i know we just got out of nine years of brutal, systemic and often deeply calculated dishonesty. it could take a while to transfer away from absolute cynicism and back to healthy skepticism. but, this is actually right up the liberals' ally.

i'd expect them to make more progress on this than they're going to make on emissions reductions, anyways.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tax-expenditures-giveaways-neil-macdonald-1.3515484

ted cruz has no chance of winning in the northeast. it's trump or kasich. and, if trump does win, it's going to be cruz' fault for not stepping down and allowing the party to rally around an electable candidate. if the banks had backed somebody less extreme in the first place, trump wouldn't be controlling the center so effectively.

so, it doesn't matter. cruz has already lost, and he's just wasting everybody's time.

www.cbc.ca/news/world/donald-trump-wisconsin-1.3518026