<font color=orange>I think that's a great idea Harley! I have always believed that kids in school should have such a class. I also believe they should have Home economics and also typing! Got to know how to do all three now-a-days! </font>

Somebody, I think it was Robert A. Heinlein, said that, the nastier and more soul-destroying the job, the lower the wage, and the most-comfortable, interesting, and fun the job, the higher the wage. [img]graemlins/blueblink.gif[/img] </font>[/QUOTE]<font face="COMIC Sans MS" size="3" color="#7c9bc4">
Heinlein was also attached to the acronym TANSTAAFL, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" as in, you work, or you starve. [img]smile.gif[/img] of course in his later works he seemed inordinately fixated on incest too...but I like most of his books.</font>

That idea lasted about as long as Milli Vanilli's attempts to actually sing their lyrics. B&J backpedaled when no corporate execs would take the job they had to offer. So, now, just like everyone else, they work under the reality that there are people in the company making 100 times what the lowest paid worker makes.

It's hard to know what $6/$7/$8 etc equates to in real terms for other countries. What's the average national wage?

Don't know the answer, but I can do this quick math:
Average Income = $24,000/yr
Assume 50 weeks (2 wks vacation) / 40 hours per week:

This results in $12/hr.

Lots of assumptions with this rough math, but use it if it helps.

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Timber, I read some where a couple of years ago that the "Average Household Income" was around $52,000 in the United States....now Im gonna have to go look it up [img]smile.gif[/img]

Found this...I was off by 10k

http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/income01/inctab1.html

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[ 06-10-2003, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

MagiK, except for the households where one wage-earner is making an amount that is probably in excess of $50K anyway, "household" income is usually the income of two people. I quoted the $24 K median income for an Illinois individual. It is a common figure on the news around here. So, perhaps we're both right. ;)

Up until about 6 years ago, we ddn't have a national minimum wage here in the UK, because we had a right-wing government in charge that couldn't care less about the slums the uneducated/unskilled lived in. Maggie Thatcher (may hairy spiders gnaw on her bones for all eternity), thought that a perfectly reasonable solution was for people to work in conditions of virtual slavery, earning maybe £1.50 per hour, arguing that should you work 100 hours a week, you have a perfectly liveable weekly wage. Thank god we had the National Health Service (despite the right-wingers attempts to destroy it), or we would have had unskilled/uneducated people dying in the streets.

Then, we got a more centre-left government in charge, who announced their intewntion to introduce a minimum wage. The capitalists and right-wingers fought tooth and nail agianst this (just as they fought tooth and nail against giving non-homeowners the vote). They demanded that the idea be scrapped because of the impact it would have on prices, spending, industry, small businesses, and just about everything short of the sun's magnetic field.

Of course, the minimum wage was introduced, and has been increasing every year since then (I think it's about $6.50 - $7.00 now), and all the doomsayers on the right-wing benches have been proved wrong. The impact was minimal, and we no longer have people selling themselves into virtual slavery to earn a living wage.

Tell you what, Magik - why don't we simply assume that anyone who doesn't have the ability to get a job paying a liveable wage is a burden on society, strip them of all belongings, and confine them to sleeping in mudholes on the street until they die? That would save the taxpayer quite a bit, I imagine, and would have the full support of your like-minded colleagues. I mean, if the minimum wage is not meant to be a minimum working salary on which one can survive without benefits or working 2 or 3 jobs for 80 hours per week, then it is clearly just an arbitrary measure we can do without. That, or we rename it the "Anyone incapable of earning more than this wage is clearly just a lazy bum, because I say so" Wage?

Do you actually know anyone in this situation, Magik? Anyone who simply was no good academically? Someone who trained for a job which is now obsolete, and who can no longer retrain due to his age? Anyone who simply does not have what it takes to get beyond the bottom rung of the career ladder? I mean, are you at all in contact with anyone like that, or is your total lack of sympathy for those people simply a result of detached scorn and ignorance of the daily struggle of their lives?

Hey, Bardan...

First, breathe deeply and count to 10. :D

Second, nice post.

Third, is that $6.50-$7.00 figure in US dollars? I assume you translated from quid for us, but just making sure. (England isn't on the Euro yet, is it?)

Indeed it is, indeed I did (and indeed we're not) [img]smile.gif[/img]

And yes, call me Over-Reaction Man. It's my calling card ;)