If minimum wage goes up to 15 bucks an hour?

Agreed. Completely agreed.

 

Welfare policies vary widely from locality to locality with some states having almost no welfare at all. Obviously in places where welfare doesn't phase out with income around the 1500-2000 a month range my complaint isn't accurate. In places where it does it creates a situation where someone can make an extra 50 bucks a week and lose 800-1000 in monthly welfare benefits because they crossed the magic line where they stopped qualifying for the program.

 

I'm not arguing with any of that. We definitely need to cut the military way back. We're a nation with the largest oceans on planet earth on our eastern and western borders and extremely friendly nations to our north and south. That we should be spending a greater % of our GDP on the military than anyone within 500 miles of Russia is laughable. The Europeans/Koreans/Japanese/Israelis have been sucking on our teat for 50+ years and it should stop within 2-3 years. Honestly I was hoping that this was what Trump was going to do. I figured at least if he actually realigned our foreign policy with our national interests something good might come of the next 4 years. So far no sign of that happening and in fact he seems to be trying to start the Korean War 2.

 

Public-Private partnerships are such a scam. The government should pump money into basic research, infrastructure, and if an industry is important enough (solar certainly is) some tax breaks. It should be illegal for localities to offer tax breaks to industries to relocate there. That dynamic is how corporations get out of paying their share of maintaining our communities and everywhere looks worse because of it.

Either the government is doing something, which means 100% of the staff are government employees, or the private sector is doing something. When the private sector starts doing deals with the government they are actually negotiating with career bureaucrats who are actually negotiating on their own behalf. I learned years ago that my customer isn't the company I'm doing business with but the purchasing manager. I spend a good bit of money on christmas baskets, pizza, swag, etc because of that. Best investment I make every year. Needless to say this isn't a recipe for the government getting the best possible deal on anything.

 

Oh henna-penny the sky is falling; full time low wage workers are going to get paid just a little closer to a living wage. How will the rolls of food stamps and welfare survive?

Well, you can just tell what is polluting the airwaves on wing-nut radio just by reading the talking points parroted here. Obviously special interests have a motive for keeping wages low and the truck stop economists are all out in force.

Since, Seattle was the first to come out with this dastardly economic plan, why not look at what is happening there:
Seattle (King county) has 3.8% unemployment. Wow, is that strange? All the experts claim unemployment should skyrocket when the minimum is raised. Yet Seattle unemployment has decreased since the minimum was raised. Just how did that happen?

Like the right-wing exclaimed, everybody must have just moved out of town to find work. But it appears just the opposite happened: Seattle once again nation’s fastest-growing big city; population exceeds 700,000

Seattle with its ridiculous $15 minimum wage is the fastest growing city with the most job growth:Washington state ranks No. 1 for combined job and wage growth

Just how could that all be? That just goes against all the wing-nut claims.

 

His track record of lying and cutting shady deals goes back decades and dwarfs anything the Clintons were ever even accused of. Of course local media gave a lot more exposure to his BS and scams thru the years than the rest of the nation ever saw, which is probably why he got less than 20% of the vote in his own hometown.