GOP representative and Galtian hero Tom McClintock showed up on C-SPAN, and this is what burbled out of the biggest hole in his head:
California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock said on Thursday that the minimum wage should not be raised because low pay was necessary for minorities and other unskilled workers who were not worth more than $7 an hour.
During an appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, host Greta Brawner asked McClintock if he could get behind a presidential candidate like Mitt Romney, who is one of an increasing number of Republicans saying that the minimum wage should be at least $10.10 an hour.
But McClintock argued that raising the minimum wage would “rip the first rung in the ladder of opportunity for teenagers, for minorities, for people who are trying to get into the job market for their first job.”
And the minority outreach continues in earnest. So far this new congress, the Republicans are doing a bang-up job of not looking scary or out of touch and the party you would trust with the Presidency.
Roger Moore
I thought that was the one his brains leaked out of.
Comrade Dread
McClintock is, for all intents and purposes, a libertarian, so yeah, not a surprise he’d say something like this considering most of the Libertarians I know would be in favor of getting rid of the minimum wage altogether as it’s a violation of the ‘contract rights’ of an employee and employer to set their own wages.
Libertarians generally do not see any sort of power that exists outside of government power, let alone a disparity of power between a large corporation and an individual worker.
Origuy
California allows Congressional Representatives to live outside their district. McClintock was living in Thousand Oaks, north of LA when he first ran for district 4, in the northwest corner of California. It’s about the whitest part of the state. Now district 4 is further south and includes Lake Tahoe. Lots of minimum wage jobs in the tourist industry there.
KG
it’s funny because the minimum wage here in California is $9 an hour and set to go to $10 on January 1, 2016.
not funny “ha ha” but funny…
ETA: also, too, because 29 states and DC beat the federal minimum wage
c u n d gulag
Can you imagine what would come out of their stupid and ignorant mouths if they WEREN’T trying to reach-out to minorities?
ZOINKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
c u n d gulag
Can you imagine what would come out of their stupid and ignorant mouths if they WEREN’T trying to reach-out to minorities?
ZOINKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
balconesfault
Of course, if we dropped minimum wage to $2 an hour … and shot people who weren’t working … we’d eliminate unemployment completely!
KG
@Comrade Dread: most of the movement libertarians, who tend to be center right or right wing libertarians fail to see power outside the government. those of us who are center left libertarians, and there are a few of us, realize that corrupting power resides in many places and that it’s probably best to set those powerful agencies against each other whenever possible.
MattF
Do sparrows fart?
http://willowcottage.co.za/do-sparrows-fart/
Possibly!
schrodinger's cat
Heh many GOP intellectuals think lowering the minimum wage is the way to go.
beth
When I walk into a Mcdonalds or Target or Publix or Kohls during the day (you know, when all the teenagers are at school) the employees I see all look like adults. And where I live they’re mostly white adults (because that’s how the customers like it). Why shouldn’t they make enough money to live on? Aren’t the Republicans the ones going on about the dignity of work? Why don’t they ever get any pushback on this?
trollhattan
@Comrade Dread:
Yeah, he’s “libertarian” right up to the bit where he wants (the gummint) to build a ten-billion dollar dam for certain of his well-heeled constituents. God, I hate that man with the fire of a thousand suns.
C.V. Danes
Well I guess saying that someone is 7/10 worth someone who can get a full minimum wage is a step up from three-fifths.
Who says that Republicans ain’t progressing!
ice weasel
but assholes all across the country trust those same republicans to be the nation’s legislators…
wtf-ever.
trollhattan
@beth:
Some things are simply different in this century. I have had an adult delivering my newspaper [your what?] for decades. Paper boy was the go-to first job for generations.
C.V. Danes
@beth:
Because in the Republican universe, even slaves were grateful for three squares and a warm straw-patch to sleep on, so what’s the problem if you have to work 120 hours a week for the same?
Pogonip
@MattF: This is useful information. In the unlikely event the topic of dog poop is ever exhausted, we can switch to discussing bird farts.
gene108
What a job is worth is really a very arbitrary notion.
For the MOTU, if they can pay someone 1/10 of what they make in the U.S. for doing the same job, they figure they are overpaying American workers.
The question is do we really want to get into a race to the bottom of cheap labor?
I think Republicans would not mind.
C.V. Danes
@gene108:
Not only do they not mind, they’re promoting the race, with help from their neo-liberal friends from across the aisle.
Gin & Tonic
@Pogonip: It’s not an either/or.
flukebucket
@gene108:
Sorry but that ship sailed long ago.
srv
Tom’s thesis is testable – if white folk start jumping off of their couches and flipping hamburgers, then minority unemployment will skyrocket.
I’ll hashtag this for a future search: #juicefascism
jonas
@trollhattan: Yep. Minimum wage jobs used to be for teenagers looking for some summer work and a little spending money. Given how 30 years of neoliberalism has hollowed out our economy and decimated the working-class jobs grown-ups *used* to take, all that’s left now are service-sector jobs once intended for people looking to afford some new sneakers at the mall, not raise a family.
docg
I am absolutely sure that if increased wages at McDonalds lead to annual profits of 4 billion instead of 5 billion, they would go out business immediately. How Republicans successfully sell this type of unadulterated horseshit is beyond me.
Belafon
I take this as another sign – the first one being that he identifies as a Republican – that he really has no clue how our economy works.
PIGL
@ice weasel: it’s because they’re assholes that they support those other assholes. It’t not a question of trust so much as of self knowledge. Assholes do what assholes do, and they like seeing it done, as long as it’s not done to them so far as they can. Which is often not very, because this personality characteristic (warning: opinion ahead) is weakly negatively correlated with intelligence.
JPL
It’s almost as though, they think people need to be lined up and identified. Carson said something similar. Although he had a lot of federal aid, people now a days aren’t as deserving.
danielx
@balconesfault:
Let’s don’t start talking that up; they’re likely to take it seriously and push for it.
scav
@C.V. Danes: They speak of the dignity of work, not anything about the paychecks for same. All the (necessarily positive) returns of business belong to the stockholders.
schrodinger's cat
@gene108: Our economy is consumer driven and it will tank if people lose their buying power. Its already happening, the mid market brands are in trouble, while the low end and the high end ones are doing pretty well. The super rich consumers cannot sustain the entire consumer economy.
Kristine
@beth:
The dignity of work is its own reward. Unless you’re a CEO–then you deserve tens of millions because reasons.
Scotius
@trollhattan:
I worked in the circulation department of the Portland Press Herald iin Maine n the late 80s and Mid 90s. They moved from having trucks delver the bales of newspapers to the delivery persons’ homes to setting up regional distribution centers where the delivery people had to drive to to pick them up instead. This had the effect of ending the tradition of teenagers or even younger delivering newspapers. It also meant that if you didn’t have a car to go pick up your papers, you were shit out of luck and were now shut off from what used to be an entry level job.
jl
It would have been a standard Econ 101 argument, but he had to put all ‘minorities’ in there as unskilled and not worth much.
Not that the Econ 101 argument is correct for modern labor markets. If, as McClintock suggests, minimum wage jobs are the bottom rung of a skill ladder, which implies learning on the job, then the Econ 101 argument is too simple.
But anyway, the lesson is: outreach is hard for our current GOP. You always have to censor yourself.
danielx
@gene108:
We being Republicans and most particularly Republican Ayn Rand devotees…
Yes. This has been another edition of Simple Answers To Simple Questions.
And if they could get rid of all those inefficiencies and overhead items like paid vacations, insurance, childbirth leave, workplace safety, and so forth, that would be even better.
sacrablue
I live a quarter-mile outside this bozo’s district. I worked really hard to keep him from getting elected the first time he ran for this seat…bitter disappointment. Roseville, the largest city in his district, is a retail mecca. If he thinks the employees are all minorities and teenagers he still isn’t spending any time in the district, freaking carpetbagger.
Pogonip
@schrodinger’s cat: Do you anticipate a sudden outright collapse, as in 1929, or continued gradual slide into depression? Dmitry Orlov argues the former, John Michael Greer the latter.
What has struck me so far about the current depression is how normal things seem on the surface. No bread lines, no protests. Cars zipping around.
Belafon
@Pogonip: Because we managed to avoid the 1929 depression by having the Republican leave office right when it started. Had Bush had two more years to implement Hoover’s policies over again, we would have the bread lines.
Pogonip
@Gin & Tonic: It’s a dessert topping AND a floor wax!
We could even combine the topics: dog farts, and sparrow poop! I don’t know if sparrows fart, but I’m pretty sure they poop.
“When the sparrows fart” must be a regionalism. Everyone else refers to oh-dark-thirty.
schrodinger's cat
@Pogonip: We could have another 2008 like crash, the incentives haven’t changed and the regulatory bodies are still poorly staffed.
ETA: FWIW I think Orlov is a kook.
Kay
This is the economic theory that says low wage employers hire people they don’t need at 7 dollars an hour, so they’ll just hire fewer of those useless employees if the wage goes up to ten dollars.
Because they have spare employees standing around doing nothing at 7 dollars and when it goes to ten dollars they won’t be able to afford those spare employees anymore.
It’s really an amazing theory because it doesn’t assign any value to the 7 dollar an hour employee’s work at all.
We have exactly as many employees here as we need. We don’t have any optional spares. I think the same is true at McDonalds.
Litlebritdifrnt
Sort of OT but Huckerbee was on MJ the other morning talking about WalMart. He said of the millions of workers that WalMart employs in the US only 1,400 were earning minimum wage. No one called him on it and asked him where he got his facts from so I was curious is it true? Of course it is entirely possible that WalMart pays its employees $7.26 an hour instead of $7.25 so that they can claim they pay “more” than the minimum wage, and I certainly wouldn’t put it past them.
Mandalay
After Obama’s State of the Union speech McClintock said this:
The same argument applies about the minimum wage: if you decrease the minimum wage of workers they spend less and therefore put less money into the economy.
McClintock should be fighting for an increase in the minimum wage if he is so keen on putting money into the economy.
Pogonip
@schrodinger’s cat: From what the old folks tell me, 1929 was much worse, with actual starvation.
schrodinger's cat
@Mandalay: The super rich don’t spend they invest, they already have more than they can spend. I am talking of the 1%.
Pogonip
@Kay: You work in a relative paradise. We have about half as many employees as we need.
scav
Based on some of their speeches recently, apparently two of the greatest dangers stalking the working poor of ‘Merka are increases in income and available healthcare! But, have no concerns: they’re on the case!
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: They do not value labor, they would bring back serfdom and slavery if they could.
Pogonip
@Litlebritdifrnt: My mom used to love his show. Would that we had known that was a sign of encroaching senility. That guy’s 10 pounds of bullshit in a 5-pound bag. We got to where we’d go run errands at 2000 and only come back at 2055, when the show ended with a jam session.
schrodinger's cat
@Pogonip: Well this time the credit crunch was resolved by pumping oodles of cash from the Treasury and the Fed to banks and banking institutions so a repeat of 1929 was avoided.
Mandalay
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I think it’s actually 1,400 WalMart stores, which collectively had less than than 6,000 employees earning minimum wage:
So if Huckabee said 1,400 employees he understated the number, but not by a wild amount.
Actually WalMart likes it when the minimum wage goes up:
jl
@schrodinger’s cat: And no unemployment, no deposit insurance, no Medicaid, no Social Security no Medicare in 1929 to 1933. Social Security and Medicare don’t help most of the newly unemployed in a recession, but they do help stabilize spending, That spending would have collapsed as investment portfolios and bank accounts implode.
schrodinger's cat
@efgoldman: Yes but one rich buying 1 Merc or Bimmer is still less than 99 average Joes buying Hyundais or Kias
schrodinger's cat
The Republicans and DLC dems dismantled the New Deal regulatory framework and we have had many financial crises since the 80s. Now the Republicans with and assist from the Supreme Court wants to undo all the Civil Rights regulations. Its like we are going backward in time.
Hungry Joe
My parents were in retail, and they laughed at this argument. “Companies hire people,” my father said, “because there are jobs that need to be done. When the minimum wage goes up, the work doesn’t go away.”
Of course, the minimum wage has been raised many times over the last 80 or so years. And the raise has wrecked the economy/caused unemployment to spike exactly … let’s see … carry the 4, subtract pi, multiply by the square root of … ah, here’s the answer: Zero. Zero times.
? Martin
Hmm… 3/5 of $10.10 is $6.06.
Good news black people! You’re worth 24% more than you were 240 years ago! Not quite ¾ of a white landowner, though. Keep trying.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Mandalay:
They do understand that the minimum wage is a suggestion and not a law don’t they? What the hell is to stop them voluntarily paying all of their lowest paid workers $10.10 an hour? I guess he was talking about those “other” companies like McDonalds et. al.
jl
Looks like Gohmert tried to talk about something related to minorities, and seems to have better intentions, except he is crazy so it made no sense at all.
Louie Gohmert Finds Way To Connect ‘Selma’ To The Fight Against Al-Qaeda
“People in Egypt know about Dr. King,” he continued. “He wanted a peaceful demonstration and they were part of a peaceful demonstration. Unfortunately, radical Islam did not like being removed. They burned churches. They went after Christians. They went after Jews.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gohmert-selma-movie-al-qaeda
I tried to figure it out, but gave up.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Mandalay:
That was 6,000 employees in states which had just voted to raise the minimum wage. It certainly isn’t 6,000 employees in the entire US.
Kay
@Pogonip:
They know exactly how many they need, on any given day, or any different shift. They have elaborate scheduling programs to make sure they never, ever have one spare person.
I think it’s so horrible because it goes further than “be grateful, serf!” It says “your work is so without value they can not hire you and it won’t make any difference”.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Oh yeah. McClintock, California’s perennial embarrassment.
I keep wondering when he’ll retire, leave the state or die. No luck on any of those fronts.
Belafon
OT, I like the Wonkette headlines and stories much better than Newsmax.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@beth: Bottom line – poor people do not vote. The participation numbers are staggeringly low.
Ergo, no pushback.
JPL
@jl: Look in the latest DSM, the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals. You might be able to figure out why he gibbers so.
Mandalay
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I’m sure they do, and I can’t understand why Walmart doesn’t just pay everyone more than minimum wage immediately. That would pay for itself in terms of PR and good will. Conversely, keeping some employees on minimum wage invites the media to dwell on the vast wealth and stinginess of the Walton family.
The country is strongly behind increasing the minimum wage, and Walmart would be smart to do more about that than just paying lip service.
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah, the Great Recession pretty much hurt the crap out of consumer brand makers, who had high quality, slightly premium products (Bounty paper towels, for example) and that has not really rebounded. People have become very price conscious or they have the money to splurge.
I do wonder how the super rich think they economy can be sustained, when they are gobbling up all the wealth and all the activities that generate economic activities become stagnant – retail, consumer goods, travel etc. – because people do not have extra money to spend.
At some point your investment portfolio’s going to suffer.
Kay
@Hungry Joe:
Apparently he’s never worked a low wage job where he got the panicked call from the manager when someone didn’t show up.
They certainly seem like they need each and every employee. Maybe I worked at the places without the extraneous “charity” hires on each shift.
JPL
@Mandalay: Walmart wants to remain competitive with their low prices. Car manufacturers knew seat belts saved lifes, but how many installed them before that pesky regulation. It added cost to the manufacturer.
Hal
Over and over again I see statements like this being made. Where are all of these non minimum wage jobs that people will get once they get some experience? There are not enough jobs in this country outside of the service industries to support every person who wants to work. I have, and I’m sure many other people have, friends with college degrees, masters degrees who work retail. These people are clueless about how millions of people make a living.
danielx
@efgoldman:
Median price for a new car is a little bit more than $30k at this point….though it’s true there are a lot of cars for sale for less. But a better comparison might be someone buying a Bentley or something versus twenty people buying a Kia.
? Martin
@Mandalay:
That’s ‘how race to the bottom’ works. Walmart would benefit from everyone earning more, but they alone don’t control enough of the economy to do that lift – their own employees cannot possibly pump enough money back into Walmart to pay for their own raises, and retail has such thin margins that retailers paying less will almost certainly wind up with lower prices and they’re already struggling against Amazon that has much lower labor costs. So the only way it can work is if everyone goes together. You see this in every industry in one form or another, and you need some form of regulation to break free of it. That regulation could be from a dominant player in the industry (Google, Boeing, Intel, Apple, Bank of America, etc) or from the government if no dominant player exists.
daverave
@sacrablue:
As you probably know, McClintock has never had a job outside of government except for a few years when he was the director of a couple of right-wing, tax-fighting think tanks.
Iowa Old Lady
@Hal: Which is why we have to stop thinking of service workers as inherently worth less than, say, factory workers, who also used to sign on right out of high school. There’s no logical reason for that. Basically, we accept it as normal but what made the difference was unionization.
ruemara
@sacrablue: yeah, but Roseville, or so I’ve been told, is highly conservative.
different-church-lady
Well, yeah, I gotta admit it’s very important that young people have that first opportunity to be underpaid early on.
@Mandalay:
So why wouldn’t they just… you know… go ahead and do it then?
jl
@Hal: Crummy job market in crummy slow economic expansion since 2007 recession and 2008 financial panic explains a lot of it. Might be changing now, but it will continue to be painfully slow.
Mandalay
@JPL:
I’m sure they do, but the cost to Walmart of getting all its employees above minimum wage is trivial in the scheme of things:
So even if Walmart passed all the increased cost onto the consumer, your eighty dollar spending spree would increase by just five cents.
gene108
@JPL:
But somehow in the last 20 years, after airbags became mandatory, car makers realized people will pay for safety.
There’s no law that says new cars need 8 sets of airbags, but that seems to be the norm these days.
I wonder, if other industries will realize doing more than just the bare minimum required by law can be good for business?
Mike in NC
@Belafon:
But think of all those cool bread bags that people could be wearing on their feet.
srv
@schrodinger’s cat: So you want to put 99 people who should be on buses into cars.
Typical liberal thinking. Every solution causes more problems to complain about.
jl
@daverave:
I think McClintock is they guy who served a few terms in the CA legislature, and then who ran for half a dozen or so state-wide offices in CA and lost.
As commenter above indicated, he was one of two Southern California GOPers who were attached carpetbager style to some of the most conservative Congressional districts in CA and managed to win. Now he represents the western slope of the Sierra between Sacramento and Fresno. So, besides a number of national and state parks and monuments, he represents Sierra Nevada hillbillies and some cities east of Sacramento. I doubt Roseville is even nearly most conservative part of his district, since it has to compete with ranchers and older folks in Sierra foothills.
ruemara
@Mandalay: truth. They just refuse to do the right thing. This is who the Walton family and all their executives are.
Kay
@Hal:
They just finished telling us they won’t hire them if they have to pay ten, but will hire them if they have to pay seven.
Now they can give raises? I thought this deal was wholly contingent on 7 dollars an hour?
ruemara
@Kay: Not sure how long it’s been since that person quoted worked retail. When I was a Borders employee, my raise was the highest percentage in the store due to performance/merit. It puts me from $8 to $8.50. Woo. That was back around 2002.
Iowa Old Lady
Betty Cracker mentioned the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, and this talk about how teens and new workers deserve the minimum wage reminds me of an episode in which Mary discovers that she’s paid less that the man who previously held her job. Mr Grant says that’s appropriate because that guy had a family to support. It takes Mary a few minutes, but eventually she storms back into his office and says that argument is false because if it were really valid, Mr Grant would be paying the man with two children more than the man with one and he doesn’t do that.
So if the argument is that the minimum wage is for teens and new workers, then it follows logically that people who are not teens and not new should make more and that doesn’t happen at Micky D’s.
WereBear
@Scotius: It’s part of that “wonderful” business trend to outsource what used to be a company’s responsibility onto their workers & customers.
The last several times I called customer service I had to figure out how they handled things, track down the people who did those things, and then explain to them that they had to do those things.
See what I mean?
Mandalay
@? Martin:
You’re completely missing the point that this would only impact 6,000 of its 1.3 million employees. The cost is trivial. Currency fluctuations and the price of gas have a bigger impact on Walmart than the cost of getting 0.46% of its employees off minimum wage.
JPL
@gene108: Costco has paid their employees more because they believe in keeping employees. Several years back wall street typed criticized them for not cutting more expenses, especially wages.
@Mandalay: It’s a competitive market. I think walmart could raise the pay of their employees with a big ad campaign explaining why. I won’t walk into a Walmart now, but might reconsider if they valued their employees.
kc
I’m surprised that Mitt Romney is backing an increase. That’s good to hear. Not gonna vote for him, but still, good.
kc
@Mandalay:
Yes, but that’s 200 million less for the CEO and big shareholders.
What about THEIR needs?
kc
@Mandalay:
@different-church-lady:
Yeah, really. You’d think they might like to get some good PR for a change.
Mandalay
@Litlebritdifrnt:
It certainly is the entire U.S. (unless Walmart are telling a very reckless lie):
But what Walmart is much less willing to talk about is the number of its part time workers who are losing health insurance.
Mike in NC
@kc: Keep in mind that Mitt is a pathological liar who repeatedly said he had no plan to run again in 2016.
Turgidson
@beth:
Why would they get pushback on this when they don’t get pushback on even more ridiculous shit like climate denial, neo-Hooverist and trickle down economic nonsense, still thinking the neocons were right about Iraq…
and that’s just the first few things that come instantly to mind. They don’t get pushback on anything except when someone like Todd Akin says something so monumentally offensive, ignorant, and stupid that even the Villagers can’t pretend it didn’t happen. I mean, we just had a thread about Joni Ernst. Granted, Braley did himself no favors with a couple of his gaffes, but the only reason Joni is a Senator is because the entire political media outside some cheeto-dust-covered lefty bloggers agreed not to cover her actual statements, positions, or beliefs, and because she managed to refrain from making any shockingly crazy utterances the media would reluctantly have to cover in the couple months before the election.
…sorry, your comment triggered a bit of a rant. I’m more angry than usual about our failed media experiment lately. Not sure why.
? Martin
@Mandalay: I don’t see how it could be as small as $200M annually. They have a million employees. Even if only a fraction of them earn below $10.10 that doesn’t mean you can leave the people above $10.10 alone as they’ve earned that wage differential through seniority or greater responsibility. Their wages will similarly need to increase. Multiply the number at least by 5. Do we really think that a 30% increase in minimum wage will increase take-home pay at Walmart by $16 a month? Either we believe that Walmart pays shit wages now, or we believe that this will have minimal financial impact on them – both can’t be true. I would bet the true cost to Walmart would be $1.6B-$2.3B annually, based on the wage surveys I’ve seen ($8.50 average in-store wage, ⅓ part time, 80% employees paid hourly).
? Martin
@Mandalay: It’s not a reckless lie – it’s wordsmithing. Walmart already has been paying many of their workers more than the federal minimum wage because they’re having to pay state or local minimum wages. They’re paying CA minimum wage here in the largest state, so they can freely claim they aren’t paying federal minimum wage on every employee here. That doesn’t mean they still aren’t earning minimum wage, or aren’t earning less than $10.10.
jl
@kc:
“I’m surprised that Mitt Romney is backing an increase. That’s good to hear. Not gonna vote for him, but still, good. ”
I am glad to see it too. It’s the new socially conscious Mitt Romney, who is very concerned about alleviating poverty.
Won’t work for him, though. Saw poll results earlier today that HRC beats all the GOP top contenders by 15 points or more. Romney is down towards the bottom with ol’ Huck.
sacrablue
@ruemara: Yes it is, but there are a sufficient number of Bay area transplants to make it close for the right candidate. It took weeks before we knew that McClintock had beaten Brown in 2008. We even had many volunteers from Granite Bay (where most of the money is).
Origuy
Nobody at Walmart wants to stand up at the next stockholders meeting and tell the big fund managers and Wall Street analysts why they didn’t grab every last penny of profit that they possibly could.
Kristin
How do these corporations think people are going to be able to buy their shitty products?
Mandalay
@JPL:
OK, but with the possible exception of Costco, which stores get your seal of approval? Where do you choose to go instead of Walmart, and how do you even know you are making a wise choice? Best Buy? BJ’s? Amazon? Sears? Home Depot? Target?
Googling for dirt on any of those name shows that scumbag corporations are everywhere.
gogol's wife
I’m still thinking about Joni and her bread bags. Last year it was Mario and his water bottle. And yes, he was acting seriously weird with that water bottle, it wasn’t nitpicking on the part of the blogosphere, as some NYTimes reporter implied. And I thought, do these things turn into memes because the blogosphere is more left-oriented? Then I thought, when has a Democrat ever said/done anything so stupid? When? They just don’t, even the DINOs. Even Lieberman was loathsome, but not stupid.
Hal
@ruemara: Ah yeah. Ex Borders employees in the house. I worked at Border from 1996 to 1998 on two coasts. Minimum wage, but at least we had full medical. I think my raises were all in the 50 to 75 cent range, so even if I worked their for years, it’s not like I would be making all that much more money outside of management. Even then, my friend who was the cafe manager was only making 27 or 28,000 a year I think.
Mandalay
@? Martin:
Whatever you say. Now write to the chair of the Labor Center at UC Berkeley and tell him he is a fucking idiot, and his numbers are off by a factor ten, and you know better. Be sure to stress your relevant qualifications so that he is suitably impressed.
jl
@sacrablue: Is Roseville especially conservative? I thought it has been just a suburb of Sacramento for a long time. And only has under 200 K people, I think. Isn’t all those Gold Rush towns and ranches that make it so conservative? Mariposa and Sonora, etc.
IIRC, Roseville’s claim to historical fame is that, for defrauding the federal government purposes, the Central Pacific declared it to be the western edge of the Sierra Nevada, in order to get higher $ per mile, back when transcontinental railroad was built.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Origuy: Thousand Oaks is more west than north of LA.
jl
@gogol’s wife: You can compare tweeter hashtags for Obama’s SOTU, and Obama’s SOTU ‘i won twice’ burn, and Joni Ernst’s breadbags to see how they went over. I don’t have them at hand, but read a Yahoo news story about it.
different-church-lady
@jl:
He’s had two years to dwell upon this “populism” thing, and has reached the conclusion that it would be advantageous to introduce this module into his programming.
I expect over time it will work about as well as the “interacting with normal human beings at county fairs” module did.
Pogonip
@Kristin: China. They think the Chinese will fill the gap once Americans are tapped out.
WereBear
@Pogonip: Yeah, good luck with that. I believe China’s workers aren’t paid much either. By a magnitude.
srv
Obama starts WW III:
ruemara
@sacrablue: Got it. I once interviewed up there. It was surprising. The downtown was very sleek and bits of hipster, but the poverty was obvious in the surroundings.
? Martin
@JPL: The real reason why Costco doesn’t worry so much about wages is that their customer base isn’t minimum wage workers. Costco shoppers are price conscious in a different way – they aren’t struggling to find the cheapest source of protein to feed their family, but they’re happy to save $30 on a new Dyson and forgo the showroom trial or fancy store setting. The only cheap thing Costco sells is gas. Otherwise they are selling upscale products in a given category at a lower price, but by their very nature these are products that carry higher profit margins to begin with and therefore afford more room for salary. Costco’s meat department is very good and they are competing more with full-service butchers that will carry a lot of labor premium vs a low-cost grocery store.
Labor is simply more important to Costco’s market than labor is at Walmart and that’s why they pay more. That’s why Apple pays more for retail labor than Best Buy – the customer market is simply different.
I don’t shop at Walmart because the stores frankly are shitty. Their stores look like hell, the stuff they sell tends to range from crap to okay (vs Costco which is okay to excellent), and the employees aren’t helpful because WalMart doesn’t particularly care if they are helpful or not. Paying them more won’t change that and I don’t expect it’ll change who shops there, and I’m quite certain that the folks that run Walmart are very clear on who they want their market to be.
Walmart is going to pay minimum or near minimum wage because their customers are minimum wage or near minimum wage themselves. They shop there because it’s more often than not the nicest store they can afford, not because the labor justifies shopping there. Walmart has no incentive to pay more, and they likely never will. The only way they can really rationalize paying employees $10/hr is if their customers suddenly become $10/hr earners. Walmart can’t change that.
different-church-lady
@? Martin:
Litlebritdifrnt
@? Martin:
$7.26 is more than the minimum wage, I wonder if that is how they are skewing the numbers.
sacrablue
@jl: Roseville has grown quite a bit in the last twenty years. Yes, it is a suburb of Sacramento, but it has a large retiree population (Sun City) and also has tried to expand its economy beyond Union Pacific. H-P has a campus there as well as some smaller tech companies. They made significant investments in professional office space as well. The number of restaurants per capita seems outsized, but they all appear to be busy. The mega church business is also booming.
Another Holocene Human
YEEEEEAAAAAARGHHHHHHHH!!!! Damn you, Cole, damn you!!
trollhattan
@jl:
Per Wiki, CA#4 recent voting patterns:
The way it’s currently drawn, I don’t see anything to indicate it won’t remain a very safe Republican seat, at least until the next census. In the meantime, his district now includes all of our Sierra Nevada National Parks and I fully expect him to begin dicking around with them, to the horror of many.
jl
@sacrablue: Thanks. I guess that is why the leg split if off from the rest of Sacramento and put in with the western slope of the Sierra. From what you say, I still think Roseville would be more liberal than the rest of District 4, but that ain’t saying much.
sacrablue
@ruemara: Yes, there are many pockets of poverty in the older neighborhoods. When you move out beyond them you reach thousands of increasingly expensive tract homes, golf courses and fancy shopping centers and an overpriced mall. Just the number of hotel/motels built in the last fifteen years is weird.
? Martin
@Mandalay: Ok. Since you agree with the $200M assessment, you’re therefore conceding that Walmart pays the vast majority of their workers well above minimum wage – even above the $10.10 being proposed and that the minimum wage hike won’t have a meaningful impact on workers since it’ll only deliver an average $16/month.
I’ll expect you to now stop complaining about Walmart’s labor practices and start defending them for being the good citizen that is already meeting the spirit of the $10.10 labor rate for all but a handful of their workers.
Let’s all say it together – good job, Walmart! You’re doing such a great job that a 30% increase in minimum wage will only increase your SG&A by 0.8% – or the equivalent of hiring 2 full time minimum wage employees per store.
sacrablue
@jl: I’m sure there are more liberals in Roseville than in El Dorado county and most of the foothills communities. I think there are a few pockets of old hippies in Auburn and Grass Valley/Nevada City as well.
jl
@trollhattan:
I don’t know why you say that. The wikipedia article is a little confusing. It talks about recent election results for both the old and the new district boundaries.
Says now GOP voters outnumbered by Dems and ‘decline to state’ by 12%, though probably a lot of ‘decline to state’ are really GOPers who are just embarrassed to admit it.
However, McClintock lost to a strong Dem candidate Charlie Brown by less than a percentage point. Hope there is another strong Dem candidate in the district soon. But on other hand, if a dud like McClintock can win by a razor’s edge, a strong GOP candidate could win by a lot.
Turgidson
@gene108:
My guess is that they’re confident they’ll have their rich-people-only spaceship, Elysium-style, ready to go by the time it gets really bad, and the little people can fend for themselves after they’ve left.
Turgidson
@different-church-lady:
I’m sure Walmart is all for a minimum wage increase, provided that they are carved out of it as an exception somehow.
daverave
As a 25 year resident of Sacramento, I must say that Roseville (ex-downtown) and its immediate suburbs just give me the creeps. The car-dependent, hyper-consuming, earth-tone tract home, American suburb on steroids. Simply not sustainable in the long run if Kunstler is even half right. Folsom is quite similar.
trollhattan
@jl:
I’ve been here too long to envision this district flipping. Don’t have the old map at hand but IIRC chunks were once in the 11th, which was Pombo’s playground until McNerney flipped it in 2006 after two tries, pulling in JUST ENOUGH Bay Area votes. Show me the equivalent of the 2006 wave and perhaps we can talk. Otherwise it’s staying Republican.
jl
@daverave: I forgot about the Roseville Auto Mall! I hear ads about that here in the Bay Area.
sacrablue
@daverave: Exactly, and I would add Lincoln and El Dorado Hills to the list. Stepford clones.
Origuy
The 4th district changed a lot since the first time McClintock ran for it. At first it was basically the northeastern side of the Sierra Nevada, but redistricting changed it to include Roseville and more of the central Sierra.
Pogonip
@WereBear: But there are a lot of them. The corporations figure that’ll make it all come out about even.
trollhattan
@daverave:
Spot on.Here’s a little bit of Roseville’s recent past, courtesy of McClintock’s old CA4 website. Ah, memories.
In case anybody’s curious, “Charlie” was McClintock’s rival and a decorated AF pilot, while Tom is a lifelong politician..
trollhattan
@jl:
It’s very mall-like. As is the “Galleria.”
Little known fun fact: Roseville once blew up.
Steeplejack
Admittedly, I live in the “big city”—D.C.-adjacent NoVA metro area—but I can’t remember the last time I saw a white teenager working in a chain fast-food restaurant. The workers I see are mostly Latino, Muslim, Asian, and many of them are definitely not teenagers. I’m sure it’s different in the “real” America—small towns in the Midwest—but I’d love to hear Juicers weigh in. The last long road trip I took I stopped at a place (Hardee’s?) somewhere in North Carolina; my vague memory is that the crew was white and black but definitely older than teenagers.
And every time I hear someone drag out the trope about teenagers taking summer jobs to make a little spending money, I want to ask what those restaurants do the other nine months of the year.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: It also misses the point Adam Smith fucking opened his treatise with which is that if wages for laborers go up then you have less people working less hours which is a GOOD thing!
Just shows the wage that the MOTUs really want is not money, it is the suffering of those they grind beneath their heels.
And a fucking Rep is not a MOTU anyway, really more of a moocher and looter if you think about it.
piratedan
@Mandalay: true that but you can make a conscious effort to know where NOT to shop. I don’t go to Walmart, avoid Chick Fil-A, won’t set foot in a hobby lobby, won’t buy Poppa John’s and if I know that something is from a Koch Industry ancillary, I refrain from buying their products too. is it perfect, no… but it doesn’t mean that I have to willingly aid and abet the “enemy” of the folks that have set their eyes on some kind of ‘enemy agenda” that is against what I perceive as the common good. Perhaps it’s an extension of the Exxon environmental issue, the public boycott that took place hurt them and I still know of folks that have changed where they buy their gas from to this day. Sometimes these kinds of small movements eventually turn into larger ones….
Tree With Water
Forget all you know of its history, and merely study today’s GOP since congress convened. It cannot continue to conduct itself, as is, and retain credibility with Mr & Ms Front Porch. But it will continue as is, because the inmates have taken over the asylum. It makes for a extremely interesting dynamic.
Another Holocene Human
@Litlebritdifrnt: Right. Many states have a min wage higher than national min wage already, cherry picking bullshit.
Another Holocene Human
@Litlebritdifrnt: And how many times has Walmart gotten sued for wage theft?!?!
Yeah, how many workers are getting LESS than state (legal) min wage because Walmart made them work off the books and also deducted time for breaks never taken? Or what about all their off the books contract workers, usually Spanish speaking, always exploited.
Always Low Wages. Always OSHA Violations. Always Bad Karma.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay:
These “labor” programs are actually costing them money, in case of McD’s sometimes big time with lost sales, you know, “opportunity costs” from Econ 101. MBAs are so much smarter than the rest of us, they only see numbers from “real” transactions, so they know that “labor” management is saving the bottom line not sending those phantom not real opportunity cost customers right out the fucking door.
Another Holocene Human
@gogol’s wife: Biden’s said some pretty dumb things. Somehow he seems more lovable because the crazy Biden memes are affectionate teasing.
He does come off as really genuine talking to a crowd. Maybe it’s a front and I’m falling for it, but … hey, maybe Joni and Mario could try a little harder, also, too.
Another Holocene Human
@? Martin: I was kind of following you except that you’re actually wrong, Sam Walton did not earn his market share by treating his employees like crap, instead he treated them like they were valued. When he was alive he had employees who had a lot more longevity with the company. His kids have been squeezing the fuck out of Walmart and right now the company is in crisis, even driving away the bottom of the barrel customers they thrive on because goods aren’t on the shelves and nobody’s there to ring you up. They are in deep shit right now. I’m not saying Sam Walton was a god who did everything right but he understood the mechanics of the business better than his feckless, greedy children.
And Walmart does not have the lowest prices for all that. They just rip you off. Broke people shop at Dollar General and Family Dollar. Walmart’s been relying on people with jobs, that’s why they’re open 24 hours. (DG and FD are open during the day, when unemployed people shop.) But when you can get the same stuff at Walgreens and online with less hassles and the supermarket is cheaper and there’s a 24 hr supermarket in town, what the fuck does Walmart have to offer?
Another Holocene Human
@Steeplejack: Teenage unemployment is very high every summer and teenagers of color especially. Some areas have tourism over the summer and hire teenagers, or their regular college student hires go home and they hire high school fill ins, but other parts of the country are busier any time but summer and there are just too many adults available to hire, adults with cars, work histories, more training.
Kay
I maintain that the biggest thing they’re afraid of with a raise in the minimum wage isn’t minimum wage workers, it’s that it bumps minimum wage workers up and then puts pressure on the whole next group-the 12 to 15 dollar range. There’s a HUGE temp group in the 12 to 15 range, here anyway.
I bet Wal Mart is more worried about their warehouse and distribution worker wage inching up than they are about the people who work in their stores. Then at 12-15 you start getting into unskilled manufacturing wages too. It isn’t just McDonalds.
That’s why I’m all for raising it :)
I think the whole “teenagers” argument is bullshit designed to distract from the much bigger group of employees who might benefit from a higher bottom.
Another Holocene Human
The gov’t perpetuates this, instead of CCC we have Americorps. Some kids gladly do the City Year or Americorps because they can’t get their foot in the door in a job and this will give them experience and it takes some burden off their families, but isn’t it kind of ridiculous to expect young people to just work for free, rather than paying them?
I was a paid intern, back in the day. I may have been sometimes a burden on time and needed to be trained but I also took on a lot of scut work that some human being would have to do. Also, I never could have taken the internship without an income. I don’t think I was exploiting the employer. Must not have because they offered me a job when it was over….
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: I think it IS about min wage workers. Since when have employers given a shit about wage compression? At any rate, if everyone is making a living, wage compression is not that big of a deal. Wage rarification, as we’ve had during this time of increasing inequality has hardly been a boon to anyone, not even the rich.
Some of 12-15 get an auto-raise when min goes up, but they have contracts and those can be renegotiated. Some don’t and … they won’t.
I actually think wage compression around a truly DECENT wage would be a damn good thing because the lazy, narcissistic assholes out there would choose easier, less challenging jobs and stop FUCKING SHIT UP because they HAVE TO HAVE that higher paying job even if they’re unqualified plus too lazy plus too dumb plus too undedicated to do the job right. See, all those people who say “why should they pay McD’s workers that much, I’d take that job it’s easier”, those people SHOULD be flipping burgers, they hate their job and only do it for the pay. Let people capable of more do more, let the lazy asses do a lazy job and use all that energy on their disgusting personal/leisure time activities.
Another Holocene Human
@Tree With Water: Mr and Ms Front Porch will never hear of it, though.
Mandalay
@Another Holocene Human:
I’m not sure Martin was saying otherwise, but you are certainly right about Sam. I lived in Arkansas for a couple of years in the ’80s, and Sam Walton was beloved by all, and I’ve yet to discover that it wasn’t for very good reason.
Though Walmart has a longer history than Google, the public perception of both companies has gone from being good guys under visionary leaders, to nasty organizations who don’t give a fuck about anything beyond making mountains of money.
trollhattan
@Mandalay:
Remember WalMart’s commitment to made-in-America products? Yeah, long time ago but pretty sure that was Sam’s doing.
Pogonip
@Mandalay: I’m so old I remember Walmart when Sam was alive. Employees were happy–they had profit sharing, for one thing (Sam was a Communist).
Litlebritdifrnt
@Another Holocene Human:
We have two Walmarts in town, one is on the “better” side of town the other is on the “worse” side of town. The one on the “worse” side of town has nothing on the shelves, because they simply do not hire the people needed to stock the shelves. The store is filthy, there are perhaps two check out lines. The one on the better side of town is marginally better in that they stock the shelves more frequently and there are perhaps four checkout lines. But the store still sucks, it is understocked, understaffed and perpetually dirty. I really do not understand their business model.
Pogonip
@Steeplejack: In the small towns around here, it’s about 70/30 adults/teenagers.
daverave
@piratedan:
To this day I refuse to buy gas at an Exxon station unless the needle’s below “E” and it’s the only option available. Has happened maybe twice since the Valdez went down.
Tree With Water
@Another Holocene Human: They hearing it as I type.
Mandalay
@daverave: Good for you. My emotions don’t run so high on that issue, but after Sears deliberately cheated millions of their customers I vowed never to have anything to do with then for the rest of my life, and so far I have stuck to it without any difficulty at all.
Les Nessman
Yeah…but you guys for the most part are “urban” dwellers, city folk.
And you better get with GOTV everywhere you can, because I myself hang with the common folk, the “everyman”, out in all this great fly-over-country.
And they hate Obama, they hate the unions, they hate the “progressive”, they hate the “entitlement” society that Obama has sprung from the earth(Govt.).
Obama caused the 2008 “Great Recession” when he took office, don’t tell them otherwise.
Fox News is on every T.V. in every Cafe, truck stop, dealership, barber shop etc………
And they are tee’d up so to speak, “Don’t Tread on Me”.
It doesn’t matter a whit what the federal gubmint does…it’s bad.
Anecdotes abound, and are passed on, how much the govt. gives to the unworthy, the lazy, the(fill in blank).
I’m looking for a landslide in 2016 for the next Palin type.
Hillary ain’t going to cut it if that’s the face of the D’s.
And I don’t care what you say, Obama soured a lot of voters across the spectrum, in what actually helped him win the presidency-votes.
Votes in, dare I say it-“Hope and Change”.
schrodinger's cat
@Another Holocene Human: I agree. I used to shop at WalMart when I lived in Maine mid to late 90s, they were the only game in town. No Target. Now I only shop for the stuff I can’t find anywhere else. The quality of the stores has certainly gone down. The Walmart in my town is a sad empty store. It depresses me.
BTW whatever happened to the WalMart greeters?
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay,
you have been on this topic, and I thank you for it
America should be ashamed
Because they keep getting elected. I wonder if these people believe in God and if they think there will be a rich and segregated area up there.