Quoted from joebxr

CISSYNOMICS.....?!?!?!?!?!?
There has always been a surplus of labor, and there has always been a set min wage.
The surplus usually falls into several categories:
  those on welfare/unemployment making more than if they worked
  those on welfare/unemployment that have no desire to work
  those that are overqualified and whose salaries prior to  being dumped into the market far exceeded min wage
  those with overqualified experience that low min wage employer would not hire

So how has your Cissynomics worked so far?????

Quoted from joebxr

CISSYNOMICS.....?!?!?!?!?!?
There has always been a surplus of labor, and there has always been a set min wage.
The surplus usually falls into several categories:
  those on welfare/unemployment making more than if they worked
  those on welfare/unemployment that have no desire to work
  those that are overqualified and whose salaries prior to  being dumped into the market far exceeded min wage
  those with overqualified experience that low min wage employer would not hire

So how has your Cissynomics worked so far?????

Quoted from joebxr

CISSYNOMICS.....?!?!?!?!?!?
There has always been a surplus of labor, and there has always been a set min wage.

Quoted from CICERO

JOEYNOMICS....?!?!?!?!?

The economic world Joey created out of thin air, it's a world where a set minimum wage has always existed.(disregard the fact the federal minimum wage law was only passes in 1938, and that 9 states have no minimum wage laws).
Nice try Cissy, but........
But he says there's always been a minimum wage.  So it must be true.

Quoted from joebxr

Let me see if I can simplify this for you...everything is not about the government.
Minimum wage doesn't have to refer to something set by the government...it means the minimum wage that
an employer will bring in new employees at. If you look at government minimum wage law and states by minimum
wage, you would know some states do not follow the federal guidelines, some ignore them and have no
state/federal min wage; some have higher min wage, some lower, etc.

So again, I challenge your philosophy that Walmart's intent is driven by the government, as you insinuate.
I also stand by my economic opinion which drastically differs from Cissynomics.

Quoted from joebxr

Let me see if I can simplify this for you...everything is not about the government.
Minimum wage doesn't have to refer to something set by the government...it means the minimum wage that
an employer will bring in new employees at.

Quoted from CICERO

But, I don't know as much as corporate Joey.  

Quoted from joebxr

On this we agree 100%

Quoted Text

By Jeff Macke
February 20, 2014 10:55 AM

While Washington D.C. bickers, the Gap (GPS) effectively raised its own minimum wage to $10 an hour. The company says the wage increase will impact 65,000 of its 90,000 employees in the U.S. and will be phased in over the next two years.

While nodding to Gap’s philanthropic history, company CEO Glenn Murphy told the Wall Street Journal that the move was based on strategy rather than charity. “There’s a view that technology is becoming so powerful, consumer habits are changing so what’s the point of a store? We see it differently. We are investing in our workforce because we think going forward stores and the service our workers provide will be ever more important for customers.”

In addition to the industry-wide struggles with slow mall traffic and bad weather, Gap visibly struggled with basic store maintenance over the holidays. Once synonymous with obsessive store upkeep (remember “the Gap Girls” on Saturday Night Live?) Gap became most notable for an all but random promotional model and display stands so disheveled it was all but impossible for customers to find the right sizes.

Walmart holds the line

Meanwhile at Walmart (WMT), the nation's largest private employer says it is "looking" at possibly supporting a hike in the federal minimum wage, but does not have any Gap-like plans to take matters into their own hands. “Elected officials can have the dialogue and ultimately decide what the right thing is to do about this,” said company spokesperson David Tovar. Asked whether increasing the minimum pay of its workers might help boost Walmart’s anemic bottom line, Tovar said, “that modeling is difficult to predict.”

As it happens, Walmart also also reported earnings this morning, disappointing Wall Street due in large part to weakness in revenues at its U.S. stores. Perhaps Mr. Tovar’s modeling needs to be revised. On the topic of overall growth Walmart CEO Doug McMillion says Walmart will stick to its plan of “focusing on customers and serving them how they want to be served.”

Customer expectations and the free market economy

Critics will say Walmart is weaseling out of the minimum wage debate because it saves the company millions of dollars a year. In the past Walmart has actually supported a hike in the minimum wage and isn’t shy about stepping into controversy, as it proved when it offered benefits for same sex partners nationwide late last year.

Ultimately charity and morality have nothing to do with what the Gap and Walmart pay. Both companies are dedicated to the bottom line. In Gap’s case the company thinks it will be able to get more capable employees if it pays higher wages. Customers expect a certain level of cleanliness from the Gap and CEO Murphy wants to get the company back on track in that regard.

Walmart customers care about price above all else. For better or worse Walmart thinks the company can maximize profit by having lower-skilled workers doing less complicated tasks than what Gap associates are asked to do.

The wage decisions by Gap and Walmart are a triumph of the free market taking over where Washington D.C. failed. The Gap wanted relatively dedicated employees so it decided to offer new hires more money. That’s the math of capitalism. Imperfect though it is, the free market is ultimately faster and more fair, whatever labor policies manage to escape D.C. gridlock.

Quoted Text

California Drought Impact Seen Spreading From Fires to Food Cost
By Jennifer Oldham and Michael B. Marois  Feb 7, 2014 12:00 AM ET  19 Comments  Email  Print



The drought that’s gripping California may soon have the rest of the country seeking relief.

The emergency, which follows the state’s driest year on record, is likely to boost the prices of everything from broccoli to cauliflower nationwide. Farmers and truckers stand to lose billions in revenue, weakening an already fragile recovery in the nation’s most-populous state. And California and other Western states are seeing a surge in wildfires.

As lawmakers rush to enact measures to help farmers and ranchers contend with the immediate threat to the nation’s most productive agricultural region, the prolonged dry spell is sparking calls for a radical rethinking of how the state, and much of the West, distributes water to residents.

“We are at that point the risks for the future are really significant,” said Peter Gleick, president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan research organization. “We have to fundamentally change the way we manage water.”

The drought is a stark reminder that California built the world’s 10th-largest economy, the nation’s top farming industry, and Silicon Valley, the epicenter of information technology, in a semi-arid environment that’s struggling to sustain the water needs of 38 million people.

While rain doused San Francisco yesterday and more rain and snow are forecast in Northern California through the weekend, 17 rural communities are in danger of running out of water in as little as two months. Farmers may be forced to prune almond trees back by 90 percent, affecting yields for years.

Food Prices

The fallout may be felt on grocery shelves throughout the country in the coming months as prices of artichokes, celery, broccoli and cauliflower could rise at least 10 percent, said Milt McGiffen, a vegetable specialist at the University of California at Riverside. The state grows more than 80 percent of the nation’s supply of these crops.

California saw an almost 50 percent increase in wildfires last year from 2012, setting a record. Governor Jerry Brown has ordered 125 additional firefighters hired for the northern part of the state and will keep seasonal firefighting forces in the south on the job longer.

Lost revenue in 2014 from farming and related businesses such as trucking and processing could reach $5 billion, according to estimates by the California Farm Water Coalition, an industry group.

Brown’s Plan

Water specialists say state legislators must add to a system that includes 34 reservoirs, lakes and storage facilities and more than 700 miles of aqueducts championed by Brown’s father, the late former Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown.

The State Water Project, as it is known, sends water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the north to Central Valley farmers and Southern Californians. For the first time in more than half a century, state officials said on Jan. 31 that they were unable to make deliveries through the project to 25 million Californians and about 750,000 acres of irrigated farmland.

Brown is championing a controversial plan to build two 30-mile (48-kilometer) water tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, an ecologically sensitive confluence of two rivers that’s the hub of the state’s water-distribution system. The $15 billion tunnels are intended to ship water from Northern California to farms and cities in the south and bolster the delta ecosystem that’s on the verge of collapse.

“We live in this ‘Cadillac Desert’ where we have a chronic undersupply of water,” said David Goldhamer, a water-management specialist, referring to a 1986 book that criticized government-driven development policies in the West for degrading the environment. “We need to add water-storage capacity.”

Not Alone

California isn’t alone. Portions of 11 states have been declared disaster areas by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Oregon is experiencing extreme or severe drought in more than 75 percent of the state as is about 80 percent of Nevada.

The drought in the West is forcing water managers to cope with new risks, such as tinder dry forests prone to wildfires that threaten to burn utilities built to collect runoff from snowpack. It may also foul stored water.

“It denudes the landscape and you get rain or erosion afterward, and it puts a lot of sediment or carbon in the water,” said Holly Hartmann, director of the Arid Lands Information Center in Tucson, Arizona. “You’re looking at tens of millions of dollars to get the system back to where it was.”

Quoted Text

What These Haunting Viral Images of an Abandoned Food Court Really Mean for America
Sarah Kaufman's avatar image By Sarah Kaufman  12 hours ago 136 SHARES
3
Sbarro, American food court staple and maker of the greasiest meat lover's calzone known to man, is suffering from economic indigestion. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2011, and on last Thursday it closed 155 stores across the country — 16% of its American locations. The restaurant's spokesman, Jon Dedmon, said that most of the shuttered stands were located in dying mall food courts.

Just a couple weeks before, a blogger's haunting photographs of an abandoned food court in what was once Maryland's White Flint Mall went mega-viral. Everybody thought they were beautiful, but they were telling a deeper story that nobody heard: It turns out that our food courts have been disappearing — and there's good reason to miss them.



Image Credit: Duck Pie

James W. Rouse dreamt up the first food court in the 1970s in order to bolster economic growth. He envisioned the courts as creating strong, healthy and even patriotic communities where people of all classes could mingle. The idea caught, and, for more than 30 years after, these mini utopias full of McDonald's, Mrs. Fields and that local Smoothie franchise you were never brave enough to try reigned supreme in the American culinary landscape.



Image Credit: Duck Pie

But then the online shopping boom in 2007 and the recession began to usher them out, leaving mall vacancies at an all-time high. Mall developers needed a way to redirect affluent shoppers from their Amazon shopping carts back to the concrete mall. They thought the solution lay with the only thing that can't be recreated online: mall food. But shoppers had grown wary of the tired food court model, which had a reputation of being riddled with unhealthy food, germs, loud loiterers and even health violations and crime. Management lured these jaded customers back by overhauling the old concept of the food court and updating it to accommodate the post-recession habits and expectations of the upper-middle class.



Image Credit: Duck Pie

Shopping mall developers replaced many food courts with aesthetically modern, "upscale" dining experiences. Whereas food courts once were known for their Taco Bells, now they're the domain of the $12 panini sandwiche. America is knee-deep in the celebrity chef movement, as well as the "fast-casual," organic and local movements, where quality takes precedence over affordability, and brand is emphasized over quality. Household names like Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali worked with retail groups to build upscale food court/grocery store hybrids called "food halls," across the country. And slowly the food court faded, consigned to airports and the dingy basements of corporate buildings.



Image Credit: Duck Pie

Unfortunately, it's clear that whoever manages the new eateries in shopping malls only has the top income bracket in mind. Lunch at these new and improved food courts often costs a day's worth of minimum wages. The only people who spend $13 per week, let alone per meal, on mall fast food, make more than $100,000 a year, according to the latest data from the International Council of Shopping Centers. If lunch at a new, more upscale food court costs a minimum of $10, it's clear that developers of the "new food court" don't care much about those with incomes less than 100 grand a year. They are excluding the entire demographic that food courts were meant to bring together.



Image Credit: Duck Pie

It's true that food courts in more transient environments may not help people of different races and classes become friends forever. That's what Mario Small, Dean of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago believes. But a vision of eclectic groups of people grabbing pizza at Sbarro and then fries at Arby's, clumped at back-to-back tables, all dumping their trash in one repository is still an iconic memory in the memory of many Americans. And as we trade Burger Kings for eating like kings, we are demolishing a piece of American history — a democratic dream of the kind fast fading from public life.

Quoted from Box A Rox

If Congress increases the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour
and ties it to inflation, it could reduce federal spending on food stamp
benefits (SNAP) by $46 billion over the next 10 years.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....cbklnkushpmg00000013

Quoted from Box A Rox

If Congress increases the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour
and ties it to inflation, it could reduce federal spending on food stamp
benefits (SNAP) by $46 billion over the next 10 years.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....cbklnkushpmg00000013