Russell in Wonderland

[terracore]

"the utter disregard Ruderman gave to the scientific method"

I'm not pro/con Ruderman because he's a mixed bag. But his anti-GMO and pro-higher-minimum wage stances do certainly be in line with furthering the business model of his chain of stores.

I understand I'm just in fantasy land when I say that the representatives are supposed to represent their constituents, not just their business or personal (Ruggles) agendas.

[HiloPuna]

Terracore

Would you please elaborate on your last aside? I know nothing about Ruggles and notice a pretty big sign presence as I drive to Volcano.

Mahalo

HP

[HiloPuna]

Sorry to the thread, I'm not intentionally hijacking "Russell in Wonderland".
Just don't think my question warrants a new topic (yet)

BTW, I have a hunch regarding the "personal agenda" but it's based solely on sign content.

[Obie]

Russell is another hypocrite !

Remember when he contacted the DOT to lower the speed limit on a section of highway 130 ? This from a guy who has been cited 3 times for speeding 50 in a 35, 64 in a 45 and 75 in a 55.

Do as I say not as I do.

Also cited twice for using an electronic device.Don't know if he was texting or just talking on a phone but either is just as bad as DUI.The last one was after he was elected to the senate.

[Mendo]

quote:

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Originally posted by terracore


I'm not pro/con Ruderman because he's a mixed bag. But his anti-GMO and pro-higher-minimum wage stances do certainly be in line with furthering the business model of his chain of stores.

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Terracore - Can you please explain how a higher minimum wage is self-serving to an employer?

[terracore]

"Can you please explain how a higher minimum wage is self-serving to an employer?"

Businesses that can afford to pay higher minimum wages support them to drive out the competition of the mom and pop stores who cannot. These have dangerous trickle-down effects. For example, lets say you run a GMO-free grocery store that can afford a much higher minimum wage because a very large percentage of your customers feed your profit engine by paying for their groceries with EBT. You are essentially running a tax-payer subsidized business and reap the benefits. In other words, you can afford to pay the higher wages because the government is indirectly handing you money via the EBT system. Now lets say down the street is a mom and pop store, but they sell T-shirts or pet supplies or some other commodity that doesn't get fed guaranteed EBT profit dollars. Then the subsidized business supports a higher minimum wage and it gets passed because somebody like, oh, I don't know, THE OWNER helped pushed it through as an elected official, not only does the mom and pop grocery stores go out of business but so do the pet supply and T-shirt places, because they were already operating at a loss any way. Similar to when the Amazon lobby came out in support of every internet business collecting sales tax for sales in every state. Amazon could put a team of programmers on that and flip the switch overnight. A million individual web sites with no mechanism to get licensed in 40+ states and design their shopping carts to calculate complex tax tables and properly submit them would go out of business, or be forced to operate illegally that same night.

The bigger a business gets, the more government regulation it wants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Rudderman, like Trump go straight to the top. Instead of trying to influence politics, become a politician. CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN- the rule of every successful business person.

"Would you please elaborate on your last aside? I know nothing about Ruggles and notice a pretty big sign presence as I drive to Volcano. "

http://jenruggles.com/experience/

"Organized 11 speaking events, 6 rallies/marches, 4 concerts, and 41 movie nights on a variety of issues including climate change, GMOs, food and energy sovereignty, the Iraq War, and money in politics. All were free and public."

She is anti GMO. I'm not going to do all the research for you but it was only 3 seconds of googling to get the above. There is nothing wrong with her having that stance (elected officials are supposed to have a stance) but their actions are supposed to reflect the will of their constituents.

ETA: bold text, content

[BillyB]

Russel is free to pay $15.00 an hour if he wants to, he does not need the government to force him. What he needs is for the Government to force Abundant Life Natural Foods and Keaau Natural foods to pay $15.00 an hour in order bankrupt them and get rid of the "Pesky" competition.

Small family businesses can rarely compete with the Walmart model for long.

Monopoly JACKPOT!

[kalakoa]

Businesses that can afford to pay higher minimum wages support them to drive out the competition of the mom and pop stores who cannot.

How, then, does this work when a (large) business (like Walmart) pays so little that their workers qualify for public benefits? It's still a "subsidy". Places with a higher minimum wage are seeing this play out: workers don't want more hours because they lose those public benefits.

The bigger a business gets, the more government regulation it wants

...the more government regulation it wants to write for itself[.

She is anti GMO.

How ironic that the other Ruggles is implicitly pro-GMO, since all marijuana is hybridized.

[terracore]

"The minimum wage law requires employers to discriminate against persons with low skills. No one describes it that way, but that is in fact what it is. Take a poorly educated teenager with little skill whose services are worth, say, only $2.00 an hour. He or she might be eager to work for that wage in order to acquire greater skills that would permit a better job. The law says that such a person may be hired only if the employer is willing to pay him or her (in 1979) $2.90 an hour. Unless an employer is willing to add 90 cents in charity to the $2.00 that the person’s services are worth, the teenager will not be employed. It has always been a mystery to us why a young person is better off unemployed from a job that would pay $2.90 an hour than employed at a job that does pay $2.00 an hour."

-Milton Friedman, (1976 Nobel Prize recipient)

Fast forward out of the 1970's and the essence of the argument is the same. Except now instead of teenagers, it's older adults, sometimes heads-of-households demanding $15/hour "living wage" for the same McDonald's job that used to only employ teenagers living with their parents who were only looking for a little spending money to buy vinyl records and weed or whatever. Many people seeking $15/hour don't realize that the services they are providing aren't worth $15.00. I knew a pilot for Mesa airlines who made less than that. If one is a low-skilled worker demanding the same wage as a reliable airline pilot, you can bet that if a corporation is forced to pay $15/hour, they are going to hire people who are worth $15/hour. Then what happens to the folks that are "only worth" $8.00/hour ? Now picture the same scenario but we're in a bad recession and the unemployment rate is near 10% and former airline pilots are actually applying for those $15/hour jobs at McDonalds. Then the discriminatory nature of the minimum wage is more apparent. Imagine you are the manager at McDonalds and you have to choose between a single mother who has never operated a fry machine and a guy who used to fly machines. You're not SUPPOSED to think, gee, the single mom is going to call in sick all the time because of her kid... but you know it. And the airline pilot has a solid work history and never missed a day of work. Now do you see the discrimination effect of having a minimum wage that is set too high? Maybe having the ability to offer $8.00 to a new worker isn't such a bad thing. Maybe the opportunity to learn new skills has a value.

Replacing human workers with automation probably has a threshold far below $15/hour. Think about that next time you're at a fast food place and you see all the advertisements about discounts for ordering via the app. They may have paid somebody in India $5/hour so that they could eliminate 1000 employees making $8/hour. Start talking about $15/hour, and it won't be an app, it will be a robot operating the fry machine (hint, they are already 50% automated... the additional 50% isn't a heavy lift).

[alaskyn66]

What terracore says is true.. Google: Momentum Machines they are going to start on the west coast.. but I see them spreading out fairly quickly.if you can open a restaurant with only three or four people instead of 8 or 10 per shift. Who is going to make money here.