Homestead mailing list

[tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

Steve Oliphant wrote:

> tvoivozhd wrote:
>
> > No business which depends for existence on paying less than living 
> > wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.
> > — Franklin Delano Roosevelt
>
> So newspapers shouldn't be allowed to hire paperboys, or McDonalds 
> hire the teenagers, or a self employed person shouldn't operate if 
> their profit per hour happened to drop below some arbitrary point? 


> tvoivozhd----newspaper boys here get a living wage, as they do 
> elsewhere---doesn't matter if the newspaper doesn't make a profit on 
> delivery, the newspaper digs into their advertsing profit to pay 
> delivery costs or the newspaper doesn't get delivered, putting the 
> newspaper out of business.  You've got a problem with that?


>   McDonalds for the past forty or more years, like every other 
> business, is by law, forbidden from paying less than minimum 
> wage---hasn't harmed them in any way whatsoever---as a matter of fact 
> you would have to hunt pretty hard to find a McDonalds that paid 
> minimum wage today, they would have to close the doors.  Not that it 
> matters, you could use the same specious argument against ANY increase 
> in business costs, whether it be an increase in rent (happens all the 
> time), increase in insurance premiums (happens all the time), increase 
> in utility bills (happens all the time), increase in taxes or  
> increase in fuel bills (happening right now),

   And what is this econobabble about a self-employed  person stopping 
operations if their hourly profit dropped ?  Hourly profits always vary 
and normally do not have much effect on a business.  Now if you only 
have enough capital to  run a business for twenty four hours,  you 
shouldn't be in business at all and won't be very long.

> Why do you want to discriminate against companys that hire teenagers, 
> or people who want a job as much for social reasons as for pay?

    tvoivozhd---methinks thou dost protest too much---or have an 
exceedingly lurid imagination.  I have from concept through profitable 
operation, started, managed, and owned businesses all or in part in many 
countries---some small, the last one in Taiwan a multi-million dollar 
enterprise with about a thousand employees.  Companies don't hire 
employees for social reasons, they hire them make a profit on their 
labor---generally fifty percent.  Employees work to pay rent, transport 
and food, sometimes to gain a skill (as in an apprentice electrician or 
plumber)  Employees that work for social reasons is another bit of 
disinformation that has no relation to the real world.

> It is attitudes like that and the laws that those attitudes have 
> spawned that has caused the great job outsourcing to other countries 
> and the illegal immigrant problem here to happen.


tvoivozhd---bullshit and you know it.  The job outsourcing to China and 
India is primarily for high paying, skilled jobs., not low-wage 
ones---and what relationship have you dreamed up between moving jobs and 
entire industries overseas ,to millions of Mexicans flooding  in across 
unguarded borders?  There are now so many of them they are unstoppable 
by cowardly politicians who in an age of close elections are paralyzed 
by the thought of losing a single vote, whether it is from a 
tomato-grower or a Mexican resident that wants to surround himself with 
brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins or former neighbors.

I might add that no job requiring face-time will be moved---witness the 
growth of the healthcare industry.  Nor is Dell going to move its 
manufacturing operation, because it has become so efficient it can rely 
on the freight differential all companies used to rely on for a profit 
vs competitors more than a couple hundred miles away.

> Didn't Roosevelt admire and want to emulate "Uncle Joe" Stalin's 
> economic ideas?


tvoivozhd---no---and didn't

> What ever happened to a truly free market, and not the fascist 
> corporate run government that we have now?


tvoivozhd----the Supreme Court gave corporations all the rights of real 
live citizens.  After that the free market took over---government went 
up for sale to the highest bidder---megacorporations with the most money 
are the highest bidders who rent Congressmen, Senators and the 
President.  Free markets work only when they are fully, accurately 
informed and competitive Without ALL these conditions, they don't work 
at all---you don't believe that, move to Haiti or Gaza as a convincer.

> Besides - what is this crap about *business* having rights? Only 
> *people* have rights. And when someone tells me that they won't allow 
> me to sell my labor or the products of it for a certain price - even 
> when I have a willing buyer -  it is *my* rights that are getting 
> infringed.


tvoivozhd---as I repeat so often with no apparent effect---NOBODY has 
any rights they cannot enforce.---especially unarmed people.  Business 
has many enforceable rights becaause business bought the government 
which has lots of guns, lots of police, an Army, Air Force and Navy to 
bend you to the will of rented politicians. I would like to see a change 
but after the Supreme Court gave corporations the rights of people, 
there is no legal means of restraining corporations in any effective 
way.  Bluntly, to alter that situation would take another Great 
Depression, a desperate populace and another Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  
I was ignorant enough to support a do-nothing Hoover.  Learned from my 
error and thereafter voted for Roosevelt who made life better for 
millions of Americans.

> Tvo, I have admired your advice and wisdom about business. It seems to 
> me that the only way to ensure that one has a *living wage* is to 
> start one's own business. 



tvoivozhd---Phrase it differently---IF you have sufficient good sense 
AND good health (plus some good luck) the ODDS of your achieving your 
financial requirements are vastly improved by starting your own 
business.  It will not "ensure" that you do so---only improve tthe 
odds.  Be prepared to fail, learn from your failure, and NEVER< NEVER 
stop trying.  Persistence is the most valuable trait you can have---look 
around.  Most successful businessman are not geniuses---merely 
bulldog-persistent.

> And government regulation is the number one stumbling block for people 
> wanting to do that.

tvoivozhd---Not the all-inclusive term "government regulation"  No 
capitalist enterprise can survive without an extensive tax-paid public 
infrastructure and regulations.  A few things that qualify as a 
stumbling block exist that did not until after about 1948---these are 
better described as cost-of-entry stumbling blocks.  For example, then I 
always typed my own one-page corporate charters with all powers not 
specifically excluded in the charter or by a pretty skinny set of  State 
Statutes---cost me about $15 to record it and NO annual fee.  Business 
permits of any king were not required.  The total cost of entry was 
pocket change.  I don't like the cost-of-entry increases---they were and 
are unnecessary, yield little net taxes beyond cost of administration.



I did my own taxes and returns for a few others as well---then the 
entire Federal Tax Code resided in four thin loose-leaf  volumes on a 
shelf behind my office desk.  Now of course, as sand in business 
bearings you or  I would need to hire a Tax Accountant.









> I don't understand this coming from you or on a "homestead" list. It 
> seems that most of us would rather live frugally, and work for what 
> others would see as much lower than a "living wage" in order to enjoy 
> our life style. You are threatening this?
>
> -Steve

tvoivozhd---forget the canned definitions.  There is no such thing as a 
standardized  homestead, other than it is usually rural and involves 
enough acreage for a woodlot to provide heat, and possibly woodgas to 
run a pickup truck (and for added independence woodgas to run a truck 
engine driving an electric generator)  The  "threat" you recite is 
wholly imaginary, as is a one-size-fits all scale of "frugality". Some 
people  value leisure time above more money.  I don't---I've been locked 
into the hard goods manufacturing so long I can hardly imagine not 
starting and running one on the farm---if my age and precariious health 
permitted'

A "living wage" is not the same for every homesteader either---believe 
me, it is not that hard for a small farm factory, or well-located berry 
PYO to net $100,000 a year---and the bottom-end "living wage" on a small 
farm can be a fraction of the amount required in a city.