Individual perceptions

Granted the characteristics listed are generalities, but if you agree with one set a larger percent of the time, that is the predominance of what you are.
Regarding abortion, it is a procedure to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, NOT health care.

I agree, SC - it is too generalized/simplified, and that's why I tried to bring the attention back to the very first sentences of each "definition". Those are the only sentences, in my estimation, that actually leave room for individual perceptions. In my view, nothing in life can ever fit "neatly" into the boxes we try so very hard to construct around ourselves and others. That's just one of the myriad of reasons why discussions get so contentious in forums like this one, eh?

Your assessment is more spot on than anything I've seen thus far coming from anyone, including myself.

Thanks!

BlazerBob wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: I'm not old enough to remember it, but I am familiar with that bit of "progressive" history as well. It was the primary reason that health insurance moved from something that was individually acquired to something provided by your employer. Since employers couldn't raise your wages, they raised the value of the benefits offered to work for the company. That shift was actually encouraged by the federal government and suggested by it as an alternative means of raising the compensation offered to employees. Another Bootleggers and Baptists bit of regulatory slight of hand courtesy of the statists.

Actually I was referring to Nixon ~1972.

I think the "Nixon Shock", when the Union removed itself from the Bretton Woods, giving us a fiat currency for the first time ever, was in '71. And IIRC the wage and price freezes lasted 3 or 4 months as opposed to the action taken by FDR and Congress in 1942, which lasted for years.

Carrying this discussion one step further - should there even be a minimum wage? Why or why not?

I was not alive in 1941. I remember my boss seeming pretty happy to be able to say he could not give me a raise because the government would not let him.

ZHawke wrote: First of all, it isn't "my" graph. That's your inference.

Not an inference, you are responsible for submitting it in support of your position, which by extension makes you responsible for its content, its bias and its inaccuracies in the discussion regarding it. If you didn't critically examine it prior to submitting it, that, too, is your responsibility.

ZHawke wrote: Second, the fact you continue to refuse to provide links to your source data is more indicative of manipulation on your part than anything I've done to manipulate anyone. You see potatoes, I see potahtoes. Manipulation is all in the eye of the beholder.

If you doubt the veracity of the figures, look them up. The minimum wage set by federal law in 1938 was $0.25/hr. In 1960 it was $1.00/hr and in 1968 it was raised to $1.60/hr, a 60% increase over what it was in 1960. Why you need a link to such easily accessed data is nothing more, and nothing less, than an attempt to take the discussion off on a tangent of a personal nature instead of focusing on the issue, right in line with the SOP in Rules for Radicals. When you can't attack the data, attack the person presenting it.

ZHawke wrote: Once again, I'll ask why my data is flawed and yours isn't, even though mine comes from the same source supposedly as some of your data. I offered to provide the source of this graph if you would reciprocate for yours. Thus far, you've been silent in this regard.

And once again I'll point out that it isn't the data, it's how the data has been organized and manipulated that renders the graph as flawed. For the data to be meaningful the groups must be organized in similar fashion for comparison, not organized in grossly unequal ones. A group that comprises 10x the age span as any other group being compared in equality to the others violates so many statistical comparison standards that only one incapable of critical thinking would attempt to get away with it.

ZHawke wrote: Regarding the "deception" allegation you make, everyone has an agenda. You have an agenda. I have an agenda. That those agendas are put forward in a forum like this isn't unique. Nor is it valid, as far as I'm concerned, to accuse one side of trying to do so without acknowledging one's own efforts to do so, as well.

The difference, again, is in how the agenda is promoted. I promote my agenda with reason and logic, not deception, which is the means by which statists promote theirs. "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor". The statists choose 1968 as their comparison year for minimum wage for a reason. If they chose the first or second year of having a federal minimum wage law, or 1950, or even 1960, as their starting point their premise loses all credibility, not that it had any to begin with, which was the reason their deception was detailed by me comparing today's minimum wage in inflation adjusted dollars in more than a single year. Data is data, but when data is manipulated to support a desired conclusion, that deception needs to be exposed so that the efforts of the statists are transparent for all to see.

ZHawke wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: Anyone can look up what the federal minimum wage was in 1938, anyone can plug that number into an inflation calculator and find out what the equivalent amount of money would be today. That doesn't require a link, just a little effort beyond regurgitating what one hears in their chosen echo chamber.

You're correct in that anyone can, in fact, look up anything they want to on the Internet. Taking your "just a little effort" into consideration, wouldn't it be just as easy for you to provide that effort? You put the information out there. Back it up with citations.

When you posit something with no factual backup, it diminishes your credibility as far as I'm concerned. My asking for verifiable citations isn't meant to be a hardship on you. Rather, it is my attempt to learn. Virtually every single site I visit has links embedded into their articles as source data. It isn't that hard to do. Virtually every scholar who writes anything for anyone does the same thing. It's professional.

Having credibility with one who has so little of it themselves is not a high priority with me Z. You want citation because you doubt the veracity of my data. Fine, verify it yourself. Soon you will learn that I speak plainly, logically, and truthfully; and perhaps you will also learn a thing or two in the process about the proper, versus the improper, use of data in a debate along the way. The graph you submitted is a prime example of the improper way to use data to sustain an argument and I've pointed out why numerous times at this point. It is a prime example of starting with the destination you wish and working you way backwards trying to support it regardless of the deceptions that are necessary along the way.

A critical thinker who was seeking honesty and transparency would undertake an analysis of federal minimum wage from its inception in 1938 to today in inflation adjusted dollars. Over that period of time, it has averaged about what it is today. There have been spikes and there have been troughs, but over the last 70 years we have had a minimum wage law the rough average would be around $7.25 an hour. Statists start out with the pinnacle, the highest point in recorded history, not the entire history. There is a reason they organize all their data around that point, they wish to create a false picture of the history of the minimum wage law. There is a reason why the person who organized the graph you submitted had one group that contained 3 years, one group that contained 4 years and one group that had 40 years in it. They, too, wish to paint a false picture. That's not promotion of an agenda, it's promotion of the truth.

So, you're stating/avowing your data sets come straight from BLS and NOT from a third party website?

ScienceChic wrote: I'm sorry HEARTLESS, but that list is too generalized/simplified. I look at what they describe for each category, and think of my friends who are liberal and who are conservative, and none of them fit those definitions - they believe pieces and parts of them, yes, but cannot be divided so neatly and cleanly. For example, I believe that abortion should be a choice available to all, but I certainly don't believe that taxpayers should fund abortions for women who can't afford them. I think they should fund birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place, but once a woman is pregnant, then she should have assistance in carrying to term and raising the baby, or giving the baby up for adoption without losing her job or having to quit school, or facing the social stigma of being unmarried and pregnant. And none of those options are considered or written about in those short paragraphs in that link.

And what many believe is fundamentally opposed to these beliefs. What one wishes to see less of is taxed, what one wishes to see more of is subsidized. Giving to charity is subsidized, via tax credits and deductions, because more of it is desired. Investment in newer, more efficient, machines is desired, so it too receives a tax credit or deduction. Subsidizing behavior which is detrimental to the society will also result on more of that detrimental behavior, which is why it should not be subsidized. There should be a social stigma associated with procreating in the absence of the ability to provide for the child. There should be a social stigma attached to being pregnant outside of a permanent relationship. There should be a stigma attached to the destruction of a human life which poses no danger to your own.

Having the taxpayer fund one's personal choice to chemically sterilize themselves invites that taxpayer into other bedroom choices, which I think we all agree should be discouraged instead of encouraged. And while we may agree that there should be a safety net of sorts for people who find themselves down and out regardless of whether it is through no fault of their own or as a direct consequence of their acts, whether or not that safety net is properly funded at the federal level remains a relevant discussion and the actual, as opposed to manufactured, difference that exists.

This goes to the question of whether or not there should be a minimum wage:

www.epionline.org/study/r124/

Whether anyone likes it or not, a minimum wage is a contentious issue. Michelle Bachmann even went so far as to suggest doing away with it altogether. She may be right. I don't have to agree with her assessment as to "why" it should be done away with (her assertion was supposedly that unemployment would disappear because potential employees could be hired at "whatever" level), but, according to this article, a good case is made of alternatives to increasing the minimum wage.

The previous post was from a decidedly "conservative" site. This one from The Atlantic (a little left of center, but still considered by many to be a moderate publication) discusses both sides of the minimum wage issue in what I consider to be a logical manner with embedded citations to support their positions.

www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/201...26/?single_page=true