Billionaire mayor says ‘living wage’ is Red

[blindpig]

Billionaire mayor says ‘living wage’ is Red

The billionaire mayor of this city, Michael Bloomberg, is still refusing to sign a “living wage bill” currently before the New York City Council, despite revisions that watered it down somewhat. This bill would require some businesses that receive city funds to pay not just the minimum wage, but either a “living wage” of $10 per hour plus benefits or $11.50 an hour without benefits.

The Census Bureau recently reported that one in every five city residents lives in poverty as a result of unemployment and low wages.

In stating his reason for opposing the bill, Bloomberg said: “The last time people tried to set rates, basically, was in the Soviet Union, and that didn’t work out very well. I don’t think we want to go in that direction.” (New York Times, Oct. 5)

Bloomberg needs to learn history.

more, with a fair synopsis of the horrors of 'Red".....

http://www.workers.org/2011/us/billionaire_mayor_1027/

[Blue_Tires]

1. Just when you thought red-baiting is finally out of style

it comes back with a vengeance

[sakabatou]

2. Of for fuck's sake, he's using communists? REALLY?

[blindpig]

8. Well, he does have a point.....

though unintentional, what's good for the majority is irrelevant and inimical to capitalists.

[phantom power]

3. I wonder if Bloomberg realizes...

that massive poverty and massive income inequality helped set the stage for the Communist Revolution, and that democratic socialism more or less saved the United States from the same fate during the Great Depression?

[gratuitous]

4. A little more history for Mr. Bloomberg

Whenever (and notice I don't say "the last time") the elite keep gobbling up far more than their share of the wealth generated by labor, it doesn't work out very well, at least for the greedy. I'll see your Soviet Union and raise you a Libya, an Egypt, a Saudi Arabia (wait just a little bit longer on this one), an 18th Century France, and a Roman Empire.

Call or fold, Michael?

[Faux pas]

5. What does he care? He's got his. n/t

[SammyWinstonJack]

10. He doesn't want anyone else to get theirs. Or even be able to afford the basics from a

day's labor, apparently.

[Faux pas]

14. Yep, those billionaires need to stick together. Wonder when

his term is up? Maybe they'll recall him.

[EOTE]

6. “The last time people tried to set rates, basically, was in the Soviet Union"

Really? So we don't have a federal minimum wage that's set every few years? What an incredible ass.

[leftstreet]

26. Yep, he's basically saying the Fed Minimum Wage is Commie!

What a moron

[sabrina 1]

32. Well then, it's way, way past time to address that problem

isn't it? The man who bought the election. He is the poster boy for all that is wrong with this country. OWS is a nightmare they hoped they never would see. The PEOPLE right on their doorstep. It's so much easier to talk in nebulous numbers. But when real live Americans are on your doorstep, lying gets to be so much harder work. Not they stop, it's just harder.

[bigmonkey]

37. Wage and price controls from Republicans have a U.S. track record.

A republican president put it wage and price controls in 1971. Richard Nixon.

http://www.econreview.com/events/wageprice1971b.htm

[dana_b]

7. the more I hear of this guy, the more I

dislike him. Any excuse not to give the working poor a teeny, tiny break. Oh, and $10/hr. plus benefits in NYC?? I would think it would be closer to $14. My daughter and I calculated the living wage here in East Bay Area California and got $12.50/hr. No car, sharing a tiny apartment, no health benefits, luxuries, etc. The bare necessities - room, food, a little for clothes, bus pass and bills (electricity, water, etc.)and we found that you can't make it on less than $12.50/hr.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. Yeah, I just about laughed at that one - $10+benefits is barely a living wage

HERE - there's no way it would be a living wage in NYC.

Talk about a disconnect...

[white_wolf]

15. 10/hr can't be right. Here in Knoxville, TN it is 12.25.

I've done some work on getting a living wage passed for UT workers and it came out to I think 12.25, I know it was a little bit more than 124, but less than 13. There is no way in hell the cost of living is higher here than in NYC.

[dana_b]

17. good for you for fighting for it

and the more I think of it, $14 is probably no where near enough either. Rent in Manhattan is ridiculous. I don't know about Brooklyn, Queens, etc. but I'll bet a living wage would be closer to to the high teens or even $20/hr.

[ceile]

9. That has to be the dumbest thing I've heard in a while.

The Soviet Union? Really?!

[Trillo]

12. Manipulating perceptions downward. Think $25-$30 per hour.

Less than that is not a "living wage".

In Southern California, $10 per hour and 40 hours per week will not pay for rent and groceries, nevermind clothing, transportation costs, telephone and a whole host of other modern necessities (just to have a job).

Think more along the lines of $30 per hour.

[IndyPragmatist]

23. You could never do a living wage as a national policy

In southern California, okay, 25-30/hour may be what you need to survive. In Indianapolis, less than half. Instituting a nationwide living wage would cause chaos. I would lose my job. I have the confidence that I have the skills to find another, but I know that hundreds of thousands in my city would not.

[Capitalocracy]

31. A national living wage law would have to be region-specific and self-adjusting

And major steps would have to be taken to make sure there are no conflicts of interest in the organizations that determine the living wage in each area

Short-term problems may ensue, but nothing compared to the long-term benefits, and they could be mitigated by government programs to temporarily help small businesses make up the payroll difference, for example.

[Hugabear]

13. $10/hr is a living wage in New York City?

Really?

That's barely a living wage here in Florida, where the cost of living is considerably lower than NYC.

[socialist_n_TN]

16. The mouthpiece for the capitalist class speaks

How "Red" is that Mr. Bloomberg? :mad:

[white_wolf]

18. I just love how he has no clue what he's talking about.

We already have a minimum wage in the States. Secondly in the long term communists aren't for a living wage, they are for the end of wages. In the short term I.E. under capitalism a living wage is a very important goal, but in the long run communists would seek to abolish wage labor. To quote Marx:

take off your banners the reactionary slogan a fair days pay for a fair days work and instead inscribe upon your banner the revolutionary watchword; the abolition of the wages system"

[Democrats_win]

19. Elizabeth Warren's comments: they didn't earn it by themselves (but they have earned our anger).

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. This s where these guys want to go

Stweart industrial code

And no, the last time rates were imposed goes well before 1917

[libinnyandia]

21. Mayor Bloomberg partof a horse's anatomy

There was a cartoon indu last weekthat showed Bollomberg riding on the rear end of a horse- a horse's rear end on a horse's rear end. How appropriate.

[blindpig]

22. Put this in your pipe, Mr Bloomberg...

Thousands of jobless U.S. workers went to the Soviet Union in this period. Even though every citizen in the USSR was put to work at living wages, this wasn’t enough. Workers from all over the world were hired to go to the USSR and help out, in exchange for a living wage.

[snagglepuss]

24. Many if not most minimum wage jobs are in the service sector and can't be

outsourced so I hope labor keeps fighting.

[TBF]

28. It's where unions are needed for sure - but there has been a very concerted effort

in this country to get rid of the one thing that encourages folks to work together. The wealthy/media have been anti-union for years, and you will hear the talking points whenever you bring up the subject.

[DefenseLawyer]

25. Fluoridation, Mandrake.

Those low wage earners are tying to sap our precious bodily fluids.

[defendandprotect]

27. $10 -- $11 an hour is NOT a living wage --- they've also removed much of rent control in NYC!!

Bloomberg knows history -- he's distorting it for his own benefit and that of

elites --

[Capitalocracy]

30. Not in New York, it isn't.

In the college town I'm from (when I used to live there over 6 years ago) the living wage activists were saying it was more like minimum $13. There, NOT New York.

I have never earned close to a living wage.

[sabrina 1]

33. No it's not, and this is another thing that needs to be fixed.

By always starting out with these kinds of little demands, the only way to bargain is down.

A livable wage should be at least $24 an hour, make it $35 to start talks, then bargain down from that to no less than $20 at least.

What they are asking for is a pittance. I can feel myself getting angrier and angrier at these greedy, selfish, corrupt billionaires telling working people that they should live on $5 an hr and consider themselves lucky.

The thinking about what has value has to change. LABOR must be raised to a level of value higher than any other commodity. At the moment, the Global Capitalists have succeeded in making it the least valuable asset a country has, simply a means to profit from for them.

This attitude, so blatant now, that people are valueless, explains how these morons can so easily drop bombs on other human beings. They truly are sick people, devoid of all that makes a human being a human being. And it's why they can accept the utterly, mind-boggling concept that a Corporation has 'personhood'.

[onethatcares]

29. wow, $400.00 a week makes one a commie.

I'm out words at this point.

[JVS]

34. Why does that shit nugget get elected?

[jmowreader]

35. The Soviet Union didn't collapse because of wages

Three things took down the Soviet Union.

First was their currency. Every successful nation freely trades with the world. To do it, you need a currency people in other nations will accept. Because the ruble was not officially convertible into anything but other Warsaw Pact currencies, you had to barter with the Soviets. The people of the West were introduced to Stoli vodka in 1972, about the same time Soviets were introduced to Pepsi-Cola...because the Pepsi-Cola Company was trading Stoli for their product then selling the Stoli on the free market. Another fun one: Bon Jovi's "Slippery when Wet" album was sold on the Melodiya label--it was chosen in part because Bon Jovi's music has never been political in nature. They paid the licensing fee with a truckload of firewood.

Second was their central planning system for industrial production. All the jokes about shortages in Communist countries actually aren't jokes; there were always severe shortages of everything in those places. If the central committee told The People's Shoe Factory No. 1 to produce 10,000 pair of black pumps with two-inch heels in size 45 (European sizes are different from American ones), they would produce 10,000 pair of black pumps with two-inch heels in size 45 and send them to the stores. The problem is, you needed to also have 10,000 people who wanted black pumps with two-inch heels and who had size-45 feet if you were going to sell all those shoes. This links back to the first problem...if you'd have allowed The People's Shoe Factory No. 1 to produce any shoes it wanted, it would have made some of those pumps...but it would also have made tan flats, black logging boots, white sneakers and blue sandals, in all different sizes according to demand. To do this, it might have had to import materials--which it couldn't do because the money they had available to them wasn't anything a leather company in Italy or a rubber shoe sole company in France would want. So you've got all these pumps no one wants, and none of the boots that would sell well. But for REAL humor ask about cars.

Third is a very strange practice that dated back to Stalin. I actually heard this story from a defector I met once. I asked the guy why no products made in the Soviet Union were ever improved, like all good industrial companies do. He told me that a fine engineer from Stalin's day learned about a technological marvel from the West--planetary gearing, I think--and realized the Soviet Union should build machines using it. He built an improved machine with the new discovery and showed it to Stalin. While pleased with the machine, Stalin was not pleased with the engineer who designed the original machine. He denounced the original engineer as having taken actions contrary to the best interests of the Soviet people, and had him shot. From that day forward, no one ever improved anything unless they absolutely had to, for fear someone would further improve their invention and cause them to be shot as counterrevolutionary kulaks. And that, my friends, is one thing the Soviets' postwar destalinization campaign failed to address.

Given those three factors, wages in the Soviet Union could have been "work for food" across the board and the system would have eventually collapsed.

[Starry Messenger]

36. He's just talking out his ass.

The Soviets adjusted wages geared to the needs of different phases of their economy:

1935: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,748556,00.html

In the U. S. S. R. practically every doctor, dentist, druggist, hospital employe and medical supplies manufacturer works for Government wages. Dissatisfied with those wages, in outlying districts they have shirked to such an extent that the complaints of the nation's 160,000,000 inhabitants sounded above the Kremlin's walls. Last week Dictator Joseph Stalin decided that, to get proper work from doctors, dentists, et al., he must raise wages by about 60% and allow physicians all the privileges of engineers and industrial technicians. Last year U. S. S. R.'s health bill was $2,200,000,000. Next year it will be nearly $3,600,000,000.

For the past three years Soviet medical men and associates have been paid according to merit. The merit system will continue, and a doctor on a hospital staff will earn $300 to $525 monthly; heads of hospitals will receive up to $650. Village doctors will earn $300 to $350 per month, dentists $200 to $300, pharmacists $260 to $350, wages which in most cases are higher than the net earnings of most U. S. doctors, dentists and pharmacists.

Key word in there is "higher" than US wages, which was true for several years. That word sends a stake of fear through the heart of every grotty capitalist suckfish. More money to workers means less maximum profits. People not profits! It worked out wonderfully well if you were a human being not a corporation. And yes, to all of you frowning now that geniuses didn't get more money, scientists like Sakharov, etc. got bonuses for research.