Okay, Zach, I promised Id put this up. This might be the first time I link to Bill Maher to support a conservative idea - but, of course, it will twist slightly left. I recently posted about levels of discomfort that taking public assistance should inspire. Taking Public assistancy should be below changing your lifestyle radically and above desperation (losing everything you own) in level of discomfort. Ive said, for instance, that I think welfare should consist of the box and the Card. If you take welfare, you get your rent/mortgage at your current location covered, you get your utilities, medical bills, child care while youre searching for a job covered (if you cant find a friend or relative who wont help out), and you get your gas and car maintenance or public transportation fares covered for looking for a job, as well as your education to get a better one (say, if youre willing to put in the time and effort to become a truck driver or a mechanic, both of which have jobs open and both of which pay very well). You also get a box once a week of nutritious-but-bland food sufficient to cover your family, and some toiletries, and you can be on that as long as you want. You get NO spending money from the government, NO extra benefit other than a slightly larger box for more kids. You cant move. If you get a job, you get to keep 1/4th of your income, plus the box and the card, or you can give up the box and the card and keep all your income. This encourages people to go out and work at whatever they can get. The key component this has that welfare doesnt is discretionary spending. The other key - when you work 40 hours a week, people in this program are encouraged to switch away from substandard jobs. Currently, substandard pay is supported by employees being willing to take less because they can make it up by being on government programs. The person with a new college degree who prefers not to move over getting a truck-driving education has the gap bridged by government assistance. Which allows companies to pay substandard wages. Large service corporations are quietly in support of government support programs because they help the companies bottom line. If there were more people who said, Screw it, Id really like to live where I am now, but I want more control over my life - Ill learn a trade rather than have no money to spend, even though I have a degree, service corporations would be forced to pay more to the smaller group of employees available to them. Market forces would take over - a nicely conservative idea. The problem is, the corporations have too much control. So the other option is to FORCE them to pay more, by raising the minimum wage - OR - better still, limit the upside to executives by locking executive pay to a certain number of times what the lowest-paid employee makes. The discrepancy in the US is outrageous - where in Japan the CEO makes 10-15 times what the lowest-paid employee makes, in the US in service companies the CEO makes hundreds of times what the lowest-paid employee makes. SO - question to my conservative friends - I know you want people off public assistance (so do I), and you dont want to raise the minimum wage. What would you think of a compensation ratio being tied to the highest-paid employee in the company? Say, the highest-paid employees total compensation package is no more than 50 times what the lowest-paid employee in the company gets? To my more progressive friends - tell me whats wrong with the box and the card concept? youtube/watch?v=Bf013ID8lCE
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 22:10:02 +0000
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