Bernie Sanders at Hoffheinz at U of H Sunday Night !!

Its not the exact same thing, its called a stipend.

It seems you don't really understand what an internship is.

Interns don't work, they learn, and while learning they may provide a marginal benefit to the mentor. You are seemingly trying to argue that teachers should pay students for them "working" (doing homework)

The fact that he is paying them anything is quite generous.

 

Except that internships have certain legal requirements to exist and qualify as internships. This is not something that Bernie Sanders just invented out of nowhere. You not being familiar with our laws is different than Sanders being a hypocrite.

 

I am very aware what an internship is. who isn't? This some how justifies to Bernie paying someone less than Bernie's living wage?

 

Yes.

Just like waiters, who earn far less than a living wage, due to the circumstances of the position.

 

Bernie is not ok with waiters earning less than his living wage. Why doesn't Bernie let all individuals decide as opposed to just those who are doing internships?

 

I realize you want this to be a big issue and want to champion an epic hypocritical zinger, but acting like this is some apples to apples comparison is r****ded.

The minimum wage laws are designed to give those who work full time in a minimum wage job, as their career, to be able to live above the poverty line. That's what it is, that's what it is designed for, that is its intent.

Its not there for ****ing internships, garage sales, lemonade stands, graduate assistants and all these one off instances of temporary "jobs".

Stop being dense.

 

Makes sense, and that's something I didn't know. That's the information you should lead with when someone suggest he's a hypocrite for not paying his interns $15 dollars, lol.

 

I've just skimmed through this thread and it looks like people are stuck on just one part of Sanders' platform, and also on a very ridiculous gotcha about interns.

While $15 min. wage is an important issue there are many other issues that Sanders' is advocating that should be looked at.

 

I think you are correct and this point is fundamental to the minimum wage discussion. Whenever I'm in a debate over whether we should raise the minimum wage or not most people point to the jobs that people perform. Somehow they feel the jobs are unworthy of a pay raise because these people don't have to solve complicated problems at work they just serve food. The thing is no matter what job you hold you should be able to pay your bills without relying on the government. If the position wasn't of importance to the company there would be no position at all. Companies like McDonald's can more than afford to pay $15 an hour without raising prices so why aren't they? The answer is greed and I think the government has the responsibility to protect itself and the people of America against greedy corporations.

 

It's embarrassing, the state of conservatism.

 

Why?

What is wrong with relying on the government? I mean, as much as minimum wage advocates want to pretend it's not for some reason, higher minimum wages are a form of wealth redistribution, just like government welfare.

So why is one form of wealth distribution okay and the other not?

 

Higher minimum wages spreads wealth to a broad range of low income workers. If it's a transfer of wealth it's from corporate profits. The process avoids the taxation/distribution difficulties of collecting the money and qualifying recipients and the physical effort to get the benefit to them. It keeps bureaucracy out of the loop.

I say if because theoretically it could pay for itself by moving more money through the goods and services/banking system by which wealth is created through the multiplier effect.

 

Because the money would come from the pockets of those who benefit substantially more from the workers rather than from tax payer dollars which could be used for something that is not an unnecessary cost. Why rely on government when the business owner can afford to pay the workers, who aide the owner in creating their wealth, a livable wage? Why allow corporations to hoard money and then ask for government handouts?

 

Except you're missing the little fact that tax payers.....are primarily the rich.

So in fact, your entire logic is backwards. It's WELFARE which takes money from the rich and gives it to the poor, not higher minimum wages. Minimum wages in fact takes money from the middle classes and give it to the poor - because guess who uses businesses which pay their workers minimum wages? And guess who will thus be worse off thanks to the higher prices which will inevitably result from higher minimum wages?

 

Minimum wage hikes do not cause inflation.

 

That is not what I said.

What I am saying is that if you raise the minimum wages, business which employ minimum wage workers will raise their prices. And it's the middle class/ lower middle class who use businesses which pay their workers minimum wage, not the wealthy. Rich people don't eat at McDonald's or shop at Kroger's, after all.

So, the middle class will be worse off, because their wages won't get raised, but the amount they pay for goods will increase. And that is why minimum wage is one of the worst ways of government wealth redistribution. People ( like you) think that welfare takes money from the middle class and gives it to the poor, while minimum wage takes money from the rich and gives it to the poor. But in reality it's the other way around.

Welfare, and particularly a negative income tax, is a much superior alternative to minimum wages.

 

Let me say it a different way. You cannot simply raise your prices to recoup costs because it will hurt business overall when less patrons go your business. The hike will be for businesses who can afford it. So that means these businesses will have to eat the extra cost of labor and they can afford it. They likely will increase prices but not by much. The increase will small because it would defeat the purpose of raising prices too high when the result will be that yous scare away costumers.

 

And the businesses that can't afford it? Especially so since retail and fast food are not businesses which have massive profit margins. Blithely assuming "Lol McDonald's is big they can afford it" is just foolish.

 

McDonalds is big and they can afford it. I did not come to this conclusion blithely but thanks for thinking so highly of me, lol. McDonalds could in fact afford to double salaries save for executives who are already get paid very well and still it will be a very healthy billion dollar company.

 

The study that came to that conclusion is in fact bull****, precisely because of the price elasticity of demand that you just used to claim that these companies would not raise prices even in the face of higher wages.

And while McDonald's might be more fine, what about the small stores which also pay their workers minimum wages and are less able to recoup costs?

The reality is that government do subsidize businesses through social welfare, and that always is going to be the case. We don't b**** about how Social Security or Medicare is the government subsidizing for corporations who might otherwise provide employees with pensions or health care on their own. So we might as well use our progressive tax system to just transfer money from the rich to the poor.

Now that $15/hour really matters when we have runaway inflation thanks to Bernie's other great ideas.