On Sep 26, 10:34*pm, "Percival P. Cassidy"
wrote:
On 09/26/08 05:15 pm HeyBub wrote:
Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
On 09/23/08 04:20 pm HeyBub wrote:
It's not a "bailout" in the traditional sense: it's an investment.
The government will eventually get its money back - just like it did
with the S&L fiasco.
You're right the problem was caused by the federal government,
specifically the mandate to make PC morgtages. That is, people got
morgtages who would never, in an honest world, have qualified for
them. They got them because various agencies and lending
institutions were required to "service the underserved." Failure to
do so was evidence sufficient of incipient racism, greed, elitism,
or doing the hokey-pokey.
The problem is that the minimum wage is not sufficient to enable
people to support a family, including purchasing a home -- and often not
even
sufficient to pay rent for an apartment in any neighborhood where
anybody would want to live, or anywhere close to their place of
employment.
And guess which ethnic groups get most of those
insufficient-pay-to-live-on jobs.
Oh that's baloney. Even a minimum-wage job is sufficient to afford a
cardboard box!
You're not serious, are you? Do you think that anybody in "the
richest/greatest country in the world" (according to our own propaganda)
should have to live in a cardboard box?
No one should have to. However last time I checked, we still have
welfare programs here to assist the needy. Those living in cardboard
boxes are there for reasons other than the minimum wage. Funny how
Mexicans can come here and figure out how to live in shared homes,
etc, make a living, and send money back home.
And in how many places will "the
authorities" allow people to live in a cardboard box?
Actually, plenty of places. In fact, when cities like NY try to get
bums off the street and into shelters, the civil liberties folks come
running around filing lawsuits, defending their right to lay in the
street.
I read in the paper a few days ago a complaint by a realtor that
people now need to put down 10%, and that is too much.
The realtor was wrong.
Wrong about having to put down 10%, or wrong about 10% being too high?
For a long time Australian banks were prohibited from lending more
than 80% of the value of a home, and loans were not permitted where
payments would exceed 25% of the husband's salary (on the assumption
that the wife would become pregnant and have to drop out of the work
force).
Yet home ownership was high. How? Because the minimum wage for a
40-hour week was based on the cost of housing and feeding a family of
four.
Less than 20% of people in America in minimum-wage jobs are the primary
income source for the family. The VAST majority are teens, retirees, and
part-time workers. In Australia, the minimum wage is based on OCCUPATION not
family size. It currently is about $13USD/hour.
How many of the part-time workers on minimum wage would like to be fully
employed? -- especially those that are working two or three part-time
jobs, none of which provides any benefits?
As Bud said, most of the minimum wage workers are teens, retirees who
want to be part time, etc. The other big fallacy is that liberals
like to take a number like this and treat it as if it were static and
a big problem. "There are XX millions of Americans only earning
minimum wage." As if those same people were minimum wage 10 years
ago and will be 10 years from now. The reality is that people move
from minimum wage jobs to better jobs. At least those with any
initiative do.
Of course the wage paid to a specific individual in Australia does not
depend on the size of that employee's family. But the minimum wage that
anyone could be paid for 40 hours work in a week was such that he would
be able to support a family of four -- not four children, but himself, a
wife, and two children.
Bottom line: If you can't afford a family of four, don't HAVE a family of
four.
See the preceding paragraph. It takes somewhere around two children per
family to maintain the population.
Well then why did they have 4 children, instead of 2? And why is
it the automatic right of couples to have children if they can't
afford them? And since everyone around the world has their shorts
up in a knot about environmental issues, eg global warming, why have
policies that encourage MORE children, instead of less?
Here's a recent video on the cause of the sub-prime meltdown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH--o
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