False, the reason you are modding down every one of my comments (and a few others like you) is because I am too effective at expressing the opinions that you are personally against, which only means you have a bias that is not based on rationality of legality, you have a different type of bias that requires that anybody with the opinion that destroys all of your arguments flat is silenced.

The only reason to mod down every comment in a row i s to silence the opposition, there are no other reasons here.

I am not against unions that do not derive their power from government, so if you want to start your own union, you should be able to, however as an employer, I should not be compelled to work with a union, so I should be able to fire all people in the union, it's my discretion. Agreement between two companies not to hire employees from each other is suboptimal, but nowhere near the scale of damage that government causes with rules and regulations and taxation and inflation. As I said, the problem here is not that Apple and Google decided to agree not to hire from each other, the problem is that there are so few companies in the first place that such agreements can even be noticed.

How small and pathetic is the true state of USA economy when such irrelevant to the larger picture agreements become items of discussion? I will tell you how sad, small and pathetic the true state of USA economy is.

34% of American households feel they are worse off now than in 2008. So more than a third of American households feel that during today's so called "recovery" they are worse off than during the year 2008, the year when the economic crisis hit USA.

Again, the problem is so few employers are out there and unamerican unconstitutional decisions like this one by this court will not help at all, not even a little, it only makes it worse.

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Anyway, enjoy my last comment here, I had to use my backup account to leave this one. The moderators are already in full swing right now all over my comments, as they often are, making sure that I cannot participate in this discussion. Once they push the 'karma' low enough, I'll not be able to continue leave comments for a while, which is the point I take it, to ensure that the echo-chamber is unchallenged.

Free market (market free from government regulations) capitalist (as in, private ownership and operation of property) economy sets prices that are most efficient in that economy, and labor costs (wages) are also prices. Without government interference they are set where the market is willing to set them and this price discovery is what is important to allocate scarce resources correctly to push businesses towards productive output that the market desires.

You are saying that a business that does not pay your artificial price floor for labor is "a parasite upon the economy", however you are still assuming that people are willing to work for the price (wages) that employers are hiring at. If the business is unable to hire people at lower wages and the same business is unable to raise consumer prices to match its expenses on wages, then what you have is a market pressure for that business to find way to cut costs in some other manner or in fact to shut down, and that is exactly what economic activity requires: FREE MARKET ALLOCATES SCARCE RESOURCES IN THE MOST EFFICIENT MANNER. Without your government intrusion, free market signals to all the participants in the market as to what businesses should exist, what economic output is valuable and what the prices should be.

You are saying: let's force all businesses to pay artificial prices for labor and pretend that this does not hurt efficiency, does not hurt the actual market. It does, it eliminates free market price discovery, creates inefficiencies, prevents employment, prevents scarce resources from being allocated in the way, that market approves of most.

You are creating the parasite economy, not free market without price controls.

Since I do have artificial /. limits on the number of posts per day, I will reply to you from my backup account. Don't worry, I won't pretend to be somebody else, that's not what this account is for, it's the same user, just under a different name.
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Spending money on consumables does not grow the economy, especially the USA economy, which buys those consumables from abroad. It doesn't increase competitive pressures in the USA economy to produce, the only competitive pressures in the USA are in distribution and sales, but that's where a small number of very large economies of scale, such as WM dominate, specifically because they hire people at lowest prices and push suppliers to sell to WM at lowest prices as well.

Customers that get their income from welfare or from laws that steal that money from somebody else first are not real customers. The real trade is done between parties that produce, the so called trade between those, who live on welfare (or are benefiting from any type of theft, including taxes and borrowing that go towards minimum wages) is not real trade.

You see the point of trade is to exchange something, it makes sense for me to trade my productive output with others, who also have productive output, where I can get something from them I myself do not produce - comparative advantage is the name of the game.

When governments tell me (as an employer) that I must hit their artificial price floors, I cannot magically expand my overall earnings to provide any more money to anybody that I am already paying. I actually have a number of people that are paid below what you would consider a legal 'minimum wage', while vast majority of my employees are paid much more than any such price floor. The reason is very simple: productivity.

I don't throw people out if I can use their labour at the price, at which it makes sense for me to buy that labour. If the labour price is artificially raised, I would rather not hire anybody in that category at all, I would only be considering people that are definitely more productive than those, who are barely making it to the artificial price floor. There is a substantial difference between a worker that can produce high output and a worker that can barely move, however I can find use for those who barely move but they will not be making anywhere near what you think 'minimum wage' should be. They are fine with it, those are students and they do in fact need these jobs, they are getting experience that will help them to find better jobs later. Some of my student workers are very good, making more than what you think minimum wage should be.

My point is this: I will not have people at minimum wage, that doesn't even make sense. I will have people much below it and people much above it. Minimum wage is an artificial construct that has no meaning to me as an employer, there is nobody who is worth specifically that amount that I employ.

Now, the people that you are talking about, they are mostly in services industry, they are cleaners, stocking personnel, people with very little skills, not anybody with any real skills, those people command higher than minimum wage salaries. Placing artificial government price controls on labour price does a very simple thing: ensures that fewer people in that category are hired and those who are hired are going to be in higher categories of workers.

I definitely can see some business hiring an overqualified person with no job experience even to clean toilets, rather than hiring much less 'learned' counterparts, so the only thing that minimum wage does in that category is it prevents people without experience and without any extra qualifications from entering the work force.

Of-course the modern 'mainstream economists' will muddy the waters and try to sell you all sorts of nonsense as to how they think the economy works and how higher minimum wages will grow the economy, it's all nonsense and propaganda for the political elite that is in power, it has nothing to do with the actual economy and hiring and pricing. The actual economy will find a way to work around these price controls - hiring people that are much more qualified than necessary for jobs that shouldn't need those qualifications, ensuring that jobs go to the more connected people rather than considering people from the entire job market, etc.

As to your 'negative sum' and all that, sure, one way to deal with the increase in minimum wage is to raise your prices. Well, that IS happening. What do you think news like this are all about? It's inflation and all the price controls and laws and regulations, taxes, that's what it is. And Hershey's raising prices by 10% that just one tiny drop in a bucket of the overall prices going up, they are going up much faster than any government numbers indicate or admit to.

Product quality and portion sizes are going down, prices are going up, gov't can even claim that this is somehow indicating a 'growing economy'. But if you spend 10% more on Hershey's it doesn't mean your standard of living is better, the exact opposite is the case. To listen to the mainstream nonsense, you are in danger when prices fall. Well, I hope you are getting your fill of the great economic news, prices are not falling, they are going up just fine, so don't be scared, your wallet won't be emptied slower, it will be emptied faster, so you are all good.

I take it you believe that everything should fall right on your lap the moment you START a business? This is the game - you start a business and ONE of many businesses will succeed and it takes YEARS to succeed. I know that majority of you here don't understand such concepts as long term vision and you believe that you have to be rich already to make it in the world, but damn, when did this change occur, WHO told you that you should become a millionaire 4.5 years after starting a business exactly? Majority of business owners only make it into the black by around that mark.

By the way even without talent hard work beats talent that does not do hard work. I am not confirming anything that you wrote, I am telling you straight out: your claim (and this subsequent comment) doesn't make any sense. Nobody becomes a millionaire or a billionaire right away in business, it takes years, possibly decades if your business is even viable and profitable in the first place.

any sufficiently truthful statement is indistinguishable from flamebait.

Yes you do, you become rich by working hard. You become rich by building your own business, you need capital savings to start a business, which is why you will have to get that money somehow. I did it by working on contracts for 10 years before starting my own business. I am not 'rich' as in millionaire rich, I am rich by doing what I like, building products I choose to build with a team I hire and maybe over years it will make me enough money to put me in a category that you define as 'rich' or maybe it won't work out. One thing is for sure, if I do make it, some total asshole will be posting comments somewhere how I must have stolen something from somebody rather than building my own business over years of actual hard work. My employees have weekends and holidays and a steady paycheck, something I do not have, that's my risk and that's my choice.

Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Jobs, etc. Millions of people got rich (or at least rich enough for them) by building and running their own businesses.

You are totally mistaken, nobody depends on USA economy except for the welfare recipients and there is no more such thing as a 'USA economy' anyway. USA doesn't produce enough to have an economy.

It's the exact opposite that is the case, China, Germany and many others FEED USA, USA is the welfare recipient of the world and nobody depends on them for their economy. Economy is not consumption without repayment, economy is trade of goods that all sides participating in the trade produce and USA has been running 500Billion USD / year trade deficits for over 20 years now to claim that it has an economy that anybody relies upon, that ship has sailed together with the gold dollar.

What would actually HELP all of the countries suffering from the USA initiated inflation is to stop throwing money into the bottomless pit that is the USA welfare state. Germany needs to get whatever gold it can back from the USA Fed in a short order otherwise it will never see any of it again.

Since I hit the posting limit wall on my first account, I am going to reply to you from my backup one. ...

False choice! HL NEVER TOOK ANY FREEDOMS AWAY from anybody, government took freedoms away from HL. HL compensating their employees in currency rather than in whatever government tells it to compensate employees in is a freedom that HL AND employees must have and that government must not be able to steal.

Freedom to negotiate a contract between 2 parties is an essential freedom that cannot be impeded by government and nobody should lose those freedoms regardless of whether they become an employer or whatever.

By the way, thinking that HL is 'dictating choices' is a gigantic misconception! HL is not coming to anybody's house and not looking for contraceptives they don't like and not preventing people from buying the contraceptives with the MONEY THAT HL PAYS THEM. This is a huge lie perpetrated upon the population stupid enough not to understand the simple concept: you get paid and then you buy the products you want regardless of what anybody thinks.

- just because somebody is rich it does not mean that they should be forced by the government (and thus guns and prisons) to pay for your life. You can buy your own goddamn contraceptives and as to 'welfare kids', there are private charities for that and welfare shouldn't exist in the first place.

Same user, second account.

- and that is the actual problem, isn't it?

Government making it a Constitutional entitlement to protect whatever it is you want protected. Why not a McDonalds having Constitutional entitlement to prevent competition from opening another fast food place within 10 miles of each of their stores?

This is the same thing: what you do in your life and on your time is none of government's business in any way, you shouldn't be attacked by government and you shouldn't be given any entitlements by it either. I guess whoever managed to stick that particular item into the USA Constitution had interest in patents but not in fast food stores.

FTFA

- isn't that something.

Patents are a system of government enforcements that provide monopoly over something to a patent holder, however to understand what this 'something' is you need to read through millions of patents and you need to understand that insane language that they are written in.

How is it possible to assert that people are infringing on patents at all if the patents are unreadable in the first place? If the patents are written in a coded language and there are millions of patents, who in their right mind (except for government officials) could ever believe that companies that end up using something that is covered by these patents are infringing rather than simply working out the details of what they need for their product to be built on their own?

All of these and more is why I am ever so firmly against all government involvement in the patent and copyright schemes in the first place.

I disagree with your assessment that women cannot win, I think men cannot win in the society where women are given all sorts of entitlements and men are forced into obligations.

Welfare state is a single mother state and men are the slaves in that system.

Yeah, good luck with your ideas about what you want to get. This is INFLATION, you are getting LESS AND LESS for the same money, because things are more and more expensive in your currency and you salary is not going up, because the inflation is created by the government money printing operation and has nothing to do with any 'productivity'. The reality is that USA consumers cannot afford anything, they can't afford 'live persons' on the phone, they are not producing enough to offset the enormous 500 Billion USD / year trade deficit and given that, every service job ends up being a net drain on the economy, not a gain. You have no manufacturing and no real exports given that staggering trade deficit number, so you can't pay for services, because paying for services requires surplus in production that can be shifted to the service workers, but there is a deficit in production, so nobody can have anything.

This is what 'consumer based economy' looks like.

Incorrect, the opposite of central government (monopoly on violence and slavery) is not anarchy, it is individual freedom, and in the global capitalist economy where the money is made not by plundering one another but by creating new businesses that provide products and services and compete for every pair of eyes, every person on the planet, is the potential customer. Where the entire world is your potential customer and the number of your customers is directly linked to the health of your income generating business, you do not create slavery, you prefer society as free from slavery as possible.

Beyond that, the attitudes changed and capitalist industrial economy has conclusively proven that slavery is a very inefficient mode of generating income. Non-specialised work force, whose only incentive to work is based on fear of punishment is not a productive work force.

As I said (before /. limit on 'daily comments' kicked in), the future generations will look at our times and see what most of us do not see today: barbarism. Of-course if you are on the receiving end of the welfare State you may prefer this barbarism based on slavery, since you believe that you gain more from profiting off of the slave state than you would from the free market capitalism, but this comes from the same ignorance of ideas as the belief that the opposite of a slave state driven by the monopoly on violence in the hands of central governments is anarchy.