So what happens when a tornado hits, rips off the 60 metre blades and throws them around?

You're right. This is why they don't allow cellular towers or satellite dishes in populated areas.

all the bird carcasses

It's really touching how concerned people proponents of fossil fuels suddenly become about wildlife when the discussion turns to wind energy..

http://www.theguardian.com/env...

You don't think artificially jacking wages up will have any impact on inflation?

That's correct. History has shown that increased wages have had a negligible impact on inflation.

If someone's labor is not worth the minimum wage they will just remain unemployed.

Don't think individually, think about the company's labor force as a whole.

If the company is profitable, isn't that proof that they're earning their wages?

Why is profitability always a factor in the salary increases of upper management but never a factor in the salaries of workers?

That's not true. In order to pay the McDonald's worker $15.00 an hour, they will have to basically double all of their prices

That canard has been debunked long ago.

We have seen big jumps in the minimum wage many times (many of them in my lifetime) and they have never resulted in equal jumps in prices. Because if those companies could increase those prices, they would have already, minimum wage increase or no.

so you are telling me businesses in seatle are opening in record numbers now right?? no one is leaving right???

Seattle is not only the fastest-growing city in the United States, but employment is growing there faster than the national average. Anywhere you go in Seattle, you see new commercial buildings going up. You think that's because businesses are leaving?

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/...

http://jobs.seattletimes.com/c...

Where I live one can survive on twelve dollars an hour.

Yeah, but some people want indoor plumbing. Go figure.

I think it will largely end up being a feel-good measure that well-off, well-meaning people can use to congratulate themselves about

And the LAST thing we want is for anyone to feel good about a few extra dollars in a worker's paycheck. Why, that's un-American!

I mean, if managements starts to see something good start to come from paying workers more, what's next? That's meddling with the primal forces of nature, is what.

This is also detrimental to businesses in the long term, since it means that increases to the minimum wage tend to be large and create a correspondingly large jumps in expenses.

It's interesting that you never hear this argument used in reference to extreme jumps in executive-class incomes.

Somehow, if a CEO's income goes from $40million to $60million, it's all, "Well, look how profitable the company has been." But for some reason, "Look how profitable the company has been." is never an acceptable argument for higher worker wages.

ALL of the cost of goods falls into only two categories: labor, and profit.

And one of those is nothing but a tax on productivity (profits).

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a 19th century philosopher who had a great debate with Karl Marx (Proudhon was opposed to centralized state ownership of anything), had some very interesting things to say on the subject of profits and their relation to labor. Even though some of his thought veered into anarchism territory, and later he went off the rails with some anti-semitic comments, his logical arguments about profits and capital are well worth considering.

A lot of what we take for granted about the relationship between capital, profits and labor are really just a construct of an economic philosophy embraced by the oligarchy benefited by it, and which is starting to show its limits in a global market in late-stage capitalism.

Does that go both ways- if the minimum wage went down then prices would deflate with it?

Almost certainly not as long as we have increased consolidation in the companies producing goods and services and in the labor market.

But there's this thing called inflation.

Inflation? Really? Such a thing exists, but it has been historically low for some time now. At least since 2008.

http://inflationdata.com/Infla...

"Annual inflation for the 12 months ending in March 2015 was a deflationary -0.07%. Due to rounding the BLS counts this month as -0.1%. This is down slightly (more deflationary) from the 12 months ending in February at -0.03% when the BLS rounded to 0.0%.but slightly less deflationary than January when the BLS also rounded to -0.1%. Note that Annual Inflation has been negative (i.e. deflationary) for three months now primarily due to lower gasoline prices.

http://aneconomicsense.com/201...

The Federal Reserve sets a nominal inflation rate of 2%. Despite the quantitative easing, we haven't seen anything like that. Monetary policy is one of those areas where you can most perceive just how much Economics is a pseudo-science and how many of the so-called "laws" (such as "supply & demand" and it's resultant fiction, "supply-side economics") are just fables you tell working people to make them behave as the value of their labor is artificially degraded.

Because some people's labor is not worth the minimum wage.

Why isn't the best measure of that the profitability of the employer?

Let the businesses pay them what they are worth.

See, "monopsony"

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/mon...

You seem awfully upset at MRAs.

They are embarrassing all men. You should be upset too.

Also realize that I never bring them up until they start to appear in the comments, like maggots on a corpse.

I had to do this once before when a small group of neo-nazis started hanging out at Slashdot. It takes a while, but eventually they run off when they realize that someone will call them out on their bullshit. It's not that hard. You just hold a mirror up before them, and they shrink away.