You're right, taxes are an undue burden. Let's get rid of them!

The US absolutely PROSPERED without an income tax, raising itself from an agrarian backwater to industrial power bordering on superpower without one. It continued to prosper for a long time when the income tax only really applied to the super rich, and didn't become a problem for normal people until inflation pushed everyone into the tax brackets that were once reserved for the wealthy.

There isn't. Food insecurity is different from starvation, and is honestly just ridiculous. We have food stamps, food banks, and church-run charities absolutely EVERYWHERE. If you are starving in the US, it's 95% likely that you are a child locking in a closet. Most of the other 5% just have some sort of extreme mental problem that prevents them from communicating and getting help.

And sure, roommates won't let you live there for free, but they charge less than it costs to live alone. Get two or three or four and your bill is pretty reasonable. And MOST people have families that WILL let you stay for free, or at least a severely reduced rate.

No, you set the goalposts yourself. I never said anything about the total value of natural resources in an economy being important. I said that natural resource rich economies can afford socialism. To determine if you are rich, you have to subtract you liabilities from your assets. Places like Norway do quite well, where the US has been in decline for a long time, punctuated by a brief shale boom that is already fading rapidly.

Cost of living for the same STANDARD of living is much higher in Africa than the US. Actually, last I looked, the highest cost of living in the world was in Africa (thanks to inflows of Chinese hot money). http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

But they still don't have a minimum wage, and their economies are still growing very quickly.

No, the MARKET should choose, since there and only there does EVERYONE have a voice. But you guys want to impose your arbitrary opinions on the whole under force of arms. Disgusting.

But you said that wealth is measured by quantity of currency. You going to retract that statement?

How much would it cost to extract all that?

Ohh.....

Sorry, what are my other options when increased wage cost is forced upon me? I could raise my prices, but the market won't support that. China would eat up my market share at a higher price, and only a fraction of my customers could afford a higher price even if we imposed tariffs. That means they would go out of business too.

You really don't think, do you? It's quite clear who you voted for in the last two elections. And now we are all paying the price. Not that the right half track of the fascist machine would have been any different.

That is a derivative of the broken window fallacy. According to that logic, we could just give those people money for doing nothing and it would have the same effect. The (greater) point of a job is not to attract money for the worker to spend, but rather to increase the productivity of the worker over the level of his consumption. This creates value for the economy, and allows for increased capital investment and savings. These lead to lower prices for goods and thus an increase in the standard of living for everyone.

"I don't know what peer review is, so I will post a politically influenced paper put out under Clinton and a survey rather than any sort of actual numbers or anything relevant."

^---That's you.

No, they raise them with inflation, and prices rise with inflation. THAT is why employment stays the same. Leave it the same in the face of inflation for 30 years and you will find your employment rate approaching that of Switzerland (~3.2%, IIRC), which has no minimum wage.

HAHAHA. Lets seem them papers, son.

"Rising prices lead to more sales! study finds. All stores immediately set prices to $infinite and became mega-wealthy as a result! We are now almighty gods! News at 11."

Yet they aren't getting any richer. Only the top 0.01% is getting appreciably richer. Do you work for a billionaire?

Also, unions have a place in society, preventing atrocious abuses of workers as we saw during the great depression. They have been given special status, however, and as a result have become destructive. Note that child labor was almost entirely gone by the time it became illegal. Children only labored because they had to do so to help their families. Once enough capital had accumulated that a single person (the "man of the house") could support the family with his wages, child labor became a thing of the past, and education became a childhood norm. Attributing the results of market forces to coercion is really, REALLY dangerous.

A "wage" is taxable income provided to an employee by an employer in exchange for labor or some sort.

"Liberal" is an insult because deep down liberal know that they are in the wrong, and scream all the louder to proclaim their rightness. Politics in the US is fucked up beyond repair. "Liberals" are different from classical liberals, in that they are people who advocate policy based on feelings rather than any sort of actual logic, which is why their policies have a strong tendency to produce the opposite effect of what they wanted.

Nope. That is the only group that does that to any extent. Happens ~90% of the time that I debate them. Conservatives don't do that, they just clam up and tell me I'm wrong.