Prose that could stun a water buffalo. One-dimensional characters that barely pass as cardboard cutouts representing their assigned idiom.

I tired to read Atlas Shrugged about 5 different times and just couldn't. Was given a copy of the audiobook narrated by Edward Herrmann that manage to make it possible to sit through (at least while we drove 18 hours cross-country and 18-hour back!) otherwise I still wouldn't have "read" it.

And that monologue--jeez lady, one or two pages of that would've been sufficient.

"A corporation may write its check to the Internal Revenue Service for payment of the corporate income tax, but that money must come from somewhere: from reduced returns to investors in the company, lower wages to its workers, or higher prices that consumers pay for the products the company produces."

Congressional Budget Office report "THE INCIDENCE OF THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX"

He got that from the suffering of others (I mean, sure Pacquiano suffered some, but he also got about $200M for his efforts)? Through the labor of others? He & Pacquiano didn't "earn it"? Who did Michael Jordan (billionaire) oppress? How about Oprah Winfrey? Who'd she make suffer to get her billions (other than husbands of women devoted to her shows)?

And while you piss and moan about "useless ignorant fucks", they're actually the great equalizer: you should be *hoping* these billionaires have stupid children to whom they leave their money just so that they can piss it all away in a mad bout of consumerism. Tears down the empire (never mind the people the empire employs) and spreads out the wealth quickly, right? And, it gives you someone to point at and ridicule for being a stupid fuck--he had it all given to him and he pissed it all away.

Google is your friend.

"In general, McDonald's franchisees pay about 20 percent in labor costs, according to Richard Adams, a consultant out of San Diego who works with McDonald's operators."

Of course, this varies widely from industry to industry. For example, in hotels (which also have a large number of minimum-wage workers) "...in 2013, labor costs represented 32.3 percent of total revenue".

It's impossible to calculate what raising the cost of labor will do to the cost of the product to consumers, because supply and demand drive that more than anything. You can *assume* that all other production costs remain fixed and that use of labor remains unchanged (however unlikely that is) and that the extra labor costs are passed directly to consumers. But surely everyone realizes how unrealistic those assumptions are.

One thing that is clear, though, is increasing the cost of labor will certainly lead employers to look at ways to reduce labor costs, with technology and automation leading the way. I image that soon we will not need minimum wage workers at McDonalds because we will have self-serve kiosks with touch screens and Siri-like voice ordering sending our orders to a McRobot that assembles all orders with extreme precision (no wrong orders!). One on-site "food engineer" can service the robot, and one "manager" can provide security and resolve the (hopefully) rare complaint about the robotic system. He or she, of course, will not be a minimum wage worker, as servicing the robot will require extensive training.

We already pump our own gas, ring up and bag our own groceries, etc. as technology reduces labor costs.

and he posted at 11:42PM he probably typed that in the nude, so no.

Surely can't be worse service than we get now.

Look at U6 if you really want to know the unemployment rate. U3 is the "officail rate" (5.9%) and is about half of what U6 is (11.8%).

Such a person is *not* living in poverty, according to the official poverty designation. Of course, we give foodstamps to people earning 130% of poverty line. And the $194 in monthly foodstamps for a single person works out to about $1.21 per hour of full-time work. So we ought to be able to increase the minimum wage by $1.21/hour and eliminate foodstamps for minimum wage earners.

Of course, in California you can use your foodstamps at fast food places, so the circle is complete!

One item not discussed is how this is a benefit for tax collectors and a much larger hit on employers than just the hourly wage difference. Wages account for about 70% of employers labor costs (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm).

Consider just payroll taxes. A person making $8/hour working costs their employer $8.61 after the 7.65% FICA taxes ($0.61 goes to the taxman). Raise that wage to $15 and the cost to the employer is $16.15 ($1.15 goes to the taxman).

Then there's additional costs pegged to wages, such as UI insurance "premiums" and workers comp. In California UI insurance has a maximum cost, but runs up to 6.2% on first $7000 of wages before maxing out. In California, employers spend $3.48 in workers comp cost per $100 in wages paid.

Benefits employers paid (vacation, sick days) account for about $2.16 per hour worked on average (about 6.9% of average hourly wage).

Raising the minimum wage entails all those additional costs too, so jumping someone from $8/hr to $15/hr changes the costs to the employer from about $10.40 to about $19.50 (assuming 30% of labor costs are non-wage). It's not a $7 additional cost, but a $9.10 additional cost (of which the majority of the difference goes into the state tax coffers *before* the wages are subjected to the income tax and sales taxes).

For me, when I do a any assembly it is writing SSE cores for algorithms. So pretty crappy SSE2 code wouldn't usually beat it.

But seriously, why would you want to work anywhere that did this sort of thing?

Install a gaussian cage in the trunk of your car. Leave the phone on ("See, you can see it hasn't been turned off or tampered with") but stick it in the box when you leave the office.

Are clear example of when tracking is almost certainly going to happen and is probably a good thing for the employee. Of course, ti should be tracking to company-owned vehicle and not the employee per se.

Forward employer-provided phone to personal phone. Leave employer-provided tracking phone at the office.

While the Citizens United ruling moved the bar into "corporate speech" you need to understand that the decision was based on a 501(c)4 corporation, which is not at all like a business corporation. There are a lot of 501(c)4 organizations, and most are not political per se.

A 501(c)4 simply allows a group of people to pool their after-tax money (that's important, donations to a 501(c)4 are not deductible and hence are after-tax dollars) so that they can, as a group, sign contracts and hire people. They're tax exempt largely because the money donated to them has already been taxed, and they don't generally produce anything of commercial value (they don't generally sell stuff except memberships).

501(c)4 was created by the government for the purpose of providing these abilities. Groups like AARP and the NRA are 501(c)4 corporations. So are Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, and Lions Clubs, the Miss America Organization, and the League of Women Voters.

They are by their very nature "speech" groups. The "corporate" part is a legal necessity for hiring staff and paying bills. They don't need the limited liability, etc. normally associated with what most people think of when they hear the word "corporation".

And then there's the notion that about 1M laudable charities exist in the USA, and they are almost all 501(c)3 corporations.