I didn't have the patience to go 4+ more rounds on this topic under such a hostile tone from my cell phone, but since a civil tone has been resumed (in child posts), and I'm now at a desktop, I can maybe address the issues more appropriately, hoping we can retain a civil tone.

I confess I neglected to put my usual disclaimer of "this is not a statement of fact, but of my understanding extrapolating logically from what I do understand," and I let everything ride on my "fantasy land" comment (because typing long articles from a cell phone is a pain). But if you have a moment to enlighten me, hopefully I can extrapolate better in the future. I thought the 5th amendment protected you from providing self-incriminating evidence. And I thought I was talking here about the inability to provide supporting evidence (not incriminating evidence). If someone has evidence against you of illegal activity, isn't it your responsibility to provide evidence to the contrary, and if you have none, then the evidence against you that *does* exist is enough to incriminate you on its own? I do not see that as having anything to do with the 5th amendment.

This is where I think you missed my comment "Surprise inspections may not be the only way or best way to prove that employees are there at the behest of the employer. But I think that's *all* that needs to be proven once the employer fails to provide evidence of legal employment." In other words, the employer is not guilty just because someone claims they were working for them and they had no records of payment. There's still the need to prove that the employer was in on the deal. Is there something I should have said to make that more clear, or am I still missing something? It seems that exactly answers the point you think I missed here.

I think we're not talking about destitute unemployed people here but about the working poor who can't take the risk of giving up their minimum wage job for a chance at something better. Pardon me if I misunderstand the nature of those who moved during the dust bowl, but that's my first impression.

Yes, this isn't a panacea to solve all the problems in this realm, but possibly an improvement in one targeted area, still needing other solutions to the other problems.

It's clear from your resorting to personal attacks that you no longer wish to participate in civil discourse on the topic, and that you didn't fully read and understand what I said. If anyone wishing to continue the discussion in a civil manner would like me to clarify the confusion (if it's not obvious) I will respond to more articulate disagreements.

Exactly, there are no simple solutions, but I suspect they're are *better* solutions than what we have, and those better solutions might start out with simple ideas that need some development.

The employer wouldn't be prosecuted based on their evidence so there would be no 5th amendment issues. They would be prosecuted based on their inability to provide evidence of legal employment. Isn't this already codified? It's like being audited by the IRS. If I can't produce evidence of the claims I made on my tax return then I'm in trouble. It wouldn't just be just about minimum wage but about legal employment and minimum wage. In other words the only requirement to be legally employed is that you be paid minimum wage. And heaven forbid you employ someone under the legal working age, you'll be on the hook to pay them minimum wage until they are of legal age whether they work or not. As for the comment, "Furthermore, there would be no documents; they're illegally working! They are being paid under the table." That's exactly my point. If you can't provide evidence of legal employment, then you suffer the consequences of illegal employment. And on the topic of surprise inspections, I admit there would be some challenges, but I don't think they're all new challenges or can't be worked out somehow. Unfortunately I don't have all the answers, just a thought. Surprise inspections may not be the only way or best way to prove that employees are there at the behest of the employer. But I think that's *all* that needs to be proven once the employer fails to provide evidence of legal employment. At least in my fantasy land :).

It's just an idea I thought up on the spot, so was wondering about. I welcome any ideas for improvement. But if authorities are tipped off to a bunch of immigrant labor somewhere, how hard would it be to prove that they are there at versus against the employer's request when they come for a surprise inspection? If the employer can't produce records of paying at least minimum wage, they're in trouble. The only thing left to prove is that the workers were there at the request of the employer. I think harder things have been proven.

I also wonder if some of our illegal labor problems could be solved if there were a law making an exception for illegal immigrant workers that required any employer caught hiring illegally to pay minimum wage to all such workers (with no option to lay them off or withhold payments until they found other work, returned home voluntarily, or the employer legitimately declared bankruptcy), and made those workers legal citizens to the extent that they would not fear reporting any employer paying them less than minimum wage. The goal would be not so much to improve or increase immigration (illegal or otherwise), but to deter illegal hiring by holding the employers participating in such practices responsible for the people they hire that way, if they haven't treated their employees fairly from the beginning (can't produce records of paying minimum wage for as long as evidence for employment exists).

It doesn't seem sensible to me that the answer to illegal behavior would be to forget about the laws that make those behaviors illegal, but rather to uproot the causes of that illegal behavior. In other words, can't we have a higher minimum wage *and* provide proper incentives, like those you describe, for the minimum wage to be higher in a workable way?

Moving to the state whose laws work best for you may work for people who can move, but I expect the people affected by these laws are pretty closely representative of the set of people who can't move.

Ok ok ok... so how about, to prove a system is intelligent, it must devise a test that can determine whether another system is intelligent.

You've got it. What I don't understand is why nuclear electricity is put in the same basket as coal and gas plants. The incidents that Nuclear has gone through in the past 60 years only reinforce my view that it's a safe solution. If given all the fsck-ups that gave us Chernobyl, Fukushima and 3 Mile Island that's all that happened I think that it's pretty much OK. I'm saying this because coal/thermal have their exhaust pipe problems which affect a much greater percent of the population and hydro is in general an ecological mess that also involves massive population relocation.

Aren't they starting at the wrong end of the food chain? Or have they already verified that all the organisms on which livestock depend will be able to survive?

They are more difficult to forge than physical commodities. My assumption (which I've adjusted due to other comments) is that this represents intrinsic value. My corrected assumption is that this represents a market value, and that intrinsic value is irrelevant for a currency.

You make a good point. I guess my question then is, why would anyone *want* to give something being used primarily as a currency some intrinsic value when the currency we've been using for decades (centuries?) has none, and probably works best that way? Isn't the whole point of a currency to represent a market value and nothing else?