[minimum wage manifesto] Minimum wage in the US has at least two major problems. First, the huge number of exemptions to it - Food service, agricultural, salaried employees, and so on. These need to vanish, ASAP. No more of this "tipping" BS (and I don't say that as a cheapskate, I tip damned well - I'd just rather see people get paid enough not to need it). No more "piecework" to get around minimum wage laws. Not more unpaid overtime. You work, you get paid at least 7.25 per hour for it or your employer goes to fucking jail. Second, we also need a maximum wage to go along with it. And don't think I count as one of those "hate the rich" types - I'd accept something still pretty obscene, like 100x the minimum wage - A "mere" 1.5M per year. Can't live on that? Cry me a river and move aside for someone who will appreciate a higher standard of living than most historical kings and emperors enjoyed. I would also add a 2.5th need - We need, perhaps more even than the first two, a maximum number of hours. We need to make it absolutely unwaveringly illegal to have an employee work more than 40 hours (and I'd actually prefer we make it less than that - I've always thought we should get Wednesdays off, nothing good happens on Wednesday), no exceptions. If you can't get all the work you have done in 40 hours, you need to hire someone else, period. We have a society of people living shorter than our grandparents, partly because of how we eat but partly because we literally work ourselves to death. This amounts to a public health crisis, not just a way to save a few bucks by deliberately understaffing and expecting people to pick up the slack. [/minimum wage manifesto] Oh, and I want a pony, too.