Uncle Walt’s Cabin: S,N! Celebrates Confederate History Month

Walter E. Williams, John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, George Mason University, The Confederate State of Virginia, as featured in Clown Hall
Minimum Wage Cruelty

  • Because black labor is never worth anything near the minimum wage, laws guaranteeing payment of a minimum wage are a plot by liberals — the real racists — to assure that whites are employed and blacks are not. As proof, let me point out something that happened in the United States in 1909 and something else that happened in South Africa.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


 

Comments: 107

 
 
 

The 1909 example is from a US strike. The South African example is likely later, when apartheid became systematized.

[Tintin adds: Good point. Fixed.]

 
 

Wendy O. Williams has really gone downhill…

 
 

Wendy O. Williams has really gone downhill…

The friction tape provided inadequate support.

 
 

Always. Trust. The. Shorter.™

So Walter Williams is the Clown Hall Clown Car Busclown?

And Scott? FY for taking my cheap joke.

 
 

And Scott? FY for taking my cheap joke.

/does the Victory Dance for Victory of Victory

 
 

From the link:

“Williams, that’s a stupid question. Who would support people being unemployed at $7.25 an hour over being employed at $3.26 an hour?”

Williams, that’s a stupid quote! Who would set up a straw man about halving the minimum wage when there is ZERO evidence the minimum wage creates unemployment?

It does not cut jobs. It may hamper new jobs from being created as quickly, but here’s the trick, you insignificant idiot:

Those jobs that are lacking right now are not lacking because the minimum wage is higher, they are lacking because YOUR BANKSTAH FRIENDS ARE NOT LENDING MONEY.

Fucking idjit, fucking fucking idjit.

 
 

I always suspected that paying people a not-even-living wage was a plot by Teh Man to keep the people down.

Wait, what?

 
Ted the Slacker
 

Just had to go read the fapulation on apartheid. That’s some bugfuck crazy stupid, you need teabag-induced brain-rot to imagine that wage negotiations were a bigger factor than having non-whites classed as subhuman and excluded from trades unions in the first place.

 
 

(farrrrrt) Quick Pantloady-type bleg: what’s the command shortcut for a screen capture? Thanks (farrrt) in advance!

 
 

Isn’t it just hitting the Print-Screen button, or alt-PrintScreen? Or am I misunderstanding the question?

 
 

So efforts to pay people a living wage are why people … can’t earn a living wage?

The dumb is strong in this one …

 
 

alt print-screen captures a window which you can paste.

 
 

what’s the command shortcut for a screen capture?

Google is your friend, you fat pantload

http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/general/ht/winscreenshot.htm

 
 

what’s the command shortcut for a screen capture?

I find this whole discussion to be sexually threatening.

 
 

God, when black people shill for conservatives it’s just. So. Sad. You get such an entire picture of a person so psychologically abused that their only way out was to identify with their perceived oppressor. So many layers of irony in that.

 
 

I find this whole discussion to be sexually threatening.

Is that because of the word “capture” or “short cut” reminds you of something? Or someone?

 
 

God, when black people shill for conservatives it’s just. So. Sad. You get such an entire picture of a person so psychologically abused that their only way out was to identify with their perceived oppressor.

I call it “StockHomes Syndrome”.

 
 

sweet hat, though.

 
 

I often wonder if in the course of writing columns like that, people like Williams (dumb-ass conservatives, I mean) aren’t occasionally struck by blinding self-realization and shout “Oh my God! This makes no fucking sense at all! At all I tell you!!!!” Then the rest of the Corner crew looks over and he sheepishly goes back to typing, a bit deader inside.

 
 

ok, im going for the mangoes…..

 
 

and they are rotten…..

 
 

actor, since I see you’re “registered” over there, post something for me, willya?

It occurs to me that, if we would just bring back slavery and stop with all this dicking around with trying to find out what’s the least amount we can get away with paying people, we would kill two birds with one stone: black teens would all have “jobs” (mandatory jobs), and employers would have an endless supply of cheap (free) labor. This simple solution addresses all of Williams’ concerns.

 
 

The media matters link has a live one on the hook….recommend the live fish on the hook rather than the rotten mangoes.

 
 

Jennifer-

Go directly to the MM link right now. That fish needs to be netted with your impeccable logic.

 
 

Williams is correct. The way we got out of the Great Depression was to allow workers to be paid less and less.

We’d all be much better off going back to the early 20th century Southern factory pay system, in which the whole family had to work and their parents were paid so little that they literally didn’t make enough money to pay for enough food to supply sufficient calories to fuel both their children and their own replenishment each day.

Having your workers starving themselves to work in textile and lumber mills so that their children can eat and maybe better survive the next hookworm or pellagra incident is the only Constitutional labor system.

 
 

Who would support people being unemployed at $7.25 an hour over being employed at $3.26 an hour?

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

By this logic, being employed for any amount is better than being unemployed. You could get paid a quarter an hour, and it’s better than nothing, right? Incidentally, this is the same logic that is used to defend sweatshops.

The economic problem with this is pretty obvious. Labor is worth something not only to the employer, but to the employee as well. If you divide up my monthly expenses so that they’re X dollars per hour, but the only job I can get pays X/2 per hour, what’s the point of working that job? I’ll end up in the street anyway. Better to look for a better job, or collect welfare if it pays better than X/2.

This is not to say that the ideal minimum wage is $7.25. It could be higher or lower. Personally I think the minimum wage should be tied to the cost of living, so that we don’t have to have these stupid debates every time we want to raise it.

 
 

Oh no, Jennifer, I get enough hate mail from that place without calling for a return to slavery!

 
 

And by “hate mail” I mean spam offering to sell me Going Rogue or Ann Coulter’s box set.

Which I suppose is the remnants of his penis stuffed inside her vagina.

 
 

We’d all be much better off going back to the early 20th century Southern factory pay system, in which the whole family had to work and their parents were paid so little that they literally didn’t make enough money to pay for enough food to supply sufficient calories to fuel both their children and their own replenishment each day.

Looxury!

We used to ‘ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o’clock at night and lick road clean wit’ tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit’ bread knife.

 
 

Uh…no. I refuse to register at MM and avoid clicking it whenever possible, as it is a part of the Axis of Atrios.

I just have this thing about not helping dicks make money.

 
 

We used to ‘ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o’clock at night and lick road clean wit’ tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit’ bread knife.

A shoebox and road would have been like tea at Buckingham palace for us.

 
 

A shoebox and road would have been like tea at Buckingham palace for us.

Kids these days and their $7.25 wage…they never had it so good!

 
Ted the Slacker
 

OT, but Colonel Mustard resorts to anti-Semitism cos he’s unhappy with how Obama treats Bibi.

 
 

OT, but Colonel Mustard resorts to anti-Semitism cos he’s unhappy with how Obama treats Bibi.

I love how he extends a frustration over the intractability of Israel under Netanyahu (who didn’t win the PM election, by the way, but formed a coalition with, of all people, Olmert to secure a majority of Knesset seats) into a hatred of Israel.

It’s precisely this kind of posturing that has Israeli influence in America on the decline as people see the true costs of supporting Israel.

I support Israel and I support its existence. I think it is not only vital to America’s interests in the region but as a homeland for people who have been brutalized over the milennia, deserves to exist.

But I do not support its existence in some vaporous “superior” state, above the interests of other nations around it, nor do I think the cost of maintaining its existence should countermand huge losses on the part of Americans.

It cannot be denied that Israel’s crappy attitude towards the Palestinians has fueled, or at least given an excuse, to radical Islamists throughout the world. Jacobson doesn’t even acknowledge this truth. He is an ass.

 
 

Tragically, minimum wages have the unquestioned support of good-hearted, well-meaning people with little understanding who become the useful idiots of charlatans, quacks and racists.

Hm. Let’s see if I got this right, Uncle John.

I believe in paying a living wage, even to (gasp!) black people, and that makes me the useful idiot? I don’t shill for racist, greedy corporations who still think that wages are theft, and I’m the useful idiot, the charlatan?

Gosh, Uncle John sure is smart.

 
 

Uncle Walt could take a lesson from my blog today

 
 

Ol’ Walt could take a lesson from my blog today.

 
Ted the Slacker
 

I love how he cusses American Jews… I mean, that makes so much sense.

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

Identifying with the oppressors does not get you a seat at the table! You might get slightly bigger crumbs, but you will not get a seat at the table!!!*

Rise up against the oppressors and support a decent fucking living wage – you’ll feel a lot better about yourself in the morning, I promise.

*There is no sex in the Chamapgne Room.

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

* or even the Champagne Room.

 
 

I love how he cusses American Jews… I mean, that makes so much sense.

AND totally ignores that Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is an Orthodox Jew and has deep personal ties to Israel.

 
 

*There is no sex in the Champagne Room.

*cancelling reservation for Poconos hotel*

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

@actor212: But remember, for an extra charge, you can get the “champagne” sent to your room…

Or just hang out in the bar for a bit.

 
 

I call it “StockHomes Syndrome”.

actor212, that is beautiful.

Stockhomies?

House whines?

 
 

Stockhomies?

I was going to go there, but then I realized “homes” can refer to La Razans who sign up for the Republican Kool Aid, like Juan Williams of FOX News.

 
 

That’s precisely the outcome of Congress’ 2007 increases in the minimum wage. Chicken of the Sea International moved its operation from Samoa to a highly automated cannery plant in Lyon, Georgia.

So wait, it affected the wage in Samoa but not Georgia?

The unemployment effect of minimum wages isn’t restricted to American Samoa but to the mainland U.S. as well.

Except for Georgia, apparently.

 
 

It occurs to me that, if we would just bring back slavery and stop with all this dicking around with trying to find out what’s the least amount we can get away with paying people, we would kill two birds with one stone: black teens would all have “jobs” (mandatory jobs), and employers would have an endless supply of cheap (free) labor. This simple solution addresses all of Williams’ concerns.

Even more win/win – if the police could just shoot ’em anywhere anytime for any reason whatsoever.

OOPS. forgot – that’s what they do anyway!

 
 

Rise up against the oppressors

I think Groucho Marx said that.

 
 

Chicken of the Sea International moved its operation from Samoa to a highly automated cannery plant in Lyon, Georgia.

You know your economy is in the toilet when you’re insourcing jobs from Third World countries.

 
 

I guess getting rid of the minimum wage also falls into Bernanke’s plan of keeping lots of folks unemployed so that ol’ American entrepreneurial spirit will come roaring back.

 
 

@actor212: But remember, for an extra charge, you can get the “champagne” sent to your room…

OK, I can see my joke, which admittedly dates me a little…OK, a LOT…needs some visual aids.

Picture this

 
 

I guess getting rid of the minimum wage also falls into Bernanke’s plan of keeping lots of folks unemployed so that ol’ American entrepreneurial spirit will come roaring back.

I hear there’s a run on apple carts and shoe shine kits.

 
 

Dark glasses and pencils are in heavy demand as well.

 
 

W. Williams is proof that having a Ph.D. doesn’t mean you’re not an idiot…

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

needs some visual aids.

Oh, Duh. I don’t need visual aids for sex in a weird hot tub four feet off the floor, thanks. O-o

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

…but the harness might come in handy.

 
 

Dammit. Got off the boat, even though I KNOW BETTER. After the initial overall visual bludgeoning from the graphics, I was ambushed by a “buy this book” pop up. And this was before attempting to wade through the morass of stupid.
Instead, I got back into the damned boat. WHEN WILL I LEARN!!!!!!

 
 

I don’t need visual aids for sex in a weird hot tub four feet off the floor, thanks

I prefer the lights on, thanks. If I have to buy her dinner, that’s the price she has to pay.

 
 

I think Groucho Marx said that.

I admit to being a dedicated Marxist/Lennonist myself.

 
The Goddamn Batman , He Just Keeps Rollin' Along
 

Williams thinks that that Chicken of the Sea plant wouldn’t have made the move to Georgia, and in the process letting the company ditch 90% of its work force, if only Samoa hadn’t adopted the minimum wage. Riiiiiiiiiiiight. Jennifer is joking, but you do have the assclowns who insist that Africans were better off being enslaved in North America than they were as free people in Africa. You can’t lowball these bastards.

 
 

After the initial overall visual bludgeoning from the graphics, I was ambushed by a “buy this book” pop up.

Don’t buy the book.

It’s full of candiru.

 
 

Shorter Republican Minimum Wage Arguement:
Americans should be paid no more than the lowest wage on the planet for the same job. American businesses have no obligation to employ Americans.

 
 

Want some candiru, little boy?

 
 

“If I have to buy her dinner, that’s the price she has to pay.”

Groucho to Margaret DuMont as the bill arrives: “Thats an outrage; I wouldn’t pay it if I were you.”

 
 

I never claimed it was original, Smedley, just my philosophy.

 
 

Is there a Laffer curve for how much better off we all are as our wages decrease?

 
Ted the Slacker
 

This looks like a job for Tintin… photoshopz plz

 
 

Samoa doesn’t have time for canning, what with all the Girl Scout cookies.

 
 

Ol’ Walt could take a lesson from my blog today.

actor, you clever whooare! Excellent read, especially:

…if we truly allowed capitalism to be laissez-faire, crime would be a booming industry, all drugs would be legal, and porn would be available on the counter of your corner newsstand instead of bowdlerized and forced into dark corners and pay-per-view television.

I think I like capitalism!

 
 

Is there a Laffer curve for how much better off we all are as our wages decrease?

Except it’s spelled “Laugher”….

 
 

I think I like capitalism!

Den you won’t mind if we steal yo wife?

 
 

This looks like a job for Tintin… photoshopz plz

Tea partiers don’t wear capris, French people like Tintin do.

 
 

Den you won’t mind if we steal yo wife?

Sure, take her. But can I have that handle of Jack?

 
 

Uh, actor, that paragraph I quoted, is repeated. Or is the glue really working today?

 
 

Sure, take her. But can I have that handle of Jack?

I ernt it, so no, you lazy slacker.

 
 

Uh, actor, that paragraph I quoted, is repeated. Or is the glue really working today?

Um. It’s central to my point.

 
 

Damn. And it will have to wait until tonight before I can edit it.

 
 

Damn. And it will have to wait until tonight before I can edit it.

That will be one months hard labor in my reeducation camp for my copy editing work. Please report to room 912!!!

 
 

Please report to room 912!!!

*whew*

Thought it would be room 101.

 
 

Is there a Laffer curve for how much better off we all are as our wages decrease?

That would be the curve your spine makes when you grab your ankles…

 
 

Seconding the praise for “StockHolmes”.

I laughed, ashamed.

 
 

Anti-minimum wage types never have anything to back them up.

I remember a study on the minumum wage in a town that straddles* the WA/ID border. Half of the town had a much higher minimum wage, so according to their theory, all the jobs should have migrated to the ID side once the min wage went up in Wa.

It didn’t – because people have other reasons for making business decisions other than a tiny increase in labor costs. Just like if we increased the cap gains tax on millionaires Steve Jobs or Donald Trump wouldn’t suddenly stop working.

*there’s a joke in here somewhere

 
 

Why do I get the feeling that half a century ago, this asshole would be defending child labor?

 
 

couldn’t find the study, but here is a piece about the issue
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/us/11minimum.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

 
 

I remember a study on the minumum wage in a town that straddles* the WA/ID border.

That’s a rather large WA/D to be straddling…

 
 

Why do I get the feeling that half a century ago, this asshole would be defending child labor?

Curiously, a half century, he would have been a child as well.

 
 

A half century ago was 1960. Don’t you mean a sesquicentenny ago?

 
 

Actually, the sesquicentennial takes us back to Jennifer’s point.

 
 

Why do I get the feeling that half a century ago, this asshole would be defending child labor?

Hell, just wait half a week and he’ll be defending it now.

 
 

Wait, I’m confused — unless this new cannery is next to the Black Sea, the Georgia they’re talking about is in the US, where (even though Georgia is a “right to work” state) the minimum wage is already $7.25. They mention that this is going to be staffed by 200 workers and is “highly automated”, which might give the impression that the automation basically replaces 90% of the labor — in fact, while the plant in American Samoa was processing whole fish, the Georgia plant is canning pre-cooked tuna loins (VPR) cleaned in Thailand (tuna workers in Thailand get maybe $0.75/hr), which you could also look at as civic-mindedness, as Chicken of the Sea is owned by a Thai company.

(And I mean that you could look at it as civic-mindedness if you were very naive about multinational corporations. Starkist’s parent company Dongwon Foods Chairman Kim had some hilariously self-serving comments on CotS’s departure.)

This comment brought to you by Tuna of the Dirt brand chicken products, a division of Yu Wan Mei Amalgamated Salvage Fisheries and Polymer Injection Group.

 
 

canning pre-cooked tuna loins

You can tuna a piano, but you can’t tuna loin.

Live and loin, I guess.

 
 

Yu Wan Mei Amalgamated Salvage Fisheries

I see what you do here.

 
 

The idea that an increase in the upper marginal tax rate might cause Donald Trump to work less is quite possibly the best argument for it I’ve heard. Have you seen “Celebrity” Apprentice?

Actually, it’s so close to being a really good show — they have Step 1, which is packing a lot of insufferable preening douchebags into an office, but they are probably never going to move on to Step 2, which is releasing the hounds/bees/hounds-with-bees-in-their-mouths-so-when-they-bark-they-shoot-bees-at-you/bears/Kraken. More’s the pity.

 
 

I Wan Yu Tu Wan Mei

 
 

This looks like a job for Tintin… photoshopz plz

Oh my. Has anything so overtly begged for a teabag?

Glasses–shows she reads. HA! Is Hop on Pop considered “reading”?

 
 

Actually, it’s so close to being a really good show — they have Step 1, which is packing a lot of insufferable preening douchebags into an office, but they are probably never going to move on to Step 2, which is releasing the hounds/bees/hounds-with-bees-in-their-mouths-so-when-they-bark-they-shoot-bees-at-you/bears/Kraken. More’s the pity.

If you are a doctor, you have missed your calling. This is TV I would totally watch.

 
 

/bears/

ARMED bears!

 
 

Chicken of the Sea International moved its operation from Samoa to a highly automated cannery plant in Lyon, Georgia.

So reducing the wages sufficiently would ensure the permanence of jobs working for a Korean–based company, when its business model consists of strip-mining the southern oceans and reducing fish populations to commercial extinction as fast as possible. Good luck with that.

 
 

Dear Sir, when I was at school, I was beaten regularly every 30 minutes, and it never did me any harm, except for psychological maladjustment and blurred vision.

RWA’s tend to fetishize work for work’s sake. Work is GOOD!

Wait, you want vacation rights like Mr. White Collar over there, who has the right take off for weeks and weeks each year? And French workers who aren’t even white collar masters of the Universe? FUCK YOU.

Work is good for YOU.

The boss? Not so much.

Oh yeah, and money would corrupt you, you can’t have any, it would destroy your moral fiber. Your boss, on the other hand, is made of sterner stuff and can withstand lots and lots of bonuses. Of course, he can take it, he’s tanned, rested and ready from his Bahamian vacation.

A little more than a century ago, these assholes were defending child labor!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailey_v._Drexel_Furniture_Co.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_laws_in_the_United_States

Stoopit gangster gubmint, always tellin’ us waddado…

 
 

The economic argument made by conservatives is that the minimum wage artificially distorts what the invisible hand would handle perfectly, because “if the wages are too high employers won’t pay them, if the wages are too low employees won’t work for them.”

The first part is true (doubly so in a system where employers have all the power, which as been true of America for the last thirty years), the second is not. Look no further than Mexican immigration – we’re talking men and women leave everything they’ve ever known behind them, illegally cross a border patrolled by trigger happy good ole boys at the risk of their own lives, and are often willing to accept working conditions with no collective bargaining, no rights, no legal identity, no recourse at all against their employer, and a salary far below what’s required to live decently. Sounds like shit, doesn’t it? And yet thousands upon thousands of people do exactly that every year, because the shittiest, most degrading, dehumanizing and unprofitable job on the face of the Earth is still better than no job at all.

There’s no balance in an unregulated employment market – the management has all the power, labor next to none, which largely explains the grinding poverty of city workers (and many other Americans) during the Gilded Age. The only solution that’s been found to date are strong unions, and government intervention (in the form of things like the minimum wage). If you’ve got alternatives, please, let’s hear them. But let’s not pretend that letting the magical invisible hand solve everything is any kind of a solution. It’s failed humanity too many times for that.

By the way, Prof – have you ever tried living on $3.26 an hour? Seriously.

 
 

By the way, Prof – have you ever tried living on $3.26 an hour? Seriously.

He knew a man, Bojangles, who dances now at every chance in honky tonks, for tips and beer.

 
 

alt print-screen captures a window which you can paste.

What the hell is this, 1984 and we’re all using IBM personal computers?

Apple+shift+4, baby.

 
 

What the hell is this, 1984 and we’re all using IBM personal computers?

I had inside information on that particular user.

 
 

alt print-screen captures a window which you can paste.

What the hell is this, 1984 and we’re all using IBM personal computers?

Apple+shift+4, baby.

 
 

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