Is the COLA increase fair?

Quote: SOOPOO

Of course. It’s called common sense. The higher the minimum wage, the greater the impetus to replace human workers with AI type fill ins. Just tried to call and order Chinese food. Was on hold forever, but remembered you can order pick up on their website. One less person needed to answer phones apparently.

If or more like when Ai comes for the more educated and skilled jobs, will they all say, "I don't deserve my pay" "no one owes me a living."

I know what i'm predicting.

Quote: SOOPOO

No idea on the toaster or laptop. But the TVs are much cheaper still!

I’m not saying inflation isn’t real, or a problem, or even not expected! You want me to show you 100 SOOPOO posts that predicted this when the damn broke on the guaranteed minimum wage? When the kid stocking the milk now gets $17 an hour instead of $10 an hour I wonder what will happen to the price of milk? When the guy making $17 an hour to tell the kid when to stock the milk now wants $22 an hour, what will happen to the price of milk? When the (tipped!) waiter now must be paid $15 an hour instead of the previous $6 an hour what will happen to the cost of the burger and fries? This all happened pre silly Trump tariff wars.

Geno will chime in that ‘good for those workers’. And I’ll say when you buy that expensive milk ‘you get the days you voted for’. And thats a Democrat platform.

Yesterday I saw a 75" TV listed at Best Buy for $379.

Not to hijack, but China is roaring forward to capture the world-wide EV market.

The Yellow Horde is making tremendous progress across the world selling decent products for less than others can sell them for: the European auto industry in particular is on its knees, and GM, Ford and Tesla are positioned to lose even more market share, especially if there are no tariffs in place; a lack of tariffs will allow / encourage the Chinese to dump government subsidized EV's in the USA undercutting the cost of domestic EV's.

First the Chinese try to kill us by encouraging / facilitating he flood of precursor chemicals to our shores, next they will be using EV's to kill our EV industry.

Wow: I don't like tariffs but without them our auto industry, as currently configured, cannot compete successfully in the EV market...not that I'd ever buy an EV.

Quote: GenoDRPh

It's the right thing to do, it keeps the economy afloat and it's a nice thing that people get paid fairly for their work. Inflationary? So what? Nice things cost money.

Googled it. Average wage for a pharmacist is $66 an hour. Mamdani wants $30 an hour minimum wage. No high school diploma. Do you think you should only make slightly more than twice what the kid stocking shelves should make? Is that ‘fair’? Let’s not forget the 4 (or more) years you made zilch while accumulating 6 figures in debt to get your degree. And that’s just a bachelors. If you got your PharmD add years and debt.
I think it’s ‘fair’ you make 6 times what the kid stocking shelves makes.

Who is right, me or you?

A true capitalist system mimics the Natural World, i.e. "natural selection...survival of the fittest."

Why should we who buckle down, work hard and apply ourselves be forced to pay higher prices in order to support lthose who choose not to?

Keep up or on to the salg heap you go...in a Perfect World...ah, but we're "civilized."

Harrumph.

Quote: SOOPOO

Googled it. Average wage for a pharmacist is $66 an hour. Mamdani wants $30 an hour minimum wage. No high school diploma. Do you think you should only make slightly more than twice what the kid stocking shelves should make? Is that ‘fair’? Let’s not forget the 4 (or more) years you made zilch while accumulating 6 figures in debt to get your degree. And that’s just a bachelors. If you got your PharmD add years and debt.
I think it’s ‘fair’ you make 6 times what the kid stocking shelves makes.

Who is right, me or you?

I will never ever say someone is right if they want to reduce the wages of people working for a living.

Why would I care how much someone else makes? I care about how little some people make. I care about how much I make.

5 years for a bachelor's. Add another 2 years for post-bachelor's Pharm D. Entry level Pharm D now 6 years. Due to a confluence of circumstances, all in my favor, no bachelor's student loan debt for me. For others' their mileage may vary.

Why are you so damn hell bent on keeping the working poor, poor?

When the government mandates a big increase in minimum wage the employers raise their prices to pay for it, and then we ALL, including the working poor, pay higher prices.

Quote: GenoDRPh

I will never ever say someone is right if they want to reduce the wages of people working for a living.

Why would I care how much someone else makes? I care about how little some people make. I care about how much I make.

5 years for a bachelor's. Add another 2 years for post-bachelor's Pharm D. Entry level Pharm D now 6 years. Due to a confluence of circumstances, all in my favor, no bachelor's student loan debt for me. For others' their mileage may vary.

Why are you so damn hell bent on keeping the working poor, poor?

I have never heard of a standard bachelors being 5 years! I thought they were all 4.

But to your point, I want everyone to have the OPPORTUNITY to lift themselves from poverty. Become a plumber. Go to diesel mechanic school. If you are poor now (in NY at least) you can go to college tuition free. Walk other people’s dogs as a side gig. Start a weed pulling service. Become a masseur. Get a cybersecurity job (requires a ‘certificate’, less than a college degree). I can go on. And how about this for a crazy idea…. If you have no drive and won’t do one of those, or a thousand other things, work more than 40 hours a week? And don’t have kids if you can’t afford to take care of them without government money?

Be honest Geno…. I assume early in your career you worked more than the standard 40 hour work week? During residency I think I averaged 70, and that doesn’t include studying. And after started and stayed around 55 for many years. And that’s not including a few years when I would moonlight also! Come to think about it, my extra work resulted in extra taxes paid at the highest rate, so I could support a few extra families that paid nothing in federal taxes! I wasn’t keeping the working poor poor. I was supporting the working poor!

Perhaps the unarticulated policy for doling out entitlements to the poor is to give them just enough to eke by on so that they don't go berserk and commit crimes against We Who Thrive in order to survive.

Sort of like giving a junky just enough dope to keep them high enough so that they don't go mugging and stealing to fund their next fix.

Claiming it is done out of compassion might be the liberal's explanation, but not the conservative's.

Quote: SOOPOO

I have never heard of a standard bachelors being 5 years! I thought they were all 4.

But to your point, I want everyone to have the OPPORTUNITY to lift themselves from poverty. Become a plumber. Go to diesel mechanic school. If you are poor now (in NY at least) you can go to college tuition free. Walk other people’s dogs as a side gig. Start a weed pulling service. Become a masseur. Get a cybersecurity job (requires a ‘certificate’, less than a college degree). I can go on. And how about this for a crazy idea…. If you have no drive and won’t do one of those, or a thousand other things, work more than 40 hours a week? And don’t have kids if you can’t afford to take care of them without government money?

Be honest Geno…. I assume early in your career you worked more than the standard 40 hour work week? During residency I think I averaged 70, and that doesn’t include studying. And after started and stayed around 55 for many years. And that’s not including a few years when I would moonlight also! Come to think about it, my extra work resulted in extra taxes paid at the highest rate, so I could support a few extra families that paid nothing in federal taxes! I wasn’t keeping the working poor poor. I was supporting the working poor!

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You keep going on and on about not having kids if you can't afford them, but you refuse to vote for politicians who will protect that choice. And you keep justifying electing politicians who wish to take away that choice. Vote your rhetoric, I dare you.

BS Pharmacy was 5 years for decades-4 years of classroom and 1 year of required internships and clerkships per accreditation standards. *You* may not have ever herd of it, but that was the way for decades.

Every job I have ever had, from the time I started working as a young teenager, anything over 40 was paid at the OT rate of time and a half and taxed accordingly Not sure what point you are trying to make here.