You keep talking about teaching the poor how to manage money. Did you just invent that by yourself? Do you know how much it would cost the US taxpayer to implement these programs? Too much with too little ROI. How about increasing minimum wage and aggressively deporting illegal immigrants? The US has around 7 million unemployed people and about 8 million illegal (mostly working) immigrants.
Last I heard education here in the states was FREE. Curriculum adjustments in secondary education would not be diffficult to implement. If you think that teaching the public how to manage their money would not have a positive ROI over time, that leads me to believe you yourself know jack sh!t about managing money yourself. That also happens to be the idea of some of the best selling authors in the world regarding money management, so I'll take what you said as a compliment. The unemployemnt rate in Germany is higher than the U.S., you keep ignoring this fact. How can you have a higher unemployment rate than us, yet have 1/5 of the population, and expect me to take what you say seriously about OUR system?
Force companies to pay fair wages, what is wrong with that? How do fair wages hurt the economy? Oh, wait. I see. The best thing for the economy would be to turn all blacks and hispanics into slaves. It worked in the past, right? It turned the US into the richest country in the world! Profit at the expense of the poor.
Force companies to pay higher wages?? Why are we forcing the very entities that supply jobs to pay HIGHER wages? I recommend you take ECON 101. By forcing companies to raise the minimum wage, you are also forcing them to eliminate JOBS. Hence the reason why Germany's unemployment is probably so high. Don't get me wrong, no CEO deserves 30 million dollars for doing their job, but force?? I want government OUT of my business, not entangled in it. As for turning blacks and hispanics into slaves, save your nonsensical BS opinions for your NAACP meetings. I find that statement insulting and ignorant.
The usual argument is younger/uneducated workers will have a harder time getting jobs with a higher minimum wage. In 2000 a survey was made where they asked academic economists if they agreed with this statement, "a minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers." 46% agreed, 28% were in partial agreement and 27% disagreed. They did the same survey in 1990 and the numbers were; 62% agreed, 19.5% partially agreed, and 17.5% disagreed. In 2010 I think the numbers will have shifted again. So, as you can see, economists have widely different views concerning minimum wage. Don't believe everything you see on Fox News.
http://www.indiana.edu/~econed/pdffi...l03/fuller.pdf
Hmm that's funny, I saw that study, and what you are neglecting to say is the wage increase would ONLY be for young, unskilled workers in minimum wage positions until they have gotten the skills necessary to survive. After that, economists are in favor of DECREASING the wages of hourly minumum wage jobs in order to allow these companies to compensate for the new workers while still maintaining a steady job supply. Nice try, don't believe everything you read either
Card and Krueger wrote a book called
Myth and Measurement (I think) in which they debunked the claims by economists that minimum wage laws reduce jobs, etc. You should read this article that investigated the factuality of the Card/Krueger research.
Wow, one study, now search for the other 10,000 that refute it.
http://www.epinet.org/briefingpapers...mw_bp_1996.pdf