Never heard of 5 Cousins. Five and dimes I remember. Kresgies. Franklin's. Corvettes. All closed due to places like....Walmart! The gorilla in the neighborhood putting folks out of business for years. We shop Target, Sam's and BJ's.

Not sure where you're getting that idea. I was lucky enough to a) be born into a family with the financial ability to send me to college, and b) be born into the one time and place in history where people can be paid well for analyzing bond portfolios. I'm not working two jobs or working 70 hours a week, but I'm very comfortable. I'm also not arrogant enough to chalk all of that up purely because I worked hard. There's a large element of luck involved in success. Timing, circumstances and just plain luck are often overlooked when people crow about how hard they work.

So, tsk tsk-ing someone and telling them to just find a better job ignores a economically and socially destructive issue and pins all the blame on the individual and willfully ignores the system. If every McDonalds employee went out and got a degree in astrophysics, McDonalds would still pay them $7.25 an hour, and we'd still be on the hook for their medical care in the form of higher insurance premiums and higher medical bills. Someone's gotta pay for the uninsured. Not to mention they'd be $50,000 in student loan debt with no hope of ever paying it back.

The world only needs so many astrophysicists. It also needs McDonalds employees. Why punish them for that? Why do we need to subsidize McDonalds' labor costs?

Spending is the only way it does grow.

Luck favors the prepared. Your post is irrelevant. We went through this before. It is the individual that chooses to stay at the job. It is the individual that accepts there is no health insurance offered. How about the individual taking on the responsibility of good decision making concerning accepting a job? Blaming someone else for accepting these things is not the answer. No one is punishing anyone who openly accepts these positions at McD's. If you have such concerns for the guy why not sponsor him and subsidize his pay to a living wage out of your own pocket? If you don't agree with McD then eat somewhere else. As far as subsidizing these folk via taxes I'm astonished you are asking. You seem to be the hand out guy to me. Entitlements R Us. Give everyone healthcare. Free. Pay the vat guy $34.50/hour. He'll spend it on a new Ford. Never mind the kids meal just went up to $18.00 plus tax. No toy. Again, pay is commensurate for the job at hand. I really do think the fast food industry should pay about the same as say a airline pilot. :up:

Platitudes are fine and all, but you still miss the point. If Bill Gates were born 100 years earlier, there'd be no Microsoft. He was lucky to be born when he was. If Michael Jordan was born 100 years earlier, he wouldn't have been one of the most recognizable faces/names in the world. If Mark Zuckerberg hadn't been born to a family with the financial ability to send him to Exeter and Harvard, there's a strong possibility there'd be no Facebook. So no, luck in many cases is just luck. Yours is. We have, and yet you still don't get it, so this is my last post on the subject Many times because there isn't much choice in the matter. If your choice is have no job and go on welfare and be abject poor, or work at McDonalds, make a little bit of money and still be on welfare, but just be plain poor, I know which one I'd choose. So you people bitch when people are poor and don't have a job, and now you bitch when poor people have a job that makes them working poor. There really is no winning with you, is there? Examining a system that exploits workers and keeps them working poor is a good thing to do. You don't seem to get this - I ALREADY AM. YOU ALREADY ARE. WE ALL ALREADY ARE. The working poor cost the government tons of money every year, money that comes out of the taxpayers' pockets - YOUR POCKET. I don't know how to explain this any better. :damn: Single payer healthcare isn't free but it would solve a lot of problems with this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma McDonalds could pay their workers a living wage that would preclude them from having to go to the government for welfare and Medicaid. And it's not $34.50 an hour. That's idea's just stupid or willfully ignoring the whole point.

Thats unusual, a CAPSLOCK that actually makes the point:up:

A CAPSLOCK,explain I have not been here for several days,:hmmm:

Typing very loud. :O:

Ok! Which I never do, light step is the secret,:)

A very good style. Stay calm. :D

Always, the whole weekend has been quiet, with some exceptions,:yep:

Frequently people write in big letters to emphasise their point but instead manage to simply highlight the point of their arguement which doesn't make sense.
In this case it highlighted a valid point instead.

Thanks,:)

So, why does the Big Mac I paid fifty cents for in 1970 cost seven times that now?

Want better pay,, get a hair cut, and get a real job if my 99cent Mc double goes up I'll be alittle upset.

So the rubes below your scale should just be happy to be relegated to thier crappy lives?

I gots mines! Effffff all you dummies under my social standards! Better you than me!


And you wonder why America revolted against England, they treated us the same way, don't be surprised when it happens again.

God bless the moneyed classes, and screw the stupid, and people who are not me.

We are becoming China faster and faster...

For the corps...Whos the people?

Yeah, laugh now, one day they will get to something or someone you love, then you will comprehend my outrage. (I know alot of you are southern, and capitalism is always good to you ol boys.)