<p>All humans are possessed with greed. The minimum wage, which I never said I was against, is a byproduct of greed (People who want more money but don’t develop the skills, talents or knowledge to be of more value). They can vote for random, arbitrary increases without doing an ounce more of work. That is greed. Wanting me or someone else to pay for your healthcare is a form of greed. So I don’t get the diatribe on here since none of it helps a kid get a job.</p>
<p>This is the problem in this country. Young people want a job and all the grown ups are fighting over this economic system or that system vs socialism, liberal vs conservative or left vs right. People just want jobs. </p>
<p>There is no human perfection found anywhere in the world. I can’t think of a single product made in Australia. I can’t imagine where everyone is employed there because even if they no longer existed, the business world would get along fine without them. Maybe a few cheesy actors and actresses hail from Australia but they make their money in American movies-The epitome of greedy behavior (Doing a few weeks or months of pretending and earning ten million dollars for it)</p>
<p>Businesses break at some point. The businesses you saw that pay such a high minimum wage are businesses that were able to price that into their products and they get kickbacks and political favors. The business that doesn’t exist, that died, doesn’t get counted in anyone’s stats.</p>
<p>I find a similar utopia in Germany - low unemployment, high wages, relatively high taxes, and regulations to keep you up at night… </p>
<p>I have visited the same location where our subsidiary is housed in central Germany a few times over a period of several years. Their facilities are not marble and glass towers - just a ho-hum set of concrete buildings that are quite depressing. There are some incredible areas around the small city that are hills, woods, and very picturesque and I kept wondering “man, they have not put subdivisions there yet” :). My German colleagues make good money but they’re not greedy. They all drive sensible econoboxes as opposed to giant SUV’s and live in sensible houses…</p>
<p>Start from there and we can see what happens.</p>
<p>“There is no human perfection found anywhere in the world. I can’t think of a single product made in Australia. I can’t imagine where everyone is employed there because even if they no longer existed, the business world would get along fine without them. Maybe a few cheesy actors and actresses hail from Australia but they make their money in American movies-The epitome of greedy behavior (Doing a few weeks or months of pretending and earning ten million dollars for it)”</p>
<p>Yes, because you can’t think of any there are none. <em>rolling eyes</em></p>
<p>My kitchen sink is made by an Australian company in Australia. </p>
<p>Absolutely because I can’t think of any. Americans have been making a difference in people’s lives globally through ingenuity and entrepreneurship since our founding. The Constitution, Light bulbs, telephones, Internet, computers, smartphones, Pepsi, Jeans, etc, etc. The entire human race has benefitted from our existence. You got a sink from Australia. They probably didn’t even invent the sink. And if they disappeared, someone else would make a sink just as good or better. Their contribution to mankind is reduced to sink making. How fulfilling is that. </p>
<p>Maybe the 50% of college kids struggling to apply their degrees can go into the sink manufacturing business. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.</p>
<p>^I didn’t want to be completely ignorant about Australia.</p>
<p>I looked the biggest businesses in Australia.</p>
<p>Their biggest company is a mining company as well as their 4th biggest and a couple others down the list. The rest of their biggest companies are banks, other financial institutions and insurance companies. These make up almost all of their top 40 companies along with a handful of agricultural companies but they are in a 6 year drought so I guess agriculture is struggling now.</p>
<p>Unemployment is 5.4% there now. That would be considered high from their point of view though it’s low from ours and its trending upwards as is ours. They generally hover around 4% unemployment.</p>
<p>I learned something today. I’m not ideological about this stuff. Everybody has their favorite regulations and everybody wants to see their neighbor stopped from painting there house bright orange. I get it. But it all has an undeniable flip side. The regulation denying your neighbor the right to paint their house orange could possibly prevent you from painting your house your favorite color.</p>
<p>Everyone loves the minimum wage unless it’s coming out of their wallet. For some, the minimum is too low, for others it’s too high. It just is.</p>
<p>Australia probably makes nice sinks and at $15/hour minimum, it’s probably a good gig. Too bad they won’t let foreigners get those jobs but it’s not like we can just walk across the border to get there anyway. Lol.</p>
<p>What I am guessing is happening is that in the US there are many options that allow a 25-30 year old to scrape by without too much thought towards the future. A college degree would be of dubious value at best. Such options do not generally exist elsewhere and kids adjust accordingly.</p>
<p>Also we seem to focus more on a powerball approach to income rather than slow and steady. If every comp sci grad’s idea of a career is Facebook or google then we have a problem…</p>
<p>Vegemite
Uranium or coal to generate your electricity
Various metals that go into things that you buy</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>High fuel prices and old cities with limited road and parking space are major incentives to choose smaller vehicles.</p>
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</p>
<p>Being established companies with publicly traded stock means that Facebook and Google are more of the slow and steady type of companies (relative to the volatile computer industry) than the little startups.</p>
<p>They are looking for honest and responsible employees who will not tempted to cheat the company to pay bills. I think employers should be allowed to use almost any criteria they want, just as job-seekers can reject employers for any reason.</p>
<p>There are legal issues with the use of credit checks in making employment decisions:</p>
<p>To date, 40 bills in 19 states and the District of Columbia have been introduced or are pending in the 2012 legislative session. Out of the total 41 bills, 40 address restrictions on the use of credit information in employment decisions. The total number of states that limit employers’ use of credit information in employment is now eight: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Washington enacted legislation in 2007, Hawaii enacted legislation in 2009, Illinois and Oregon enacted legislation in 2010. California, Connecticut and Maryland enacted legislation in 2011. Vermont enacted its legislation in 2012.</p>
<p>Most companies with operations in several states (i.e. virtually all large corporations) use the results of the criminal background check in lieu of the credit check.</p>
<p>However, any company who hired a CFO or Treasurer or even a Controller who was in the middle of a bankruptcy proceeding could be liable for a shareholder’s lawsuit (what kind of public company would allow someone in bankruptcy to mind the store/monitor the financial health of a large company? etc.) so many companies try to find a middle ground.</p>
<p>The probability that increased screening/use of background checks is causing our unemployment is pretty close to zero. Home Depot is aggressive that it uses drug testing for applicants NOT because it wants people to fail the drug test- because it is a signal to people who use drugs NOT to bother applying. Someone who is dying to work for Home Depot needs to clean up their act before applying-- that’s reality- but doesn’t seem to me that we’ve got a systemic unemployment problem because of drug testing.</p>
<p>Any law, such as the laws you mentioned restricting credit checks, that stops an employer from gathering and using information about potential employees raises the cost of hiring and therefore unemployment.</p>
<p>Move to Somalia if you want an Ayn Rand anarchocapitalist paradise, Beliavsky. Because the United States isn’t one, and isn’t going to become one.</p>
<p>Should we do away with worker’s compensation laws, too? Get injured on the job? Too bad, so sad, right? It raises the cost of hiring if an employer has to pay when someone gets injured on the job. The employer should just be able to fire them and hire someone else, right?</p>
<p>Ah, so because it helps the employer, it’s OK. But if the law helps the employee (like, say, banning frivolous credit checks), it’s bad. Got it.</p>
<p>polarscribe, guessing you are a tenured College professor; you certainly seem to have the demeanor, socialist disposition, and belief that you can say anything you want to anybody and get away with it (see “tenured” above). Oops, I did miss the “grad student” in your profile; too funny! Obviously seeking to be a tenured college professor. You’ll fit right in comrade…</p>
<p>Beliavsky, your spot on with your comments!</p>