Listen to Glenn because he's a CPA.

I spotted the following on my facebook feed this morning as I quickly scanned through the "facebook junk" (one of my friends lamented about Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement; it was a shallow lament, and the responses that followed were equally shallow) before starting my day. This was the original post that was posted by my peer regarding minimum wage:

Many pointed out it was flawed. It most likely is since it's a meme. But it wasn't the OP that stood out, it was the this response by a man named Glen:

Did you read what Kira wrote? I hope you did. Did you let it sink in? She talked about "basic economics" - sorta like common sense but not really, at least in her mind. I'm not sure what "American economic system" she was taught or read about because apparently, in her mind, the "American economic system" needs an unemployed class in order to function and at the same time the evils that are alive also don't want social programs that help these poor workers. Wait, I've seen this concept before. I find this rather ironic given what Glen said about memes. Kira implies that the American economic system relies on a poor working class as opposed to a more egalitarian economic system like, I don't know, Sweden maybe (I just threw in Sweden because that's the favorite country of many who use the vernacular and tone that Kira does). Let's move onto Glenn's post, a more involved post.

Glen states he has "facts" and by looking at his post he seems he has facts (just look at all those numbers!) but he doesn't. He has a hypothetical situation. Though Glen does most of the math correct he doesn't factor in how a higher minimum wage affects business owners, big and small. He just concentrates on how much milk a poor working class person can buy. This is ironic given the fact he stated he majored in business economics (do you really need a degree in business economics and be a CPA to do figure out the math? No). The biggest irony here is that he is irritated with original poster for posting a meme that supports her worldview (not supporting a higher minimum wage technically isn't a worldview ... but it is to Glen), saying it's a fallacy, all the while pulling the fallacy of authority. Now you should listen to me because I'm a CPA who majored in business economics. Okay, I'm listening. My question, Glenn, have you ever owned a business, and if so are you currently paying your employees the $15 minimum wage?

Of course, Glen's post started off with smugness and ended with arrogance. I got the facts and I have the credentials. Somewhere in between the "facts", which any person with a decent amount of arithmetic skills can perform, there probably is a strong argument for the positive affects of raising the minimum wage. How he goes about doing the math reminds of this scene in *Dave -

 

But the naive aren't aware that it isn't that simple. It truly isn't. It works on an individual level, yes, but federally this type of simplistic approach is juvenile.

If only we listened to CPA's, the "American economic system" would be something oh so much better than it currently is.

The original poster actually blushed when she read his post, admitting that he was an educated man but at least defended herself by stating about the effects of inflation. I'm sure Glen will have a follow up. The effect Glen wanted was achieved: he wanted to feel superior to the meme and her. He built intimidation and shame by flashing his credentials - it wasn't so much about the "facts," since if it were he'd leave out his formal education and address his argument as a counter. If he were a truly educated man he'd address the totality of the argument. But he doesn't. He just does arithmetic.

*Financial literally is extremely important. I advise everyone to learn how to balance their own budget, make necessary adjustments to live within their budget, and restrain from expenses that aren't vital or necessary to their lives.

Military social work.

Remember when I had a massive rant on the pay of social workers compared to the debt when acquiring a MSW? Well, I still stand by that massive rant. I also have found out that if you're medically cleared to enter the military to become a military social worker, life is pretty good in terms of pay, job stability and respect. See below.

Army 73A (Social Worker)

Navy Social Worker

Air Force Social Worker

According to one Navy recruiter, a Navy social worker pay starts at around 75K and can lead up to 100K in ones third active year. I do not doubt this range because I have heard from other civilian social workers that VA social workers make the most when compared to other social work fields (child services, health care, mental) in the civilian employment. Depending on where you're placed and how wealthy the school is, school social work tends to pay a little better than a social worker working with child protection services or welfare queens.

In many cases it appears that military social work, though the program one graduates from must be CSWE accredited, is somewhat independent of the usual social work politics of "Ally" to LGBT and diversity/inclusion awareness. After all, you're dealing with people suffering from PTSD, stress, marital issues and social alienation (you know, real shit) due to wartime deployment, not some female LGBT sociology/social work student who's quite butch, or some feminist.

Now, to analyze each of the videos. I think each woman shown in the video is attractive. I won't rank them, but they're attractive to me. I think the Air Force video was the best - very sleek when viewed on the Air Force site. Then comes the  Navy video where the woman is a very coherent speaker; definitely a person with intellectual capabilities. The Army video is better than most job recruitment videos put out by the Army, but it still has the trademark corniness that the Army videos are known for -- from the outdated graphics, staged hall walks, the Captain Obvious language, the talking and the rapid sequence of pictures to the synchronized head turn. Despite all that, it's an improvement and that's saying something.

CA raises minimum wage to $15.

They're getting what they want. By "they" I'm referring to the "living wage" people. If you do the math for a full-time line-cook at a dinner in CA, working 40 hrs a week, he'll be making $2, 400 a month. If he works for 12 months straight he's before taxes income is $28, 800.

Non-profits who mostly hire people who are college graduates don't get paid much - I've read some are earning anywhere between $30-35K a year. That's the range for a starting position. You're lucky if you're earning $45K within five years.

Now I'm no economic whiz, but that reality sort of leaves me a little bitter. A college graduate wanting to dedicate his life to public service is earning $10K above the official USA poverty line. A line-cook is $2K just underneath him. The salt in the wound part, say for social workers who belong to CSWE, is that CSWE isn't known to advocate for a higher wage for social workers -- a group almost uniformly supporting the "living wage" concept. There is a common rhetoric from social workers to say that they do so much for people yet their pay is diddly squat for a working professional. Now that's a tough pill to swallow. Adding more insult to the injury, many who advocate for a "living wage" are mostly talking about the McDonald's cashier, the Wal-mart greeter and the line-cook. They aren't including the social worker or the non-profit employee.

 The disastrous march towards "equality" and "fairness" is leaving a dusty road filled with irony.  I bet a decade from now the minimum wage will be pushed towards $20. Why even attend university then? I suppose the great joke about this is is that any potential future Leftist would be spared the debt, the four years of "enlightenment" and the posturing of other bushy-tailed 17-18 yr olds. They might get a job as a line-cook and add something to society, because, truth be told, I am fan of dinners. More line-cooks, longer hours,  more food for me! I suppose I can rationalize it as a fair exchange.

Rare opportunity to purchase American made items.

Something I have noticed but didn't think much of is the items being made to promote POTUS candidates are being made in America.

 I haven't visited each candidate's store (and not every candidate has a POTUS site), but I do know that the official Donald Trump hat is made in America as well as Hillary Clinton's items. Marco Rubio has a "Wake up, America!" cup that is the most neutral item in self-promotion amongst all the items I've seen in any store. Bernie Sanders lets potential buyers know that his own merchandise is specifically union-made.

Capitalism is oppressive, says Thinking Housewife.

Thinking Housewife appeals that a capitalistic monopoly hoards money that might, if given a supposed better and equal economic system, provide "the basics" (whatever that means) to every human. Hmmm. This sounds familiar. It sounds like all the international do-gooders who think that if America wasn't so greedy that all the starving African children wouldn't be starving.

Let's see how deep she goes into delusion in response to another comment on her post -

Thank you for writing.

Note the hypocrisy of The New York Times article on the stressed family. The Times promotes and glorifies stress all the time. And then it turns around and tears our hearts out by parading the wreckage before our eyes. If it didn’t have these occasional pieces bemoaning the demolition of the family, more people would see it for what it is — a propaganda arm of centralized money power. 

You write:

 Society now lives in denial about the real decline in wages because it has turned to abusing credit in order to have all these things.

Exactly.

We live in an economy ruled by debt money and economic cartels. What do you see all around you? Monopolistic cartels in every field. And the invisible hand of centralized power. In every area of life. And we’re supposed to believe this is “free markets?” Gimme a break. We live in the Total Work Society caused by pervasive, invisible debt and institutionalized, concentrated greed. Even people without jobs are working, engaged in the consuming task of finding jobs that are not there in a world which is competitive and anxious because there is always a sense that there is not enough. A society without leisure, choked by a “web of debt,” is enslaved. 

Full employment is not a realistic goal in an industrialized world. But ample money is a realistic goal. Everyone deserves the basics. Everyone deserves the basics by virtue of being a human being, not by virtue of being a human dynamo. And there is enough to go around, contrary to what we are taught to believe. An economy founded on usury does not provide enough and is inhuman. Our monetary system depends on the creation of constant, dizzying growth to pay off debt, mindless consumerism and the centralization of economic power. Families are experiencing stress by design. Capitalism is oppressive. 

There is hope. In economies that offer interest-free credit, such as those proposed by the Social Credit movement, there are ideals to embrace. See many great, informative articles on Social Credit here. These offer serious systemic solutions for the binds families are in today, not that any of it could be brought about easily or that economics is all. 

The blinding rhetoric of Capitalism vs. Communism is losing its power. Neither represents economic democracy. Usury, the blogger Anthony Migchels writes, is “pure murder.”

It has nothing to do with ‘oh, it’s so honest, so reasonable, that 5% per year’. Look at how complete nations are gutted to pay off some filthy rich trillionaires.

Billions of people live in desperate destitution because of Usury, dying prematurely, completely unnecessarily. People commit suicide, haunted to the grave by creditors. It tears families apart in financial stress. By the millions. Throughout the West. The World. It is purely genocidal, there really is no way to get around it.

And we have built our entire economy on this horrid plunder. On this monstrous sin!

When will we again see the simple truth as the ancients always did?

Banking is simply institutionalized Usury. Capitalism is simply Banking.

The two rose to prominence together in Amsterdam, London and New York. The whole Capitalist monopoly has been bought with the proceeds of compound interest lending. They are emasculating the West with interest on the debt. The Banks openly try to endebt us to the point where all our income is sucked up by debt service! Years of deflation have made our debts weigh even much heavier in real terms. 

Look how the tumors of ‘the financial sector’ are metastasizing, with their ‘bonusses’, ‘derivatives’, LIBOR manipulation, asset bubbles, defaults, bribing politicians, evictions and repossessions, Gold manipulation, media power, globalism, bail outs, bail ins, fomenting of wars. It is all an outgrowth of the cancer of Usury.

We are already thoroughly enslaved through Usury, it’s not a doom scenario, it is the way we live!

In the aftermath of Usury prohibition in the medieval era, around the time of Luther, the main argument for allowing Usury was that without it people wouldn’t lend. And lending was necessary for the economy, the rationale went. There was (at least perceived) a scarcity of credit.

But today we can provide all the interest-free credit we will ever need at zero cost. In several ways!

The ‘time value’ rationale that Jesuits in Salamanca cooked up in the 16th century has been totally discredited and is irrelevant in a decent monetary system. 

Notwithstanding credit and money scarcity, the medieval man worked only 15 weeks to feed his entire family in the Usury free economy. Bones found in England show that people there only achieved the same height as the late medieval Briton in the sixties of last century. 

Compare that to the sweatshops of the 19th century, the heyday of Capitalist domination over Labor.

Imagine what our life would look like without Usury, and with plenty of dirt cheap credit  plus today’s technology!

 I want to single out this part:

Everyone deserves the basics. Everyone deserves the basics by virtue of being a human being, not by virtue of being a human dynamo. And there is enough to go around, contrary to what we are taught to believe.

What is considered "the basics"? A roof over ones head? Food on the table - three meals a day plus an afternoon snack? Healthcare? A car? Decent clothing for every occasion? A job that provides contraception? A job, if you are working in retail or food services, that provides a living minimum-wage?

Contraception was deemed a "basic" healthcare requirement by those who wanted it in their healthcare plan, if not freely provided. I highly doubt Thinking Housewife would agree with that.

You know what else was brought to national attention and deemed a "basic" - actually a "right" - by sheer proselytizing of so-called dignity aka virtue of being a human being? Same-sex "marriage" and adoption.

At least with the above two cases so-called "basics" were crystal clear; you knew what the supporters wanted. But with Thinking Housewife and her major beef with capitalism? Vague as can be. Maybe she means being debt free? Possibly. Then again, if you aren't deep in credit debt, the only debt I can see one struggling with is academic loans and medical debt.

Luckily, my parents were extraordinary with their money and my sibling and I graduated our undergraduate years with zero debt. My father is amazing when it comes to budgeting. If there's one thing Americans are horrid at, and I mean horrid, is budgeting. They purchase houses and cars they know they cannot comfortably pay off. They go into six figure debt for undergraduate work. They consume merchandise they don't even need or barely use - this isn't a "treat" after a year's hard work or spending a bonus - no. This is buying a brad new car when a used one from a reputable dealer does just fine, looks just fine and feels just fine once you're in it. This is yearly Disney vacations with the kids. Why not a regional road trip? Medical debt was never a reality. 99% of the surgeries my family had were mostly covered by their health insurance via job. If it didn't cover all of it the balance was doable where our budgeting skills saved the day. We never dived into our retirement savings to pay for a anything medical - we have an account for general savings which was used. My parents mortgage was also never crippling. They now just hate paying their property tax (as does everyone who pays attention to such things).

Many of the ailments caused by debt can be less harmful based on several factors.

(1) A decent job. My mother is a nurse and my father was an accountant. McDonald's won't provide the health insurance that private practice or a state run hospital does.

(2) A wanted skillet. Both my parents have a skill set that is always needed in a functioning society.

(3) Be debt averse. To use my parents as an example again: They see debt as one of the worse things a person can get himself into. If they can minimize the debt, all the better. If they can go without it while still getting what they want, or opting for a fine alternative - the ideal.

(4) Budget for almost everything.

(5) Spending restraint. This isn't necessarily the same as budgeting. Budgeting implies that you have saved money for certain items and expenses. By "spending restraint" I mean not buying shoes that cost $150 when you need that money for your monthly groceries or phone/internet bill. It means not buying a $1000 suit when the suits in your closet do just fine - there is no real need to by that suit. It means forgoing vacation and instead spending that time exploring your own city or metro area. It means creating homemade meals - breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack - six out of the seven days and just going out to Sunday brunch once a month.

In other words my parents in many ways hoard their money to themselves, they save and they don't spend full-price when buying almost anything - be it groceries, a car, clothes and vacations. They aren't "charge it" trigger happy. Cash is always in their wallet.

I'll give Thinking Housewife credit for bringing up usury and the phenomenon that is excessive consumerism. The rest? Please move to Sweden if you think capitalism is "oppressive." I guarantee you'll be happy there. If one isn't complaining on how backwards America is in terms of healthcare providing, socially and transportation wise, they're complaining on how capitalism is oppressive. I guess Thinking Housewife has something in common with modern leftists.