Lumber has skyrocketed over the last two years, most common lumber doubling, or tripling in price. Among the reasons? Trump's tariffs on Canada substantially reduced Canadian imports, while raising prices. I hope the Trumpets are happy.
Yup, here's more info:
'Fed study finds Trump tariffs backfired'
That is the flaw in most "Buy American" schemes. We simply can't compete with 3d world countries on price. They also don't give a shit about spotted owls or old growth trees. Cut them down, saw them up and send them to the US. The ironic thing is that since China is not buying our logs our timber industry is suffering. We have a lumber shortage but logs are a glut on the market. The only logical explanation is we do not have the saw mill capacity to turn logs into lumber. That is only going to get worse with Biden's $15 minimum wage. We are rapidly pricing the US out of the job market. Then we ask why a ship getting stuck in a canal half way around the world causes shortages here.
Cite?
As I understand it, the primary raw lumber exports to China are hardwoods (Walnut, Cherry, et alia) and China placed retaliatory tariffs on them, thanks to your buddy trump.
Most domestic softwood (construction lumber) imports come from Canada.
You will like this one, they blame it on Trump.
We still grow a lot of softwoods here. Have you ever been out of town to the forests just east and northeast of you? They have so much softwoods they cut it, pile it up and burn it. When we were in South Dakota the logging roads were lined with "slash piles" of ponderosa pines and other conifers that they were going to burn as soon as it snowed.
We just can't mill it up and sell it much cheaper than what it costs now.
Some of the jobs are pricing theirselfs out of business. Saw where a couple of grocery stores in California closed up because the government put in a $ 4 an hour hazard work pay.
The fast food places that were mostly maned by teenagers when I was growing up are now adult jobs. If the pay gets high enough they will be mostly be replaced by robots.
I remember working for a grocery store as a teen. We stocked the shelves, but bagged the groceries and even rolled them to the car and put them in the car. Now the check out person only has to slid the items over the computer interface and bag the groceries.
There are thousands of grocery stories in california. Two of them, owned by the same conservative republican company closed due to the temporary covid hazard pay requirement.
That's not even a drop in the bucket.
Your spelling and grammar skills are on par with your logical thinking skills. The USA is far different now than it was fifty years ago, including a much larger population and a wider gap between the haves and the have-nots. And all those republican businesses moving their labor off-shore over the past four decades.
They are doing a lot more self checkout here with one employee watching 6-8 scanner stations. People are checking themselves out, bagging their stuff and paying without involving anyone unless something goes wrong or they need to show an ID.
You certainly will not help that situation by legislating an artificially high wage to jobs that do not provide that level of return for the business. All you are doing is assuring that unskilled labor will be replaced by more machines.
Agree that $15 is too high for some jobs but $7.25 is slave wages and has not kept up with inflation.
You need balance. If you want to keep jobs in the USA you have to pay enough for people to buy the products we make.
Slaves don?t get paid wages, they get flogged if they don?t work hard enough.
That?s very arguable with the stuff minimum wage people spend their money on.
There hasn?t been an unemployment problem in the USA for a hell of a long time now and that with vast numbers of illegals many of whom don?t even get the minimum wage.
Mindlessly superficial.
It is not that far off if you look at the minimum wage in say 1964 and put it into an inflation calculator.
I am not sure the intent was for minimum wage people to buy that much. If you are an adult and only capable of making minimum wage even down here in a coolie wage state like Florida, you really need to reassess your life. My wife's club started landscape guys and kitchen help at $11 4 years ago and they could be making $16 after they were there a while ... with benefits.
Unfortunately some people were born with minimal ability to reassess their lives. They still have to eat, buy clothing, and want to keep out of the rain when they sleep. Hard to do when the minimum wage has been
7.25 for years.The 1964 minimum wage was 1.15. That is equal to 9.86 today and you say not far off?
Your wife sounds reasonable. McD's is advertising $10, Amazon is $15 to start. Good for them. If you can;t pay $10 you probably are an incompetent business person.
Also from economics 101 what would be expected is that all the grocery stores would raise prices enough to cover the new increased costs, not that they would start closing. People still need groceries and are going to pay the slightly higher prices that the new reqt would create. In the overall cost structure, I'd bet it would result in such a small price increase that customers would not even know it.
Right, no Democrat owned businesses would ever do that. Nor would any Democrat go to Walmart to take advantage of all the low cost imports that make up the majority of their business.
I was always was kind of middle of the road when it comes to the min wage. On the one hand, there is an argument for letting the market determine the price. But I'm coming more to the side of not having a problem with raising the min wage to $15. Like you say, in the early 70s the min wage was $1.60. Adjust that for inflation and you'd be around $15 now. The other argument for having a decent min wage is that we should be making working be a rewarding experience, for people to feel adequately compensated, that it's worth working instead of collecting public assistance. But Republicans don't seem to recognize that angle, which is consistent with what Republicans say they believe. Or used to believe anyway. Seems now they are just a cult that don't really know what they believe, other than that Democrats and masks are evil and not to get vaccinated.
Well, it's not 1964, and it hasn't been 1964 for a long damn time.
What, pray tell, was the minimum wage in 1964, and what percentage of the labor force was being paid minimum wage?
WTF?
WTF?
Personally, I don't believe I've ever walked through the door of a Walmart.
That is for "large retail and service enterprises as well as to local transit, construction, and gasoline service station employees". (1961 amendment to the 1938 law) It would not apply to restaurant, landscape or most other jobs. That was a buck. Using this calculator
That is the point, you really have to be a moron to be making minimum wage when "do you want fries with that"? or "Paper or plastic" pays $10-$11.
I suspect most people making that $7.xx are in the labor pool with the rest of the renta drunks. They may not actually string 2 weeks together in a row. Those folks have a horrible habit of not showing up. That is why they get $7-$8
Maybe you never really worked around those folks but when we had the store we hired them now and then. If they are really a down on their luck person who is scraping by and want to work, someone will pull them out of the labor pool and give them a real job. I don't know if you have noticed but it is rare to see a trade van or a retail place without a "help wanted" sign on it right now. The only reason we have any unemployment at all now is you can make almost as much sitting on the couch smoking dope as you can working because of the government handouts. ($15+ an hour) If you can score a little cash on the side you may not ever want a real job ... until the benefits run out.
There does need to be a ballance. It looks bad when a CEO makes 100 million a year and the workers are asked to work for $ 10 an hour.
Sometimes the pay has to come up for jobs to get people to work for them. The sports players can ask and often get millions due to the highest bidder. The common worker is not much in demand.
Around here at this time many are making more being unemployed than the jobs pay. Many food places are having a hard time getting people to work and have signs out saying help wanted. A friend works a job going around inspecting food places to see if they meet the franchise company standards. Good paying job for the work. However they are trying to hire people. Many put in applications because the government says they have to apply for jobs, but do not show up even if they are hired.
After I retired, about 6 months later I ws asked to come back for a rew months for a special project. I asked for $ 2 an hour because they told us that is what they were paying us counting the retirement and pension and such even though we were only making $ 1 an hour. So I asked for $
2 an hour as I would not receive any benefits. They did not want to pay, so I turned them down.
Somehow it seems that instead of just one minimum wage, each state is different. Some states or areas could get by with $ 10 and do ok, some areas would need $ 20 or more just to get by. Some areas of town are the same way. In Charlotte NC near where I live there are houses that are all but fallen in that poor people have lived in for many years. Now the taxes on them are very high and people are being offered lots of money just so they can tare the houses down and the high paid people can build and move in. The poor can not afford the taxes on those houses.
I don't have a good solution to the problem. There are many low skill jobs that need to be done. Such as garbage collection that really needs to be done. Without that after a while a city would be unliveable.. Who is to say that job should not be paid as much as a ball player ? We can do without the ballplayers but not garbage collection.
What is really laughable to me is some jury pay. Some hardly get enough to eat lunch on.
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