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POPSBMW to Cap Executive Pay - wundervoll! Now let me get this straight. GM, Ford, and Chrysler have all lost market share in the US and complain that worker wages and benefits made them uncompetitive. Germans assembly line workers average $60,000 a year and BMW sales have not plummeted as US car makers have. And now, BMW says they are capping executive pay by establishing the current ration of difference 25-1 as THE ratio. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average U.S. worker earned $29,544. The ratio of CEO pay to average pay is 364:1 and to minimum wage is 885:1. So... Why is it that US car companies have trouble competing?
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POPSMeet Rick Berman-Misinformation's Top Gun For Hire Who is Richard Berman? Richard Berman is a Washington, D.C.-based hired gun who uses front groups to defend his corporate clients against the public interest. Using his lobbying and consulting firm, Berman and Company, as a revenue vehicle for his activities, Berman runs at least 15 industry-funded projects, such as the Center for Union Facts, and holds 16 "positions" within these various entities.
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POPSChapter 13 Wage Earner Bankruptcy Basics Queens New York NYC This chapter allows an individual to repay all or part of his/her debts under a repayment plan to their creditors. An individual or a sole proprietor can file chapter 13 bankruptcy. Depending on individual’s state’s median income, the repayment plan can be of minimum three or maximum five years.
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POPSMinimum Wages vs Welfare Incredibly: Welfare provides the equivalent of an hourly pretax wage of $14.75 in New York City, $12.45 in Philadelphia, $11.35 in Baltimore, and $10.90 in Detroit. For the hard-core welfare recipient, the value of the full range of welfare benefits substantially exceeds the amount the recipient could earn in an entry-level job. As a result, recipients are likely to choose welfare over work, thus increasing long-term dependence.
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POPSSouthwest Preparatory School Puts Students to Work Wish I had something like this when I was in high school - better yet - I wish they has something like this when MY kids were in high school. I'm all in favor of hiring high school kids - and also keeping local business local.
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POPSTeen Unemployment Do you think there this might have something to do with the Minimum Wage? Leave no incumbent in office.
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POPS Obama Stimulate This … How bad is unemployment is the US? Among teenagers we have reached record unemployment as it is the highest it has ever been at 25.5%. This August, the teenage unemployment rate " that is, the percentage of teenagers who wanted a job who could not find one " was 25.5 percent, its highest level since the government began keeping track of such statistics in 1948. Likewise, the percentage of teenagers over all who were working was at its lowest level in recorded history… This August found more than a quarter of the teenagers in the job market unable to find work, an unemployment rate nearly three times that of the nonteenage population (9 percent), and nearly four times that of workers over 55 (6.8 percent, also a record high for that age group). An estimated 1.64 million people ages 16-19 were unemployed…
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POPSWho Killed Detroit? "Are we better off now that these things are made by foreigners? Are we better off now that we have ceased to be self-sufficient? Are we better off now that the real wages of our workers and median income of our families no longer grow as they once did? Are we better off now that manufacturing, for the first time in U.S. history, employs fewer workers than government? We no longer build commercial ships. We have but one airplane company, and it outsources. China produces our computers. And if GM goes Chapter 11, America will soon be out of the auto business. Our politicians and pundits may not understand what is going on. Historians will have no problem explaining the decline and fall of the Americans."
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POPSLow-wage workers are often cheated by their employers More: The researchers said one of the most surprising findings was how successful low-wage employers were in pressuring workers not to file for workers’ compensation. Only 8 percent of those who suffered serious injuries on the job filed for compensation to pay for medical care and missed days at work stemming from those injuries… The study found that women were far more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than men, with the highest prevalence among women who were illegal immigrants. Among American-born workers, African-Americans had a violation rate nearly triple that for whites… The report found that 57 percent of workers sampled had not received mandatory pay documents the previous week, which are intended to help make sure pay is legal and accurate. Of workers who receive tips, 12 percent said their employer had stolen some of the tips."
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POPSWhat Ted Kennedy got right "He was also a longtime proponent of amending the U.S. Constitution to allow 18 year old citizens to vote. "Long ago, according to historians, the age of maturity was fixed at 21, because that was the age at which a young man was thought to be capable of bearing armor. Strange as it may seem, the weight of armor in the 11th century governs the right to vote of Americans in the 20th century," said Kennedy in 1970. His dream was accomplished in 1971 with the signing of the Twenty-sixth Amendment that lowered the voted age from 21 to 18."
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POPSThe Perfect Job - Myth or Reality? Is there really such a thing as the perfect job? Some say the perfect job is a myth but this article shows how anyone can find and land a job that is - Andy Havens
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POPSPresident Obama and His ‘Outstanding’ Humility You mock my teleprompter, and uh, as I’ve always said, I use it to appear more humble. The “uh’s” and tennis-match-observer head motions have always been my plan. When it breaks, during a speech, I appear humble by bumbling my sentences. This is all pre-planned. In fact, right now the teleprompter is scrolling at an unruly rate, so uh, I have to fake it. Now, look " I know you Americans, who uh, understand history seem to think socialism is a failed idea. I don’t know. History. And, we’re halfway through my term, or at least half-way through the first year of my regime " and I’ve managed to implement socialism, in new and exciting ways. And I encourage humility, especially in Americans who make more than minimum wage, because it takes humility to pay the kind of taxes I am planning for you. Trust me, this hurts me more than it hurts you. That’s an old Kenyan saying, one my Father taught me during the 5 hours I spent with him during my life.
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POPSMinimum wage hike: More money or fewer jobs?
I wanted to clip this article, not so much because of any supposed newsworthiness of yet another impotent attempt by Congress to help make our lives better, (personally I think if consumer prices would just stop increasing then wage hikes would actually mean something), but because of this photo. I find it disgusting for two reasons. One, that Ted Kennedy (or any politician) can stand behind this idea with a straight face telling the working class that this is a ‘new direction for America’. Secondly, I find it insulting that they are trying to convince us that higher wages are somehow equivalent to better jobs. I would never begrudge anyone earning a fair wage, but what is considered a fair wage in the face of the seemingly out of control increases in prices for everything we buy? The cycle of increasing wages in order to keep up with inflation caused by increasing consumer prices to keep up with increasing wages, is maddening. Stop increasing consumer prices!
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POPSA Few Facts About the Honduran Military Coup 5. For its editorial page, “democracy” is strictly utilitarian; it’s OK when our side wins; otherwise, we will justify vote-rigging or military action by the other side, even while pretending we support constitutional order. But what else would you expect from a newspaper that fired its only opinion writer who was right about Iraq and that has offered to sell its reporters to the highest bidder? Maybe the Honduran military is buying up advertising space in the Post in order to ensure favorable treatment from Fred Hiatt & Co.
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POPSUnion - Unions Must Pay into politics now more then ever before ,