The United States has a strong undercurrent of libertarianism in their culture going all the way back to Thomas Jefferson. He's basically a refined version of Ron Paul.

I don't think that makes it any better, though.

Never said it did, but ideological currents are often embedded in culture.

I'm not an economist by any stretch but it doesn't feel as though the forever expanding government and welfare state seems to be helping out the masses, and Libertarian's feel like the "opposite" would reap more rewards in the long run.

Government imposed wage increases (like the one Jill Stein is proposing) will, If anything, lead to more unemployment, closing businesses etc. You can't expect McDonalds to keep the same number of employers and also pay them $15 an hour. Her whole economic view seems to border on naivety.

Also, being poor is often the fault of the individual. Why should we have a society that panders to poor people who aren't willing to put in the effort or make the right decisions in their life to become more prosperous? And the current system seems to encourage that lack of ambition and dependency on the state.

Pure libertarianism is a lofty ideal that would be very hard to impose, but there's definitely a good basis for it working. Especially as we have seen almost all forms of left leaning economic policies fail to one extent or another.

McDonald's is a massive corporation, I'm sure that they can afford it.

Wow, talk about naïveté.

If they wanted to they already would. But they don't, and I don't think it's a giant leap to predict that they wouldn't keep on as many members of staff if the $15 minimum wage was put in place.

And what's naive about understanding that a lot of people are poor due to their own life decisions?

Actually they might have to keep a high number of employees. There are only so many people you can let go before you either have to start giving people overtime or not be able to run the store at all. The answer for them isn't hiring less people, it's giving people less hours.

Just felt like saying that.

It's kind of like the increased taxes debate. It's not only a matter of raising the taxes of companies/entrepreneurs and funnelling that money back into the system, but what those companies do in reaction to it. Will they make that expansion, which will cost money and require workers? Will they decide to lay off staff to cover the uncreased taxes? These things aren't quite as simple as "Raise the minimum wage and everyone will be better off" or "Tax them more and we can put it back into the system".

That's true, many companies are giving employers fewer hours and 0-Hour contracts. Something that would only increase if there was to be a forced minimum wage that the companies would probably deem too high.

You know what's naive about this statement? You don't realize that the jobs just aren't out there. People go off to college do their four years and still aren't able to get a job so they flood the service industry to get something so they can get by. There are people with Master's degrees working fast food and it isn't for a lack of trying. There just isn't enough jobs out there and they need something in the mean time. Your idea/opinion about this is so naive and unrealistic based off of the current economic situation. Sure there might be a few people that ****ed up in life and made the wrong decisions but if you look at the stats. The numbers are way too large for that same situation to apply to everyone.


The companies need to stop being greedy ****s and help out their employees that are making them record profits. They will deem it too high because it is starting to cut into their millions upon millions of profits they are making. They don't give a **** about the working poor.

What you are talking about is leaning a bit towards supporting trickle down economics? If you feel the other side of the coin is any better. It's definitely not. Look how great that's been working out in the past!