Also, if your business model depends on paying workers extremely low wages, maybe it’s not a viable business model. If I went around mugging people, and someone pointed out that this was illegal, I couldn’t plead that my business model requires it, and if you punish me for mugging people, I’ll go out of business. I’d have to come up with a new business model.

Ford, and GM, and Chrysler are in trouble for two reasons: 1) they misjudged the market ten years ago, and focused on SUVs and trucks with high gas consumption, while their competitors focused on hybrid technology and fuel efficiency, as well as on making better cars. And 2) their competitors are based in countries with universal health care, which means that, unlike the Big Three, they’re not burdened by those costs, and are free to focus on, you know, making cars.

If that’s true those businesses are not paying their fair load. If its the EIC, BadgerCare, food stamps, AFDC, those businesses are being subsidized by tax payers and not self efficient.

Now, there may be businesses where we want to do this for, social good and all. But, for the majority of these businesses they are are drain on the economy.

Do you have a particular business in mind? When an employer is paying minimum wage that is not total cost. We also must take into account all the government programs needed to cover that substandard wage.

There are undoubtedly teenagers who will get raises now, but the majority of those affected are adults, most of whom are responsible for more than half of their family’s income — a main wage earner, in other words.

If you’re argument is the minimum wage is mediocre and thus not nearly high enough I would agree with you. Also the minimum wage should use your book keeping, as in what it would take for 1 main wage earner to raise a family.

I totally agree that the IRAQI government needs to step up. But like I said we should give The Genaral and his plan a Chance I really hope it works and we can give the Iraqi Govenrment a true chance to Succeed because if Democracy gets a true foothold there that will be a very good thing for the world

We can’t make decisions based on “what will the Islamists think”, or “what we think the Islamists will think”, or worry too much about the symbolism of various foreign policy initiatives. What matters is the objective, real world results.

My best guess is that leaving would be better for our national interest, better for our foreign policy, and no worse for Iraq, than would staying.

A time table is a dumb idea when you’re talking about announcing D-Day, or something. But what we’re doing in Iraq is far closer to a colonial occupation than an actual war. What’s needed is a political settlement, and time tables can be useful for that, because if the Iraqi government is unwilling to get its shit together in four years, I don’t think we should keep spending our blood and money to prop them up (and it’s not like the Iraqi government is some kind of bastion of enlightenment — it’s one faction in a civil war in which all sides are unpleasant and illiberal).

But the war was won four years ago. Right now, we’re a colonial army in the middle of a revolt-cum-civil war. What are we supposed to do in that situation? What constitutes “winning”?

There was certainly no shortage of good intentions when we invaded Iraq, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was a bad idea. And whatever the merits of this “war of cultures”, that’s not what’s going on in Iraq. We’re not fighting any actual opponent. We’re serving as policemen to a Iranian-influenced government, acting as a buffer between the various Iraqi sects, trying to kill terrorists that have moved to Iraq in the wake of the damage our war caused (and the Iraqis, Sunni and Shiite, are fighting against AQI as well), and trying to lessen the damage caused by their ongoing civil war.

We’re being shot at from all sides. Most of the Iraqi Parliament wants us to leave. Most of the Iraqi people want us to leave, even though they worry that us leaving will make their civil war even worse.

I don’t have any certainty that our withdrawal will work. Everything I’ve read about history and what we’re doing in Iraq suggests it will be better than our staying there. But I could be wrong.

I do think the burden should be on those people who want us to stay in Iraq indefinitely to explain what the sacrifice they are demanding of us and our military, is buying us. So back to you: what are we trying to accomplish in Iraq, and does our strategy have any chance of accomplishing those goals?