[Maceman]

Everybody's income is somebody else's cost. Drive up wages artificially, and you drive up costs the same way. Living age is a paycut for most Americans, since it means their taxes will go up to pay for the artificially inflated cost of government-contracted work.

[mulligan]

We just get dumber and dumber. The nations water supply must be receiving stupid pills manufactured in D.C. by our Congress. This is truly a great country. Happy days are on the way.

[Red Jones]

it should be a major goal of the federal guv to push the unemployment rate down to under 4.0% and keep it there for as long as possible. The reason why it should be our goal is specifically to push wages up for people.

Prior to 1965 we as a nation agreed that this type of low unemployment was good. After 1965 we don't have that agreement as a nation. We haven't matched the low unemployment rates that we used to enjoy either since before 1965. If you look at long-term charts of the unemployment rate, it is really very dramatic. Simply throw out the 1930's and you'll see that prior to 1965 our unemployment rate was on average a solid 25%-30% lower than after 1965.

It is no accident. Republican economists, including Alan Greenspan and others, have been quoted as saying that they have to keep unemployment up over 6% to keep lots of willing workers for big corps. Big corps don't produce jobs, so it doesn't make sense that the republicans would think this way, but they do.