Scattered things...

[pmb]

• I remain skeptical of quite a few things that Hillary Clinton stands for - increased censorship is pretty much always wrong, and she's too willing to roll over and find the "middle ground" between the centrist position and the loony right - but linking the federal minimum wage to the congressional wage is a stroke of genius.
• 12 catches of 5 clubs

Comments

[roninspoon]

I'm of the idea opinion that congress people shouldn't be compensated at all. There are already far too many motivations to remain in office and ignore their constiiuents.

[pmb]

We need more than just the idle rich in Congress.

[roninspoon]

we need the idle poor looking to become the idle rich!

[pmb]

Send us your idle rich,
your idle poor,
your idle masses yearning to breathe free
The idle refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the idle, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

[pmb]

True. But it at least ends up tying the minimum wage to inflation, which is a very important first step (although it's already been done here in Oregon).

[freyley]

Yes, a more ideal scheme would be along these lines:

minimum yearly salary (per company) = .02*CEO's total earnings+bonus+value of benefits, etc OR .20*Congresscritter's salary, whichever is greater.

And then calculate hourly wages based on the standard 40 hour week.

Sadly, neither Hillary nor anyone else can propose that sort of thing.

[djsendai]

sounds like the "Maximum Wage" law that Jello Biafra was proposing several years ago. Maximum Wage being defined as 4 x minimum wage, more or less.

[leech]

I say it's a cheap stunt. Why are congressional wages a reliable measure of inflation? If the point is to raise minimum wage, how about a bill to raise minimum wage?

Of course it's a stunt, but...

[pmb]

Congressional wages increase with inflation every year as part of a congressional wage bill passed in the 1940s. Tying the minimum wage to inflation has been shot down in the past, but it's much harder to come across as a good guy when you are voting to be able to increase your own salary while keeping poor people poor. It's all about making people ashamed to vote against a bill. My only worry is that the mandated increases to the min. wage will shoot down the bill. I'd prefer a straight-up tying of one to the other.

[bagoffarts]

My 5-clubs has hit another wall at 9 (and a really fucked up jammed finger). I'm envious. I will have it this year though.

But are you going to ireland?

[porfinn]

Oh...ouch! Ick. Why does plastic sting so bad!

[pmb]

Nope. Paper got turned down, I have 2 major week-long bike trips to go on, and the IJA festival is 120 miles from my house the week after EJC.

[pmb]

Sometimes I think about it. But I just don't enjoy (or, at least, haven't enjoyed) coding for more than 15ish hours a week. Google wants 40+, just like every other CS job that doesn't involve teaching. And I really like teaching. I am also really bad a at separating work and life and I am unable to cease thinking about work problems after I go home. Even if the problems are not, in themselves, particularly interesting. Thus, I need work where I can think about only the stuff I really want to think about and hopefully teach as well.

And if I want to teach smart students who want to learn and not just be a warden, then I need a PhD so that I can teach at the college level. But every now and then I consider either joining Google or starting my own Web2.0 this-or-that. But Paul Graham's most recent essay contained a quote that keeps haunting me: By compressing the dull but necessary task of making a living into the smallest possible time, you show respect for life, and there is something grand about that.

[pmb]

But Paul Graham's most recent essay ...
 should be read as
And Paul Graham's most recent essay ...