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To: GraceZ who wrote (108293)	6/12/2001 4:09:43 PM
From: Don Lloyd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Grace - ...The difference between that minimum wage job they can get with Manpower a day at a time and one that pays $15/hour is: $100 worth of tools, some form of transportation to the jobsite and the ability to show up on time regularly. Not exactly high hurdles. Can you please elaborate on the $15/hour job? Union or other certification required? Market determined wage rate or not? Private contracted or public works? If the wage is market determined, is the market affected by existing public projects sopping up labor and their possible non-market wage rates? TIA, Don

To: GraceZ who wrote (108293)	6/12/2001 5:09:00 PM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

>>>It's obvious that you don't understand what motivates people to move money to other investments. You are wrapped up in some sort of Holy crusade and you don't realize that the efforts to go after the rich wind up hurting the very people you profess to be trying to help.<<< It's odd Grace. Yesterday you seemed to think TRA '86 was a great thing because as you yourself noted it produced a rise in tax receipts which must have been caused by a reduction in rates for the rich. I then pointed out that the increase in tax receipts was more likely than not due to the elimination of tax preference items and changes in the treatment of business property. This morning I gave you an example of both, the article on TRA '86 and real estate. Now apparently you've changed your mind that the post TRA '86 increased economic activity and increases in tax receipts wasn't brought about only by a reduction in individual rates for the rich...that in fact it came at too high a price given what the TRA '86 elimination of real estate tax preference items did to Baltimore? (Well, apparently I convinced you what the real driver was or likely was.) Now your seem to imply TRA '86 was an assaualt on the rich and any assault on the rich hurts the poor as evidenced by the effect of TRA '86 real estate changes on Baltimore...changes in the treatment of tax preference and business property items which you initially claimed had no significance compared to rate reduction. Damn, no wonder my head hurts... >>>My city is finally coming back after years of going through these artificially created disasters caused by tinkering with the tax code.<<< No...no series of tax code artificially created disasters causing the decline of Baltimore. Your city would have never experiened its' "Rennaisance of sorts" in the first place without a specific tinkering of the tax code. That was a manufactured pause in a long decline for older urban areas. Talk to any 20th Century urban historian and he or she will tell you trend towards flight to the suburbs began in earnest early in the 1900s with the expansion of steetcar lines far, far beyond city limits and accelerated with the construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950s. Throw in persistent racism and you get massive flight as soon as people can afford the price of wheels beneath them and decide the grass is greener in the suburbs. The only thing Ronnie and Congress did was decide halting the decline was too expensive (in that manner) and said, "No more. We've got other plans for the money." So IMO it was the withdrawl of "natural disaster relief" which was the problem for Baltimore and dozens of other older cities.

To: GraceZ who wrote (108293)	6/12/2001 5:38:17 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Grace - doesn't the hourly rate vary by craft, and also by skill level? To clarify - would he pay $15 an hour for a carpenter's helper? Strong healthy kid just out of high school, say? I never worked construction but I used to earn $18 hour as a master lithographer in 1983. Apprentices made a lot less. No union, informal apprenticeship. Guys who can't show up for work every day never learn a craft well enough to be a master, which requires increasing levels of responsibility. You could conceivably have someone who was a master craftsman and then fell apart but I never saw that. Someone irresponsible will never get trusted with something that will cost money to fix. They need constant supervision, or you give them something to do that can't be messed up too bad, like cleanup. I wouldn't dignify someone like that with the term "apprentice."