Well, I cannot eat pasta anymore. I can only eat about 2 tbsp at a time. I have replaced itwith zucchini others use spaghetti squash. I also done like most sugar. I only eat dark chocolate and only every other week or so in small doses. I have found organic fruits and veggies and as close to locally grown.as you can get taste better and are better for you. Also avoid any pre packaged meats. Look up meat glue. Luck yuck yuck! Its not digestible and I think it and all the hormones they are containing is whats making us all gain so much weight. We have started buying from the local butcher. And we grow rabbits, which taste amazing when fed properly. And you have to stay moving. I haven't sit through a whole movie in years. I have to get up and doo things at least every hour or my joints lock up. So I am really active. I also learned a little lifting weights and stretching every day goes a long way. I also walk a lot, because I mow our five acres and garden. I also walk our young malamute a lot. Its really just a whole foods diet and finding anyway to get exercise. I hate using work out equipment so i have found ways to do it on our farm. Like chopping wood, picking up sticks and walking as much as I can. I really think too much sugar and processed foods is the culprit. Also I only snack on healthy snacks through out the day instead of big meals if I know I am gonna be doing desk work. I hope this helps. Its helped me to lose 2 dress sizes and I am approaching#3.

"Deserving" has two sides. Certainly no one "deserves" to take more than their work is worth, but on the other hand no one "deserves" to have the incentive of improving themselves removed by a wage which keeps them just comfortable enough to remain where they are. A "living wage" becomes a sort of speed bump on the road to advancement which would keep many workers from aspiring to better jobs. The inevitable accumulation of such "living wage limited" workers would push the less-qualified out of the labor force, and they simply don't deserve to be harmed in that way.

I read an article yesterday about 5 Wal-Mart store around the country closed for 6 months or so to upgrade their plumbing, laying off all the employees. Interestingly, these were the five stores that were stuck on Black Friday a couple of years ago. CBS News in a fit of pique has found that no plumbing permits have been pulled, the implication being that Wal-Mart is engaging in a bit of payback.
I wonder if Head of State Obama will order the stores to re-open.

I would argue that his value to the u.s. is negative. -- j

I knew someone, years ago, who lived on the bus.
he was homeless, had a job, and worked his ass off
to try to progress in life. . he was proud of his life. -- j

excuse me, but the "living wage" idea has nothing
to do with the "minimum wage" idea. . you work for
what you can get, and bargain for more all the time.
when you can't live on what you get, you work more
or differently. . or go back to school somehow.

if you work your way up to a "living wage" which
will support a family, you celebrate by having a
family.

high-rent districts prevent this from happening at
lower wages.

the use of government force to give people raises
is immoral, in my view. . it is gang robbery. -- j

I love your 1st amendment connection, above. . that's
a powerful idea -- freedom of association. . although
it is a court-constructed result of the amendment,
if pay for work could be tied to that, we would be rid
of this govt force affecting pay. . I wish!!! -- j

people need to understand that boards of directors
are in competition between one another for CEOs
who can manage a company, and this competition
drives the pay level. -- j

and the retirees living on fixed income see inflation
as a drop in pay. . I R 1. -- j

the whole "minimum wage" idea is designed to buy
votes, imho. . using govt force to give people a raise
whether they deserve it or not. . decidedly D thinking. -- j

Oh, oh, oh, give me some pointers off line (or on- line if necessary), I need to lose about 20 lbs. And with my exposure to Agent Orange exercise is out of the question. Don't tell her I said so, but my wife could stand to lose at least 20 too.

Very true! We recently got a Sprouts in our area. What a Godsend! Rather than ccardboard everything tastes like it should. I literally get laughed at because I will stand there and smell the bell peppers much longer than I should. I never even liked them before, but now I eat them like Apple's. I have also decided to never shop at Price Chopper. Our local store provides fruits and veggies, both regular and organic that taste like pesticides. It makes me wonder how many people can still taste. I get sick from "big box store" meat and produce. I went to a doctor for the better part of a year, just to figure out it was food that was making my sick and obese. Weight has been melting away ever since.

Today it all tastes like it might be coming from another planet. Perhaps it's what those people in other lands use for fertilizer that has something to do with it. I might be kind of spoiled, when I used to live two states south of here (some 38 years ago), I had two Avocado Trees, a Grapefruit, an Orange, and a cross bred Lemon/Lime/Something that made the most fantastic juice, and a couple of Apples, all in my back yard. I used to shovel some of up and put it in the trash because I couldn't even give it all away, especially the Avocados.

You know, I saw the increase in minimum wage first to $1.25 and so on. All it does is hurt other workers for about a year and nothing changes. Over a period of time the difference re-establish itself and everything cost more. It has never worked nor will it ever work.

It's not automation, it's the fact that the strains used are developed with picking, storage and transportation as the highest priority. When you get fruit out of season it may be coming from the other side of the planet.

Another thing that would happen with a raised minimum would be an increase in people wanting the job.

That would then lead to the lesser competent people being not being hired at all.

Sure we would. Haldeman's "The Forever War" has a few chapters set on an Earth in that state of things, but I'll summarize:

Given a law that no one can be hired or fired, then even if it were fully obeyed, the economy would gradually fall to pieces because people die or become disabled and their jobs can't be filled. (Even jobs in government.) But there's also all the new people who leave high school or college -- no jobs for them, so what do they do? If they can't get black-market jobs they'll have to steal. In the book, Earth winds up with a huge black-market in jobs, where the person officially employed in a job takes a 40% cut of its pay as "rent" and the illegal worker does the job for him.

I beg to differ. The term gets abused a lot, but a living wage, to me, means enough money to rent a place to live, eat, have light and heat, and be able to get to work (even if it's on the bus). Everything else is a luxury, but below that standard the worker is homeless, and nobody can expect anyone to work under that condition.

This is especially true when you are looking for information.

I guess you are right. Who am I to expect a kid to realize that 5 dimes = 50 cents? Shame on me.

Actually NO! I expect every (non mentally disabled) teenager to realize that - do I really expect too much?

Has anyone noted how bad most of our fruit seems to be anymore. I find it to be tasteless, sometimes having a grain to it similar to dirt, and none of it has any sweetness anymore. Only bananas seem to be real. Is it possible the rest has all been automated? I wonder what automated fast food will taste like? Bui then again, I rarely eat it now..

Thank you for validating my point. Everything you list is a personal choice, and has nothing to do with a "living wage".

I was born and grew up in Detroit, and was very happy with my wage, even though it was well above what it really took to "live". It was much more...

I then moved to Manhattan, and wasn't happy with it until it was more than triple what I earned in the Motor City.

Then, for family reasons, I moved back to Detroit, and got a really good job making less than half of what I made in NYC. And had a lot more "things"...

The reality of things is that you choose to live in an area costing more than Louisiana...and, absolutely nothing to do with any kind of rational definition of a "living wage"...

In the first place, the government imposition of a
minimum wage was (and is) a violation of the right
of free association of both the employer and the
employee. Also, as the article states, such an
increase would destroy jobs rather than making
them more profitable for their workers. When I
got my job at age 18 as a carhop in the curb
service restaurant in Staunton, Va. (1970), I was
very excited. (Minimum wage was $1.60 an
hour; but that being a very small business, it
didn't have to pay minimum wage; the inside
people at the cash register and in the kitchen
started out at $1 an hour; carhops were paid
75 cents plus tips). I was a little disappointed
at first that it didn't pay minimum wage, but I
had applied at so many places without success
that I was excited at getting it.And then, soon,
because of the opportunities to make more
money the more orders I took out, it didn't take
me very long to discover that I loved it. (But then, it was supposed to be a part-time job
while I went to business school; when the school
took bankruptcy, I continued to work the job
and started working more shifts; I ended up
working that job for about a year and a half be-
fore I left and went to the furniture factory).