Personally, I am pro electricity and indoor plumbing and I do not want to live like my grandparents did. However, I think some people might prefer that. Therefore, I am hesitant to support laws that do not allow them to do that if that is what they choose.

Yes, it is a double--edged sword. If we see families living in a $500 per month apartment without AC and pass a law that the apartment must have AC, it does not ensure that there will be $500 per month apartments with AC. What happens is the apartment now costs $550 per month with AC. So, some renters are priced out of the market and are now homeless. The answer then is to pass a law to increase the wages those people earn so that they can afford $550 per month. But, then some of them can't find jobs. So, then we pas a law that.... Each of those laws introduces a distortion n the market. Whether or not we prefer a world where the market determines the price and characteristics of housing, jobs, etc. or we prefer a world where we add regulations to address the side effects after previous regulation and then additional regulations to address that is a matter of preferences and values. If we want to regulate the market we must be willing to acknowledge these side effects; ignoring them or just saying they don't or shouldn't exist just makes the problems worse. The laws of economics do not cause the side effects; they describe the side effects.

This has happened with the median, as well as the mean, and has been well documented by Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller in his work on the housing market. It is not simply the fact that the wealthier are buying more house than they need. What is considered "minimum" has changed a great deal. My maternal grandparents lived in a one bedroom apartment (which shared one bath with another family) until my mom was in third grade. Then they moved to a house with two bedrooms and one bath--no microwave, no washing machine, now dryer, no dishwasher, no garbage disposal, no AC (south Louisiana). I think most of us would agree that if we saw two parents raising one child living in a one bedroom apartment with a shared bath today we would say that they were living in poverty--my grandfather had a good job with the railroad and my grandmother did some part-time work. They were considered middle class. My paternal grandfather worked at the turpentine plant and the family "gardened"--what would be considered a small farm today. They raised six children in a two bedroom house--and it wasn't until after the youngest was starting school that they had indoor plumbing or electricity. If we saw a family living in south Louisiana today without electricity--or even electric fans--I doubt we would think that was minimum living standards.

I am sorry that I don't have any online tutoring recommendations, but I would suggest the following: 1. Check with the professor about meeting outside the professor's normal office hours. Most professors will gladly accommodate a request if a student can't attend office hours because of a class conflict. 2. If he has a work study job, most campus jobs are flexible so that he might e able to meet with the professor during that time slot if he makes prior arrangements. 3. Visit the math lab as often as possible. Even if he doesn't think it is the best help right now, he is probably getting something out of it. 4. Ask other students for recommended tutors; in my experience, a live tutor is better than online, especially if he is having trouble framing what his questions are and his confusion is. 5. See if there is a way that he can sit in on a Calc 1 class in addition to the class that he is taking to fill in some holes.

People may not chose their profession based upon how much they will make in comparison to other people, but they do make their decision based, in part, on how much they will make in that profession relative to how much they would be able to make in another profession. Thus, a significant different wage structure would impact choices and decisions workers make.

I am not seeing how you conclude from this article that wealth creation is a zero sum game. This article is about income distribution, but that can widen as everyone becomes more wealthy. Say we both have an income of $100 in the first year. Then I create a machine which allows me to earn an income of $2000 the next year and hire you so that your income increases to $500. We now both have an increase in income (and can have more wealth) although the income distribution has widened greatly.

Then how would you propose to ration those jobs? What would ensure that the fewer jobs got allocated as one across each family instead of having some families with two jobs and other families with none? Or, what would ensure that a single person got on of those scarce jobs?

How would this work? It would be much better for me to own an engineering company than a home nursing service, janitorial service, or burger bar. Not because I was a better employer, but because I was in a different industry with a different type of worker input. If I did hire lower-skilled workers, I would make sure that I hired the teenager from the wealthy neighborhood, not the single mother on government assistance so that I wasn't penalized. Is that the incentive we really want to give?

Hope that you find the injections help--I did them as an adolescent and saw a big difference. I did go through a round again about 15 years ago and found that they made a big difference then, also. DH has one through several rounds throughout his life and thinks they have made a big difference. DS started college this year and has been miserable as he has been exposed to high levels of pollens that he hasn't experienced before. I wish we had been able to forecast this and get on it before he started college. I am trying to talk him into seeing an allergist, explaining that he can't expect things to be any better the next time there is a windy, dry period.

I am sorry; that is so difficult.

ironically, the two bolded items are government policies which were intended to reduce the cost of home ownership in the U.S.

Although the average hourly wage for Costco workers exceeds that of Walmart workers, one has to be very careful about what conclusions are drawn. First, Costcos are concentrated in different parts of the country than are Walmarts. Costcos are my likely to be located in high cost of living areas and Walmarts are more likely located in low COL areas. If you compare a worker in Seattle making $16 dollars an hour with a worker making $10 an hour in Small Town, Arkansas you are not comparing apples to oranges. Second, Walmart hires MORE workers per square foot than does Costco. This is in line with the idea that if you increase the minimum wage, some people will make more money but some people will now make no money because they lose their job (as a society we may or may not prefer this, but that is a separate issue from the economic reality that it happens). Third, the structure of the jobs at Walmart and Costco are different because of their size and range of business activities. The last point is important because businesses can hide their low paid workers by not directly hiring them. I know of a number of businesses that have decided to fire all of their janitors and use a janitorial service. Immediately, the average wages the business is reporting are higher. I know of a grocery chain that brags of its high average wages; but, if you go to purchase their store brand, pre-cut vegetables, they are not cut by the chains high-wage workers. There is a separate company that chops those vegetables (often with undocumented workers paid below minimum wage) and then the chain purchases the vegetables. Almost the entire amount of the separate company's revenue comes from this one customer. If those workers were on the grocery chain's payroll, their average salaries would be lower.

It is estimated that minimum wage increases reduced employment in Puerto Rico by 8-10%. In addition, it created a large migration of workers out of Puerto Rico to other parts of the U.S. as the workers looked for jobs. http://www.nber.org/chapters/c6909.pdf

Yes, allowing employers to pay teens less than other workers would encourage them to hire teens. But, it would discourage them from hiring college students and other low-skilled workers.

What comparison do you want to make between Costco and Walmart?

But a problem is that higher wages will reduce the number of available jobs, so while these single moms may find it more advantageous for them to work, chances are there will not be available jobs for them.

Of those living in poverty, only 9% are working full-time, year round; 67% did not work at all. (http://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/who-earns-the-minimum-wage-suburban-teenagers-not-single-parents ) If the intent is to help people who are in poverty, increasing the minimum wage will probably have little positive effect. In fact, it may make the situation worse. If there is any reduction in jobs and hours worked, the workers who were the intended beneficiaries are the ones who are most likely to lose their jobs. About 1/2 of those who are working at minimum wage jobs are young people (high school and college students) who are working part-time and live in families with household income exceeding $50,000 per year. Distorting this market will probably not do too much to help alleviate the poverty problem A UBI or a negative income tax would probably be a more efficient way of addressing the problem of poverty.

How do I verify whether an employee is in school or not? What counts as college? Does this apply only during the semester? What about summer? Christmas holidays? Spring break? What aboud college students who work more than 30 hours? What about part-time college students working less than 30 hours? Does this apply only to undergraduate students? What about graduate? What happens if a worker drops all of his classes while working for an employer? What about college students with dependents? Unemployment among 19-23 year olds who are not attending college would increase. If I am an accounting firm, why would I pay a 19 year old with no experience and no college classes more than I would pay a college student with 3 1/2 years of college and three years working in my firm during tax season?

What were your favorite baby gifts when you had a second child? My neighbors just had their second baby (a boy, they have a 2-year old girl).

I do not know whether the comment was in an attempt to set a boundary. Yes, as one matures one realizes that she can't control other people. I don't think that precludes one from making an honest comment of stating that what someone's talking about you is doing damage to the relationship, making you uncomfortable, or destroying trust. I don't see that as manipulation.

Maybe a missed something, but it isn't clear to me that he went into her house and then demanded that she not speak to him. What I gathered was that he was remaining in the car--she went to talk to him--in that conversation he said something about not talking to him or about him; I am not sure exactly the context of those words. Were they a demand? Were they an explanation of the types of things that had been said that he found helpful and a suggestion that he would prefer not to have them said again? I got the idea that he did not go to her house for an extended time after that (and it seems as if he was criticized for being distant and disrespectful for that). Then, he did go to her house for birthday cake (maybe to be ugly, maybe as a peace offering, maybe as a favor to his GF, maybe fore some other reason); I did not get that he demanded some sort of reverse silent treatment then.

There are a lot of smart businesspeople out there--if it were possible to pay their workers more and then have the people pay more, and then the business make more money they would do that.

What happens is the employer figures out to close the business or use a robot instead of the employee--so you still pay for food stamps.

If an employee can make one widget an hour and I can sell that widget for $10, why should I have to pay therm enough for food and a roof over their head if that is more than $10. Then as an employer am I not paying welfare?

Labor productivity has not risen substantially, especially at the lower levels of the skill and wage distribution, and especially when controlling for productivity increases that have occurred because of machinery not labor. A worker at McDonald's is not able to cook significantly more hamburgers an hour than a worker was five or ten years ago. A janitor is not able to sweep significantly more square feet of flooring in an hour than he was 20 years ago.