Don Pope, How can you say that in a capitalist society, companies don't make their money from sales, but from how they pay their workers? If they don't grow their sales, then they can't pay their workers. As for value, if the consumer doesn't perceive a value for their money, then they won't buy the product, which leads to declining sales, which leads to loss, which leads to no longer being in business.
But their sales are Guranteed! People NEED to eat, people NEED clothing. The companies can't lose. If they wanted to they could pay the minimum wage worker's salaries from their own pockets and still profit. And if certain companies products do lose value from customers then the more succesful ones just buy them out.
As for immigrants being exploited, I don't know if they feel that way. I believe that my grandparents were pretty happy to get those jobs. Yes, they worked hard, but they came here to make a better life for themselves and their families. They came because they believed that hard work and this country would afford them more opportunity.
Yes their was the honest hard-working immigrants who didn't mind it because what they were being paid here in america is much better then what they were being paid from where they came from. They want to survive so working for that little money is better than having nothing to eat. (If you refer back to a couple of my posts back I refer to when people dont like how their being paid and speak up about it the companies fire them then hire the unemployed for even less. That's where the immigrants came in during those times.) Then their were the immigrants that realized they didn't want to be screwed and looked to crime. That's where your irish, jewish, and italian gangsters came from. They realized they could be wealthy but couldn't because their stuck at minimum wage level, they formed their own business's whether it was legal or not to survive!. After awhile yes things did change for them and things got better. If you look at today it's still the same going on and in the same areas! except now their the blacks, Spanish, the chinese etc. They realized just as the immigrants did from earlier times they can't move up from minimum wage. So they go to crime. Sell drugs, rackets. Make their own business's even if illegal. They dont want to live in poverty for the rest of their lives. Same as some of those earlier immigrants did. And it all still comes from the same areas of New york the ghettos, upper Manhattan, the Harlem area, Brooklyn, Bronx, queens etc. Now that americas grown bigger every city has crime ridden ghetto areas. It's almost like every new generation they find new minorities to exploit! And thats the way it will always be as long as capitalism is our economy!
