"Right, so conservatives are magically going to create a massive amount of jobs that pay a "real wage", unlike McDonalds jobs, so vote for them. Yeah, sure."
There's nothing magical about it. When people don't have massive amounts of regulations, they can start a business easier. When they have lower taxes, they have more money to spend. Thus jobs are made, as well as many opportunities to be self-employed.
Mainstream conservatives aren't actually doing enough.
"It isn't so much that 15 dollars an hour is ideal (20 dollars an hour is closer to the "living wage"),"
15 dollars an hour is like ~2400 a month on a regular schedule.
Nobody's gonna pay you that if the work you do isn't worth that much. A guy cleaning shit in the toilets isn't worth that much, I can clean my shitty toilets myself thank you very much, and who says it has to be a "living wage"? A lot of these jobs are entry jobs for young people who still live with their parents. You're acting like they actually have a lot of bills to pay or rent to pay. Not necessarily. Plus they can also get roommates or marry for double income.
"the trick it to make sure businesses don't have to pay 15 (or 20) dollars an hour. Meanwhile, McDonalds bosses and the bosses of the businesses employing most Americans are getting paid upper six figure/seven figure salaries for doing far less than what the actual people working are doing."
I'm not sure they make THAT much, but yeah, they get paid well. If they run the business in a way that makes the shareholders money, why shouldn't they also get handsomely paid. Running a business isn't that easy. The wrong decisions can turn a profit into a loss very quickly.
Speaking of shareholders, they're not necessarily rich people. Minor shareholders certainly aren't rich, they're regular people like you or me, maybe they're pension funds for regular people etc. Your policies would hurt them the most, the major players will do just fine.
"Anyone remotely intelligent with a bit of knowledge could do the job those guys are doing."
Except they're not. You hire a regular bum to be CEO, he's going to fuck things up big time and you're not going to have a profit and your company's value will drop it like it's hot.
"Look at history, and look at now. Either the government pays for welfare, or businesses do (many Walmart employees are on welfare). In which case, that amounts to the government supporting Walmart."
No it amounts to the government supporting the Walmart employees.
Besides, it was you progressives who wanted a welfare state, stop crying because the policies that you supported (and which no serious conservative supports) didn't work as you wanted them to work.
I mean just a quick solution would be to cut welfare entirely for people with jobs.
"The other option is to end welfare entirely, in which case we go back to the 19th century with people starving in the streets. Oh wait, that's what you guys want anyway. But be careful what you wish for--last time you did that, you got socialism and communism in response. I wonder what your foolishness will cook up this time? I eagerly await... "
Except your got it ass backwards. The USA has been the country MOST resistant to communism and the countries most susceptible to communist propaganda were feudal shitholes where most people had no rights.
The first true communist revolution happened in Russia (which was more feudalistic than capitalist) and then Russia exported communism to other nations through a combination of propaganda, subversion and military might.
As for people starving in the streets - when did that happen? There was private charity and churches you know.
But even if it did, starving people can't fight, so they can't bring about a communist revolution anyway. (And if they tried, well, regular people have guns too, they may not be rich, but they like their property rights and will die for it if you push them) None of the communist subverters in Russia or other places were starving or in any danger of starvation, they were just deluded ideologues and propagandists. And now many far leftists are academics, also no danger of starvation. You honestly think Chomsky isn't rich from all the books he publishes decrying the west?
Was Lenin starving? No.
Was Karl Marx starving? No, he was just a lazy fat ass.
Was Che Guevara starving? No, he was quite wealthy in fact.
