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National Italian American Foundation Scholarships: $2500 – $12000 per year for being an Italian-American with a 3.5 GPA.

Sons of Italy Foundation Scholarships: $4k – $25k

Two of many, look up "Italian American scholarships" and you'll get a whole list to choose from.

{ Expecting people to do extra work on top of school and often school + a job is too much to ask, and I would consider that cruel. }

You don't have to pay student loans off until after you graduate for that very reason. You don't have to work while you're in school unless you can't exist on a $20,000 per year budget (the standard federal student loan), and that's a whole $5k more than the minimum wage you're bitching about.

{ I am ignorant BECAUSE I never had a class in high school or college devoted to this }

A class devoted to teaching you how to Google the words "free college scholarships" which generates a whole list of websites where you can fill out forms with all your special snowflake attributes so it specifically matches you with scholarships you qualify to get? All you have to do is fill in your personal information. You do that to sign up on this website. Did you need a class to sign up for KYM?

{ And the in-state community college tuition isn’t free, it costs time and energy to get it }

Step 1: go to website of community college in state where you live
Step 2: apply, have transcripts forwarded to admissions office
Step 3: that's it

Pure and simple laziness. Utter lack of will and motivation.

"Americans wouldn’t do those jobs anyway, amiright?"

Well a lot of those jobs have been taken by Robots.

But in the auto industry, temp workers are commonly used for the high turnover jobs which have the lowest rate of pay such as basic assembly work or logistics. Useually after a set amount of time and the worker is meeting all of the standards, if there is a spot open, there is a good chance they can get hired in as an actual employee of the company and not the temp agency. Like you said about the ribbon, Assembly line work can be done by almost anyone. So when one worker quits or gets canned, one quick phone call, and maybe a few hours later you have a new person doing the same work with less tenure starting at the start wage rate. Now when you have a better specialized set of skills such as being an industrial electrician, mechanic or pipefitter, the companies will pay higher wages to retain the workers because they expect a higher degree of quality. Any one can install lug nuts (or flip burgers or cut fabric) but not everyone can wire up a $150,000 robot and properly program it. Also if an electrician quits, they cant just pull joe shmoe from the assembly line and tell him to fix an electrical panel. A lot of skilled jobs need safety and other certification. If Joe Shmoe gets hurt, the company has to deal with OSHA and there could be criminal and civil charges pending on the investigation outcome.

{ But in the auto industry, temp workers are commonly used for the high turnover jobs which have the lowest rate of pay such as basic assembly work or logistics. }

That's a super tiny percentage of overall manufacturing jobs here, basic jobs are the jobs most likely to already have been automated. They're a greater percentage in Mexico/etc because it's still cheaper there to hire Mexicans for super low wages than buy the machinery and set up automation.

The average Ford assembly line worker in the USA makes $17-21 an hour.

The average Ford employee in Mexico make $26 a day.

It shouldn't be a mystery why American manufacturing and the American labor force has died a rapid death.

Let me ask this question: if minimum wages are that bad, then why do they exist in other lands? and why AREN'T those lands in a bad economic state?

1. They don't have 100 million people competing for jobs.
2. 13%+ of their population isn't immigrant guest workers.

That would be the big two influential factors. A minimum wage can only be successful if there aren't ways to undermine it, but guest workers have a clear advantage. They don't even cost as much as the minimum wage workers, so the minimum wage workers aren't truly the most minimum wage workers that companies can employ.

That right there, is the crux of why your argument fails.

"This isn’t about results. This isn’t about statistics." ACTUALLY. Yeah. It is. The fact that you are blatantly ignoring facts, results and statistics, is why you're argument fails.

You're premise is based entirely on personal morality. "DAMN the reality of the situation. It's how I believe things ought to be goddamit."

"The fact of the matter is, prices keep going up, wages fucking don’t, and more people who tried to get a start in the world will start living in poverty because they couldn’t afford jack shit."

Actually, wages have been going up. But you wouldn't know that because statistics, facts, and results don't matter to you right? You're so focused on a tiny segment of the population, that you can't even fathom that they are an EXTREME minority.

"Gradually raising the minimum wage would HELP that. " By also pricing out the lowest skilled, the lowest educated, and those wishing to gain at least SOME work experience. Thank you, Calkarot, for making sure that young people, and black youths who would stand to gain the MOST out of low minimum wage laws by being far more likely to get employed, are now screwed.

"Pull your heads out of your asses, and grow some fucking empathy." Pull your head out of the fucking make belief unicorn clouds and live in some reality.

You mean lands like Norway, Sweden and Denmark, the so-called Nordic Socialist Models so praised by the left…and which have NO national minimum wage?

Average Americans spend 5.4 hours a DAY doing a leisure activity.
I went online and was able to sign up for a course learning C# for the Unity 3D Engine. The Course, which was over 110 hours, and very thorough, cost me only $70, for unlimited, lifetime, full access.

If I put 2 hours a day, in less than 2 months, I would have been able to finish that kind of course and come out of learning a skill that is useful. And, in fact, in demand. In fact, right now there are at least 4 job posting in LA for someone looking for Unity developers, and the going salary? 65k.

You don't need to go to college to learn a new skill.

But if you need to get certified? Oh okay. So instead of going to a 4 year super expensive college, you could instead go to a year and a half trade school for a fraction of the cost, and learn welding. You know how much starter salary for a welder is? 45k.

Raising the minimum wage would affect only 4.7% of the work force. OF THAT workforce, nearly half are 18-25. Also, raising that wage would also price out a good chunk of that workforce away. So explain, how again are you being empathetic here?

Instead of trying to convince us all that facts, figures, statistics, and efficacy of what you propose is irrelevant, and instead we should focus on YOUR moral opinion. How about you get off that high horse and do some critical thinking. You're not a special snowflake. You're level of empathy is irrelevant to facts.

So for a lot of you guys, are you saying that there just shouldn't be a minimum wage? Like, if corporations had to only pay people 3.50 an hour, but could still charge them the same prices for goods as now, would that make them hire more people?

Otherwise, they'll lower the minimum wage, lower the cost of goods, and then create the same imbalance that you see currently where they're like "We can't hire anyone or we won't make a return on our goods costs, sorry still broke 100 million americans. The immigrants work for room and board now". And would utilities cost lower if we lowered the minimum wage?

Considering only 4.7% of the workforce is under minimum wage, removing it entirely isn't going to affect all that many people. The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of people in America make more than minimum wage. But I don't think anyone is advocating that at all. From a practical standpoint federal minimum wage laws should be significantly lowered. Whatever the states want to have as their minimum wage is up to them. That's at least far more practical, than outright removing it.

There is this cataclysmic view that people have that employment is a one sided agreement. That, without some sort of minimum wage, all companies will start paying virtually nothing to their employees. But the reality is virtually all forms of employment is a mutual agreement.

Employers will offer the lowest they can as long as there is someone to want to work for that money. And why should you be the judge to get in the middle of that mutual agreement? Because from your point of view, you see as one being taken advantage of?

At least, if the federal minimum wage is removed it allows for states to set their own rules. And th at would at least give a lot more evidence of what effect it has on unemployment. Because, as of so far, minimum wage never went down, so we only see the results of what happens when it goes up.

But the idea of countries not having a minimum wage isn't that far fetched.

Denmark for example does not have a national minimum wage. Instead, it has a different system where Unions and Industries work out a deal that is often mutually beneficially and with Government assistance and brokering. I don't think such a system can be implemented here, but it isn't that far fetched to live in a society without those restrictions.

Sweden doesn't have minimum wage.
Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland don't either.

{ So for a lot of you guys, are you saying that there just shouldn’t be a minimum wage? }

No, I'm saying going either way at this point in time is only going to hurt everyone.

Minimum wages are fine when they work correctly, they're a protection against worker exploitation among other things, but only when all the cogs work together. South Asia and India are making use of modern-day slave labor and have corporate income taxes and business regulations designed to attract manufacturing to their countries. Our shitty fiscal policy perpetuates slave labor, it's worth it for those companies to be in Asia despite all the ethical considerations/bad PR. We've made our own workers less desirable than literal slaves.

We have to slim down our business regulations so it's worth it for companies to set up headquarters and factories in the USA and hire American workers. All of these costs, raising the minimum wage and increasing employer payroll taxes and expanding guest worker visas and even the histrionic climate regulations that dramatically penalize CO2 emissions, they only drive us deeper into the mess.

But how, other then turning americans into literal slaves, can americans possibly be viable to corporations over their current less then a dollar employees? The only way I could see doing so, would be to make use of employees outside of our own country a taxed service, with ridiculous taxation to make the cost of hiring a foreign worker as costly as hiring an american one. But this sort of thing goes against free-trade, which is what a lot of these corporation and government cooperative efforts have been working towards for decades.

Like I said above, if you lower minimum wage, the cost of goods go down, but so will everyones wages via the whole domino effect you guys described in raising minimum wage. You said, when you raise minimum wage, everyones wages tend to be raised in order to keep the current balance, cost of goods go up, and less jobs become available as businesses shrink their workforce to accommodate the new costs.

However, why would a corporation whose been able to do well enough with it's current work force, increase the cost of their work force and thus cost of production, just because they have to pay less per-head? Even if the minimum wage was lowered to 3 dollars an hour, the average wage for an indian employee doing the same job is .46 cents. There's no investment to stop using overseas workers, even if you lower the minimum wage and repeal all the modern worker compensation and insurance coverage. Because the cost overseas for those is 0, and I doubt america will ever be comfortable with employers giving them 0 coverage for anything, and putting all the risk on them.

Anyway, back on point a bit more. If you were to lower the minimum wage, products would probably lower in cost all around. A big win, only the minimum wage raising and lowering doesn't occur in a vacuum. Each state seems, to me at least, to adjust their minimum wages in accordance to the federal standard, even if its higher in some states then others, they raise and lower based on what's around them. If the minimum wage lowers by 50 cents, a lot of businesses, especially restaurants, will jump on the opportunity to drop everyone's pay by at least 30 cents. Think about how much money they'd save doing it. Think about how they could increase their profit by 30 cents per employee every hour from this point forward.

There would be no incentive for every private corporation to not lower everyones wages should the minimum wage lower. Nor is there really an incentive to lower the cost of products by the same set price as the minimum wages drop. Because if they can lower their prices by only 20 cents instead of 50 cents, they make more money, and you still are going to buy their product because every seller is going to do it. You already see this with bargin brands vs more recognizable brands, Great Value vs Kraft for example.

There's a lot of talk about making america viable. But I'm just not seeing the argument present to persuade businesses who already make hand-over-foot using foreign labor to switch back to more expensive labor. Nor how lowering the minimum wage to anything less then .40 cents an hour is going to incise them back.

You responded to me saying the minimum wage shouldn't change in either direction by assuming the only way to fix our economy is to lower the minimum wage…..

{ But I’m just not seeing the argument present to persuade businesses who already make hand-over-foot using foreign labor to switch back to more expensive labor. }

Stop thinking about wage as a independent variable. It's one of many that corporate board members consider when fleeing American business regulations, and those other variables are what need to change.

I keep hammering corporate income tax because ours is the highest. No matter what they have to pay workers, no business will establish itself where more than a THIRD of their income is to be immediately handed over to the government. All of our competition is at the very least 5% below us, but more often 10-15%. Our rate is 40%. Mexico is 30%. Canada's is 25%. China's is also 25%. UK is 20%. It's 22% in goddamn Syria ffs. Many of the leading GOP candidates have proposed a corporate income tax of 10-15% to undercut our competition. At 40% we're chasing everyone out, 40% of nothing is nothing, but 10-15% of trillions is a lot. The dramatic saving in this area is one way to balance out the higher labor costs our worker's rights laws enforce (the minimum wage, working condition legislation, unions, etc) which countries like China don't have.

Democrats, on the other hand, want even more war against manufacturing. Their rally cry is DAMN THOSE GREEDY JOB CREATORS!! SEE WHAT WE CARE IF THEY LEAVE!! Well, now they're gone… and raising the minimum wage, increasing their tax burden, and waging hostile PR campaigns against them are not gonna bring them back.

This isn't a thread about income tax, and is only tangentially related to political parties. This is a thread about minimum wage, and to a lesser extent wages in general, and not about how to make america great again through deregulation and tax cuts.

Please stay on topic.

They're all related… you can't talk about raising or lowering the minimum wage without considering all of these other factors. Otherwise the thread is over, we've posted multiple studies that show the overwhelming negative consequences of raising the minimum wage, there is nothing more to say on the issue of minimum wage alone.

You are the one who asked me for the "argument that persuades businesses who already make hand-over-foot using foreign labor to switch back to more expensive labor". The way to persuade employers that America and its workers are better for them than South Asian slaves is through deregulation and tax cuts so that the cost of employing our liberated workers isn't undercut by China's low corporate income tax and lack of worker's rights.

Keep in mind that not everything can be outsourced, and more and more are corporations learning that outsourcing is becoming just as expensive.

Lisa is right to say that it isn't wage a lone and our income taxes, and increasingly unfriendly business environment is driving away businesses.

But to be specific about outsourcing it isn't always viable. If it's for simple things like customer service which doesn't require much training and would need minimal oversight, yes, you can definately cut costs…but sacrifice quality. You think that makes no difference? In 2008-2009 I recall a tech survey being down which ranked Apple as number one. You paid an extra premium for Apple products but the return was extremely good customer service and product support…of which majority was within the states.

Anecdotally, when I worked for a web firm, almost all the hard programming was sent to India where they would finish a website for about 1200 dollars in about a week. It saved cost, for sure, but the quality was poor. In fact, when we lost our main liason in India we went through a stream of bad luck. In the end it ended up costing more.

Wage alone isn't a factor.

You're also making arguments based on people on minimum wage having a major impact on our economy – which they don't. Remember, 4.7% of the labor pool is on minimum wage. Lowering it or increasing it would only affect those people…which wouldn't budge the over all wage growth this country has been experiencing for 60+ years now

4.7 % does have a major impact, because the adjustment to that 4.7% causes a domino affect that alters everyone elses wages indirectly.

Say you are paid 9.50 an hour working at the entry level positions of a company. The minimum wage of 7.50 gets lowered to 7 dollars. Do you think that entry level position, set by a private corporation, is going to continue to operate at 2.50 dollars over minimum wage? Or will they lower their wage to continue to match the difference between minimum wage and their offered payments?

They'll probably go for the later, because it allows them to save a ton of money for everyone in an entry level position. Then you have those above them, managers and senior members of the company. Why would we keep their wages ridiculously high? We're literally spending 50 cents more then we need to for everyone we currently hire. That's an insane amount of cost to the bottom line that we could shave off.

Now not every company would follow suit. You'd definitely have some outliers who would use a maintained wage as an incentive for attracting more employees. But resturants and big retailer chains, the ones who employee the majority of people, would definitely drop the wages they paid their employees to continue to be level with that of the minimum wage. That 2 dollar more ratio was choosen on purpose, and there's no way they're going to throw that out if minimum wage drops.

I don't know what domino effect you are speaking of.

"Say you are paid 9.50 an hour working at the entry level positions of a company. The minimum wage of 7.50 gets lowered to 7 dollars. Do you think that entry level position, set by a private corporation, is going to continue to operate at 2.50 dollars over minimum wage?" You're assuming my employer determines the value of my wage based on the minimum wage, and not how much he believes he can get away with hiring someone at my professional level. As someone who's been employed, and someone who's employed people, that determination wasn't predicated on minimum wage, it was however predicated on what t he industry standard was averaging. So no, I do not believe that my employer is going to lower my salary because the minimum wage went down.
If my employer tells me that he believes he should pay me less, then I will seek employment elsewhere, that better suits my value.

"They’ll probably go for the later, because it allows them to save a ton of money for everyone in an entry level position. Then you have those above them, managers and senior members of the company. Why would we keep their wages ridiculously high? " Because these managers, these senior positions have the skills, the knowledge, and the experience of making sure my business runs smoothly. Considering that, as an employer, i would also know that the longer they've been working with me the more familiar they are with the logistics of my company, as such, I would be beholden to them partially about wages. If I could get away with paying them 5 bucks an hour, I would, however I know for a fact that the moment I suggest they take a pay cut, is the moment I am risking them leaving. At that point, I have to ask, is it worth hiring someone new, training them, and getting them to the same level? You'd be surprised as to how many employers would say no.

Again, setting a wage isn't a one way street. Both the employer and the employee mutually agree on the set wages.

Outliers? How about the vast majority of companies. You DO Know that most of the so-called legislative-backed bonuses, perks, and other things that companies are forced to do came originally because companies needed incentives to keep the talent when there was an artificial wage limit placed on them.

An anecdotal story:

about 2 years ago I was applying to work for a game company as a senior environment artist. I almost had the job, had two interviews, they really liked me and my portfolio. But there was a hiccup, as their company had suddenly received a lower than expected earnings and they decided not to hire as many people.

I went through an employment agency, so I didn't have the ability to determine the minimum of my wage. The employment agency controlled that minimum ($27/h)

I was later told that they couldn't afford to hire me. I was thoroughly disappointing and even told t he agency I was willing to work the same job for $20/h. But because the agency had set a base minimum I couldn't do that. I ended up losing out on that job.

Artificial barriers on wages has a direct effect on employer/employee relationship. And if the agency didn't have these barriers, I would have been able to sell myself for 20$. You may say, well I'd be ripping myself off. You'd be right, but at t he same time, I thought then, as I do now, it would have been totally worth it even at 20.

By now you should realize that lisa's posts boil down to:

1. remove immigrants

2. Put boots on ME for the third time

3. Republican party is the one true party

I'm still trying to figure out how you got started on lowering the minimum wage.
Who suggested that? Where did it come from? Why would we do it?

What timing.

Workers at the Carrier manufacturing plant in Indianapolis were caught on video booing and jeering after being told that the plant would be relocated to Monterey, Mexico.

{ A YouTube video showed Chris Nelson, the company's president, delivering the news on Wednesday. The plant employs roughly 1,400 people.

Nelson said it was "strictly a business decision" that was made in order to "stay competitive and protect the business for the long term."

The company's distribution center will also be relocated to Monterey, where Carrier has existing operations. }

Who suggested that?

Chewybunny.

Yep. I stand by it.
Federal minimum wage laws should be drastically lowered.
There I said it. Again.
States have the option to set their own minimum wage laws as long as it's above federal minimum wage. I'd rather have the states have that control – and if successful, which I am sure such measures would be, even on county level.

And I think better solutions to raising the minimum wage would be to drastically make the business environment in America far friendlier than it is today. Jesus Christ, when even the "socialist" presidential candidate is making an argument for us to mimic countries with far better business environment, you KNOW we've got issues.

Okay, well there's a difference between lowering the minimum wage and getting rid of the federal minimum wage in favor of state rights. If you're going to actually have a minimum wage, doing it by state is more efficient. Some major cities even have their own higher local minimum wage, Chicago does that.

I still don't get how we got to lowering the min wage in general and the whole economy following downwards, which isn't even what would happen.

Because people assume that wages are determined by their minimum, when they aren't.

More on Carrier, which is blowing up on facebook:

{ Carrier’s workers are categorized into a two-tier wage system. A quarter of the workers make about $14 an hour -- about $30,000 a year -- and the rest make about $26 an hour, or about $55,000 a year. The higher-wage workers, however, can earn more than $70,000 a year with overtime. Carrier declined to say how much it would pay workers in Mexico. }

A new question for this thread:

So how can they compete.

The reality is, our economy is rapidly changing and shifting. What our parents' generation considered stable middle class jobs are no more. Hell, even what was considered a stable job in the 90s isn't guaranteed anymore. So, in as much as I am advocate of little government intervention I think there does need to be a program that adresses the fact that there ARE in fact a lot of adults with no realistic skills that are viable right now.

For those adults I would create a supplementary program that is added unto unemployment benefits. Essentially, the program would allow the participant to extend their unemployment benefits as long as the participant is enrolled in either a trade school, community college, or actual college.

For up-and-coming school kids, I would make programming, 3D modeling, and financial literacy essential classes starting in middle school to high school.

Expanding access to cheaper trade-schools, and community college programs for lower-socio-economic background students. In fact, I would highly encourage them to try out plumbing, welding, electrician type jobs as they are stable, pay really well, and require less initial investment of time, money, and energy to attain.

Legislatively I would go through every regulation that forms a barrier of entry economically.

I would engage in structural patent reform, especially in copyright litigation. Strengthen the ability for smaller firms to fight copyright infringement accusations, etc.

Lowering corporate taxes to 15%, Reduce federal minimum wage to $3.50, let states decide what minimum wage would be. So states that would like to encourage more business could offer better incentives.

It's not that hard.

Listen, fellas, I know a lot of you want a Presidential Candidate that promises you a lot of free things. I understand the appeal of being angry at these nebulous evil rich people. But the reality is, YOU being poor is partially a result of Government making it difficult for employers to hire you. You aren't guaranteed a job as a right. So instead of fighting the very people you want to be employed by, how about joining in with them?

Forgot to add: I would like to also obliterate child labor laws. They were necessary in the 19th century, adn the early 20th, but they are no longer necessary. They create barriers of entry to teenagers who want an early start in gaining job experience.

Forgot to add: I would like to also obliterate child labor laws. They were necessary in the 19th century, adn the early 20th, but they are no longer necessary. They create barriers of entry to teenagers who want an early start in gaining job experience.

Isn't it wonderful how child labor and sweatshops are all a thing of the past.

Those laws exist to make sure kids at least go to school until they're 16. We're not trying to churn out human-robots who only know how to do one thing on an assembly line for the rest of their life. We could stand to tighten it up in a few areas but it'd have to come with public education reform, it's impractical before then.

We need to get other countries to actually enforce the worker's rights parts of the trade agreements they sign, but that would destroy their developing economies and we know it.

So just throwing out a hypothetical. What would realistically happen if the minimum wage was raised 30 dollars? Give your best guesses.

A good chunk of people would be immediately unemployed. As businesses will strive to make up the difference in cost.
A lot of businesses will go under or move out of the country. Because paying someone 30 dollars to flip burgers is not a profitable way of doing business.

Essentially, the highschool diploma wielding burger flipper is going to be competing with someone making 30 dollars an hour. Which is usually someone with a lot of college and work experience.

I do not understand why this is such a hard concept to fathom that you'd have to throw out such an extreme hypothetical.

["Expanding access to cheaper trade-schools, and community college programs for lower-socio-economic background students. In fact, I would highly encourage them to try out plumbing, welding, electrician type jobs as they are stable, pay really well, and require less initial investment of time, money, and energy to attain."]

I agree with this but from what i have seen in my college career is that can be summed up nicely as the saying "you can lead a horse to water but you cant make him drink". i got my first associates degree in a low cost community college that is in a steel town that got hit hard with job losses over the years. I got my first degree in Industral Electrical Maintenance. One thing i notied is that 98% of the people in my classes were either going for job payed classes and/or at least ten to twelve years older than me on average. the very few people my age were taking some of those classes for a BS in Electrical Engineering . Nothing wrong with that but the market for electrical engineers got saturated quite quickly while companies are moaning about not being able to find skilled trades men. Some companies have even stared up their own apprenticeship programs to try and find skilled workers. Some of the young people ive seen try the welding and HVAC programs only get certificates in the basic forms of HVAC and welding. If you want to make the good money in hose types of jobs, you need to continue on and focus on a certian type of section of the skill. For example, if you just take the basic welding certificate program, you will likely earn less then someone who has been certified to weld oil pipes or perform welds that require constant xrays. Or the basic home furnace repairman is likely to earn less then someone who works on heavy duty industrial HVAC and boiler systems.

This also brings me to another point

["Listen, fellas, I know a lot of you want a Presidential Candidate that promises you a lot of free things. I understand the appeal of being angry at these nebulous evil rich people. But the reality is, YOU being poor is partially a result of Government making it difficult for employers to hire you. You aren’t guaranteed a job as a right. So instead of fighting the very people you want to be employed by, how about joining in with them?"]

One of the things about those skilled trades is that they are VERY demanding from the workers. Many companies who pay their workers well expect the very best from them 110% of the time. They expect you to be on time to your shift, have personal responibility for ALL of your actions and get your job done. A good chunk of those skilled jobs that open up are for off shifts which can start anywhere from 2PM til 2 AM and have a lot of overtime as well. Nothing like installing new high voltage lines from 2am sunday until 1PM. most people from ages18-25 would run away if asked to do something like that. Also with the "me" generation, Acting entitled in a skilled trade is an excellent way to get canned. If your boss needs you to work a manditory Saturday shift from 4am until 6pm runnnig new sewer lines, and decide to go protest the latest issue, you will likely be getting a pink slip of paper. Having the "15$ a hour to flip burgers" mentality will have the employer see you as a financial liability where as someone who comes into work every day on time and does their job corectly every time as a key asset. I just cant see many people my age doing well in those skilled trades unless they undergo a mentality switch to where they learn that they have to EARN their keep. Not expect free handouts