|
Geriatric Pirate posted:Hmmm, it's missing key stats like "Median age: 24"[citation needed] and "Equally like to be from a household in the top 20% of incomes as the bottom 20%"[citation needed] or "Average family income: $53000"[citation needed] LeoMarr posted:a system where economic fortitude is directly related to population happiness and prosperity? wow! Yes, I agree, having strong labor unions does increase the happiness and prosperity of the population, we should get right on that
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 03:50 |
|
|
Geriatric Pirate posted:About 3% (of the work force) for the federal minimum wage, about 5% including all state minimum wages. Source: BLS, some math What % earn less than $15
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:12
|
|
|
Geriatric Pirate posted:(who are almost as likely to be from a household in the top 20% of income as the bottom 20%) So to start off unfortunately I didn't find statistics that cut off at the quintile rather than the yearly amount you make on minimum wage but it's relatively easy to approximate from there and the numbers not being exact gives me the opportunity to to give your position the advantage throughout it.  The bottom quintile cuts off at roughly 20k and the upper quintile begins at roughly 100k, the numbers are actually slightly over on both of those but again I don't mind throwing you that slight edge. bottom quintile: 18.6% + some portion of 32.4% top quintile: 13.6 Even if you assume that 0% of those earning between 15k and 40k are in the range from 15-20k there are only 73.12% as many people in the top quintile earning minimum wage as in the bottom quintile. If you instead decide to say, use the percentage for all households from 15k-40k that fall between 15-20k to determine the percentage of the chunk you give it (approximately 20.61% as you can see here)  So even assuming the distribution of minimum wage households is roughly the same as the distribution of all households (which we know isn't true because the top quintile contains only 13.6% and the bottom two quintiles which cut off at roughly 40k contain around half of the households, again trying to give you every possible advantage) you get the following bottom quintile: 18.6+ (20.61% of 32.4)=25.28% top quintile: 13.6% Even with these extremely generous parameters you get the top quintile containing only 53.8% of the minimum wage workers that the bottom quintile does. Just for fun let's do the top and bottom 2/5ths of household incomes since they're even easier to pull out from this data due to convenient cutoff points. The 3rd quintile begins at just under 40k, roughly 38k. Since reality isn't on your side I'm willing to take off 3% of their share of their population for that 2000 dollars. that leaves you with: bottom two quintiles: 18.6+32.4-3=48% the 4th quintile begins at a little over 60k, about 2000 over, still I don't feel a need to exclude the extras who earn between 60k and 62k because it won't change the overall results excessively in any case. top two quintiles: 19+13.6=32.6 This makes it so, even with the 3 percentage point penalty the top two quintiles only include 67.92% of those in the bottom two quintiles. (if we just assumed that the 2ks balanced each other out it'd be 63.92%) Although not quite as striking as nearly double the workers like in the comparison between the extremes you wanted to make it's still nowhere near "almost as likely" even for this extended range. Finally let's take these percentages and put them down into real numbers of people and dollars to make this a little bit more concrete and easy to grasp. There are about 1.6 million people currently earning the minimum wage. That means that there are about 217k people in the top quintile. In the bottom quintile unfortunately for your point there are about 404k workers. Pie charts for a visual display of the difference because why not:    And a chart for all households divided into the same sections for comparison purposes.  So yeah you are very very very wrong. Minimum wage workers are, obviously enough even without the data, more likely to be poor than wealthy. This, again obviously by common sense as well as the data, means that they in general have to spend a greater percentage of their income on bare subsistence. I assume that the data for some subgroups will be even more striking but I don't feel like looking it up and I basically only did this stuff because the data is right there and arithmetic is easy so I could get it done quickly and it was really obvious what the results were going to be before I even pulled up the tables. Edit: Dang those last few pages came really quickly... The ideology eater fucked around with this message at 00:01 on May 11, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:13
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:So in your mind, paying people less than a living wage and forcing them onto food stamps is equivalent to having public roads? Well if GP has actually been arguing for full communism this whole time (albeit in the dumbest way possible) then all is forgiven. If the government provides unlimited free food, housing and etc. there'd be no reason to have a minimum wage at all!
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:13
|
|
|
computer parts posted:About half of workers make under $17/hour. Sure, and if we define minimum wage worker as the slightly less than half of the population who'd be affected if the minimum wage rose to $15 overnight, things would obviously be different. Probably not in any way that would help the pro-min wage people here though.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:14
|
|
|
Geriatric Pirate posted:About 3% (of the work force) for the federal minimum wage, about 5% including all state minimum wages. Source: BLS, some math Look either the minimum wage is so wide-ranging that it strangles the economy and sends prices skyrocketing, or it's so narrow that it's a worthless waste of time, but like pick one and go with it. Contradicting yourself every other post isn't convincing in the least.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:14
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Central bank policy is producing lots of inflation though, because the fundamentals are deflationary and it has taken unprecedented amounts of direct cash injection to stave that off. No, this is right wing bullshit. And you're still ignoring the fact that it's nonsensical to compare temporary inflation used to counter economic cycles to permanent inflation. RBC posted:if only there were multiple real world examples from around the world to find out. oh well If you have any academic studies you'd like to add to the discussion, link them.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:15
|
|
|
Geriatric Pirate posted:Sure, and if we define minimum wage worker as the slightly less than half of the population who'd be affected if the minimum wage rose to $15 overnight, things would obviously be different. Let's do that then since it helps your position.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:15
|
|
|
Geriatric Pirate posted:What if, instead of calling it the "minimum wage", we called it the "randomized wage increase lottery" where we gave a random selection of 5% of young workers from each decile of household income a raise? And funded that with a VAT, with a special focus on goods that poor people like to buy. Geriatric Pirate Apr 25, 2008 REMEMBER WHEN READING MY POSTS THAT I AM LITERALLY LAUGHING AT PEOPLE FOR DESCRIBING HOW HARD IT IS TO BE POOR IN THE USA, WHILE POSTING FROM A SCANDINAVIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. ALSO, DON'T READ MY POSTS, I AM A MORON BUT TOO STUPID TO KNOW IT.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:18
|
|
|
What is the difference between temporary and permanent inflation.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:19
|
|
|
LorrdErnie posted:
I got my stats from the paper posted, which used official data, though it was from the 1990s. Things may have changed. Based on your maths however, I suspect things have not changed much. Your estimation for the bottom quintile was 25% of minimum wage workers. Versus an expected 20%. Households making $60k-$100k have 19% of minimum wage earners. I think that really speaks for itself. No, it's not quite equal anymore between the top and bottom 20%, but it's clearly not the case that minimum wage workers are mostly from poor families.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:21
|
|
|
JeffersonClay posted:No, this is right wing bullshit. quote:And you're still ignoring the fact that it's nonsensical to compare temporary inflation used to counter economic cycles to permanent inflation. (a) central bank policy is permanently inflationary, (b) we wouldn't double the minimum wage every year. You do it once and then index it to inflation thereafter
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:23
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Look either the minimum wage is so wide-ranging that it strangles the economy and sends prices skyrocketing, or it's so narrow that it's a worthless waste of time, but like pick one and go with it. Contradicting yourself every other post isn't convincing in the least. Look, I know you want to hurt the poor even more by increasing minimum wage by a large amount, but you're going to have to be patient. I posted the effect a small increase had. I know the prospect a large increase screwing over the non-working poor and poor people unaffected by the minimum wage is making you cream your pants, but the regressive tax like price increases are real even when not so many people made minimum wage so hopefully that will be enough to keep you satisfied for now.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:25
|
|
|
Inflation from fed policy goes away when the policy ends. It's temporary. Inflation from the minimum wage is permanent because the minimum wage isn't going to end when the economy recovers.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:27
|
|
|
JeffersonClay posted:Inflation from fed policy goes away when the policy ends. It's temporary. Inflation from the minimum wage is permanent because the minimum wage isn't going to end when the economy recovers. [citation needed] euphronius posted:What is the difference between temporary and permanent inflation. it means that any day now the fed is going to be like "okay that's enough inflation, time to let prices settle to where they should be", they'll pull a big lever at Fed HQ and then suddenly gas will be $0.25/gallon and you'll be able to buy a moon pie for a nickel QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 21:32 on May 10, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:27
|
|
|
JeffersonClay posted:Inflation from fed policy goes away when the policy ends. It's temporary. Inflation from the minimum wage is permanent because the minimum wage isn't going to end when the economy recovers. What. We wouldn't increase the real minimum wage over and over again year after year. Indexing it to inflation doesn't cause more inflation because the real value remains the same.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:31
|
|
|
JeffersonClay posted:Inflation from fed policy goes away when the policy ends. No it doesn't. The inflation already happened when the policy was in effect. It's baked in.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:32
|
|
|
[quote="VitalSigns" post=""445160329"] (a) central bank policy is permanently inflationary [/quote] Lol no. When natural inflation is too low, it can promote inflation. When natural inflation is too high, it can reduce inflation. That's the whole point.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:36
|
|
|
JeffersonClay posted:Lol no. When natural inflation is too low, it can promote inflation. When natural inflation is too high, it can reduce inflation. That's the whole point. Reducing inflation is like reducing acceleration; you slow it down but you haven't actually gone backwards and so that inflation that you were increasing earlier is still all there now you are literally adding less each second not taking anything away. Edit- You need to fully stop accelerating if you want to change direction; I will leave it up to you to figure out how to remove inflation from the monetary system from there.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:38
|
|
|
so then what is the difference between natural and artificial inflation
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:38
|
|
|
JeffersonClay posted:Lol no. When natural inflation is too low, it can promote inflation. When natural inflation is too high, it can reduce inflation. That's the whole point. so in other words, permanently inflationary.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:39
|
|
|
we are approaching purestrain gold territory here
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:39
|
|
|
JeffersonClay posted:Lol no. When natural inflation is too low, it can promote inflation. When natural inflation is too high, it can reduce inflation. That's the whole point. And the target is always what? Inflationary! Explain how a one-time real minimum wage increase is "permanently inflationary" in a way that say another particular year's inflation was not, please.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:40
|
|
|
TJeffersonClay posted:Inflation from fed policy goes away when the policy ends. It's temporary. Inflation from the minimum wage is permanent because the minimum wage isn't going to end when the economy recovers. ty that makes theoretical sense but when has the fed ever been seriously deflationary.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:46
|
|
|
Sometimes the central bank says "whoa that was a lot of inflation in the 90s, let's not make that permanent" and burns huge piles of cash until Coke machines are 25 cents again.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:46
|
|
|
Indexing the minimum wage to inflation adds additional inflation. Each yearly nominal increase will add to inflation.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:57
|
|
|
So let's have a deflationary fed policy and inflationary minimum wage policy
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 22:02
|
|
|
What is the economy for? What is its use?
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 22:03
|
|
|
JeffersonClay posted:Indexing the minimum wage to inflation adds additional inflation. Each yearly nominal increase will add to inflation. but is that natural inflation, or artifical?
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 22:04
|
|
|
JeffersonClay posted:Indexing the minimum wage to inflation adds additional inflation. Each yearly nominal increase will add to inflation. No. By definition this cannot be true, indexing something to inflation means holding its price in real dollars constant. I think you are confused between nominal dollars and real dollars, see.... No gently caress it someone else take this, after explaining functions to asdf32 I can't be assed right now
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 22:05
|
|
I'm seriously disappointed in everyone that humored the marsh Russian's opinions.JeffersonClay posted:Indexing the minimum wage to inflation adds additional inflation. Each yearly nominal increase will add to inflation. I well remember the hyperinflationary spiral caused by indexing Social Security to inflation.
|
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 22:38
|
|
|
Hey, GP, who do you consider an affected worker in this $15/hr minimum wage thread? Just wondering, someone brought it up earlier and you seem to be operating under a completely different definition than everyone else in this thread since you seem to be pretending that the only people whose wage this would increase are the ones currently making minimum wage. Real talk though: Minimum wage would hurt people, and it would primarily hurt the upper middle class, who would likely see higher immediate costs but no related immediate benefits. Since this is the class most likely to own a great many small businesses, many would also see direct hits to income in the short term. From a purely selfish perspective, it make sense why this group would be opposed to raising the minimum wage. Psychologically, it's also a big hit to the middle middle class who are already making near the combined couple income of $30/hr, who will now be considered lower working class in terms of income level, even if their quality of life doesn't actually suffer. This is intolerable to a lot of people, who define themselves solely by those they are doing better than, who will see this as a "an insult to all the effort they put in to get to where they are". Minimum wage is hardly the best solution to the problem of the poor and can actually exacerbate income inequality by making harder and brighter the line between the upper and lower classes. It's also not strange at all why many people oppose it. But it is more feasible, politically, than any of the better alternatives, so it's still worth pursuing. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 23:02 on May 10, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 22:54
|
|
|
Nope, this is mostly all wrong too.VitalSigns posted:Describing it by total dollars doesn't make sense. That would imply that the same minimum wage change in a larger economy has a bigger impact on the economy because there are more workers, therefore more dollars. But, duh, the bigger economy is better able to absorb the change because it is bigger. The important thing is the percentage change in total labor costs. I have already proven to you that total labor costs are always something less than a linear function of minimum wage increases (only the limiting case, all workers are making exactly the minimum wage, is linear). You're fighting a war against middle school math and it is really bizarre to watch. Not change in percentage of total labor costs exactly but [labor cost change]/[total economy size]. Though they're similar. But see below, this is obvious and the fact that you're bothering to say it is an indicator you're not following along. Actually there is calculous here. Perhaps that's your problem. quote:If you double the minimum wage, and everyone makes minimum wage, you will double total labor costs in the economy. This is a linear relationship: Yep quote:If you double the minimum wage and some people currently make more than the minimum wage, their salaries will be something less than doubled, and total labor costs in the economy would be something less than doubled: Yep except now instead of doubling, like the example above, we doubled all the minimum wage people AND added new people too. That's exponential. The trick you used that you don't understand yourself is that you went from everyone being at minimum wage to a few people being on minimum wage. Your'e correct that this makes the impact lower. This almost sounds like its good for your point but it's not because what it means is exactly what I've been saying: past studies have looked at increases which are tiny in terms of dollars and larger increases have exponentially more impact. quote:An exponential relationship would mean something like you doubled the minimum wage and total labor costs in the economy increased by some power of that: Buddy all that it takes for the relationship to be exponential is that there is a ^ on the variable in question. Here it's the wage and there is. If you want an analogy, and I'm sure you won't follow this, we're talking about filling a container. The container is already filled to $7 [the current minimum wage] and you want to add more water (new wages) to raise the level. If the walls of the container are straight going from 7->8 will be the same as going from 8->9. That's linear with respect to wages and would represent your first example where everyone is at the minimum. But if the walls are sloped, like a funnel, then going from 8->9 takes more water than going from 7->8 and every increase takes more water still. The amount of water (new wages) will increase exponentially in this case. This is calculous, we're finding the area under the curve where one curve is the wage distribution (number of people making less than a given wage). Actually I have reason to think that wage distribution isn't linear and that the resulting exponent is actually larger than 2, but I haven't run the numbers. quote:Edits: clarity & niceness The primary thing here is how large the wage increase is compared to the economy. If the proposed policy will increase wages $10 billion in a $1 trillion economy that's 1%. This is the impact (good and bad) I'm talking about and this is the thing that increases exponentially. QuarkJets posted:Dude, I just watched Vital Signs explain to asdf32 the difference between exponential and linear functions. This came a day two days after failing to correctly calculate a percentage, and a few days after claiming that $15 is closer to $100 than it is to $7.50. I'm sad people think they can use math and science in politics when they don't understand it.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 23:11
|
|
|
This guy is literally blowing my mind with his genius economics
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 23:18
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:And the target is always what? Inflationary! Explain how a one-time real minimum wage increase is "permanently inflationary" in a way that say another particular year's inflation was not, please. No, you need to consider an interest rate target over the lifetime of the policy. When inflation is under the target, the Fed will promote inflation. When inflation is above the target, the Fed will promote deflation. Fed policy just smooths inflation over time. The inflation caused by current policy will be eliminated when the Fed is fighting against the other part of the business cycle. Net inflation is zero. VitalSigns posted:By definition this cannot be true, indexing something to inflation means holding its price in real dollars constant. Indexing a wage to inflation means that its value to the person receiving the wage stays constant. It doesn't mean that the value to everyone else is constant. If you're unemployed, inflation erodes your purchasing power. If the minimum wage is increased because of that inflation, labor becomes even more expensive and your purchasing power is eroded again.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 23:22
|
|
|
asdf32 posted:Yep except now instead of doubling, like the example above, we doubled all the minimum wage people AND added new people too. That's exponential. Why did we add new people, exactly?
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 23:23
|
|
|
asdf32 posted:I'm sad people think they can use math and science in politics when they don't understand it. 
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 23:25
|
|
|
euphronius posted:So let's have a deflationary fed policy and inflationary minimum wage policy That would hinder the ability of the Fed to promote sustainable growth and protect against boom and bust cycles.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 23:29
|
|
|
GlyphGryph posted:Hey, GP, who do you consider an affected worker in this $15/hr minimum wage thread? Just wondering, someone brought it up earlier and you seem to be operating under a completely different definition than everyone else in this thread since you seem to be pretending that the only people whose wage this would increase are the ones currently making minimum wage. Most people in this thread are once again completely detached from reality when it comes to demographics and have no idea who poor people actually are. There are only 148 million employed Americans. This means that about 165 million Americans are not working (includes children, elderly, disabled etc). Can you maybe see from that why minimum wage is not a good policy for helping poor people? Unless you think that poverty is concentrated among working Americans and their families, it's a policy that helps employed people and hurts people who are not working through price increases. $15 as a minimum wage would mean a wage increase for almost half of working Americans. Fine, I admit that clearly the demographics of such a group are different than current minimum wage workers. So then it's no longer a subsidy for a small group, of whom only 25% are part of poor households, but instead for most low wage working Americans. Now that doesn't change a single thing I said, and making the minimum wage increase up to $15 per hour affects almost half of workers (with some wages rising 50%). A normal minimum wage increase affects about 10% of workers with a max 21% increase. You'll most likely have job losses, you'll most likely have inflation. Who's going to be hurt most by this inflation? Probably the people who lose their jobs and the people who never had jobs to begin with. The paper I posted showed that the price impact is concentrated on businesses patronized by poor people. The psychological impact on the middle class is absolutely nothing compared to the actual, real purchasing power impact that this will have on those poor people who do not benefit from the policy. A normal minimum wage increase is a dumb policy because it's an anti-poverty policy that improves the income of a group where only about 25% actually come from poor households and actually hurts most other poor households. A $15 minimum wage is a dumb policy because it's literally mandating a wage increase for almost half of the working population. And you'd have to be completely delusional to think that that's not going to have serious consequences. But then again, looking at the names on this thread (Zeitgueist, VitalSigns, QuarkJets), I'm not really surprised. edit: Here's the BLS on how many workers are below the poverty line. http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2012/ted_20120405.htm 4.2% of full time workers below the poverty line. So minimum wage helps them... and then a ton of other people who are not below the poverty line. I guess they're more important than the tons of non-working poor below the poverty line. Geriatric Pirate fucked around with this message at 23:41 on May 10, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 23:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 03:50 |
|
|
Geriatric Pirate posted:I'm focusing on actual minimum wage workers is that a sudden change (or even a staggered change over less than 5 years) in the minimum wage to $15 is about as realistic as a GMI. People in this thread are handwaving away actually useful anti-poverty policies because they're unrealistic yet seem to think $15 might happen. Sorry, not even the Republicans hate poor people that much. lol
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 23:41
|
|