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LorrdErnie posted:please help im a complete moron Context-free quoting is fun!
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May 11, 2015 19:56
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Are big macs significantly more expensive in countries where minimum wage is already higher than $15? If not, why would it be different for America?
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May 11, 2015 19:57
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QuarkJets posted:
Dude you have absolutely no idea how business works and I pray god you are never anywhere near the levers of policy. =/
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May 11, 2015 19:59
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ElCondemn posted:Are big macs significantly more expensive in countries where minimum wage is already higher than $15? If not, why would it be different for America? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index twodot fucked around with this message at 20:26 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 20:12
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wateroverfire posted:Dude you have absolutely no idea how business works and I pray god you are never anywhere near the levers of policy. =/ ...do you? None of the three items you quoted are particularly controversial. Which ones do you disagree with and why?
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May 11, 2015 20:17
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JeffersonClay posted:Context-free quoting is fun! The rest of the context of his statement: "And to be perfectly honest, I'm not that concerned about the US bottom 20% either, but I'm a hell of a lot more concerned for them than I am for the US upper middle class" This still means that he isn't that concerned about them but also that he is not concerned about the upper middle class. We are talking about helping the american poor so just maybe it might still be relevant to the idea that he doesn't actually care about them? The rest of my statement: please help im a complete moron who doesnt understand what cost of living is does this seem to be A. Me shamefully admitting that I've failed to understand a basic economic concept or B. Me making fun of someone for failing to understand a basic economic concept Funnily enough it's me making fun of the exact same guy for the exact same reason it was obvious he didn't care about poor Americans
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May 11, 2015 20:25
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No, the context you're excluding is the comparison to the global poor. "Compared to the global poor, I'm not that concerned about Americans in poverty" does not mean "I don't care about the poor"
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May 11, 2015 20:31
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LorrdErnie posted:hmmm is quoting something talking about what they mean and using that to represent what they mean the same thing as quoting someone making fun of someone else and using that to represent what they mean? if only it were possible to check the two things and tell what they meant from the convenient link that was posted Unrelated to the above, but related to your earlier stupidity: Poor Americans (bottom 5%) are in the top 30% globally, adjusting for cost of living. So while you were probably going for B, you seemed to hit A. That doesn't mean they're doing great or that they shouldn't be helped (especially if the conversation is dominated by people who are opposed to global solutions), but that means that 70% of the world is doing worse. LorrdErnie posted:If you exclude mortgages the average debt still exceeds 38k which is a significant thing up until you approach the 60-100k group which, again, is where you are starting to become financially secure, not the group that I'm most concerned about. What is currently being defined as the upper middle class is what used to be called "middle class" when you look at inflation and modern cost of living. Food prices have increased much more rapidly than inflation, gas prices have increased much more rapidly than inflation, medical prices have increased much more rapidly than inflation, college prices have increased much more rapidly than inflation and so on and so forth. You showed numbers that were in no way linked to the minimum wage. Ok, New York is expensive and an upper middle class salary in New York is not the same as in Oklahoma. Now the next step would be for you to show that minimum wage workers in New York are actually from high income households thus distorting the figures, which you haven't done. Or that minimum wage workers are from households with a lot of people, meaning that they need more money to survive and their household income isn't representative. For all I know, minimum wage workers could actually be mostly in Oklahoma, making the fact that 19% of them come from the 60-80% quintile even more astonishing. Basically, it all sounds like a bunch of  about how poor the upper middle class, or the global 0.5%, is. Until you actually show why minimum wage workers being distributed 25-25-18-19-13 (bottom 20%, 40% etc.) is not representative, let's just stick to that.And lol at you trying to justify a policy that helps upper middle class families and hurts non-working poor through price increases with your "help is not a binary state". Let me guess, next you're going to tell me how the wealth is going to trickle down? Yes, going from $15k to $30k is a bigger thing than going from $100k to $115k but that doesn't change the fact that you're still advocating a policy that will make some people go from $100k to $115k while leaving most people at $15k untouched. It's going to help almost as many people go from $100k to $115k as $15k to $30k (broadly speaking bottom 20% vs 4th quintile). How do you not see how ridiculous that is? If it was a case of the rising tide lifting all boats, that would be fine but it's actually a rising tide that leaves a lot of the $15k people half way under water. It's funny how there are many realistic policy options that affect poor families almost exclusively (TANF for example), yet expanding these is completely unrealistic to you so you go for the policy that creates inflation for most poor people (who are not affected by it). Geriatric Pirate fucked around with this message at 20:41 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 20:38
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JeffersonClay posted:No, the context you're excluding is the comparison to the global poor. "Compared to the global poor, I'm not that concerned about Americans in poverty" does not mean "I don't care about the poor" Rather, "because of the global poor I'm not concerned about Americans in poverty" He says: "Households with incomes from $60k-$100k, i.e. the global 0.5%, are now poor by your definition. So the fact that the minimum wage helps them almost as much as it does the bottom 20% is all of a sudden ok because everyone is so poor"" I then ask him "Do you have an argument for why poverty just being people in the bottom 20% is a more meaningful measurement than their security in their access to the necessities of life? Do you have an argument for why we should ignore the global 0.5% which is the people who are barely not insecure in these things that doesn't apply to the global 1% that is the bottom quintile who are totally insecure in their access to necessities?" He replies: "These poor poor upper middle class people, they have such big mortgages that they're actually poor And to be perfectly honest, I'm not that concerned about the US bottom 20% either, but I'm a hell of a lot more concerned for them than I am for the US upper middle class" If you follow basic logic from there this leads to the meaning of the part of his statement meaning "'I'm not that concerned about the US bottom 20%" meaning strangely enough "I'm not that concerned about the US bottom 20%"
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May 11, 2015 20:41
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LorrdErnie posted:Rather, "because of the global poor I'm not concerned about Americans in poverty" Me: *Points out how your policy hurts the poor through price increases, seems to benefit upper middle class people, who you classify as poor because they have debt or something* You: *Desperately trying to spin my statements to make it seem like I don't want to help the poor*
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May 11, 2015 20:45
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wateroverfire posted:Dude you have absolutely no idea how business works and I pray god you are never anywhere near the levers of policy. =/ Do you have any actual counterarguments, or are you just here to chew gum and shitpost?
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May 11, 2015 20:46
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Me: *Points out how your policy hurts the poor through price increases, seems to benefit upper middle class people, who you classify as poor because they have debt or something* Why are you dodging back and forth between saying that the bottom quintile is poor and also part of the 0.5% (lol)? Where, exactly, do the non-working poor get their money that isn't inflation-pegged welfare payments?
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May 11, 2015 20:48
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JeffersonClay posted:I do see a massive change in American politics on the horizon as demographic change is going to continue marginalizing the Republican Party. There's a real possibility that Democrats could have veto-proof majorities in the next few decades, and could pass the fundamental reforms that the poor desperately need. That will be harder if the bootstraps solve poverty ideology gains more traction in the Democratic Party, and the minimum wage makes the bootstraps argument more plausible. That's been the status quo for the Democratic party at least since Clinton's triangulation in the 90's led to him gutting welfare. This discussion over minimum wage is the result of that, not a cause of further cuts later on. If you have some way to get democrats to shut the gently caress up about workfare, I'm all ears. There's no reason to think that raising the minimum wage would entrench that any further though.
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May 11, 2015 20:57
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Geriatric Pirate posted:justify a policy that helps upper middle class families and hurts non-working poor through price increases I just don't understand why you think there's a huge amount of non-working poor. But even if there were, any price increase is going to affect them since they're not earning income, by that logic anything that increases prices should never be allowed. Especially since you think there's a huge number of poor people with trust funds that would be negatively impacted.
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May 11, 2015 21:04
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QuarkJets posted:Do you have any actual counterarguments, or are you just here to chew gum and shitpost? he only ever posts in D&D because he gets off on getting dogpiled by and talking down to D&D posters
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May 11, 2015 21:04
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GlyphGryph posted:...do you? Yes. =) QuarkJets posted:Do you have any actual counterarguments, or are you just here to chew gum and shitpost? It's working for everyone else ITT so why not me? You're not thinking long term and you're applying assumptions (that businesses have maximized prices, and minimized employment) that don't hold when you radically change the cost of inputs, which is what a $15 minimum wage would do. On the price side, there's limited room to push prices up if your costs go up but your competitors' don't. But if everyone feels the same pinch they've all got the same pressure to raise prices and less incentive to compete on price, so the dynamic is not the same. We've seen that here in Chile as the peso went from oscillating around 490 or so to oscillating around 620 and stayed there. It takes time for pressures to percolate into higher prices but as contracts come due and companies have to deal with the reality of a different const structure they adjust to recapture their margins. Same story with employment. If the cost of employing people goes up and stays up companies will start looking for ways to do more with less and ways to demand more of the people they already have. There's no static optimum employment, in the long run, independant of what it costs to keep people. In the short run companies will try not to fire people but over time it's going to happen if the change in costs is large enough. And $15 would change the poo poo out of labor costs. 45% of workers affected at all levels of the supply chain, costs compounded at each step. Companies are going to adjust and eating lower margins is a thing that will only happen in the short term.
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May 11, 2015 21:05
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have you addressed the fact that demand will go up.
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May 11, 2015 21:10
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Well, like I'm saying, having a higher minimum wage makes the bootstraps argument more plausible and might drive a wedge between poor people who benefit from the minimum wage and those who don't. Their response to future anti-poverty measures might be "instead of giving money away to those moochers, why don't we just raise the minimum wage again?" Unless you think there is no chance of any class solidarity existing in the Democratic Party this seems like a valid concern.
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May 11, 2015 21:11
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wateroverfire posted:Same story with employment. If the cost of employing people goes up and stays up companies will start looking for ways to do more with less and ways to demand more of the people they already have. There's no static optimum employment, in the long run, independant of what it costs to keep people. In the short run companies will try not to fire people but over time it's going to happen if the change in costs is large enough. If it takes 3 hours to make widget X and the price of labor goes up it will not have any impact on the time it takes to create widget X. The same amount of labor is still required, if you've ever worked at a restaurant you'd learn quickly that you can't maximize profits by overworking your staff. Though maybe they'll decide they should invest in that robot that was too expensive when labor was significantly cheaper. Either way, I think that's a good thing.
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May 11, 2015 21:13
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JeffersonClay posted:Well, like I'm saying, having a higher minimum wage makes the bootstraps argument more plausible and might drive a wedge between poor people who benefit from the minimum wage and those who don't. Their response to future anti-poverty measures might be "instead of giving money away to those moochers, why don't we just raise the minimum wage again?" Unless you think there is no chance of any class solidarity existing in the Democratic Party this seems like a valid concern. If $30,000 a year makes bootstraps measurably more plausible than when it was $15,000 a year for the minimum wage, either Americans are simply too stupid to survive or there's some kind of magical spell at play.
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May 11, 2015 21:16
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JeffersonClay posted:Well, like I'm saying, having a higher minimum wage makes the bootstraps argument more plausible and might drive a wedge between poor people who benefit from the minimum wage and those who don't. Their response to future anti-poverty measures might be "instead of giving money away to those moochers, why don't we just raise the minimum wage again?" Unless you think there is no chance of any class solidarity existing in the Democratic Party this seems like a valid concern. So what is your solution? Never increase wages because some people will earn more than others? If people are dying in the streets because the wage gap makes it impossible to survive maybe your dystopian future might be a bit different? Instead of seeing dead people on the street and thinking "god drat moochers" we'll see a mass of dead bodies and say "hey, is someone going to do something about all the dead bodies?"
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May 11, 2015 21:17
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Lyesh posted:That's been the status quo for the Democratic party at least since Clinton's triangulation in the 90's led to him gutting welfare. This discussion over minimum wage is the result of that, not a cause of further cuts later on. If you have some way to get democrats to shut the gently caress up about workfare, I'm all ears. There's no reason to think that raising the minimum wage would entrench that any further though. Now if they have an argument that an increased minimum wage is inherently a conservative idea I'm all ears, but I'm not sure they do. That some conservatives like it is not an argument for that claim. There can be multiple motivations for a policy from different parts of the political spectrum. JeffersonClay posted:I do see a massive change in American politics on the horizon as demographic change is going to continue marginalizing the Republican Party. There's a real possibility that Democrats could have veto-proof majorities in the next few decades, and could pass the fundamental reforms that the poor desperately need. That will be harder if the bootstraps solve poverty ideology gains more traction in the Democratic Party, and the minimum wage makes the bootstraps argument more plausible. *all else being equal, of course, but the exceptions might be things like "expanded immigration" or "measures to reduce emissions and combat global warming," not "minimum wage". Everything we do will impact how politics goes in the future, it's pointless to try and restrain ourselves just because we might think we could get better stuff when I'm in my 60s.
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May 11, 2015 21:21
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Prices will increase but that doesn't matter too much. But you are straight up wrong on employment, employment is a structural phenomena, if a business could do 'more with less' it would already be doing that (Which is what we are already experiencing, with the 'jobless recovery' and all). Growing unemployment is a dysfunction of capitalism and increasing automation, it's not due to worker wages (which are just spent on consumption anyway). But blaming unemployment on worker rights is such a farcical dodge anyway, if people aren't earning a living wage then their fact that they're 'employed' doesn't mean they're being treated with human dignity. I'm sure slavery has a high employment percentage, but it's still outlawed because it's disrespectful to the workers. Same poo poo here, people need a living wage and the cost of living has only gone up.
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May 11, 2015 21:23
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Effectronica posted:If $30,000 a year makes bootstraps measurably more plausible than when it was $15,000 a year for the minimum wage, either Americans are simply too stupid to survive or there's some kind of magical spell at play. Americans are stupid and vote against their own interests, news at 11! "If you're too poor, get a job" makes more intuitive sense the higher wages go. ElCondemn posted:So what is your solution? Never increase wages because some people will earn more than others? If people are dying in the streets because the wage gap makes it impossible to survive maybe your dystopian future might be a bit different? Instead of seeing dead people on the street and thinking "god drat moochers" we'll see a mass of dead bodies and say "hey, is someone going to do something about all the dead bodies?" Let's assume I'm right for a second. Would implementing the minimum wage still be worth it if that delayed more fundamental economic reforms? I don't expect anyone to have a cut and dry answer. I'd say it would still be worth it if the minimum wage made some significant positive impact on the poor, but I'm not confident that's actually true.
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May 11, 2015 21:28
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JeffersonClay posted:Americans are stupid and vote against their own interests, news at 11! "If you're too poor, get a job" makes more intuitive sense the higher wages go. That's not the bootstraps argument. The bootstraps argument is about class mobility. You stupid gently caress. In addition, it's not an argument based in reality. It's a platitude to avoid thinking.
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May 11, 2015 21:32
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JeffersonClay posted:Let's assume I'm right for a second. Would implementing the minimum wage still be worth it if that delayed more fundamental economic reforms? I don't expect anyone to have a cut and dry answer. I'd say it would still be worth it if the minimum wage made some significant positive impact on the poor, but I'm not confident that's actually true. This is actually a pretty easy one, have minimum wage increases had a negative impact on the poor in the past? If not we can assume min wage increases in the future would have similar effects, no? In my lifetime minimum wage has gone from 3.30 to 7.25 with unemployment and poverty rates declining up until about 2009 (now nearly back to what they were before 2009), so the minimum wage has more than double in my lifetime and there has been little discernible effect on the poor. So what makes you so wary?
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May 11, 2015 21:39
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perhaps you missed the nine pages of frantic gradeschool math trying to prove theres 170 million americans that are poor and will be hurt by minimum wage increases through spiralling hyperinflation
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May 11, 2015 21:44
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RBC posted:perhaps you missed the nine pages of frantic gradeschool math trying to prove theres 170 million americans that are poor and will be hurt by minimum wage increases through spiralling hyperinflation I've been reading, I'm just not seeing anything but "what if" arguments as if there's no way to tell what would happen.
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May 11, 2015 21:50
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Effectronica posted:That's not the bootstraps argument. The bootstraps argument is about class mobility. You stupid gently caress. The bootstraps argument is that hard work will allow you to pull yourself out of poverty. Yes, it is a platitude. Yes, it makes more sense if wages are higher. You are the shittiest troll. ElCondemn posted:This is actually a pretty easy one, have minimum wage increases had a negative impact on the poor in the past? If not we can assume min wage increases in the future would have similar effects, no? When we look at the effects of previous minimum wage increases we don't see unambiguously positive results.
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May 11, 2015 21:50
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JeffersonClay posted:The bootstraps argument is that hard work will allow you to pull yourself out of poverty. Yes, it is a platitude. Yes, it makes more sense if wages are higher. You are the shittiest troll. You understand that the people who espouse the argument don't really care about whether it's related to reality, and that the people who repeat it don't care about that either?
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May 11, 2015 21:52
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JeffersonClay posted:The bootstraps argument is that hard work will allow you to pull yourself out of poverty. Yes, it is a platitude. Yes, it makes more sense if wages are higher. You are the shittiest troll. Do we see negative results? Where is the concern coming from? Last time we had a minimum wage increase the same arguments were trotted out but at worst we've seen no change.
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May 11, 2015 21:53
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Effectronica posted:You understand that the people who espouse the argument don't really care about whether it's related to reality, and that the people who repeat it don't care about that either? If the poor people who benefit from the minimum wage start believing it, that could make passing better policies more difficult. ElCondemn posted:Do we see negative results? Where is the concern coming from? Last time we had a minimum wage increase the same arguments were trotted out but at worst we've seen no change. We don't see significant employment impacts. We do see moderate price impacts. It's quite possible that large minimum wage increases will have more substantial effects than the smaller historical examples we try to extrapolate from. I think incrementally increasing the minimum wage and monitoring the effects is probably the best option right now.
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May 11, 2015 22:01
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JeffersonClay posted:If the poor people who benefit from the minimum wage start believing it, that could make passing better policies more difficult. So we're back to "Americans are so stupid they regularly drown in rain".
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May 11, 2015 22:03
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JeffersonClay posted:I think incrementally increasing the minimum wage and monitoring the effects is probably the best option right now. Right, that's exactly what is being proposed. In Seattle we are rolling out the change over the coming years, do you think proponents of the min wage increase are asking for an overnight change? Why do you assume that's how it will be handled? Here's the roll out schedule, seems pretty good to me, lots of provisions to make it a more gradual change for smaller businesses. http://murray.seattle.gov/minimumwage/#sthash.qb5CVBCV.dpbs ElCondemn fucked around with this message at 22:08 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 22:05
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wateroverfire posted:You're not thinking long term and you're applying assumptions (that businesses have maximized prices, and minimized employment) that don't hold when you radically change the cost of inputs, which is what a $15 minimum wage would do. None of that is a substantial rebuttal to anything that I said. In fact, some of it explicitly agrees with what I said. I suspect that you didn't even read the whole post Going paragraph by paragraph A) We're talking about permanent changes in labor costs, profitability, and potentially prices and staffing. This is all long term. None of my assumptions only hold in the short-term. B ) Not everyone feels the same pinch. For instance, In N Out pays their employees substantially more than the federal minimum wage, so they're going to feel "the pinch" a lot less than McDonalds. More importantly, my post allowed for long-term price changes, especially as demand increases, so I don't know how you can claim that it doesn't. In any case, once a minimum wage in place then supply/demand pressure is what dominates changes in prices, not a minimum wage increase that occurred N years ago. C) Yes, I explicitly suggested that automation and "doing more with less" is something that employers would have greater pressure to seek out. But this is a red herring; these pressures already exist! Every employer seeks to do as much as they can with as few people as possible because that's the whole point of running a business: to maximize profits. Higher wages could bring on automation sooner, but that's a tangential discussion that really belongs in another thread (the oncoming eradication of menial labor as robotics advancements continue to increase) D) Yes, I explicitly said that a minimum wage increase will change labor costs. That's obvious. But it only really effects the bottom rungs here, in the US. GIven that we barely manufacturing anything anymore, it's unclear what your argument is meant to convey. You haven't provided any evidence to back up your claim that lower margins would be temporary. Higher minimum wage does not make automation cheaper, nor does it significantly change a supply/demand curve, so why would these other factors readjust significantly just to bring profit back to where it was? What mechanism causes these changes, and why?
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May 11, 2015 22:07
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We should really restrain our discussion about ameliorating poverty to policy choices that could reasonably be enacted in the current American political environment. You know, reality, where the American electorate is smart, well-informed and votes in their own self-interest.
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May 11, 2015 22:09
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JeffersonClay posted:We should really restrain our discussion about ameliorating poverty to policy choices that could reasonably be enacted in the current American political environment. You know, reality, where the American electorate is smart, well-informed and votes in their own self-interest. Can you be more clear? your sarcasm is making it hard to understand what you're complaining about.
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May 11, 2015 22:11
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JeffersonClay posted:We should really restrain our discussion about ameliorating poverty to policy choices that could reasonably be enacted in the current American political environment. You know, reality, where the American electorate is smart, well-informed and votes in their own self-interest. You just said that people making 30,000 dollars a year are going to believe that this will allow them to become rich. How this is going to happen when poorer people have consistently voted lefter is left as an exercise for the reader. ElCondemn posted:Can you be more clear? your sarcasm is making it hard to understand what you're complaining about. Americans are stupid, ignorant, and vote against their interests, in his view, and that's why people voted Obama in twice.
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May 11, 2015 22:14
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JeffersonClay posted:When we look at the effects of previous minimum wage increases we don't see unambiguously positive results. We don't see unambiguously negative results, which we'd have to if any of the anti-minwage arguments were correct. We do see unambiguously positive results: people who were making less had their incomes boosted, which is good for those people.
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May 11, 2015 22:40
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Americans voted for Obama twice and then elected a republican legislature because they are very savvy and just wanted maximum gridlock -- a serious poster. We do unambiguously see negative effects. We unambiguously see positive effects as well. there is ambiguity about which effects dominate. JeffersonClay fucked around with this message at 22:46 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 22:42
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