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Geriatric Pirate posted:Which you'll probably choose to ignore because in your mind changing the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 is the same as $7.25 to $15, and then someone will ask "why not $100?" and you'll come up with some weak excuse about how $100 is unreasonable blahblahblah but $15 is totally going to work, because you can phase it over 5 years and it won't be the same thing or something. This is like that slippery slope argument conservatives use when talking about gay marriage. "First they want to marry other men, soon they'll want to marry dogs!"
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May 15, 2015 02:34
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Series DD Funding posted:BLS data indicates average worker hours have been unchanged for at least a decade, even when you narrow it down to "retail trade" Series DD Funding posted:Because Walmart's average wages are already $11, yes. You should stop bringing up average in situations where averages are meaningless, it makes you look dumb. If I have an average of 11 and then force the minimum value to be 11, all this means is that my totals can at most double. Which is useful information, but not what you are acting like it is. Similarly, if you have an average of 40 hours with everyone working 40 hours, and then you pass a law saying that some benefit needs to be granted at 32 hours, this doesn't change the total hours of labour a company needs to employ, but it certainly changes how many they'd want from any individual employee! Assuming they don't want hire new people, the logical course of action would be to reduce as many people to just below 32 hours as possible, and then push those hours on to the employees that remain. If the benefit is large enough or expensive enough, this is true even if you have pay those employees overtime, and the medical mandate is easily that at lower pay grades. And yet, in the end, you've still got the same average of hours, even if 2/3rds of your work force has been moved to part time and the other third to 56 hours a week. So even if what you're saying is true (and I'm not entirely sold on the idea it is) it doesn't actually invalidate the point you're using it to invalidate.
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May 15, 2015 05:32
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VitalSigns posted:So when Seattle's $15 minimum wage doesn't cause any of the problems conservatives say it will, you're going to support raising it to $100 right, since whatever is true for $15 is true for $100, according to you? It's funny how you don't understand the "orders of magnitude" argument for why previous evidence on 20% increases in the minimum wage won't necessarily be valid for a 100% change, but seem to understand it perfectly well for $100.
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May 15, 2015 09:00
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ElCondemn posted:The study you keep referencing indicates a 2% increase in prices, which doesn't seem much higher than normal inflation (some years it's much lower even). The other arguments were about how they don't really help the poor (the whole stupid tangent about who is going to see the income boost) and that raising the minimum wage is at best going to be a wash, which is just plain stupid... so maybe that's why you feel like it's been ignored? And no, I didn't mean just one study. Many studies, even those that find no employment effects like the flawed Card and Krueger (1993) paper, find price increases. quote:I was giving this some thought before I posted actually. I think if people want $100/h and they're able to pass it, more power to them. I'm certain I'll be affected by that change drastically, but I really don't see why it would make things worse in this country. The ramifications are obviously going to be global, and I'm no expert, but I'd guess the world economy would be in flux for a while and it would even out and our dollars would probably be worthless anywhere else. QuarkJets posted:There was a single study suggesting that the price increases wouldn't be any worse than 3%,and the minwage opponents jumped on this as irrefutable proof that a minwage increase would be disastrous Man all those poor families sure love their cheetos, another great left-wing post about poor people right there 
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May 15, 2015 09:08
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Geriatric Pirate posted:It's funny how you don't understand the "orders of magnitude" argument for why previous evidence on 20% increases in the minimum wage won't necessarily be valid for a 100% change, but seem to understand it perfectly well for $100. x2 is not an order of magnitude And, of course, people used the same "well what about $100 then, checkmate liberals" argument back when the wage was being raised 20% to $7.25 and empirical observations showed it to be a poorly conceived one, so it's baffling that you are relying on it now VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 09:35 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 09:21
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Extrapolating from real data is well-known to be a risky and error-prone process. What is not so well known is this one weird tip: make up an imaginary data point an order of magnitude away and extrapolate back from there instead, liberals HATE it!!!
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May 15, 2015 09:53
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Geriatric Pirate posted:It's funny how you don't understand the "orders of magnitude" argument for why previous evidence on 20% increases in the minimum wage won't necessarily be valid for a 100% change, but seem to understand it perfectly well for $100. Your'e misusing the term "orders of magnitude"; that's used when something is increasing by at least a factor of 10, not a factor of 2
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May 15, 2015 10:03
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Man all those poor families sure love their cheetos, another great left-wing post about poor people right there I'm referring to neckbeards like yourself obviously, poor families generally aren't eating that many cheetos In any case, you keep missing the point that 3% is insignificant, normal inflation is usually greater than that
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May 15, 2015 10:04
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Our normal inflationary policies is to give free money to the rich, which is cool and good. If a price rise happens because a poor person got money, then it's bad and that poor person is a thief of value, stealing mah low prices
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May 15, 2015 10:25
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VitalSigns posted:x2 is not an order of magnitude What was the prevailing wage level when the federal minimum was raised to 7.25? Was that mostly formalizing something that had already happened in the market? That would explain why there might be little discernable effect.
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May 15, 2015 12:58
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VitalSigns posted:x2 is not an order of magnitude This sounds familiar. At 5% now an increase to $15 would be ~8x increase in people (to ~40%) with something on the order of a 50x increase in terms of wages. So yes what you're talking about probably is an order of magnitude increase in terms of actual impact.
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May 15, 2015 13:14
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Yeah, no, You don't understand how proportions work. We've gone over this already. E: VitalSigns posted:Which statement gives you the information you need to estimate how much the price tag on a Spacely Sprocket might increase next year? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 13:45 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 13:27
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wateroverfire posted:What was the prevailing wage level when the federal minimum was raised to 7.25? Was that mostly formalizing something that had already happened in the market? That would explain why there might be little discernable effect. From Card and Krueger's 1992 New Jersey/Pennsylvania study  No, their results were not predicated on the wage increase merely formalizing something that had already occurred in the market. If you're asking abut a different study, I'm sure you can find that information in the study about which you have concerns. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 13:40 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 13:35
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Your graphs refer to fast food workers only, so while clearly there was some movement, it doesn't address the "mostly" part of "mostly formalizing"
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May 15, 2015 13:50
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Your graphs refer to fast food workers only, so while clearly there was some movement, it doesn't address the "mostly" part of "mostly formalizing" The study was about employment in the fast food industry. Presumably because if you want to look at the employment effects of the minimum wage, you would look at employment among those affected by the minimum wage, not among those who aren't affected. But I am not an economist. If you've got a different study in mind, go to the data section and post it, and we can see whether the study's results depended on the nominal wage mostly formalizing what was already the case in the market for the population in question.
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May 15, 2015 13:55
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VitalSigns posted:Our normal inflationary policies is to give free money to the rich, which is cool and good. People are having trouble processing multiple peices of this puzzle at the same time. If minimum wage passes on most costs as price increases and if minimum wage workers are close to evenly distributed within the economy then minimum wage won't transfer wealth. Both of these things are true to a large extent. If minimum wage doesn't transfer wealth then it doesn't benefit the poor and doesn't even have the demand increasing benefits people here like. That's why both of these peices, including inflation, are important.
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May 15, 2015 14:02
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asdf32 posted:If minimum wage passes on most costs as price increases and if minimum wage workers are close to evenly distributed within the economy then minimum wage won't transfer wealth. Both of these things are true to a large extent. Labor costs and price increases are not 1-for-1 even if you assume 100% of the cost is passed on, because labor is not 100% of the input costs of most goods. But this circles back to your bizarre refusal to think about proportions when your ideology is on the line.
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May 15, 2015 14:05
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VitalSigns posted:Yeah, no, You don't understand how proportions work. We've gone over this already. A and B are the same information buddy. One as a percent the other not. This isn't the difference were discussing. We're discussing the difference between "15 is 2X 7", and "15 is ~50X 7". It doesn't matter whether you put either on of these in a percentage or not.
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May 15, 2015 14:13
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VitalSigns posted:Labor costs and price increases are not 1-for-1 even if you assume 100% of the cost is passed on, because labor is not 100% of the input costs of most goods. But this circles back to your bizarre refusal to think about proportions when your ideology is on the line. VitalSigns you are incredibly dense. If wages go up $X then X is coming from somewhere in the economy The question is whether it comes from capitalist's pockets as reduced profits or as price increases. If they raise prices a total of $X then the rest of the economy sees $X in increases prices. We don't care about proportions we care about X and who paid for it. There is no such thing as a fixed cost when looking at the whole economy - every cost is labor (or profit) of someone. The thing which enters this analysis which we skipped is foreign vs local which tells us whether foreigners are paying for our increase or not. That's that's not a huge variable.
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May 15, 2015 14:19
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asdf32 posted:Reminder: the question isn't whether $15 is fair or not. The question is whether a policy mandating $15 will result in a good outcome or not. It is a good outcome because it is fair.
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May 15, 2015 14:24
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Your analysis only holds true if 100% of labor costs are passed on in the form of price increases and 100% of all purchases are made by people either making minimum wage or who are financially dependent on people making minimum wage. You should reexamine these assumptions with a more critical eye, especially the latter one E: But don't neglect the former. For example, business profits are taxed, but money spent on wages is not. Businesses don't have to increase income by $1 to fully offset additional labor costs of $1. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 14:46 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 14:29
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asdf32 posted:A and B are the same information buddy. One as a percent the other not. No, a proportion is, by definition, more information than an absolute value as a proportion is expressed relative to another value (more information). One would think you would be wary about doubling down on your dubious knowledge of grade school math after earlier in this thread, but here we are.
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May 15, 2015 14:49
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asdf32 posted:A and B are the same information buddy. One as a percent the other not. Simply astonishing.
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May 15, 2015 14:50
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VitalSigns posted:Your analysis only holds true if 100% of labor costs are passed on in the form of price increases and 100% of all purchases are made by people either making minimum wage or who are financially dependent on people making minimum wage. No not if we're asking the question "does minimum wage help the poor". To answer that we examine the extent to which increased wages are passed on as cost increases and compare the demographics of those getting te increase vs those paying it. If we assume a general cost increase then everyone pays for it and minimum wage workers get it. If minimum wage workers barely skew towards poor (true) then it's a wash from a demographic point of view. I agree that the person whose wage went from $7 to $15 wins in every scenario. But no one here wants policy which takes money from some poor people to give it to others. Minimum wage comes close to exactly that. And all of this comes in before we try to decide how scared we are of employment downsides.
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May 15, 2015 14:54
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wateroverfire posted:What was the prevailing wage level when the federal minimum was raised to 7.25? Was that mostly formalizing something that had already happened in the market? That would explain why there might be little discernable effect. Maybe. The onus is on you to contextualize it, using data that you have found and analyzed yourself, rather than just saying 'hmmm sounds fishy'
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May 15, 2015 15:02
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archangelwar posted:No, a proportion is, by definition, more information than an absolute value as a proportion is expressed relative to another value (more information). One would think you would be wary about doubling down on your dubious knowledge of grade school math after earlier in this thread, but here we are. I'm not because while it's true I made a vocabulary mistake vital signs was posting: "It's not squared" 10x then changed subjects when he realized it was, then forgot even that is trying to go back to "but 2x isn't an order of magnitude". All while still not understanding fundimental components of this subject he's written 1000 posts on or economics. But like I said the proportion part is irrelevant to me, I'm telling you the numerator is like 50 when vital signs says its 2.
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May 15, 2015 15:03
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Even poor people who are unemployed now can benefit from an increase to the minimum wage: if they are married to a minimum wage earner or are financially dependent on one, or if they are looking for work and get hired in our recovering economy with falling unemployment. You're making the same mistake GP was making when he subtracted the number of workers from the total population and assumes that the livelihood of the other 200 million people are completely uncoupled from wage earners.
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May 15, 2015 15:04
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asdf32 posted:This sounds familiar. At 5% now an increase to $15 would be ~8x increase in people (to ~40%) with something on the order of a 50x increase in terms of wages. You seem to have done some math to get these numbers. Any chance we can see it?
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May 15, 2015 15:04
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asdf32 posted:No not if we're asking the question "does minimum wage help the poor". To answer that we examine the extent to which increased wages are passed on as cost increases and compare the demographics of those getting te increase vs those paying it. I too am concerned that minimum wage workers are already making too much money.
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May 15, 2015 15:06
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asdf32 posted:I'm not because while it's true I made a vocabulary mistake vital signs was posting: "It's not squared" 10x then changed subjects when he realized it was, then forgot even that is trying to go back to "but 2x isn't an order of magnitude". All while still not understanding fundimental components of this subject he's written 1000 posts on or economics. The relevant quantity, percentage increase in labor costs, does not increase by an order of magnitude even if the marginal additional cost does. This is the quantity I have always been talking about. Proportional increase in labor costs = (new costs + current costs)/(current costs) The quantity (A+B)/B does not increase proportionally to A until A becomes much much larger than B.
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May 15, 2015 15:09
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VitalSigns posted:The relevant quantity, percentage increase in labor costs, does not increase by an order of magnitude even if the marginal additional cost does. This is the quantity I have always been talking about. Christ. That simplifies to 1+A/B which demonstrates it's just adding a fixed offset. IE it changes the phrase "10% increase" to "110% of the old value". The 10 part doesn't even change. If you were to then take this offset proportion and compare it to a different offset proportion say like 120/110 that would be different than 20/10. Why would you do this? I have no idea. In either case I would say "the impact has doubled" if we're comparing a policy that increases 20% vs 10%. I ask that if you take this to another round (please don't) you actually stick to the minimum wage example on hand so we're not talking completely in the abstract.
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May 15, 2015 15:24
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asdf32 posted:I agree that the person whose wage went from $7 to $15 wins in every scenario. But no one here wants policy which takes money from some poor people to give it to others. Minimum wage comes close to exactly that. This is a bait-and-switch. The statement "minimum wage is not as effective at redistribution as another policy would be" is not equivalent to "minimum wage is no better than doing nothing"
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May 15, 2015 15:26
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asdf32 posted:I'm not because while it's true I made a vocabulary mistake vital signs was posting: "It's not squared" 10x then changed subjects when he realized it was, then forgot even that is trying to go back to "but 2x isn't an order of magnitude". All while still not understanding fundimental components of this subject he's written 1000 posts on or economics. No, he was always clear on the value he was referring to, and you insist on changing the discussion because either you hosed up and want to save face, or you are incapable of actually following the conversation. Either way, it is embarrassing and sad and you should really stop.
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May 15, 2015 15:29
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VitalSigns posted:This is a bait-and-switch. The statement "minimum wage is not as effective at redistribution as another policy would be" is not equivalent to "minimum wage is no better than doing nothing" That thing you just quoted says zero about whether it helps the poor. If that person's entire raise came from other poor people then minimum wage is literally doing nothing to help the poor as a demographic. Literally nothing. That's why it's important to figure out how true this actually is.
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May 15, 2015 15:31
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asdf32 posted:That thing you just quoted says zero about whether it helps the poor. If that person's entire raise came from other poor people then minimum wage is literally doing nothing to help the poor as a demographic. Literally nothing. Which has been done, multiple time in this thread. Glad we could end this impossibly stupid rant.
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May 15, 2015 15:33
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asdf32 posted:Christ. That simplifies to 1+A/B which demonstrates it's just adding a fixed offset. IE it changes the phrase "10% increase" to "110% of the old value". The 10 part doesn't even change. The quantity (1+A/B) does not increase proportionally to A until A/B becomes much greater than one, which happens when A becomes much greater than B. This is equivalent to my earlier statement. asdf32 posted:If you were to then take this offset proportion and compare it to a different offset proportion say like 120/110 that would be different than 20/10. Why would you do this? I have no idea. In either case I would say "the impact has doubled" if we're comparing a policy that increases 20% vs 10%. Because if we're trying to figure out things like "at most, how much will businesses raise prices" or "at most, what percentage of the workforce must be cut to keep labor costs the same" to compare the two situations, we care that the difference between the two situations is 120/110 => a 9% increase in total labor costs, not that 20/10 => a 100% increase in extra dollars spent VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 15:42 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 15:38
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VitalSigns posted:The quantity (1+A/B) does not increase proportionally to A until A/B becomes much greater than one, which happens when A becomes much greater than B. This is equivalent to my earlier statement. The first example doesn't matter. Try doing the second one out for us.
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May 15, 2015 15:45
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asdf32 posted:The first example doesn't matter. Try doing the second one out for us. I just did. The maximum possible price increase between the two situations is 9%, not 100%. The maximum possible cuts in worker hours are 1-110/120=8%, not 1-10/20=50%
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May 15, 2015 16:11
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These conversations are always so strange to me. I live just north of Seattle in a state where the state minimum wage has been tied to inflation for years. Sure, every January there are headlines about "the highest state minimum wage in the nation", but despite all of that, the sky hasn't fallen, unemployment is lower than the national average and we remain a great place to do business. No one ever seems to mention this ongoing experiment when the discussion comes up, especially foes to minimum wage though. It's really strange!
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May 15, 2015 16:13
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asdf32 posted:People are having trouble processing multiple peices of this puzzle at the same time. People aren't trying to process multiple pieces of the puzzle because they don't care. Their true justification is they want to take money from greedy corporations and give it to poor people, everything else in this thread is a smoke screen of post facto justification to try to sell that idea to people who don't abide by that ideology. The stupid thing is minimum wage is maybe the worse possible mechanism for that, and people can't seem to wrap their head around the fact not every employer is Walmart. Small businesses make up about half of all employment and 2/3 of all new jobs (https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/FAQ_Sept_2012.pdf).
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May 15, 2015 16:26
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