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VitalSigns posted:This is a function of the minimum wage though. Before 2009, 95% of wages were also above the $5.15 minimum, but fast food in most places still paid less than $7.25/hr. This cuts against your position. Unless you are now arguing that 95% of wages were already above $7.25 in 2009 and the minimum wage did nothing? Most workers are well outside the influence of minimum wage.
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May 26, 2015 02:00
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asdf32 posted:Most workers are well outside the influence of minimum wage. You're equivocating. We're talking about workers who are inside the influence of the minimum wage: ie, unskilled workers. Bringing up heart surgeons who aren't affected by the minimum wage is facile, and you know it, why even do it.
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May 26, 2015 02:02
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It was my understanding that you were making generalizations about the labor market. We're in agreement that workers under the influence of minimum wage are under the influence of minimum wage.
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May 26, 2015 02:06
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I like how whenever you meet an argument you can't answer, like this oneVitalSigns posted:This is a function of the minimum wage though. Before 2009, 95% of wages were also above the $5.15 minimum, but fast food in most places still paid less than $7.25/hr. This cuts against your position. Unless you are now arguing that 95% of wages were already above $7.25 in 2009 and the minimum wage did nothing? You just ignore it and bring up some ridiculous irrelevant pedantry like "well heart surgeons weren't affected by the minimum wage in 2009", makes for scintillating conversation.
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May 26, 2015 02:09
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asdf32 posted:So your argument and my argument are the same then. Not sure how you misread my post that badly, but no, our arguments are not the same. I do not believe that employers have very much competing to do when it comes to minimum wage labor
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May 26, 2015 02:13
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QuarkJets posted:Not sure how you misread my post that badly, but no, our arguments are not the same. I do not believe that employers have very much competing to do when it comes to minimum wage labor Right, because there is high supply and low demand. The thing I've consistently said is responsible for low wages.
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May 26, 2015 02:23
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asdf32 posted:Right, because there is high supply and low demand. The thing I've consistently said is responsible for low wages. There's more to this situation than mere supply and demand. Workers are not analogous to ears of corn.
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May 26, 2015 03:07
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QuarkJets posted:There's more to this situation than mere supply and demand. Workers are not analogous to ears of corn. Specifically?
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May 26, 2015 03:10
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asdf32 posted:Specifically? If minimum wage were lowered tomorrow, would anyone be hired at the new minimum wage or the wage gap between the new minimum wage and the old one?
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May 26, 2015 03:33
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QuarkJets posted:There's more to this situation than mere supply and demand. Workers are not analogous to ears of corn. I don't understand, aren't prices self-correcting? When there's a glut of chocolate bars, companies will start cutting shifts and mothballing factories until the fall in supply makes prices profitable again. When there's a glut of work, a few million workers just dig ditches and commit honorable seppuku until supply and demand are in balance and the drop in supply makes living profitable again. Workers sure wouldn't elect to stay alive to work at unprofitable rates, that would be as absurd as Nestle continuing to operate an unprofitable factory at full capacity out of some bizarre emotional attachment to the machinery! VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 03:38 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 03:34
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You never responded to the criticism of this argument:asdf32 posted:3) Employers compete with any other employer that might also hire their employee. This is why 95% of wages are currently above minimum. When you say "95% of wages are above the minimum" you're including jobs that pay say $7.50, which you take as evidence that they are unaffected by the minimum wage and set purely by supply and demand as discovered in a one-on-one negotiation between McDonald's and a savvy bootstrapping young worker. Is that your argument? Because if it is, then why are these jobs being paid a quarter above minimum wage now still paid a quarter above minimum wage back in 2008? Inflation has been flat: did the demand for burger flippers by some happy coincidence increase 30% at the exact moment the new minimum wage came into effect? Also, we know that without labor laws, employees will agree to work long hours in horrible, dangerous conditions. But how can this be if they are able to exploit competition between employers to bargain for the enviable wage of $7.50/hr, wouldn't they be even better able to bargain for fire exists and workman's comp?
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May 26, 2015 03:51
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VitalSigns posted:You never responded to the criticism of this argument: Anyone being paid more than minimum wage is being paid more than minimum wage because of competition. Because the employer doesn't want that person going elsewhere. I'm well aware that wages somewhat above minimum wage also track minimum wage. That's the reason. Irrationality and information asymetry are great reasons for regulation.
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May 26, 2015 03:59
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asdf32 posted:Anyone being paid more than minimum wage is being paid more than minimum wage because of competition. Because the employer doesn't want that person going elsewhere. Right, by imposing a small additional cost on changing jobs and ostensibly rewarding loyalty, an employer can reduce turnover and the saving are worth it. But that wasn't your claim. Your claim was stronger: asdf32 posted:Right, because there is high supply and low demand. The thing I've consistently said is responsible for low wages. But wages aren't what they are because of pure supply and demand. If they were, then a wage that pays $7.50/hr now should have paid $7.50 an hour back in 2009, but they didn't. asdf32 posted:I'm well aware that wages somewhat above minimum wage also track minimum wage. That's the reason. Yeah this directly contradicts what you said before, but I bet it won't stop you from later claiming that low wages are set by pure supply and demand! Why did you make the claim that 95% of workers aren't affected by the minimum wage if you knew it was false? You also refuse to acknowledge the point about worker safety. Surely if I'm a savvy young worker driving a hard bargain for 25 cents above minimum wage, I'd be easily able to bargain for something vastly more important to my well-being like fire exists. But I'm not, we had to write laws about that! And it's not information assymetry: not only were workers openly complaining about being locked in a firetrap, but after a couple of high-profile conflagrations with mass death, it still took laws to stop it, almost like individuals had hardly any power to bargain for better conditions at all... VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 04:27 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 04:20
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VitalSigns posted:Right, by imposing a small additional cost on changing jobs and ostensibly rewarding loyalty, an employer can reduce turnover and the saving are worth it. In this case it's a combination. quote:Yeah this directly contradicts what you said before, but I bet it won't stop you from later claiming that low wages are set by pure supply and demand! Why did you make the claim that 95% of workers aren't affected by the minimum wage if you knew it was false? I didn't. I said their above minimum wages were due to competition. Which is true. quote:You also refuse to acknowledge the point about worker safety. Surely if I'm a savvy young worker driving a hard bargain for 25 cents above minimum wage, I'd be easily able to bargain for something vastly more important to my well-being like fire exists. But I'm not, we had to write laws about that! And it's not information assymetry: not only were workers openly complaining about being locked in a firetrap, but after a couple of high-profile conflagrations with mass death, it still took laws to stop it, almost like individuals had hardly any power to bargain for better conditions at all... Workers voluntarily choosing unsafe conditions is identical in this case to them choosing a low wage position. With the same explanation and the same relationship between minimum wage and minimum safety standards.
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May 26, 2015 04:41
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Why wasn't this competition adequate to keep those wages at $7.50 back in 2009? It sounds like this competition isn't particularly strong or effective. Almost as if...there's some kind of power imbalance that makes it possible for employers to reduce turnover by spending a pittance of $0.25/hr extra with workers unable to get concessions on obvious life-saving conditions like fire exits without laws. Might have something to do with the almost immediate certain painful starvation they face if they don't agree to the job? Anyway you've already conceded that wages aren't purely a function of supply and demand, and since your "but unemployment must happen if we raise wages above what supply and demand says they should be" depends on the existing wage being a pure function of supply and demand, I guess we're done with that talking point. Unless you have some kind of proof that the $15 minimum wage actually exceeds what McDonald's would be willing to pay for a cashier. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 04:55 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 04:50
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asdf32 posted:Workers voluntarily choosing unsafe conditions is identical in this case to them choosing a low wage position. With the same explanation and the same relationship between minimum wage and minimum safety standards. Why are workers apparently more interested in bargaining to get $0.25/hr more than bargaining to literally save their lives? This doesn't sound like a very rationally functioning market at all, I'd have to be a character from Candide to think that workers agreeing to work in death traps is proof that they really want to work in deathtraps!
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May 26, 2015 05:03
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asdf32 posted:Specifically? Do you really need me to spell out how a human being is different from an ear of corn?
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May 26, 2015 05:11
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VitalSigns posted:Why are workers apparently more interested in bargaining to get $0.25/hr more than bargaining to literally save their lives? This doesn't sound like a very rationally functioning market at all, I'd have to be a character from Candide to think that workers agreeing to work in death traps is proof that they really want to work in deathtraps! Because people are stupid, scared animals and will totally do stuff like torture people if a guy in authority/lab coat tells them to.
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May 26, 2015 05:22
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Methanar posted:Because people are stupid, scared animals and will totally do stuff like torture people if a guy in authority/lab coat tells them to. No, the Milgram experiment is proof of the prevalence of a demand for electric torture in our economy coupled with the willingness of rational actors to supply such torture for a $4.00 payment
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May 26, 2015 05:27
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VitalSigns posted:Why are workers apparently more interested in bargaining to get $0.25/hr more than bargaining to literally save their lives? This doesn't sound like a very rationally functioning market at all, I'd have to be a character from Candide to think that workers agreeing to work in death traps is proof that they really want to work in deathtraps! Why do people work in construction or fishing? Don't they realize that they could LITERALLY SAVE THEIR LIVES? Checkmate market.
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May 26, 2015 06:43
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There definitely aren't any essential government safety regulations in the construction industry, thanks for the modern safety record free market.
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May 26, 2015 06:57
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VitalSigns posted:There definitely aren't any essential government safety regulations in the construction industry, thanks for the modern safety record free market. Those are still the two most dangerous fields to work in in the EU, don't those workers know that they are LITERALLY RISKING THEIR LIVES? Since you think that safety standards are disconnected from economic conditions, how about you name one poor country with good worker safety standards and one rich country with worse standards? Other than the Gulf Arab states which are basically an extension of Indian subcontinent labor markets.
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May 26, 2015 08:26
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Safety standards obviously aren't completely disconnected from economic reality. If a given safety standard is infeasible, we know it won't be implemented regardless of the law. But the contrapositive isn't true. It would be incorrect to say "if a safety standard is feasible, we know it will be implemented regardless of the law". For example, when we passed a law that says "you can't lock workers in a firetrap factory with no way out" we knew this was already feasible yet it wasn't happening, that's why we needed the law. Because individual workers don't have the power to bargain for that on their own. I don't know what point you think you're making about construction workers. "Workers knowingly accept more dangerous jobs rather than starving to death", well yeah they do duh. And in the absence of safety laws, even easily affordable safety precautions won't be taken if it's one dollar cheaper just to replace maimed or dead workers with another desperate out-of-work body. We already tried this laissez-faire poo poo before.
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May 26, 2015 08:38
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VitalSigns posted:Why wasn't this competition adequate to keep those wages at $7.50 back in 2009? Haha yes I concede that when the government mandates a minimum wage wages are no longer set by just supply and demand. Haha and are you trying to turn this into "but see supply and demand doesn't work all the time"? I think you got lost. Can you step back and tell us why we're here? Just a reminder that standard econ tells us when prices go up demand doesn't drop to zero. Customers take the hit in consumer surplus and the demand drop is determined by elasticity. If the price increase is low and elasticity is low then a small price change might cause in-detectable decrease in demand. Or, the overall decrease in demand might not happen at all for other reasons. This is exactly what I think happens in the labor market with minimum wage.
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May 26, 2015 12:42
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No no, you claimed that because jobs pay a quarter above minimum wage, this proves that competition between employers is enough to set them there so you could imply we don't need a minimum wage at all. But the only reason those jobs pay $7.50 is because the minimum wage is $7.25, not because of competition, which provides just enough extra to make it unattractive to start at the bottom somewhere else. When the minimum wage was $5.15, those employers only had to pay $5.40 or so to encourage a little loyalty and make those same savings on turnover. And if the minimum wage were lower, there's no reason to believe unskilled wages wouldn't go lower still until people simply cannot function on them even in the short term, like it was in the gilded age. You can't have it both ways dude. Why did you claim that cashiers making $7.50 is proof that it's supply and demand setting the wages and not legislation, if you knew all along that the legislation is the only reason those wages came up to $7.50 instead of remaining just above $5.15? Watching you try to argue contradictory things and cut the legs out from under your own argument is freaking weird. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 13:00 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 12:56
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VitalSigns posted:No no, you claimed that because jobs pay a quarter above minimum wage, this proves that competition between employers is enough to set them there so you could imply we don't need a minimum wage at all. But the only reason those jobs pay $7.50 is because the minimum wage is $7.25, not because of competition, which provides just enough extra to make it unattractive to start at the bottom somewhere else. When the minimum wage was $5.15, those employers only had to pay $5.40 or so to encourage a little loyalty and make those same savings on turnover. And if the minimum wage were lower, there's no reason to believe unskilled wages wouldn't go lower still until people simply cannot function on them even in the short term, like it was in the gilded age. I see your confusion but it really hasn't been that hard to follow. I used 95% when making the point that competition exists and it's valid to use that number in that context. Multiple times I pointed out that some portion has wages attributable to a "combination" of minimum wage and competition and generally stated that "most" workers are well outside influence of minimum. That's how it works.
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May 26, 2015 13:25
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Right, that's how it works: for workers close to the minimum wage, the main determinant of their wages is the absolute floor we set with the minimum wage, not competition or supply and demand. Companies will offer as close to the minimum as they can get away with legally and people will take it, even if that legal minimum permits something ridiculous like "okay you're going to work at machinery with inflammable fabric scraps piled on the floor in a conflagration-ready heap and we're going to chain the doors shut from the outside so you don't take unauthorized bathroom breaks", and that's why we need labor laws. I'm glad we can agree on something at least.
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May 26, 2015 14:11
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Those are still the two most dangerous fields to work in in the EU, don't those workers know that they are LITERALLY RISKING THEIR LIVES? Let's piss into the wind by looking at workplace accident and fatality rates in the face of a lip-smacking slavocrat. http://www.researchgate.net/profile...387d1000000.pdf So while we can see that poorer countries generally have worse worker safety than richer countries, this breaks down when we look at it in detail. Canada is richer than Finland but has twice the accident rate. Israel and South Korea have fatality rates reminiscent of Latin America. India and China have fatality rates on par with Spain's despite having one-sixth and one-third the GDP/capita, respectively. If the market is god, the gods must be crazy indeed. Or, perhaps the ability of humans to define and shape their environment is real.
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May 26, 2015 14:16
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VitalSigns posted:Right, that's how it works: for workers close to the minimum wage, the main determinant of their wages is the absolute floor we set with the minimum wage, not competition or supply and demand. Companies will offer as close to the minimum as they can get away with legally and people will take it, even if that legal minimum permits something ridiculous like "okay you're going to work at machinery with inflammable fabric scraps piled on the floor in a conflagration-ready heap and we're going to chain the doors shut from the outside so you don't take unauthorized bathroom breaks", and that's why we need labor laws. I'm glad we can agree on something at least. Yes it's demonstrably the case that the market sometimes assigns really low values to the point where people risk lives and/or work for really low wages. The market isn't fair. Actually my red title is related to this point. Though in real life in the first world wages and safety are generally quite good.
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May 26, 2015 14:27
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Effectronica posted:Let's piss into the wind by looking at workplace accident and fatality rates in the face of a lip-smacking slavocrat. Canada has a lot of dangerous mining and extraction work, Israel has a lot of poor (Arab/Palestinian areas) and India and China have higher rates than Spain and rates that are probably higher in practice. So while governments can make changes at the margins, attrbuting everything to laws when economic growth explains most of the variation is stupid.
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May 26, 2015 15:33
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Ah you're back. Let's see how your "I only spend 1/2 an hour per day on the forums" end up looking today. How much time did you spend digging up this paper? Okay, so you didn't look at the actual paper, then. Thank you for admitting you have no interest in honesty or discussion.
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May 26, 2015 15:35
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Effectronica posted:Okay, so you didn't look at the actual paper, then. Thank you for admitting you have no interest in honesty or discussion. Well you posted a paper that you admitted proved my point and then pointed out a few counter-examples, 2 of which had really easy explanations (Canada has lots of dangerous industries, Israel has a lot of poor people) and 1 which wasn't even true in the statistics you posted, if they can be taken at face value.
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May 26, 2015 15:55
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Markets can diverge pretty far from a model of perfect competition and create the opportunity for one side to extract economic rents though. For example, what if some bizarre good existed with a ridiculously inelastic supply, Like so crazy inelastic that people are still willing to supply the same amount even if prices fall, even if prices fall below the supplier's long-term maintenance costs. I'm talking about a really strange and alien good here, so inelastic that rather than go out of business, suppliers will burn through their savings, sell off everything they own, and bring themselves to absolute destitution and ruin to keep supplying 40 to 80 units of this good per week for whatever buyers might offer. If I were a buyer of this good, I would definitely notice some opportunity get some rents here.
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May 26, 2015 16:00
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VitalSigns posted:Markets can diverge pretty far from a model of perfect competition and create the opportunity for one side to extract economic rents though. Hmm are you talking about food? Because the first part of it sounds like you're talking about food (except that you're talking about demand, not supply) and it does sound like an excellent opportunity for suppliers of food to get some rents. I wonder why that doesn't happen in practice... Could it possibly be competition, the same thing that drives up wages? VitalSigns posted:Right, that's how it works: for workers close to the minimum wage, the main determinant of their wages is the absolute floor we set with the minimum wage, not competition or supply and demand. Companies will offer as close to the minimum as they can get away with legally and people will take it, even if that legal minimum permits something ridiculous like "okay you're going to work at machinery with inflammable fabric scraps piled on the floor in a conflagration-ready heap and we're going to chain the doors shut from the outside so you don't take unauthorized bathroom breaks", and that's why we need labor laws. I'm glad we can agree on something at least.
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May 26, 2015 16:08
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Hmm are you talking about food? Because the first part of it sounds like you're talking about food (except that you're talking about demand, not supply) and it does sound like an excellent opportunity for suppliers of food to get some rents. I wonder why that doesn't happen in practice... Could it possibly be competition, the same thing that drives up wages? He is talking about labor, jfc quote:Companies offer wages above the minimum they can get away with to 95% of the work force as well (median wage being over double the minimum wage), so, nope, don't really see how your argument applies there. For the 5% that get paid minimum wage, changing the minimum wage doesn't cause their value to change at all, which is why minimum wages cause unemployment. Honestly even if you had any real evidence of it it'd be kinda like claiming child labor laws cause unemployment
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May 26, 2015 16:17
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asdf32 posted:Though in real life in the first world wages and safety are generally quite good. Not for unskilled labor though, in the absence of the laws the first world has that make safety for those workers good and wages barely tolerable. Geriatric Pirate posted:Hmm are you talking about food? Because the first part of it sounds like you're talking about food (except that you're talking about demand, not supply) and it does sound like an excellent opportunity for suppliers of food to get some rents. I wonder why that doesn't happen in practice... Could it possibly be competition, the same thing that drives up wages? Lol why do you keep bringing up a commodity that's subject to the heaviest of US government intervention to keep supplies and prices within certain bounds, and then subject to even more intervention to subsidize the poor in purchasing it? Gee I wonder why there hasn't been widespread famine or widespread bankruptcies of farms in the US in eighty years, must be that free market  Are you saying we should regulate suppliers of labor like we regulate farmers, ie, huge price supports to keep them from going out of business like many of them would in a laissez faire market along with protectionism to blunt competition from overseas? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 16:27 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 16:19
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Inelastic supply can mean a lot of things which depend largely on demand. Though note that from the perspective of an individual employer or a field supply is more elastic. If an employer raises wages more employees apply. Or people train for high paying fields like pharmacist specifically because they're high paying. Or people move to boom towns. Thus increasing supply. Though generally it's a good thing that labor is limited in supply because that's the reason wages keep going up across the globe! first world lower/middle classes are the main exception.
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May 26, 2015 16:20
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VitalSigns posted:Not for unskilled labor though, in the absence of the laws the first world has that make safety for those workers good and wages barely tolerable. Food isn't just cheap in the US, it's also cheap in places which import almost all the food they need, like Singapore and Finland. And the subsidies aren't meant to lower price but to protect farmers (by blocking cheaper exports). And even the basic economic argument you're making is retarded. Just because the US government gives subsidies to farmers doesn't mean that farmers will keep prices low. You argued that labor supply is inelastic, so therefore a profit maximizing labor demander would pay as little as possible. Demand for food is inelastic. Therefore a profit maximizing food supplier would _____ (fill in the blank there). The money they get from the government is just the cherry on top. There are no real price controls for food, at least there are no binding price controls for food delivered to customers. Or in other words: If I face inelastic demand for my product, my pricing is not affected by the government giving me a dollar for unit of the good that I produce. It doesn't affect my optimal price or quantity produced in any way. THe only thing it affects is my profit. Econ 101. Edit: Of course in practice, neither food nor labor demand and supply are perfectly inelastic, but I was sticking with your stupid "I must work to live" argument there (same thing applies for food, yet we can alter quantities of both) LorrdErnie posted:He is talking about labor, jfc google "David Neumark", go to his website, read his papers Geriatric Pirate fucked around with this message at 16:35 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 16:30
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Geriatric Pirate posted:google "David Neumark", go to his website, read his papers Also would you agree that child labor laws cause unemployment? How do you feel about those? There are many jobs currently done by machines that could be done more inexpensively by tiny hands while allowing them to bring more money to their households.
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May 26, 2015 16:38
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Geriatric Pirate posted:And the subsidies aren't meant to lower price but to protect farmers (by blocking cheaper exports). No, the US government also subsidizes the purchasers of food with programs like WIC and SNAP (food stamps). And part of its price support mechanism is buying up reserve food, which it can distribute if needed. And some foods like milk are subsidized to lower the price. Geriatric Pirate posted:And even the basic economic argument you're making is retarded. Just because the US government gives subsidies to farmers doesn't mean that farmers will keep prices low. You argued that labor supply is inelastic, so therefore a profit maximizing labor demander would pay as little as possible. Demand for food is inelastic. Therefore a profit maximizing food supplier would _____ (fill in the blank there). The money they get from the government is just the cherry on top. There are no real price controls for food, at least there are no binding price controls for food delivered to customers. The unemployment rate is at least 5% right, depending on how you measure it, and used to be higher during the recession, right? So there are at least 5% fewer jobs than people who need jobs, right? What might you expect to happen with food prices if the total amount of food available for purchase in the US amounted to just 95% of the calorie requirements of the population, and the government pursued a free-market laissez-faire approach to food prices and distribution?
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May 26, 2015 16:46
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