From tax breaks, through GMI, to FULL COMMUNISM - poverty elimination station

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > From tax breaks, through GMI, to FULL COMMUNISM - poverty elimination station

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

thehomemaster posted:

This.

15 USD is loving ridiculous.

agreed.

$20 minimum wage now!

# ¿ May 5, 2015 01:38

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 01:25

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

LeoMarr posted:

10 employees at 15 bucks an hour now costs you 150 instead of 100. a 33% increase in operating costs in a split second.

ahahahahahaha

oh wait you're serious

:dogbutton:

# ¿ May 5, 2015 02:00

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

thehomemaster posted:

Some itneresting pointers on issues around minimum wage:

http://marginalrevolution.com/?s=minimum+wage

oh my god

this graph

look at it

# ¿ May 5, 2015 02:04

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Birdstrike posted:

Maybe if workers are paid more they will spend the extra money on things provided by businesses.

poors will just hoard money now let me tell you why "job creators" need more tax breaks

# ¿ May 5, 2015 02:42

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

"consume less" aka if you're not subsisting on bulk internet lentil gruel you get no sympathy from me

# ¿ May 5, 2015 02:43

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Increasing the minimum wage might raise food prices by 2%.

Doing nothing will probably raise prices 2% in a year due to existing inflation.

For some reason only the former matters?

# ¿ May 10, 2015 17:50

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

JeffersonClay posted:

Lol no. When natural inflation is too low, it can promote inflation. When natural inflation is too high, it can reduce inflation. That's the whole point.

so in other words, permanently inflationary.

# ¿ May 10, 2015 21:39

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Geriatric Pirate posted:

I'm focusing on actual minimum wage workers is that a sudden change (or even a staggered change over less than 5 years) in the minimum wage to $15 is about as realistic as a GMI. People in this thread are handwaving away actually useful anti-poverty policies because they're unrealistic yet seem to think $15 might happen. Sorry, not even the Republicans hate poor people that much.

Most people in this thread are once again completely detached from reality when it comes to demographics and have no idea who poor people actually are. There are only 148 million employed Americans. This means that about 165 million Americans are not working (includes children, elderly, disabled etc). Can you maybe see from that why minimum wage is not a good policy for helping poor people? Unless you think that poverty is concentrated among working Americans and their families, it's a policy that helps employed people and hurts people who are not working through price increases.

$15 as a minimum wage would mean a wage increase for almost half of working Americans. Fine, I admit that clearly the demographics of such a group are different than current minimum wage workers. So then it's no longer a subsidy for a small group, of whom only 25% are part of poor households, but instead for most low wage working Americans.

Now that doesn't change a single thing I said, and making the minimum wage increase up to $15 per hour affects almost half of workers (with some wages rising 50%). A normal minimum wage increase affects about 10% of workers with a max 21% increase. You'll most likely have job losses, you'll most likely have inflation. Who's going to be hurt most by this inflation? Probably the people who lose their jobs and the people who never had jobs to begin with. The paper I posted showed that the price impact is concentrated on businesses patronized by poor people.

The psychological impact on the middle class is absolutely nothing compared to the actual, real purchasing power impact that this will have on those poor people who do not benefit from the policy.

A normal minimum wage increase is a dumb policy because it's an anti-poverty policy that improves the income of a group where only about 25% actually come from poor households and actually hurts most other poor households. A $15 minimum wage is a dumb policy because it's literally mandating a wage increase for almost half of the working population. And you'd have to be completely delusional to think that that's not going to have serious consequences. But then again, looking at the names on this thread (Zeitgueist, VitalSigns, QuarkJets), I'm not really surprised.

edit: Here's the BLS on how many workers are below the poverty line. http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2012/ted_20120405.htm 4.2% of full time workers below the poverty line. So minimum wage helps them... and then a ton of other people who are not below the poverty line. I guess they're more important than the tons of non-working poor below the poverty line.

lol

# ¿ May 10, 2015 23:41

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

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.

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.

I too am concerned that minimum wage workers are already making too much money.

# ¿ May 15, 2015 15:06

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Methanar posted:

I don't understand this argument.

So you're saying you make less the difference of today's minimum wage and 15 dollars an hour profit from an employee's work?

If that is the case then your business model sucks.

If it's not the case, you're only hurting yourself further by removing a net financial gain

The obvious solution in the face of doubling the minimum wage is to cook the burgers half as long.

# ¿ May 24, 2015 00:44

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

asdf32 posted:

Heh what a dummy. The "that" in the middle one references "full order of magnitude".

I think you mean "exponential".

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 01:09

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Who What Now posted:

It has neither units nor scale, it is literally incapable of being accurate in any way.

Sure but that means you can't *prove* it wrong either, checkmate. :pseudo:

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 02:40

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

JeffersonClay posted:

You get that neither I nor anyone else has a function which would actually generate that curve, right? The lack of units is intentional. The graph is just a tool to help you understand how the minimum wage affects the poor at different levels of wage.

did I miss where you attempt to quantify or define "benefit to the poor" like at all

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 04:30

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

JeffersonClay posted:

The concepts I'm describing aren't just theoretical, they're measurable. Unemployment is a real thing. We can predict how a policy will impact employment, but can only measure it discretely after the fact.

and your totally based in fact economic common sense is going 0/12 or so there

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 05:13

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

JeffersonClay posted:

Yours is a special kind of stupid. I've shown that there can exist situations where the maximum benefit to the poor is achieved at a wage lower than a living wage. You apparently think that even if a living wage did less good for the poor overall than a lower minimum wage, we're ethically bound to support the living wage. I think it's unethical to support inferior policies just because they give you good feelies.

No, you drew a line in mspaint and claimed that's what it means. You haven't shown poo poo.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 23:22

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

down with slavery posted:

?

The Mother of All Non-sequiturs.

Polygynous fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Jun 4, 2015

# ¿ Jun 4, 2015 14:56

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 01:25

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

as this graph clearly shows there's no such thing as fixed costs

# ¿ Jun 4, 2015 22:49

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > From tax breaks, through GMI, to FULL COMMUNISM - poverty elimination station