|
Eimi posted:I majored in history and make no money because my history degree is worth less than the paper it's printed on. I do agree that colleges should teach a real life 101 class, but this is about the minimum wage. As some people have said, until we get efficient and autonomous robots, we are always going to need people to do 'low skill' jobs, janitors, harvesters, what have you. Those things are literally a necessity if you like clean buildings or food. Why should they be paid less than anyone else if their work is vital? Why shouldn't they be able to have a comfortable life? FYI those things already are and can continue to be addressed by policy other than minimum wage. Minimum wage is fascinating [here] because it's a bizarre intersection of leftism and market economics. "We must use the market to address social welfare". Really?
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 03:39
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 10:43 |
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Why is the company paying 10 people to do a job that can be more profitably done with 9? Because 10 was most profitable until wages went up 50% and then it wasn't.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 13:56
|
|
|
District Selectman posted:You make it sound like small business are running Monte Carlo simulations to optimize their profitability at all times and this is not reality. You just made up numbers so every worker is equally profitable and didn't include alternatives like outsourcing or capital. A business can be highly profitable overall but that second worker scheduled on the Sunday evening shift might still be on the margins. You can make an argument about elasticity of demand in the labor market but you can't pretend that labor costs aren't a major component. District Selectman posted:ding ding ding Nope. A key thing to realize is that just like any other cost increase, say oil or electricity, we understand the long term effect is that businesses will pass on costs to consumers, not just suddenly decide to live with lower profits. This is why the notion that government "subsidizes low wages" by providing benefits to Wal-mart employees is misguided. Society is going to "subsidize" them (if that's the word we want to use) either way regardless of whether the check has Wal-Mart's name on it or not.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 14:31
|
|
|
paragon1 posted:Name one. So wait, raise your hand if your ideology includes the idea that zero businesses are on the edge of viability in the economy.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 15:37
|
|
|
Chalets the Baka posted:Minimum wage needs to be tied to productivity rates, and it should not ever be implemented in some staggered fashion - it must be immediate and universal. An increase to $12 by 2020 or whatever middle ground bullshit politicians are peddling is too little, too late. Accounting for the inevitable inflation and productivity increases, $12 an hour in 2020 would basically be the same thing as $7.25 an hour in 2010. Even if it were $15/hr by 2020, it would still not be enough - minimum wage right now should be at least $20. The way the minimum wage is raised right now - huge conflicts over specific dollar amounts - is unsustainable and counterproductive to a laborer's right to a living wage. It must be tied as a function to productivity, as that is naturally the outcome of a worker's labor. There is nothing unique or special about the US economy that differs from any other OECD country that makes a consistent, living minimum wage nonviable. Productivity tells us whether the economy as a whole can support a living wage but doesn't tell us much about what labor prices should be in any specific instance. As a reminder: "value" and price in a market are not the same thing. If something is plentiful in relation to its demand it's expected to be cheap regardless of how valuable it really is. Low skill wages are low for a bunch of obvious reasons and productivity doesn't change that.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 15:40
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Oh poo poo, well let's repeal all labor laws then, think how viable businesses will be when they don't have to have fire exits. Some probably would be but who cares. I could support either minimum wage or fire exits while actually understanding their consequences. The answer isn't "none".
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 15:43
|
|
|
Chalets the Baka posted:I never said that productivity levels themselves infer exact dollar amounts. What they do tell us is that wages have been going down even as productivity and profits go up. And since productivity almost always increases linearly with time, so too should wages. Setting a minimum wage is setting an exact dollar amount.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 15:48
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Exactly. The businesses that starve their workers have no reason to exist. You insufferable idiot. Businesses are not supposed to be responsible for life and death. They're supposed to produce shoes and pencils. When they happen to provide a good loving for people great! When they don't, it's everyone's responsibility to deal with it. Only a libertarian sets life and death equal to market prices.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 15:51
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:You just reversed your position from like two posts ago, where you agreed we shouldn't give a poo poo whether lovely businesses fail in the face of laws that prevent death. It depends on the cost. Low skill workers are plentiful. If Wal-mart wants to employ them it's literally not costing society much at all (i.e. those workers wouldn't be doing more valuable things otherwise) This stands in contrast to other costs, say unsafe working conditions, or pollution, where a business is burdening society and therefore should pay for that.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 16:08
|
|
|
archangelwar posted:Businesses are responsible for whatever the gently caress they are told. A business is not some immutable force of nature you watermelon fucker. Other people are the ones presenting baked in assumptions that they don't even seem to recognize. I.E. that businesses are supposed to provide a living wage and are somehow costing society if they don't.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 16:33
|
|
|
Ocrassus posted:The economy is meant to serve as a method of distributing resources. Private property itself is predicated on a utilitarian argument, even the ones grounded in natural law (Locke, Grotius etc). Therefore businesses exist solely for the good of the society that they inhabit. Yep and this is fundamentally a practical argument. Make practical arguments all day long. "Minimum wage is the best policy for X". But that's much much different than the unstated value judgement inherent to many of the "businesses should pay a living wage/business is costing society by not paying a living wage" arguments being made here.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 16:59
|
|
|
Popular Thug Drink posted:And saying that businesses shouldn't be permitted to pollute isn't a value judgement? The only difference between air pollution, sound pollution, and low wages in terms of social externality is where you personally draw the line in terms of "business are responsible to provide X level of service to society" That's not really true. A lot of people are getting hung up on the triviality of "if Walmart paid more the government would pay less". But that doesn't actually mean anything, we could replace Walmart with literally anything and it remains true. It tells us nothing about whether Wal-mart has "cost" society or not because cost is actually a judement call which includes a notion of responsibility - exactly the responsibility I don't think exists or should be expected here. By contrast if a company pollutes the responsibility is clear.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 17:23
|
|
|
Popular Thug Drink posted:We can absolutely calculate Wal-Mart's costs, as we can see that they pay some employees below poverty wages and then tally up the public welfare expenditures given to Wal-Mart employees. All these things are quantifiable. Yep we can easily quantify an almost infinite number of things Wal-Mart doesn't pay for. The next step is to construct reasonable arguments for why you think they're supposed to pay for those things. That's what's included in the notion of cost.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2015 17:59
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Because it's more practical to get the money to pay for these things from people who have the money, instead of people who don't Great reason to support almost every welfare policy except minimum wage. Pizza show owners and Wal-Mart customers are not exactly prime examples of the haves. Popular Thug Drink posted:People have already made this reasonable argument - a living wage is better for society as a whole. You rejected this argument with blather about useless people and your opinion about the responsibility of private business. Nobody has an obligation to jump through your weirdo rhetorical hoops. It's pretty amusing/sad that you think delineating your opinion is a rhetorical game. Practical arguments on behalf of a living wage are completely different than the "cost" argument you were trying earlier.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2015 04:35
|
|
|
So let's be clear that minimum wage can be expected to transfer some wealth but it does it really poorly. Significant chunks of the additional wages come from middle and lower class owners/consumers, not rich people.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2015 14:52
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:When the minimum wage was higher, wealth inequality was lower. Buddy I siad it does transfer wealth. Just badly compared to taxing and spending. So your evidence is completely consistent. Although about a million things were sl different in the past including tax rates.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2015 15:39
|
|
|
paranoid randroid posted:its being called a subsidy because walmart is able to pay their workers unsustainably low wages, that do not meet basic day-to-day needs. the cost of things like food is then being passed onto the taxpayer. No you're calling it a subsidy because you've been indoctrinated into a market/business-centric outlook which you don't understand and wouldn't agree with if you did. Or you're propagandizing. But I'm not willing to give you that much credit.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2015 20:21
|
|
|
paranoid randroid posted:listen buster the only thing ive been indoctrinated into is the worship of baal melqart and unless were discussing brazen bulls and the sacrifice of babies therein, i fail to see how thats immediately relevant to this loving awful thread Is kindergarten a Wal-Mart subsidy?
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2015 20:31
|
|
|
paranoid randroid posted:i believe if you read between the lines you will be able to extrapolate my positions on childcare from taht post So yes. I disagree. I think the fact that we provide education and possibly food to 5 year olds has nothing to do with corporate entity Wal-Mart whatsoever and it's bizarre to suggest that it does.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2015 21:10
|
|
|
I think having cheaper state/community colleges with free scholarships for qualified students is a good all around solution. It would also have the effect of driving down inflated private school tuition through competition. Alongside this loans should lose their bankrupcy exemption which will drive up rates, but will force lenders to evaluate actual results That puts more pressure on tuition and school performance/graduation rates. Its important to remember that education, alongside healthcare and housing are major culprits eroding standards of living.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2015 22:51
|
|
|
wateroverfire posted:There are no guarantees in this world where we can't provide everything for everybody. Well first world countries sort of can in a strictly economic sense. Poor countries are a different story. Though a caveat is that poverty is more than economics at this point. Welfare spending in the US currently stands at ~14k per person in poverty (and has only ever generally increased). Clearly money isn't the whole picture.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2015 16:49
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:What do you mean by "welfare spending" I think this is a good source though I'm not positive. I'm also not positive that sharply dividing on the poverty rate is ideal. Though certainly it's iseful to relate spending to the number of poor people. http://federalsafetynet.com/poverty-and-spending-over-the-years.html
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2015 17:59
|
|
|
euphronius posted:Omg your source is so hilarious I looked and didn't think they did but certainly healthcare should be considered in general.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2015 18:18
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:But that's a function of the underlying costs of health care, not an indication of the increasing generosity of the welfare state. I'd say generosity is best measured by money and the outcome of that generosity is separate. Neither the left or the right understands healthcare properly. It's a tape worm eating up the U.S. economy from the inside out. It explains shrinking military budgets, stagnating wages and continued deficits. quote:And there's a tension in your arguments. You oppose the minimum wage because the solution to these problems is a robust welfare state. Then you complain that welfare doesn't actually do anything and money can't solve these problems after all. Actually yes. Partly because I didn't know the 14k number until I heard it on PBS News Hour a couple days ago. That said, it remains true that in purely economic terms minimum wage is poor as a wealth re-distributor which is the entire point of it. Other programs are effective at transferring wealth, like food stamps, they just still don't get us the outcome we want. quote:Edit: Yeah yeah the source is probably propaganda but the numbers are simple enough I think they're right. Grem posted:Companies will make more money because they will have more clients able to afford their goods. That plus the RECORD profits companies have been posting lately is more than enough to offset the cost. Brilliant! Economic perpetual motion! Cole posted:publix supermarket cake decorators max at $14.89/hour and they cross train people who make minimum bagging groceries to be cake decorators First, his wages will probably go up a bit. Second, too bad.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 00:43
|
|
your source
|
Popular Thug Drink posted:i don't understand where people are getting this $15 figure from. what we should do instead is figure out the average expenses for a family of four, and then calculate how much a person would need to be paid every hour for 40 hours, 52 weeks a year, in order to hit that target That number has literally zero to do with how the market would otherwise price labor and setting prices (wages) in the market has negative consequences. Minimum wage has avoided negative consequences because it's always been tiny.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 02:27
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:The market is a human invention. Down with the slavocrats! Down with the reign of the idiot-god! Right and so is a hammer. What's your point.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 02:34
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:What are these consequences, and where is the proof. The negative consequences are the things that prevent even you from calling for $100 minimum wage.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 02:46
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:If you ban child labor below the age of 12, this would hurt the economy. $15 minimum wage isn't far off from that buddy in terms of dollars or percents.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 03:20
|
|
|
Typo posted:An increase to $15 represents ~35% increase from $11 so it's not trivial. No it's not a 35% increase it's a lot more. Minimum wage touches about 5% of the workforce now. $15 minimum wage would hit several times that and increase wages several times more for some of those people ($6 instead of $1) Like I said earlier. It's not far from an order of magnitude increase in impact and clearly beyond anything on record. Popular Thug Drink posted:i hate to break it to you, but all economics is a judgement call based on individual values since money is an abstract concept and convenient fiction we use to regulate transactions between individuals and groups of individuals You loving intellectual child. Money is a construct but economics is not and while your values might tell you that 15 US monetary units is a fair wage that says literally jack poo poo about the consequences setting wages at a that minimum or about whether doing so actually meets your goals. Shockingly my values also tell me that's it's not fair that some US workers are pretty pore or that some people on this planet are completely destitute. My values can tell me to fix this. They say literally nothing about how to fix it. The how part requires brain cells expending energy to evaluate various options with differing pluses and minuses.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 13:08
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Why are you judging the impact solely by the number of workers it affects instead of by the amount of money involved? That doesn't make sense. Buddy I literally cited both with an example for the money. And the money actually increases exponentially as minimum wage goes up because it touches both more people and increases the money to each of them.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 13:19
|
|
|
euphronius posted:People having more money helps small businesses. Who do you think buys the services of small businesses. Please tell us more.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 13:27
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:Orthodox Economixxx tells us that Marx knew nothing and Marxists less, but at the same time, argues that a perpetual underclass is inherently necessary to the capitalist system. Fascinating. No it tells us there is an underclass and that Maxism has nothing to do with fixing it.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 13:35
|
|
|
blatman posted:Did anyone properly explain why the government should continue to subsidize lovely businesses with social programs for workers instead of making those lovely businesses pay their employees adequately, so they don't need those social programs? Yes. It's not a subsidy unless you're an idiot.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 14:29
|
|
|
blatman posted:It really is though, it lets businesses continue to have living employees while paying them pretty much nothing and it's a government handout Here you unironically state the idiotic and undoubtedly internally inconsistent notion that somone's life is attached to their employer.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 14:51
|
|
|
computer parts posted:The progressive solution is obviously to ban foodstamps for anyone that's employed. Thats a half measure. We need full company towns where corporations are directly responsible for every aspect of people's lives.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 15:00
|
|
|
Raskolnikov38 posted:
My values tell me it would be nice if carbon didn't cause global warming and politics is a human construct so I'm going to advocate policy based on my values. tldr: "I want it"
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 15:34
|
|
This is great coming from the dude that doesn't know how to do basic math.
|
VitalSigns posted:No it's not necessarily exponentially more, because the people already making closer to $15 see less of an increase. In theory at some point you'd realize you have both zero aptitude for economics and also no desire to learn it and would stop posting about it. But as down with slavery says, this is America. The guy making $14 gets a $1 bump but the guy who was making $9 gets a $6 bump. Every time you up the increase you add more dollars to everyone who was already getting an increase and increase the wages of more people. As a first order analysis that's exponential. The thing that changes it are the particulars of the income distribution in this range. For example if there just aren't many people making 10-15 then increases in that range don't hit many more people. But that's not the case and the exponential analysis stands as a good rough take. mastershakeman posted:Wouldn't they be willing to work for even less out of desperation? I.e. undocumented workers often working for sub minimum wage since they're ineligible for anything? Yes. As indicated by roughly 80% of the population of the planet earning and living on lower wages.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 15:58
|
|
|
archangelwar posted:You are right, peoples' lives are not attached to their employer, only their: healthcare, housing, utilities, food, water, entertainment, leisure, provision for family needs, retirement, ability to raise children, etc. etc. etc. Access to basic services should have no connection to employment. IE kindergarten isn't a wal-mart subsidy. Tell me you disagree.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 16:18
|
|
|
rudatron posted:Is intellectual child labor illegal? Unfortunately not.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 16:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 10:43 |
|
|
Nevvy Z posted:I am at work so I can't. but it'd be interesting to see napkin math on how many people would be hurt how much by price increases caused by min. wage increase compared to how many helped and how much. As I've said before it's hard to believe that minimum wage won't transfer some wealth. Any somewhat rich person that shops at Walmart and pays a higher price is transferring some. But the question comes down to where min wage workers are located relative to min wage consumers. When they work/shop at the same place it negates the benefits. Wal-mart seems like a perfect example here where they tend to overlap. In general it seems like we're talking 10's of percents of min wage benefits being wiped out by this. Although how you weight things is subjective. Another chunk of min wage benefits come from lower or middle middle class. Is that what you wanted? Probably not. The other real downside that has better consensus than unemployment is that min wage shuffles employment within the lower class. It pushes out some of the most vulnerable among them while perhaps not increasing unemployment overall. Te point here, which is what Jefferson is getting at, is that analysis does't stop at just the wage increase and overall unemployment. There are downsides other than that which significantly reduce the benefits and need to be weighed as well.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 21:07
|
|