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Orange Sunshine posted:Many of our employees are dull witted and slow moving and we're waiting for an opportunity to get rid of them and try to bring on someone better, but haven't gotten to it yet. They can still fill a slot in the schedule, although it takes them two or three times as long as an normal person to do the job. They're not mentally retarded, they're just dumb and not good at anything. You'll keep them on at 15 an hour, or you'll fire them until you realize you can't run your business without adequate staffing and take the hit elsewhere. Your restaurant may fail, and it will be because your business model depends on a labor cost that only exists due to federal subsidy and welfare. Considering how you talk about your employees, I doubt anyone will shed a tear. Of course, you may figure out how to train and motivate your workforce, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Jun 22, 2015 07:09
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Can someone with a little more understanding of economic indicators help me with this article from Heritage? It's just a bunch of irrelevant handwaving, I don't think there's much to get. They claim that using different measures of inflation makes the "liberal" graph inaccurate. They go on to show the variance by going back and using different indicators to adjust inflation, but conveniently fail to show how that affects the conclusion in the original graph, i.e. productivity has approximately doubled while the purchasing power of minimum wage has stayed approximately the same. Then they show a graph that proves that average wage matches gains in productivity pretty evenly over the same time period. Which is true, and has nothing to do with the minimum wage, so I have no idea what that's about. As a side note, it's a pretty awful graph, because it fails to include the median wage line and thus glosses over the wage disparity trend that's central to the discussion. Then they show that productivity matches wage pretty closely in the fast food sector. Which is true, or not true, I don't know because they don't cite sources or explain where their numbers come from. Either way, it's irrelevant because the original graph is about the entire economy, not just one sector, which is the point. Then they say stuff like "Neither has productivity [risen] in minimum-wage jobs. Of course, most workers do not stay in low-productivity minimum-wage jobs very long." which are actually just good old fashioned, straight up lies. jesus christ why did i read that whole thing
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Jun 22, 2015 07:30
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:I found this completely unbiased chart: yes, also holy poo poo that graph. it's like tracking the weight of 100,000 mayflies relative to a single elephant, and giving the mayflies one single color bar and the elephant the other. Most humans would come away surprised at how heavy mayflies really are.
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Jun 22, 2015 17:27
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so uh... i hear the minimum wage is gonna get set higher. wonder what folks think about that!
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Jun 22, 2015 19:31
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well this thread is complete poo poo but now that the primary shitters are probated can we at least accept that: A: raising the minimum wage vastly increases the buying power of the bottom class in America B: the offset is a probable .7 percent increase in the cost of goods that depend on minimum wage labor and that point A is a boost to the overall economy that vastly outstrips any detrimental effect of point B?
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Jun 23, 2015 00:52
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silence_kit posted:much was the consensus (even asdf32 eventually admitted as much, although that didn't stop other posters from putting words in his mouth) that raising the minimum wage helped the bottom class, but I don't know if that was considered a boost to the overall economy. Does someone really have to prove that increasing wages for the class with the least disposable income boosts the economy? Do we have to post a study to support a claim that cats are sometimes, but not always fluffy?
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Jun 23, 2015 02:32
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down with slavery posted:Is there really any point in debating the papers/research at this point? I think we can all agree that the data isn't terribly compelling one way or another. I think we can all agree that at a sufficient minimum wage, we will start to see negative unemployment effects. Ultimately, I don't think this is a great reason to avoid raising the minimum wage because we need to figure out what to do with the unemployable, and by that I mean those that can't compete with technology and/or automation (regardless of whether it's their fault or not). I agree with your overall point, except what data are you looking at that isn't overwhelmingly compelling in support of raising the minimum? Nobody is suggesting a minimum that would have any discernable effect on employment, the current debate is (sadly) centered around just bringing it up to match inflation / productivity gains over the last 30 years. As for the unemployable, it's an unavoidable and horrible, but temporary problem. If we were a better society, we would have learned the lessons from the first 60 years of the Industrial Revolution and had a plan in place for workers displaced by technology. Sadly, bootstrap conservatives have dismantled even what safety nets we had in place, so we're probably going to face another labor crisis very soon no matter what.
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Jun 24, 2015 18:16
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JeffersonClay posted:So the minimum wage is good because it will put lots of fast food restaurants out of business. And it will somehow also not negatively affect employment. Think this through. I didn't have to think too hard about it because there has been a colossal mountain of research performed over the last 30 years on the effects of minimum wage on employment. Here are five papers that were published between 1990 and 2012 by both academic and government sources in three different countries. http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/157-07.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/288841/The_National_Minimum_Wage_LPC_Report_2014.pdf http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2010.00799.x/abstract http://www.motu.org.nz/publications/detail/the_short-run_effects_of_age_based_youth_minimum_wages_in_australia_a_regre Guess what every single one of those studies found! About whether a raise in minimum wage affects employment! Guess!! It's a fun game!!! quote:You can at least admit that poor people who do not receive minimum wage income would get hosed in this story, right? I don't understand the picture you're painting here. What does this dystopian LIEberal future look like to you?
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Jun 24, 2015 19:11
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here, I'll make this an even more fun game. Match the paper from my previous post to the conclusion in this post. Careful, though, it's a JUMBLE! A. This study is an aggregate of 1,494 estimates published in 64 other papers on the effect of minimum wage on employment. The consensus: It don't change squat, son! B. Guess what's true about minimum wage in Australia? It has a huge effect on employment! Wait, no i read that wrong, it has no effect whatsoever. C. This study looked at restaurant employment in 288 counties with various minimum wage laws. Turns out minimum wages do boost pay, but don't affect employment. D. After New Jersey raised its minimum wage and Pennsylvania didn't, this study tracked fast food employment over the following year. It found no difference employment between the two states. E. After this government commissioned 130 pieces of research from a bunch of different economists, they found that OH MY GOD MINIMUM WAGE CAUSES no discernible change in employment. If you get them all right, you get a sticker!
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Jun 24, 2015 19:37
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euphronius posted:If government is going to put up with paying for all of common goods like healthcare, education as well as put a floor on living standards (food stamps, public housing, public transit etc), why don't we just nationalize the industries so that the people benefit from the profits of their investment through taxes? because history shows two things: A. a central authority controlling the means of production is literally a dictatorship B. slippery slope arguments are dumb as gently caress.
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Jun 24, 2015 19:41
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Zeitgueist posted:Are folks still saying it causes unemployment? I thought they had moved on to "but prices will increase negating any raise"? pretty much JeffersonClay but sometimes it just feels good to post Real Facts euphronius posted:I don't think nationalization necessarily means "central planning". At all. Well what exactly do you call it when a public agency controls the means of production? Call it whatever you want, I'm just saying it tends not to work out.
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Jun 24, 2015 21:11
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Ardennes posted:A GMI is still a problem in the US, because there is most likely no way to fund a traditional safety net and a GMI at the same time. In this sense, I would prefer more traditional spending (public housing, education, health care) to a GMI. A GMI is potentially less expensive than the "safety nets" it would replace (i.e. prison, food stamps, the 33 different housing programs run by four different cabinet departments, etc) While we're in fantasy land, GMI + socialized medicine + mental health + drug decriminilization / treatment would be a vastly more efficient system than we have ever had with guaranteed better outcomes but hey i'm just blue sky thinking here
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Jun 24, 2015 21:20
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Zeitgueist posted:Yes the US during WW2 couldn't weld to plates together, right? I'm not against socializing industry for specific applications when sovereignty and/or public safety is threatened (i.e. war, climate change, healthcare) What I'm saying doesn't tend to work out is socializing production solely for the economic benefit of the state. If that wasn't what was being argued, then I misunderstood.
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Jun 24, 2015 21:34
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QuarkJets posted:Let's do it, let's set up some sort of universal income and then abolish the minimum wage. I'm okay with this, and I suspect that the rest of the thread is, too. Oh, Republicans in Congress are loving shitheads who will only pay lip service to a GMI whenever the poors start demanding a minimum wage hike and then quickly forget about the GMI afterwards? Nevermind wait, do you live in america? a republican in congress paying lip service to GMI would be pilloried, then guillotined, his head covered in tar and impaled on a pike on the south lawn as a warning for others. it's not an either / or proposal, a real minimum wage is an achievable political goal that will move the discussion toward progressive welfare reform.
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Jun 24, 2015 23:21
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JeffersonClay posted:No, I wasn't suggesting an employment effect. I was pointing out that Radbot's hypothetical story where a minimum wage hike drives fast food establishments out of business for the good of society must produce a measurable employment effect, even in the short term, which is at odds with the research you were frantically posting while missing the point, and therefore his hypothetical is likely wrong. thanks for acknowledging how frantic i was, i'm posting my rear end off over here!! JeffersonClay posted:I think minimum wages are a transfer from people who don't get minimum wage income to those that do. poor people without wage income will transfer money to Poor people with wage income, and also to middle and upper class households with a source of minimum wage income. I agree that there are situations where this will be welfare enhancing for society, but I don't see any moral imperative to support the policy, particularly as very vulnerable groups like the disabled may bear the brunt of the negatives. There's a lot to unpack here, but let's start by summarizing your thesis: You oppose raising the minimum wage because you're concerned that wealth will transfer from those relying solely on government assistance and/or pensions to the working poor. This is an interesting hypothesis. There has been more than enough fluctuation in minimum wage in our recent history to be able to observe this effect, can you point to a study that supports your claim? Also, can you enumerate the size of the middle and upper class household pool that benefits from minimum wage income? I haven't seen that mentioned as any sort of economic factor before, I'm curious as to how large this demographic is. JeffersonClay posted:If we take the study at face value, we know that the number of dollars transferred to minimum wage workers must equal approximately the number of dollars collected in higher prices. So all we need to compare is who will receive higher wages and who will pay higher prices -- there's no extra money coming from corporate profits. Minimum wage earners are more likely to come from poor households, but poor households are more likely to consume minimum wage labor and thus bear price increases, as well. We've already gone over the EPI study that estimates that a 10 percent increase in minimum wage can cause an 0.7 to 1.4 percent increase in prices. Even if that estimate is off by a factor of 4, it's still safe to say that poor households get a net benefit here. I'm not sure why you're reiterating this argument. Even if there is a complete passthrough of benefit in the form of prices of low end goods, low end goods are not the only things you can buy with money. If poor people all of a sudden gain some level of discretionary spending, an incredibly wide range of markets benefit and have incentive to cater to them. I can't see how that's a bad thing.
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Jun 25, 2015 01:54
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Radbot posted:One of the primary reasons to raise the minimum wage is to force business and the wealthy to stop doing loving nothing with their money. I'd be happy with not raising the minimum wage if domestic reinvestment of 90% of profits were mandatory, for example, or if spending 90% of your profits on domestically-manufactured jet plane demolition derbies were required. I missed this post earlier, but a large part of the reason that businesses and the wealthy don't spend their money is that they now have so loving much of it that it's literally impossible for them to spend it in a way that benefits GDP proportionally to their wealth. A minimum wage hike really woudn't put a dent in this problem.
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Jun 25, 2015 02:03
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Ardennes posted:Ultimately the administrative savings will probably be more minor than you think, usually it turns out that administrative savings doesn't show up enough to pay for any meaningful part of the program. Ultimately, there question is about what things the government could do itself (education, healthcare, childcare etc) rather than paying for what is essentially a voucher to pay for (I would leave prison out of this). It's very important not to leave prison out of this. Increasingly, prison is a consequence of poverty, and the main reason that poverty is increasingly expensive for taxpayers to cope with. Prison is extremely expensive. It funnels taxpayer dollars directly into the hands of a private industry with incredible corrupting influence. Everything we do to lift people out of poverty reduces the prison population, which reduces the size of the prison industry, which saves taxpayers money. Ardennes posted:I don't object to a GMI on the idea itself but rather what should be sacrificed for it. If we could have a GMI/mincome funded without major issue then I wouldn't have a problem, it is when people start talking about getting rid of minimum wages and social programs, that it is more of an issue. One thing is that the federal government doesn't really spend enough on non-senior social spending to "melt down" into a GMI of any real size. You have EITC/Housing Programs/Food Stamps, but you probably are going to need an extra 200 B or so if you want to get anywhere. and my point is there are other priorities (education, healthcare, childcare) that need to be addressed. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone arguing for a GMI right now who is also in favor of completely dismantling social welfare spending at the same time, it's still very much a left-progressive issue. 200B is not hard to come up with if we're willing to reduce military spending or raise taxes on the wealthy. I'm certainly sensitive to the fear that GMI could become a talking point for conservatives who want to use it to effectively privatize social services, much like school vouchers on a grand scale. Thankfully, nobody on the right seems to have caught on to the idea.
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Jun 25, 2015 19:32
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