First 100 hours

[thesightless]

Re: First 100 hours

b) employers may be helped out by getting better productivity and hence the added wages are recouped

c) employers could actually afford the higher wages regardless of their arguing against it

dude....................
ill tel you right off the bat... no on both accounts.

employees only work hard if given threats or short term incentives. that is the truth. most of the businesses in this country are small businesses. if they had a clue they would tier the wage increases based upon gross income so thaT THE higher income businesses would foot the bill as opposed to a deli owner who is pulling in 50K all year in his own pocket after all the expenses.

[toasty]

Re: First 100 hours

Don't take my word for it.

http://www.epionline.org/oped_detail.cfm?oid=48

http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?id=336

http://www.nationalcenter.org/WCT010207MinimumWage.html

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1176.cfm

http://www.mises.org/story/2130

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/...n1901101.shtml

Golly, I wouldn't expect any of these sources to be against the minimum wage. You almost had me thinking you were quoting a liberal source with CBS News -- until I realized it was quoting The Weekly Standard...

I love the article from "What Conservatives Think" just because I think it is a riot that there is a newsletter called "What Conservatives Think." Is that how you guys all manage to spit out the same talking points? You circulate a newsletter telling everyone what to think? They must have removed me from the mailing list a couple years back...

[subterFUSE]

Re: First 100 hours

There are not many large businesses which pay minimum wages. Like I said before, less than 2% of workers make the minimum wage.

Try to think of companies which pay minimum wage to people.... you'll be surprised.
The most common image is someone flipping burgers at McDonald's. But most fast food employees make more than the minimum. But let's say that we increase the fed rate, and now most employees at McDonald's make only the minimum... who is footing the cost for that? Its not the McDonald's corporation, because McDonald's restaurants are franchised. They are all small businesses privately owned by individuals, simply paying the McDonald's corp for the name, advertising and products. The McDonald's corportation itself won't see an ounce of difference by a wage increase, because it is doubtful that a single person working for the corporaton makes min. wage.

[toasty]

Re: First 100 hours

But let's say that we increase the fed rate, and now most employees at McDonald's make only the minimum... who is footing the cost for that? Its not the McDonald's corporation, because McDonald's restaurants are franchised. They are all small businesses privately owned by individuals, simply paying the McDonald's corp for the name, advertising and products. The McDonald's corportation itself won't see an ounce of difference by a wage increase, because it is doubtful that a single person working for the corporaton makes min. wage.

What's your point? You make it seem as if raising the minimum wage is intended to punish employers. Who cares if McDonalds corporate feels it or not? The point is that the minimum wage needs to keep up with the cost of living, period.

[subterFUSE]

Re: First 100 hours

What's your point? You make it seem as if raising the minimum wage is intended to punish employers. Who cares if McDonalds corporate feels it or not? The point is that the minimum wage needs to keep up with the cost of living, period.

It was in response to what Sightless was mentioning in his last post.

[88Mariner]

Re: First 100 hours

What's your point? You make it seem as if raising the minimum wage is intended to punish employers. Who cares if McDonalds corporate feels it or not? The point is that the minimum wage needs to keep up with the cost of living, period.

what you are arguing is that the corporation, large or small, is at the will and whims of who it employees. this is not only retarded, but aside from ad hominem, is also incredibly destructive to the business world in general.

What you argue here is no less than a return to communism.

So, in short, go live in Venezuela, or read an econ book for once in your life.

[88Mariner]

Re: First 100 hours

on second thought, promise me that you won't ever vote, ever.

[toasty]

Re: First 100 hours

what you are arguing is that the corporation, large or small, is at the will and whims of who it employees. this is not only retarded, but aside from ad hominem, is also incredibly destructive to the business world in general.

What you argue here is no less than a return to communism.

So, in short, go live in Venezuela, or read an econ book for once in your life.

Oh give me a fucking break. I'm arguing nothing of the sort, and that ought to be obvious to any educated person -- and up until just now, I've always thought you presented yourself pretty well, so you ought to fall into that category. There is a difference between asking a company to bow to the will of its employees and asking that its wages be commensurate with the times.

Over half the states in this country have already decided that the federal minimum wage is too low and bumped it on their own, but you've taken a couple of econ courses at Terra Haute JuCo and read just enough about logic to misuse ad hominem, and suddenly you've got all the answers? And beyond that, I'm a communist for having the audacity to suggest that the a minimum wage increase is a good idea, which, by the way, is supported by an overwhelming percentage of the populace? Whatever.

By the way, if I said that none of your points had any validity because you are a dumbass, that would be an example of an ad hominem argument. For the record, though, I'm not saying that about you or anyone else on this forum.

Yet.

[Lorn]

Re: First 100 hours

All I will say is the next two years will be interesting. Be prepared for anything.

[Jenks]

Re: First 100 hours

After calling herself "the most powerful woman in America," Mrs. Pelosi flexed her right muscle like a weight lifter to much applause at an event yesterday titled a "women's tea."
"All right, let's hear it for the power," she screamed as the jubilant applause continued.

[88Mariner]

Re: First 100 hours

Oh give me a fucking break. I'm arguing nothing of the sort, and that ought to be obvious to any educated person -- and up until just now, I've always thought you presented yourself pretty well, so you ought to fall into that category. There is a difference between asking a company to bow to the will of its employees and asking that its wages be commensurate with the times.

not at face value you're not. but at an abstract level, the very core of what you're saying is exactly what i've pointed out.

Over half the states in this country have already decided that the federal minimum wage is too low and bumped it on their own, but you've taken a couple of econ courses at Terra Haute JuCo and read just enough about logic to misuse ad hominem, and suddenly you've got all the answers? And beyond that, I'm a communist for having the audacity to suggest that the a minimum wage increase is a good idea, which, by the way, is supported by an overwhelming percentage of the populace? Whatever.

There's a junior college in Terra [sic] Haute? I think I appropriately used an ad hominem attack against you (retarded) in the context of the points you were making. I'm beginning to think that it was unecessary to point this out. Just because a minimum wage increase is supported by an overwheliming percentage of the populace, doesn't mean it is A) right, B) founded on rational ideas (or for that matter, with actual, credible, proven, historical statistics), and C) good. Populations at large have supported a multitude of laws and bills that do great harm to but a few upper-tier income earners. Slavery, anyone? Prohibition? War on Drugs? Vietnam War? Hell, a week after 9/11, you could have passed CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS That would legally abolish the civil rights of a small percentage of Americans.

Americans are notorious for supporting certain issues, only to, years later, backtrack on them after seeing the harm those related laws and bills have caused.


Minimum wage laws make it illegal to pay less than the government-specified price for labor. By the simplest and most basic economics (regardless of whether you've studied at Terra [sic] Haute or...ahem...Chicago) a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when the prices are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market. The result is a suprlus, whether the price that is set artificially high is that of cars, computers, or in this case, labor. Minimum wage laws are almost always discussed politically in terms of the benefits they supposedly confer on workers recieving those wages. Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers recieve in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage. Because they lose thier jobs. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker's productivity worth that amount, and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.

Although most modern industrial societies have minimum wage laws, not every one does. Switzerland and Hong Kong, have been amont those exceptions, and have both maintained very low unemployment rates. Hong Kong is, to me, is always an example that I can easily utilize to point out certain points of economics: minimum wage is no different. In 1991, when Hong Kong was a still a British colony, its unemployment rate fell to a seasonally adjusted 1.4% in the three months ended Nov. 30...the lowest level in 10 months, easing from 1.3 a year earlier and dropping sharply from 1.8% in the preceding three months. Hong Kong did not have a minimum wage law, but at the end of the twentieth century, labor law's mandated under China's rule gave many new benefits for workers. This imposed increase in labor costs was followed, predictably, by higher unemployment rates that reache 7.3% in 2002. Not just a few percentages, but multiples of.

This isn't the only example of why minimum wages rates are bad. Rates in Europe are generally higher than in the U.S., and correspondingly, European countries tend to have a higher unemployment rate than the U.S. (and job growth rates only a fraction of the American rate). Among 11 million Americans earning at or near the minimum wage in 2001, well over half were from 16 to 24 years of age. Just over half worked part-time. Yet political campaigns to increase minimum wage often talk in terms of providing a 'living wage', a 'wage' sufficient to support a family of four- such families as most minimum wage workers do not have and would be ill-advised to have before they reach the point where they can feed and clothe thier children.

Most empirical studies show that minimum wage laws reduce unemployment in general, and especially the employment of younger, less skilled, and minority workers. An overwhelming majority (90%) of professional economists surveyed in Britain, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and the U.S., agree with this point.

If 2001 is to dated for you, try 2004:

The U.S. Department of Labor reports: "According to Current Population Survey estimates for 2004, some 73.9 million American workers were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.8 percent of all wage and salary workers. Of those paid by the hour, 520,000 were reported as earning exactly $5.15." Only about two percent of workers over 25 years of age earn minimum wages.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Sixty-three percent of minimum wage workers receive raises within one year of employment, and only 15 percent still earn the minimum wage after three years. Furthermore, only 5.3 percent of minimum wage earners are from households below the official poverty line; forty percent of minimum wage earners live in households with incomes $60,000 and higher; and, over 82 percent of minimum wage earners do not have dependents.

The U.S. Department of Labor also reports that the "proportion of hourly-paid workers earning the prevailing Federal minimum wage or less has trended downward since 1979."

I could seriously write for hours on this topics. But I'll save my breath and sum whatever I have written in a simple point:




There's no such thing as a free lunch. Higher Labor costs increase unemployment.


(consider, on top of increasing unemployment, the other linked problems caused by this unintended, but notorious consequence: crime is one of the first ideas that come to mind...)

[subterFUSE]

Re: First 100 hours

Agreed. And to add to this.....


The politicians claim that raising the minimum wage is an effort to bring the lowest income earners out of poverty. But this NEVER happens.

What does happen is the following:

Small businesses, which comprise the majority of companies which actually pay minimum wages, are faced with increased costs for operation with no corresponding increase in productivity. When the government forces you to pay $7 for work which cost you $5 yesterday, you are simply getting a reduction in profit unless you pass on those costs to the comsumer. If you increase prices for the consumer, you will lower demand for your products.... which will, in turn, lower the need for workers. When worker damand is lower, companies lay off employees.

Another consequence is that an increased minimum wage creates added incentive for younger people to abandon their education and enter the workforce. You see, by paying more money to low-income workers you increase the demand for people to seek those jobs. Young people will drop out of high school in greater numbers, because it simply pays better by a government mandate. So there will be an increase in the number of young people in the workforce, which will therefore push older people out of their jos..... because employers will be faced with the question of paying a younger, more productive... or keeping an older one. So the very people the law intended to help, namely the poor worker who is supposedly trying to support a family on $5.15 an hour, will get pushed out of their jobs by younger workers. And by encouraging young people to end their educations earlier, you decrease their potential for pulling themselves out of poverty over their lifetimes.

[toasty]

Re: First 100 hours

not at face value you're not. but at an abstract level, the very core of what you're saying is exactly what i've pointed out.

Well at an abstract level, you're describing fascism, but I don't think you're actually a fascist any more than you probably think I'm actually a communist, so let's drop the abstractions and name-calling.

There's a junior college in Terra [sic] Haute? I think I appropriately used an ad hominem attack against you (retarded) in the context of the points you were making.

Well it doesn't really much matter if there's a junior college in Terra Haute, Terre Haute, or whatever the hell it's called. I'm not typically a fan of dickering over grammar, spelling, and whatnot, but it does bear mention that for someone anal enough to point out my misspelling of a tiny little town in Indiana, you sure have a lot of typos in your post.

And by the way, you DID misuse ad hominem, which literally means "argument to the person" and would either be me attacking you personally (which is kinda what you did to me) or appealing to sympathy, which really isn't applicable to anything I've said. There are a host of different reasons why bumping the minimum wage to keep pace with the CPI is a good idea, almost all of which are beyond, "because it would be a really nice thing to do" or "because people making minimum wage are suffering."

Ultimately, though, peppering your post with Latin phrases is so fucking pretentious, I feel duty bound to call you out on it when you botch it.

Minimum wage laws make it illegal to pay less than the government-specified price for labor. By the simplest and most basic economics (regardless of whether you've studied at Terra [sic] Haute or...ahem...Chicago) a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when the prices are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market. The result is a suprlus, whether the price that is set artificially high is that of cars, computers, or in this case, labor. Minimum wage laws are almost always discussed politically in terms of the benefits they supposedly confer on workers recieving those wages. Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers recieve in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage. Because they lose thier jobs. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker's productivity worth that amount, and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.

OK, but the "simplest and most basic economics" don't always behave as you think they should in the real world, do they? You may be able to pull out Hong Kong as an example that fits your argument, but you know there was a lot more going on in Hong Kong at the time of the increase in unemployment you're talking about beyond a simple wage increase.

So that we can be assured that we're comparing apples to apples, a better comparison can be made by looking at the unemployment rate in the states that have enacted minimum wage laws that exceed federal standards. Do you see a lasting correlation between the states that increase the minimum wage and unemployment rates? I sure don't.

The U.S. Department of Labor reports: "According to Current Population Survey estimates for 2004, some 73.9 million American workers were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.8 percent of all wage and salary workers. Of those paid by the hour, 520,000 were reported as earning exactly $5.15." Only about two percent of workers over 25 years of age earn minimum wages.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Sixty-three percent of minimum wage workers receive raises within one year of employment, and only 15 percent still earn the minimum wage after three years. Furthermore, only 5.3 percent of minimum wage earners are from households below the official poverty line; forty percent of minimum wage earners live in households with incomes $60,000 and higher; and, over 82 percent of minimum wage earners do not have dependents.

The U.S. Department of Labor also reports that the "proportion of hourly-paid workers earning the prevailing Federal minimum wage or less has trended downward since 1979."

This is a great example of how stats can be used to show pretty much anything you'd like to show. OK, only a half a million people earn exactly the minimum wage and 63% get a raise within 1 year, and 85% get a raise within 3 years. Raise to what? You don't jump from $5.15 to the corner office. I remember when I had my first job way back when at Baskin Robbins and I got a raise, it was like $.10 an hour. Big fucking deal. If you make dick, and you get a raise, you're probably still making dick. A better measure would be to figure out how many people are earning less than, say, $7.50 an hour.

Small businesses, which comprise the majority of companies which actually pay minimum wages, are faced with increased costs for operation with no corresponding increase in productivity. When the government forces you to pay $7 for work which cost you $5 yesterday, you are simply getting a reduction in profit unless you pass on those costs to the comsumer. If you increase prices for the consumer, you will lower demand for your products.... which will, in turn, lower the need for workers. When worker damand is lower, companies lay off employees.

Again, at the macro level, this would seem to make sense, but that assumes that increased costs are always passed on to consumers, which doesn't always happen in the real world. Also, it assumes a uniform elasticity for the demand of all products, and for the demand of labor. At the end of the day, it is an overly simplistic view. The reality is that over time, the cost of everything -- raw materials, labor, real estate, consumer products, etc -- has gone up, and the market always adapts.

Another consequence is that an increased minimum wage creates added incentive for younger people to abandon their education and enter the workforce. You see, by paying more money to low-income workers you increase the demand for people to seek those jobs. Young people will drop out of high school in greater numbers, because it simply pays better by a government mandate. So there will be an increase in the number of young people in the workforce, which will therefore push older people out of their jos..... because employers will be faced with the question of paying a younger, more productive... or keeping an older one. So the very people the law intended to help, namely the poor worker who is supposedly trying to support a family on $5.15 an hour, will get pushed out of their jobs by younger workers. And by encouraging young people to end their educations earlier, you decrease their potential for pulling themselves out of poverty over their lifetimes.

Now that is a stretch. Again, is this happening in the states that have increased the minimum wage? Any kid that is willing to bail out on getting even a high school education for the promise of [gasp] $7.50 an hour probably wasn't destined for great things anyway. Hope you've got shoes on with some good traction, because that's a pretty slick slope you're on...

[superdave]

Re: First 100 hours

Ok enough about economic theories of what may happen if we raise the minimum wage. I'm old enough to remember seeing the minimum wage get raised twice and I made the minimum wage both times. No one got fired at work and no one I knew got fired because their employer couldn't afford to keep them on the payroll.

The reality is that people need a wage so people can afford things like housing, clothing, shelter, and transportation. Those living expenses have increased quite a bit over the last 12 years and the wages need to be increased to afford those costs.

And btw economists don't predict things well at all. I've worked in finance and accounting for 12 years and no one I've ever met can predict the market or what the economy will do. If they tell you otherwise, they're lying or good guessers.

[rubyraks]

Re: First 100 hours

And btw economists don't predict things well at all. I've worked in finance and accounting for 12 years and no one I've ever met can predict the market or what the economy will do. If they tell you otherwise, they're lying or good guessers.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I'd studied finance, economics and statistics in my lifetime and truth be told, they're not always right and rarely able to predict. Statistics could be found to show you anything that you'd like them to...it's all a matter of how you phrase the questions and the conclusions.

One of the major mistakes that those involved in economics tend to make is that every economic theory has some assumptions that are made in order to begin theorizing. One of the most common is that there is a true free market in the world, in terms of access and information, which no one could possibly think is actually true. It's because these assumptions don't actually hold that economic theories don't play out as neatly as some may think and hope.