Once again a bunch of politicians, looking for an election-year edge, have ginned up a massive campaign around another divisive social issue. The usual hallmarks are there: congressional bills that have little chance of passing, passionate declarations of principle, base-motivating ballot initiatives in targeted states. You know the drill.
So who’s teh gay? The minimum wage:
Democrats, seeking to energize voters over economic issues in much the way that Republicans have rallied conservatives with efforts to ban same-sex marriage, have begun a broad campaign to raise the minimum wage and focus attention on income inequality.
[…] With midterm elections less than four months away, Democrats have begun state ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage in more than a half-dozen states where Republicans are in danger of losing House or Senate seats.The issue is playing a role in Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arizona — all states where Republican senators are fighting for survival.
Pressure is so high in Ohio that Senator Mike DeWine broke ranks with fellow Republicans last month and voted for a Democratic bill that would have raised the minimum wage to $7.15 an hour. The measure received 52 votes, a majority, but not the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster.
Democratic leaders in Congress are closely coordinating their efforts in Washington with campaigns in critical races around the country. Democratic lawmakers say they will try to block what is normally an automatic pay increase for members of Congress until Republicans agree to raise the federal minimum wage.
What a relief to see a wedge issue with some social relevance for a change. For eight years inflation has chipped away at the already-meager $5.15 minimum wage to the point where minimum earners with a single job cannot possibly support themselves, let alone a child, and healthcare is a distant dream. This basic fact led conservative Charles Murray to correctly point out in Losing Ground (useful review here) that such a person is often better off on welfare because of the “benefits” that welfare provides. Murray idiotically follows up by arguing that we should fix the disparity by making welfare more punitive when the more obvious choice is to give American workers a decent chance at a livable life.
Proponents of the minimum wage hike should be lucky enough to have anti-minimum wage hike politicians as tone-deaf as Tom DeLay, justifying his own pay hike thusly:
“It’s not a pay raise,” said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. “It’s an adjustment so that they’re [we’re – ed.] not losing their [our] purchasing power.”
God forbid politicians should give the same consideration to the people they represent.
***Update***
In a similar vein, this is hilarious.
Pb
Cute analogy Tim, but (as I’m sure you know) the Democrats have literally been pushing this stuff for years–and not only election years, either. However, it’s nice to see more state ballot initiatives too, that’s surely a better strategy for them right now.
DecidedFenceSitter
But this year they are doing it to drive out the vote, stealing the page from the Republican “Gay Marriage will doom your marriage so get out there vote down gay marraige and while you are there, vote Republican!” play.
GOP4Me
I hope it works, but then again it’s awfully hard to come out and vote when you’re working 80 hours a week just to get by.
Is there some good reason why election day isn’t a national holiday on par with Christmas, with time off for all workers (excepting emergency services)? If there is a good reason for that, I can’t figure it out. Maybe someone smarter could explain it to me. I know we have absentee ballots and whatnot, but I’ve been doing a lot of canvassing this summer and from what I’ve seen those things are as easy to put off indefinitely as they are to forget completely.
The Other Steve
Let me ask a question?
If Democrats have a wedge issue… let’s say minimum wage, that gets people to come out and vote for Democrats.
Is it a good idea to have the ballot initiative include a provision that keeps increasing the wage with inflation? That is, prevents this from being an issue again in 5 years, 10, 15, etc.?
Just asking.
Ancient Purple
Thankfully, the ballot initiative here in Arizona to raise the minimum wage is exceedingly popular. It is polling at around 70% in favor. Even conservatives think that $5.15 an hour is pathetic.
The backlash from smaller companies is that they will have to trim jobs to pay the increase. Yeah. I heard that same nonsense when the minimum wage was raised to $5.15 an hour.
Oddly, the Republic didn’t end.
DecidedFenceSitter
Well, the Devil’s Advocate argument might be look what has happened since then with the checkouts at grocery stores, you now have the ability for 1 man to run 4 “self-checkout” lanes, which is a money multiplier. Of course, there’s a question as to whether corporate America (who I’ve found to be the traditional employer of minimum wage earners) would have resisted the urge to institute that reform and other’s even if minimum wage was back around 4.50 or whatever.
tBone
Make it easier for people to vote? Don’t you know that just leads to fraud, like the dastardly Motor Voter Act?
Face it, kook: if we enact meaningful voting reform, the terrorists have won.
Sherard
The National Restaurant Association says that restaurants alone trimmed their staffs by 140,000 following the last increase in the minimum wage.
Statistics I’ve seen show that 60% of minimum wage workers are part time, 50% have no better than a HS diploma, and about half of them haven’t even graduated HS. The problem with the minimum wage is that while it raises the income of the full time workers, many companies will simply forego the unskilled temporary workers.
VidaLoca
What would really be surprising would be if the National Restaurant Association said anything other than this.
Jim Allen
Even moving it to a Saturday would increase the potential turnout, notwithstanding the possible issues with running into someone’s Sabbath.
GOP4Me
Good point. I hadn’t considered the GWOT angle.
Jim Allen
Oddly, that’s roughly the number of out-of-work waitstaff that got roles on the “Law and Order” and all its spinoffs.
GOP4Me
Another good idea. If you think about it, Tuesday is one of the most inconvenient days imaginable to go out and vote. Many of us are forced to choose between a lunch break and American democracy; in all too many cases, the empty stomach wins out.
John S.
I work for a small company. There isn’t a single person here that makes minimim wage. Granted, we’re an advertising agency, but there are plenty of small businesses out there that don’t even employ minimum-wage workers, so a change won’t affect them at all.
My wife on the other hand runs one of those Auntie Anne’s pretzel joints where she employs a lot of high school kids and part-time workers. Guess what? None of them get fucking minimumn wage, either. Her cheapest salary on the payroll is $6.50/hr., and yet somehow the store manages to stay in business. Needless to say, a hike in minimum wage won’t affect her company either.
And restaurant workers – servers anyway – don’t rely on minimum wage for their incomes, not that they receive $5.15/hr. anyway. So for all the nervous hand-wringing on the part of conservatives, I can’t see that a long overdue increase is going to destroy our society. Sure, a Big Mac may end up costing you a few cents more, but to echo your point, our Republic will endure.
Punchy
Social issue? Wha? This is a fiscal/financial issue. If companies pay more, we have less poverty. Less poverty ostensibly means fewer on welfare, which means the gov’t spends less on welfare/medicare/food stamps/etc and thus saves money. It appears to DECREASE gov’t entitlements, which is why I’ve never understood why conservatives hate it so (yeah, free-market, yada yada).
It’s surely not a social issue as it is a monetary one. And the Dems press it annually, not just during election years. Odd…can’t say I remember a gay-marriage amendment vote in 2005…
GOP4Me
In the 3 states where I worked as or with waitstaff, servers were paid substantially below minimum wage. Tips are supposed to offset this, and usually do (depending on where you work). I’m not sure if this server exemption from minimum wage is universal or not, as I’ve only worked in restaurants in 3 states. But if so, it counterbalances the NRA’s (ha!) argument on this issue.
This is a map of minimum wage laws around the country. Unfortunately, it doesn’t discuss restaurants. But it does show yet another good reason not to live in Kansas- it has the lowest minimum wage in America.
GOP4Me
The economy does better if poor people get more money, anyway. They spend it locally, reinvesting it in the economy. Allow me to speak in gross generalizations for a minute. Give a poor man $100, and he’ll probably spend it on rent or food or something intrinsic to the American economy, and something probably controlled by the rich (well, richer than him, anyway). Give a rich (upper class) man $100, and he’ll probably invest it overseas where he can expect a greater return on his investment. Or, he’ll stick it in a bank and let it collect interest. Either way, the American economy is better off when the poor are better off. Capital trickles up, not down.
Cue every Republican commenter on this site to tell me why my economic analysis is totally off-base. Then you guys can tell me how poor people are supposed to buy the goods and services the wealthy make their livelihood by selling to poor people, once poor peoples’ credit lines are exhausted and they can’t borrow or earn any more money. Fuck it, I don’t know anything anyway. Someone can probably answer my assessment and my questions.
Jill
It’s funny how a Democratic “wedge issue” is something that will actually have a real impact on real people, unlike the Republican scare tactics of gay marriage that have no effect on anyone but the “bad” gays who are destroying my marriage!
Punchy
WOW!! Reverse spoof!! This is new….and somewhat entertaining.
Andrew
Methinks you answered your own question.
Everything about voting is setup to supress minority and poor voting.
Jim Allen
Yup, but there’s some hope here and here
Jill
Wake up, America…one party rule is dangerous but when that party is Republican it is worse.
Andrew
Jim, I’m afraid that there is very little hope as long as we have electronic voting and gerrymandering. Issues like ID laws are like fixing a sprained ankle on a heart attack patient.
Mr Furious
Don’t forget about the original gay.
hilarious.
Mr Furious
Yeah, for some reason GOP4Me is coming to us from an alternate universe. That being the case, does the normal “bad” GOP4Me have the beard, or does this new one have the beard?
RSA
The same organization says that today restaurants and food services account for 12.5 million jobs in the U.S. It must have been lower when the minimum wage was last raised, but this is 1.1%, even if it’s somewhat apples and oranges. Not to mention that if I recall correctly, real minimum wage for wait staff is much lower than $5.85, or whatever it is, because they make a good proportion of the income from tips.
Tim F.
To play devil’s advocate here, it is true that wait staff wages don’t track very well with the minimum wage. The dishwashing and busing staff may be more of an issue. Possibly the Restaurant Association referred to the workers who do make minimum wage, although I don’t have access to numbers that would say one way or the other.
John S.
For those of you wondering about the minimum wage for ‘tipped’ workers, here is the chart from the DOL.
The federal minimum cash wage for a tipped employee is a whopping $2.13/hr (provided you make $30 or more in tips), which makes the hyperbole by the National Restaurant Association laughable in the extreme.
Mac Buckets
Look, as sweet and compassionate as increasing the minimum wage for the 4% of the workforce (75% parttime, 60% student) makes people feel, as an economic principle…it makes a good political football. An arbitrary, mandated pay raise in our market is just a tax on those not affected by the increase — it’s a tax on us when Congress raises their pay because they can, it’s a tax on us when they raise other people’s wages to get votes.
The reason why, of course, is that businesses forced to raise pay (which would include businesses paying over the minimum wage, too, because of the spillover — “Why am I just making $1/hour or $2/hour or $3/hour over MINIMUM WAGE workers?” — effect) don’t just sit back and eat the cost. They raise their prices to cover their increased labor expense.
So who winds up winning? The tiny %age of workers who go from today’s minimum to the next minimum (and who keep their jobs — in the 1991 minwage hike, a disproportionate %age of the following job losses were in the minwage segments) win, but not by as much as you’d think, because their wages are partially offset by economy-wide price rises. Who loses? Minwagers who lose their jobs, of course, but also everyone in America who earns above minimum wage, because they have the same amount of money, but prices have increased.
Are we in such great economic shape in this country that we can afford to harm 90% of the population for a small benefit to a small subsection of the job market? You be the judge.
Also, while minimum wage hikes will raise prices to cover current employees, future employees can also be hurt. The last time the minimum wage was raised, private sector job growth went from 2.9% in 1997 to 2.4% in 1998 to 2.3% in 1999.
It’s a relatively complex issue, pitting economic principles and reality vs. self-righteousness and emotions. Usually, the emotions win, because they are easier to put in very short words on bumper-stickers.
Zifnab
But, to quote John Stossel, why do we need a minimum wage at all? Shouldn’t the market bare what it can bare?
I’ve worked summer jobs pretty much every summer in college, and I don’t think I’ve been paid minimum wage once. So who IS getting paid minimum wage? 3% of America? I’m continuely flumixed at how giving the bottom rung of American society a pay raise is going to bankrupt our economy. As through grocery stores and flower shops and hot dog stands across the country are going to plung into collapse by forcing the employers to pay their staff what 97% of employees in this country already appear to make.
I think there’s a quote somewhere in which even Walmart consltants claimed minimum wage was bad for their business, because people on min wage couldn’t afford to shop at their store.
RSA
When my wife worked as a waitress, back in college, the restaurants she worked for paid lip service to the idea that if she didn’t make enough in tips to come up to minimum wage, the restaurant would pay the difference–this was the law, I think. Somehow this never happened, though. . . Laughable is right.
I don’t have a good answer to Tim’s devil’s advocate question. Restaurants could make a case that any increase in the cost of staffing will hurt them, I suppose; it’s hard to evaluate the claim without seeing more than just aggregated numbers.
Sojourner
Bucket:
Funny, the same argument could be made for tax cuts for the very wealthy. The middle class ends up paying for it.
Did you have a problem with that?
Mac Buckets
It won’t because you and I will end up paying for it through higher prices. Who you should pity are the $8/hour, full-time workers trying to support a family. Now s/he will be paying higher prices on the same salary to benefit live-at-home, parttime teenagers.
Krista
Mac, how can industry-wide price increases be in ANY way justified by 4% of the population receiving a pay increase? If the number of people earning min. wage is as small as you say, then why should an increase in their pay cause such catastrophic price rises as you’re predicting? Why would the businesses who already pay more than min. wage have to increase their prices any?
Sorry, but you seem to be painting a fairly hysterical picture, here.
Zifnab
Of course, MacBuckets takes a truly naive approach to price setting in this country. When you buy a Big Mac for $4, how much of that money goes to pay the server? Then ask how much goes to advertising, back to the franchise, to pay the rent on the building, to pay for the food materials themselves… etc? Labor makes up on a fraction of the cost of consumer goods. Even if the entire price of a min wage increase is passed on to consumers, the price of your Big Mac won’t change by more than a few pennies.
The price of gas won’t go up.
The price of computer software won’t go up.
The price of realestate won’t go up.
However, with all that extra buying power concentrated at the bottom of the economic pyramid, you will see a dramatic increase in spending. The jobs that disappear the day after the min wage goes into effect will be replaced quickly and with jobs to spare.
As can be seen here:
and here:
Steve
The theoretical across-the-board price increase we’re talking about is trivial. Yes, yes, the Republican Party is just sticking up for that poor $8/hour single mom when they oppose a minimum wage increase, much like they’re concerned about small businesses when they try to repeal the estate tax.
Mandating a higher minimum wage isn’t simply charity. Giving people a more livable wage means they spend more and stimulate the economy. It’s not all about a redistribution of wealth with no aftereffects, as conservative dogma would have it.
Mac Buckets
That doesn’t make sense on any level, I’m afraid. Not only does your Talking Points rhetoric not reflect the reality of who pays the taxes in America, it’s also not the same principle at all. In short, it’s not an expense to lower a tax. It is an expense to, well, raise expenses, which is what raising the minwage does.
Haven’t you heard the news on this year’s increase in tax receipts in the mainstream media? No, of course you haven’t. See, you can decrease tax rates and still have more tax revenue by “growing the pie.” I could go into it further, but I doubt you are serious.
John S.
That’s a good point, Tim.
However, restaurants can clearly make some of these employees – like bussing staff – get a portion of tip-outs from the wait staff (a common practice), thereby placing them in the same reduced minimum-wage category as servers.
Having worked in college as a waiter, my general impression of the stink made by the NRA is that it has as much to do with restaranteers being cheap assholes as it does with them operating in an industry with narrow profit margins. Which is to say, they are terrified of having to make any changes.
jg
Talking about how the raise wil effect this and this and this downstream in such a way that overall the raising of the minimum wage will be bad for the economy, is a waste of time. Voters worry about themselves, in present tense. If the republican revolution has taught us anything its that voters don’t think through on issues. They vote the surface. And here the surface is larger paycheck.
jg
NO YOU CAN’T! That fallacy is over. Even conservative think tanks don’t buy trickle down economics anymore. The only people positively affected by reduced tax rates are rich people who were paying out the ass previously. The other 95% of us are hurt by the stagnant economy that results. Ask Ben Stein. Even he has given up on it.
Andrew
A low minimum wage is a government subsidy for business.
These businesses get by without paying their employees enough to live even at a subsistence level. These minimum wage employees use government provided social services at a much higher rate than other workers.
If a company wants to take advantage of doing business in America, then it should pay its workers enough so that they do not need to rely on social services.
Mr Furious
Yup they’re just a bunch of suburban kids making beer and iTunes money.
Shut the fuck up, Mac. You know not of what you speak. How many stuggling families depend upon every income that comes into the house. Yes, that includes the kid working at McDonalds.
I have worked ever since I turned sixteen. My first job was at McDonald’s. If I recall I made minimum wage. That money went towards college. So did my summer job money and the money from the jobs I had while in college.
My dad was a firefighter. We weren’t poor, but there were four kids to go through college. That shit’s expensive. If I could have made an extra buck an hour as a “live at home teenager” it would have been a huge help to me and my whole family. And probably would have been one less college loan for one of us.
Sorry that the plebs have decided not to keep tightening the belt while republican fucks like yourself continue to whine for tax breaks.
Pb
…and that’s fine with me. In constant dollars, the minimum wage is lower now than it has been in the past 50 years or more. Instead of paying these people a fair wage, we’ve seen CEO salaries go through the roof. We’d have done better if *their* wages had been arbitrarily mandated to stay the same for the past nine years instead.
Nutcutter
We’ll be briefing Darrell the Decider soon, and he will be making a statement.
Darrell
I think this post illustrates well the simpleton understanding of basic economics so prevalent on the left.
RSA
. . .as a practitioner of voodoo economics. It’s all in the details. Some economists believe that a change in the minimum wage will affect the economy only minimally. Whether a decrease in tax rates increases tax revenue obviously depends on the size of the decrease.
Nutcutter
Hold onto your jockstrap, Macster …. I’m going to agree with you.
I don’t know the arcane details of the impact of minimum wage well enough to say that I’m convinced even having such a law is a good idea. I’m not convinced that it isn’t a good idea, either. But I think the concept has to stand reasonable tests before we can make that call one way or the other.
However …. if we are going to have a minimum wage, then the minimum now is in dire need of being raised. It is just out of whack with the realities of the world out there, ISTM.
Nutcutter
Oh, that was too quick …. ahem …. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Darrell!
Darrell
“Trivial” = 39% increase
Darrell
How fucking stupid can yoiu be? seriously
Punchy
What she said. Emphatically.
Zifnab
Trickle down econcomics had merit 40 years ago, when the income tax bracket at its peak was in the 70% area. Probably the wisest thing Reagen ever did for this country was to make the income tax rate sane again.
However, much like raising minimum wage has a capping point – there’s no reason to raise min wage to the Stossel-esque $40/hr – so does tax cutting have a dump-off point at which giving rich people more money fails to improve the economy.
One of the reasons the estate tax is such a joke is that it ONLY touches to top 1% of income earners in America. Likewise, cutting taxes on income from stocks appears equally ridiculous when we already have programs like Investment Retirement Accounts (IRAs) specifically designed to protect the small man investor.
And if you don’t think ballooning our national debt with tax cuts is an expense, you have no business talking about macroeconomics. We have been $300 billion or more in the red consistantly for half a decade. Interest on the national debt alone is the third largest expense in the national budget, right behind Military Spending and Social Security. The Bush tax cuts have not rebounded the economy. We have not closed that hole in the six years he’s been in office. Trickle down in this economic model is a bad joke or a cruel lie.
Krista
Care to source that, Senator?
Mr Furious
Yeah, that cracked me up as well. Taking half the money out of your checking account might not be an expense either, Mac, but it will sure have the same effect.
SeesThroughIt
Wait, I thought the Bush economy was outrageously successful and strong? Man, it’s so hard to keep track these days.
Mr Furious
No problem. I’ll do it for him…
( )*( )
There. That would be Darrell’s ass.
Darrell
$7.15 proposed minimum wage divided by $5.15 current wage yields a 39% increase. It’s not complicated math.. really.
Darrell
Hilarious how you leftists simpletons not only can’t grasp basic economic principles.. hell, you can’t even do 4th grade math
The Other Steve
Decided fence sitter made a good point about checkout lines going to a do it yourself model. I haven’t seen this at grocery stores, but that’s the way Home Depot is and I love it. It’s much faster for me as a consumer.
One of the big municipal parking ramps here went to what I call the Frankfurt model(simply because that is where I first saw it) of an automated ticket machine. Now they have 1 person watching the ramp instead of 4.
you can argue that this resulted in job loss.
But I argue that it resulted in people having an opportunity to find more meaningful employment.
I work in IT, and my job is to put people out of work. Strangely it hasn’t resulted in any job losses, but rather the ability for our company to do new and better things.
Andrei
Informative reading.
The Other Steve
Darrell – Minimum wage is kind of like the Laffer Curve. It doesn’t make sense immediately, but the reality is the higher the wages the more jobs you create.
Calling us idiots just shows poorly on yourself.
Nutcutter
Says you, the guy who never met a detail or a fact he coudn’t ignore or run away from when it was inconvenient to face up to it.
Try to keep the lecturing down to a low roar.
Krista
I really didn’t need that visual. Really.
HyperIon
Regarding:
OK, I understand that machinist jobs and textile jobs are vanishing here due to wage pressure from abroad. But, please, someone explain to me how restaurant staffs can suffer this same fate. Somebody has to bring the food to the table, etc.
Zifnab
I think he was refering to the consumer-price increase. (i.e. the price of a loaf of bread or a gallon of gas or a pokemon action figure).
If you want to get technical, since this price increase will only impact 4% of the population, it’s more like (5.15/7.15)(.04) = .16%
Zifnab
And yes, I consider less than two-tenths of one percent trivial.
The Other Steve
It also helps that they won’t need as much welfare, which reduces government spending.
Actually what was it the guy in Ohio said yesterday in an NPR interview?
“At $5 an hour a person doesn’t have much incentive to go out and find work, it’s easier to live off welfare. At $7 an hour, that will encourage them to go get off welfare.”
Andrew
Everyone besides Darrell:
The minimum wage has significant effects beyond the 4% or however many people are earning exactly the minimum wage. An increased minimum wage raise the wage floor, and has compressive effects that increases all of the wages at the bottom end of the scale.
Darrell:
I bow to your superior wit and wisdom.
Of course, if those poor people make a living wage, they might not depend on government programs like foodstamps, but I’m not sure how the CIA is supposed to get them all addicted to crack unless they have to report to government offices on a regular basis.
Zifnab
Gak. 1.6%
Shoots himself.
Tragic.
Andrei
Apparently Darrell can’t read.
MacBuckets was saying only 4% of the population would gain a 39% increase. Steve is claiming that the trickle effect across the board of all wage earners of that 39% increase to 4% of the wage earners would be trivial.
The Other Steve
Self service softdrink machines.
And bringing your own tray up to the garbage can.
think of all the jobs destroyed by customers doing things themselves.
Krista
Darrell…the increase that Mac was talking about was the theoretical across-the-board price increase in the cost of goods and services that would result from an increase in the minimum wage. Steve said that the theoretical increase in the costs of the goods and services would be trivial. You then responded with, “Trivial” = 39% increase.
You were talking about the increase in the wage. We were all talking about the alleged economy-wide price rises that have Mac’s panties in a twist.
Do try to keep up, okay? We don’t want to have to stop every 10 comments to make sure you understand what we’re actually talking about.
Zifnab
And don’t go quoting NPR OtherSteve. We all know they’re a wing of the communist liberal elite hate-America media.
Nutcutter
Home Depot preferred customer here, the guy who has singlehandedly kept their stock going for ten years. This is what happens when you buy a fixer-upper house. You live at Home Depot, Lowe’s and Ace Hardware and you have a Home Depot credit card and you use it liberally, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Self checkout? Never works right. Non-intuitive interface and menus. Scan failures. “Please call attendant” messages. Standing in line behind first time users of the thing, and watching them fumble with it.
I hate it. I’d gladly pay a 25 cent surcharge on every purchase for more checkout clerks and shorter lines in the store. I’m an American, I will pay for service.
And if I am going to check myself out, then give me a frigging discount for doing their work for them.
The Other Steve
True, but a little inflation is good for me paying off my mortgage.
The Other Steve
I don’t do it if I’m hauling out lumber.
Only if I’m buying paintbrushes, tape, screwdrivers… prepackaged stuff.
Andrei
From the informative reading link I posted above.
Darrell
Mac also pointed out that many others beyond that 4% will be demanding and receiving pay raises, based on the “I was making $1.50 or $3 over minimum wage before, so you need to increase my wage too to keep my percentage above minimum wage consistent” situation which will result from the minimum wage increas.
The Other Steve
I spend a lot time going to Home Depot to buy the one thing I need to finish a job. That PVC elbow joint because the one I have isn’t right to finish hooking up my sink, etc.
Nutcutter
Again I say, I don’t know the econ details that prove or disprove the whole minimum wage concept … but that statement is a perfect example of what Mac refers to as “political football.”
If I a talking to a person who says, “For $5 an hour I will go on welfare, but for $7 I’ll get a job” my answer is “fuck you.” I don’t give a shit about the well being of someone with that attitude. Get the $5 an hour job and shut the fuck up. If you need more money, then get two jobs, or get one and get some education in your off time and then get a better job, but get away from my wallet.
Andrei
Which Steve claimed was “trivial” to which you responded “39%” which is decidely not trivial.
Good lord, the person who invents a comment system for blogs that can scan a post and it’s comments and then ask new posters comprehension questions to make sure they actually understand the conversation before letting them sidetrack a thread will make a fucking mint.
The Other Steve
Why? You going to leave and get a different job?
Threats that you want more money don’t work if the market doesn’t have a glut of jobs making you more money.
Mr Furious
Yeah, that’s a 39% increase in the wage, not the price of goods, you fucking dolt.
The Other Steve
All right, I’ll stay on welfare.
Darrell
We can raise minimum wages as a tool to eliminate all poverty, right?
Mr Furious
LOL!
David F. Prenatt, Jr.
If the objective is to help the working poor, an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit would be a much more effective and equitable way of doing so than raising the minimum wage.
Krista
I can understand why you feel that way, but there are certain circumstances to consider, too. If you have a single parent who works full time at a minimum wage job, working a second job might not BE an option. It’s one thing to have to pay for someone to watch the kids for an hour or two after school. It’s quite another to have every penny you make in a second job sucked up by babysitting fees. Yes, there are some people on social assistance for no other reason than that they are lazy arses. However, there are some on social assistance because the system actually penalizes them for trying to work. If you’re working your butt off at two jobs, and never seeing your kids, and you see people who are on social assistance making more than you, while getting to be with their kids, after awhile, you start to wonder why in the hell you bother working. It’s not right, and it’s not pretty, but I can understand why it happens.
Darrell
Something’s wrong, Nutcutter is making too much sense.
Nutcutter
Well, good for you. You won’t of course because you are talking about a hypothetical person, not yourself.
But that “give me or else” attitude is what drives conservatives up the wall … and I am right there with them.
If I think that welfare is going to people too stubborn to take a $5 an hour job, then my response is to tighten up the welfare rules and get rid of them.
On the other hand, I am fully aware that there are those on the right who will push for the $5 minimum just so they can hear those whines and be feel justified in their actions.
That’s exactly why Mac calls it a political football, because that’s exactly what it is.
Darrell
Then that says pretty clearly that the social programs are too generous to result in a situation like that.
Andrew
TOS:
Of course raising the minimum wage increases the costs of products that are service dependent. Yay, inflation. My point is that this is only a bad thing in isolation, which it is obviously not. In particular, a higher minimum wage will reduce welfare dependencies, as we have both pointed out. Also, profits will decrease over the short term, which is why business is opposed. However, spending will increase and business will grow.
Nutcutter: the point is that at $5 an hour, the person will still require welfare just to survive. Read Nickel and Dimed for a case study. The business is making a profit because their workers are getting part of their “wages” from the government.
It would be more advantageous to the worker and society for these welfare/minimum wage candidates to take welfare and learn some job skills or perform public service. I am quite opposed to no-conditions welfare.
John S.
Ditto. What incentive is there for a person to work for minimum wage without benefits and make less than a person on welfare who will receive infinitely more benefits and be able to provide for their family much better?
None.
And regarding the attitude of such a person, you can accuse them of being a pragmatist.
Krista
See, that’s where we disagree, is in the solution to this. I don’t think that cutting social programs is the answer. There are people who genuinely need those programs or they’d be starving in the streets, and I’m really not keen on the idea of taking food out of their mouths. I’m more of the opinion that if the wages were increased, it wouldn’t create that no-win situation for a lot of working people (particularly working parents), and they would be a lot more likely to stay in the workforce and not wind up relying on social services. I think that in the long run, it would actually save a lot of money, because of the decreased dependence on those programs.
Mr Furious
Sorry, Krista, those hypotheticals only work from the top down…
Mr Furious
[/sarcasm]
There.
The Other Steve
Well look at how well this attitude works. We’re using it against Iran and North Korea too.
The thing is, I actually can understand the feeling, but I also an rational enough to know it isn’t always helpful.
The Other Steve
Exactly. We just had a situation here where Medicaid was cut off for people making over $x dollars.
So it’s like the Republican claim that progressive tax encourages people not to work harder. If you’re going to get less by making more, we all know the answer to that.
Krista
And ppGaz, I was one of those people you were talking about. I got laid off from my job in April of 2004, and had three month’s severance. We moved to a rural area, because my boyfriend had a job there lined up, and we figured the cost of living would be a lot lower than it was in the city. After my severance ran out, I was on EI (Employment Insurance) for a year. I was still looking for work, but because of expenses such as student loans and my car loan, I literally could not afford to take a job that paid any less than what EI was making me. Believe me — I wanted to work. But was I able to afford to make $4 less an hour for the sake of principle? No. I wasn’t. Fortunately I found work before my EI ran out, but if I hadn’t, I would have wound up having to take one of those min. wage jobs, and would have likely had to default on my loans.
So it’s not as cut-and-dry as a lot of people would have you believe. Sometimes, it’s just bad luck happening to otherwise ambitious, hardworkinge people.
Andrew
24 billion dollars.
24 fucking billion dollars because people with low-incomes can’t afford to fucking eat.
Throw in a another $5 billion for women and children, and $12 billion for school lunches. $41 billion dollars to feed Americans, and the majority of these from families where the parents do have jobs.
This is all at the federal level. Imagine what state and local governments spend on food and health care.
If you don’t think that we’re subsidizing shit-fuck minimum wage supplying businesses, you’re off your god damn rocker.
Andrew
Whee! My furious anger over the minimum wage is awaiting moderation!
Steve
Did I miss where Darrell explained to us simpletons how an increase in the minimum wage would result in an across-the-board price increase of 39%?
What’s amazing to me – and again, this is just my simpleton understanding of basic economics at work – is that if you give extra money to rich people, it stimulates the economy and pays for itself. But if you give extra money to people near the poverty line – who, to a simpleton like me, would seem very likely to go out and spend it on something – the money just vanishes down a hole. No positive effects for the economy whatsoever.
This is why a simpleton like me shouldn’t try to understand conservative economic theory. 39% across-the-board price increase? Seriously?
Pooh
Is there literally no possible topic on which the Senator can not demonstrate himself to be both monumentally arrogant and hillariously clueless in ten words or less?
John S.
Same here, Krista.
I got laid off after 9/11 and was unable to find work for nearly 18 months. My UI (Unemployment Insurance) – which I had to pay taxes on – was enough to supplement my wife’s income during that period, so I only concentrated on finding work in my profession which I had already spent 8 years.
Was I going to go work for McDonald’s? If I absolutely had to. But a career professional shouldn’t have to be faced with their only choices being between paltry UI and even paltrier minimum wage. If minimum wage weren’t shit, I would have happily taken something temporarily instead of sucking on the government’s tit.
Darrell
But what you’re not acknowledging is that those same programs provide a disincentive to work
John S.
Which is when you will find him go conspicuously absent from a thread. After he jams his foot in his mouth good and tight, he waits for the posts ridiculing him to die down before bursting on the scene with his know-nothing arrogance to start the process all over again.
Andrew
If you spend 100% of your money on purely minimum wage service, such as hand jobs, then yes, your costs may increase by that amount. Darrell?
Darrell
What you need to understand is what Andrew was explaining.. that the minimum wage is an actual subsidy to business
Darrell
To clarify, we’re talking about a 39% increase in the minimum wage
Krista
Darrell, what I’m acknowledging is that instead of providing a negative incentive to work, by cutting social programs (which will harm those who are unable to work), that it would be much better to provide a positive incentive to work by raising wages. A number of people on social assistance would then be more inclined to get jobs, and would therefore be paying taxes, buying gas, and otherwise stimulating the economy. Then, you have the people who are already working, and are on min. wage, and would have increased money to spend on things, which would also then stimulate the economy.
Steve
No, what I need to understand is what YOU were explaining… that increasing the minimum wage would mean a 39% across-the-board price increase, and failure to realize this illustrates how leftists have a “simpleton understanding of basic economics.” Do tell.
John S.
Correct me if I’m wrong Andrew, but I think prostitutes make quite a bit more than minimum wage.
If not, where the hell do you live, anyway?
Krista
Are there not people on social assistance who are genuinely unable to work due to disabilities? Why do you want to screw them over, Darrell?
Darrell
I never suggested that raising minimum wages 39% would result in a 39% price increase. All I know is that minimum wages are a subsidy to business
Andrew
The South.
Steve
Really.
Like hell you didn’t.
Darrell
I don’t want to screw over those with disabilities, but as Nutcutter pointed out, there are, and will be many (actually most of them) that are able bodied, but CHOOSE not to work because it pays more to be on social programs
John S.
Right. And WHY would they choose otherwise? What would you choose, Darrell:
A) 40 hours of work at $175/week after taxes with no benefits
B) 0 hours of work at $250/week with benefits
If you choose option A, why? What advantage is there?
Andrei
You know Darrell, admitting that you actually weren’t reading the comment you blockquoted when you responded while simultaneously wearing that as a badge of honor just makes you look even more moronic than most of us think you already are.
Had you said, “Oh. I misread that. My fault. Here’s what I really meant.” You actually would have gained some points.
Andrew
Since John and Tim are doing productive things with their lives, let me repost, with fewer links:
24 billion dollars.
24 fucking billion dollars because people with low-incomes can’t afford to fucking eat.
Throw in a another $5 billion for women and children, and $12 billion for school lunches. $41 billion dollars to feed Americans, and the majority of these from families where the parents do have jobs.
This is all at the federal level. Imagine what state and local governments spend on food and health care.
If you don’t think that we’re subsidizing shit-fuck minimum wage supplying businesses, you’re off your god damn rocker.
Mr Furious
No. That’s what you were talking about. It is not what the person you were responding to, or the rest of us, were talking about.
Darrell
The problem, as I have already made clear, is that too generous benefits provide a disincentive to work. Reduce benefits to make work more attractive
John S.
Damn. I live in the South, too, but I wasn’t aware that there were any hookers providing hand jobs for minimum wage.
I must live in the wrong part.
=_^
Tom in Texas
Sorry to jump in late, but I am a server at a fine dining steakhouse in Houston (actually we have several in Arizona/California as well — Fleming’s, if you’re interested). To back up the info given upthread, our waiters make $2.13 per hour. On paydays typically I owe the restaurant money to cover taxes on my tips and my health insurance premium. In addition, servers almost always subsidize the salaries of the front of the house employees (that is, bartenders, bussers, hostesses — all the restaurant staff you see when you eat there). At my restaurant, the bussers make $3.00+ per hour , the bartenders in the 4’s, and the backwaiters (food runners) make $3.50 as well. All their income is dependent upon their server, and their server’s income is dependent upon their customer’s tips. It is seriously important that people understand this when dining out. If you cannot afford to tip at least 15%, please consider take out.
John S.
I didn’t ask you what you thought the problem was, or what your hair-brained solution to it was. I asked a very simple question which should have illicited a very simple answer. And yet, you are unable to answer a simple fucking question.
Typical.
Tom in Texas
Also please PLEASE tip on wine. Servers tips to the restaurant staff is often dependent on sales, not percentage of tips (Full disclosure: at Fleming’s servers do tip on their own tips. However, every other place I’ve worked tips out on sales). So if you buy a $500 bottle of wine and stiff the server on the tip, he/she must STILL tip their busser a percentage of that $500. Something to consider.
Darrell
I see after dishonestly framing the issue as only affecting the disabled, now Krista doesn’t respond
chopper
Had you said, “Oh. I misread that. My fault. Here’s what I really meant.” You actually would have gained some points.
uh, it’s darrell. he’d argue that the sky is plaid rather than admit being wrong in front of the ‘leftists’.
Darrell
Tom, I almost always tip in cash unless it’s business expense. But you servers at Flemings aren’t anywhere near the minimum wage with the prices there. What’s your average table bill there? I’ll bet it’s $150+ with tips averaging 20%. That means you guys have an income 5X or more than minimum wage, right?
Mr Furious
Jesus. What a dick. It’s been fifteen whole minutes. Like you don’t completely blow off any calls for you to correct, elaborate or link your comments.
Besides, Krista had to run down for her welfare lunch. She’ll be back…
Mike in SLO
For the first 40 years of my life I agreed with Darrell and Mac and others on this site that conservatives were the fiscally responsible ones, and therefore their opinions on economic matters such as the minimum wage carried much more weight that those on the left. However, after 6 years of Republican rule and control I’ve done a 180. It’s obvious that conservatives aren’t anymore adept at economic matters than liberals and I now question who really is the fiscally sane party. Republican were a great boon to this country as the minority party, but as the governing party they have proved themselves to be more incompentent than the Dems ever were. So who is a moderate voter to trust and believe? I am so ready for a third, sane party, or better yet, the abolishment of political parties altogether.
chriskoz
Darrell Says:
The reason many would CHOOSE not to work is because they can’t afford to live on minimum wage. (possibly the only wage they are able to get) Please explain how cutting social programs solves that root problem.
Cuz to me it seems that if you can’t afford to live on minimum wage, then cuts to the programs that help you survive only make it worse. (Compassionate conservatism in action)
chopper
I see after dishonestly framing the issue as only affecting the disabled
you really are dishonest, darrell. krista said:
how in any way is that asserting that the issue “only” affects the disabled?
do you even read comments before replying? or do you do that only 39% of the time?
Mac Buckets
I never said nor implied “catastrophic” effects — only the leftwingers here are going that far! I’m saying it’s not sound economics. Some companies will, no doubt, overhike prices under the guise of increased labor costs, but the market should correct that in time. Most price hikes would be proportional to the increased expenses, of course.
Andrei
Well duh. If one can make more money staying on welfare, it makes more than perfect sense to do what makes more money.
But cutting social programs so they match closer the minimum wage instead of raising the minimum wage to be more in line with the cost of living and inflation is entirely the wrong way to approach the problem. The issue really has to do with how inflation works, cost of living and having a wage floor that keeps the bottom secure enough so they don’t become a burden on the health care, don’t become a burden on the penal system, contribute to the larger economy with purchasing power and actuallly provide tax revenue.
If you look at the report I linked, check out figures 2 and 3. Figure 2 shows that gains in the min wage increase have now flattened out since the last time they were increased, which indicates now is a good time to raise it. Figure 3 is equallly important, showing the value of the minimum wage relative to other wage earners. It shows the impact on how the economy and wage earners has grown while the minimum wage has decreased in relation to it. If that chart keeps going down, we are creating serious problems that have much larger ramifications as we create an honest to goodness poor class in this country that can strain the whole system in ways far more damaging than forcing small businesses to increase the base pay of their work force.
Darrell
Instead of working two jobs and improving job skills, generous social benefits provide a disincentive to work. Why work when I can get more benefits sitting on my ass at home?
Rusty Shackleford
I started working at 15. My father was a fireman/contractor and there were 7 children in our family. I swear the man worked 25 hours a day, 8 days a week to make sure the family was secure. But I still paid every cent for my education – I paid for my clothes and car and gas. I worked full-time while going to college. My brothers and sisters were in the same boat.
It like folks like Mac Buckets were raised in a bubble somewhere.
The 70s weren’t good and the 80s weren’t that hot either. When everyone moved out in the 90s and my father’s retirement funds reaped the benefits of the Clinton Years economy it was like he jumped 3 social classes in the span of 8 years. Now he and my mother are living comfortably, and rightly so.
Punchy
If a Mormon polygamist has family health insurance covered by his employer, does it cover all of his wives, just a few of them, or just the hottest and/or the first?
Steve
But it’s only “not sound economics” if you ignore the externalities altogether. In fact, increases in a corporations’ costs are not 100% passed on to consumers like in some theoretical model. You’re assuming that corporations can always simply adjust their prices to maintain the exact same profit margin – I bet they wish they could! Also, you neglect to consider that putting additional disposable income in the pockets of people at or around the poverty line has positive effects for the economy as a whole. It’s not as simple as you make it out to be.
Tom in Texas
Darrell;
My income is nowhere near minimum wage. Our PPA (Per Person Average) fluctuates between $60 and $100 per person on a given night. I average anywhere from $2000 to $4000 monthly, depending upon the time of year.
Now I did not start at this level. Throughout college, I worked at a huge seafood chain (Landry’s/Joe’s Crab Shack) that paid its employees horribly and under the table, skimped on food quality and health issues, and was generally the perfect example of the worst restaurant ever. I averaged $50 or so a day as a waiter there, increasing to $75ish as a bartender. Even in fine dining I had to backwait for years until my resume was adequate for the job. Fine dining is a specialized skill. Wine knowledge takes decades to acquire, and there is a different experience expected between these restaurants. Landry’s expects you to be quick. Courtesy is secondary to “What do you need? I’ll have it out.” At Fleming’s, I am required to be relaxed, calm, friendly — if the food is slow due to a kitchen error, I have literally sat down at a table and talked with my guests.
I am also not advocating we change the tip system. To drop it and simply pay a restaurant’s staff on salary would result in a huge, immediate increase in entree prices (if you think $60 per head is high, you should see the price when the restaurant doubles it’s overhead).
Krista
Krista had actual work to do. At her job. Which only now pays a fraction more than she was making on EI, but at least it’s enough to pay her bills.
And Darrell, mentioning that there are people who are on social assistance who are disabled, does not constitute framing the issue as only affecting the disabled. Your utter lack of comprehension skills does not automaticaly constitute dishonesty on the part of the writer of the comment to which you are replying.
Please. Do try to keep up. You’re only slowing the rest of the class down.
Tim F.
Or you could make work more attractive by making work more attractive.
Darrell
In those cases where they cannot adjust prices, that added expense takes away from other areas of investment. Yes, it puts more money in the hands of the poor via government mandate, but that government mandate removes that same amount of money from the company assuming the employer keeps the same amount of minimum wage workers employed… which is often not the case, as they lay off some percentage.
Krista
Well yes. That is a better solution, when it’s actually feasible. But you’re forgetting about the single parents out there who would need to arrange (and pay for) child care while they are out working this second job. In many cases, the cost of child care would eat up all revenue from the second job. So that means that they’d be working a second job for absolutely…nothing.
Mac Buckets
No one ever said any different, did they? Except it’s not “if” the cost is passed on to consumers, it’s “when,” and the “when” is “as soon as humanly possible.”
I haven’t seen a list of what industries these minwage workers are in, but every industry will be affected to the extent of their (or their vendor’s, or their vendor’s vendor’s) use of low-wage workers. It will be more far-reaching than Big Macs, I assure you.
Wait a second. You spend your whole post talking about what an insignificant pittance this $2/hour hike would be for businesses, and then hit me with “dramatic” increases in spending? Come on, there’s no way the increase in labor costs can be less “dramatic” than the subsequent increase in spending that you are assuming here, right? I mean, unless we revoke all taxes!
Mr Furious
I hear ya, Rusty.
When I hear a head-up-the-ass-type like Mac make a remark like that it sends me throught the roof.
Any job he had at sixteen (if he had one) might have been optional for him. It is NOT for many. And I suspect it is only worse now compared to when I grew up.
I wonder what the percentage change in single-income familes is over the last generation? It won’t be pretty.
Many of the people making minimum wage are moms (generalizing) or kids supplementing the breadwinner’s income. According to jackasses like Mac, they deserve the bottom of a boot for some reason, as if they aren’t “real” workers or earners.
Mac Buckets
Which is offset (probably more than offset) by the people who didn’t get the wage increase, but have to bear the passed-on expense in the form of higher prices. You just can’t claim a one-sided effect here. Businesses are simply not going to sit back and eat this cost.
John S.
Ding, ding, ding!
WINNER
Darrell
I don’t doubt that is a real problem in some cases. In many other cases, the father of those children are (or should be) paying those child care costs you mention. A good percentage of working single parents, including those not in minimum wage jobs, rely on family to help care for kids so they can work, so child care costs aren’t always such a limiting factor.
Mac Buckets
That’s because you, true to your name, are having an emotional reaction to this issue rather than a rational one. You want to cite anecdotes (and hypothetical ones, at that) and make policy based on that? No, thanks.
Tom in Texas
The price of all of these will go up.
The price of EVERYTHING will go up.
Vegetables
Movie tickets, video rentals (more reason for Netflix I guess)
$3.00 cups of coffee
It will only be a few cents on each, but it will be damn near universal. The thing is, I’m willing to pay it.
Steve
It’s also worth remembering that a 39% nominal increase in the minimum wage is a far cry from a 39% increase in real wages, because the minimum wage hasn’t been adjusted for inflation for many, many years. Since the last minimum wage increase in 1997, the minimum wage has lost 20% of its purchasing power simply due to inflation. The majority of the proposed increase is simply a long-overdue inflation adjustment.
As for the relationship between the minimum wage and welfare benefits, of course it’s bad policy to pay people more for not working than for working. But let’s keep in mind a couple things. First, welfare isn’t available to everyone, it’s mostly there for families with dependent children and the disabled. So for the majority of people, this choice between working for minimum wage and collecting welfare benefits for doing nothing simply doesn’t exist. Second, there are obviously two ways to fix the disparity: you can either raise the minimum wage, or lower welfare benefits. If we’re generally happy with the state welfare benefits as compared with the poverty line, then we should want to raise the minimum wage to properly incentivize people to get off welfare if they can. Of course, it’s a matter of judgment whether welfare benefits are an appropriate level, but concluding that they “must be” too high simply because welfare is more attractive in some cases than a minimum wage that hasn’t been raised in a decade isn’t a logical conclusion.
Steve
I’m not claiming a one-sided effect. I’m claiming an effect that is much more complex than how you characterized it. It’s not simply the case that businesses will pass 100% of the wage increase on to consumers and nothing else will come of it.
Krista
Not always, no. But they are a very limiting factor in enough cases that I don’t think you should be so flippant when telling people to get a second job. You sound like that horrible ad for some sort of online education:
“Want to make more money? Simple! Just get a better job!”
I always want to punch her teeth out when I hear that ad (my apologies to the perky spokeswoman — I know you’re just doing your job and you probably can’t believe their making you say that either…)
RSA
I’m not going to make an economic argument here, but there are millions of people who are working for less return than they would get if they were to be on welfare. There are lots of reasons for this, some general, some personal. Not everyone weighs welfare versus work as a purely economic decision, as some people (who obviously aren’t on welfare) seem to think is the general mindset of the poor. Work has value in itself for most people.
Oh, and of course there will always be free riders when some benefit is offered. If the tradeoff is some percentage of free riders versus no free riders but people starving in the streets, I know which policy I prefer.
Andrei
Because Mac Buckets apparently missed this.
Krista
Sorry about that. For some odd reason, my spelling is abysmal today.
Mr Furious
What the fuck? First of all, none of us are deciding policy here, Buckets. Get a grip.
How is my pointing out that many min-wage earners are actually contributing to a family’s income and ultimate solvency, if not survival, and deserving of respect and consideration in this process any more “anecdotal” or “hypothetical” than you casually dimissing those earners as a bunch of live at home teenagers?
And yeah, since your comment struck right at what I know to be true because I lived it (anecdotal, perhaps, but sure as hell not hypothetical), I might react emotiionally and true to my name.
fwiffo
Yeah, and it couldn’t be possible that too stingy wages also provide a disincentive to work.
If that’s all you know, then you know nothing, but we already knew that. You could read Swift and decide that eating babies is good economic policy. You’ve got the reading comprehension of a fourth grader on mescaline.
Andrew is saying that minimum wages which are too low are a subsidy to businesses. If wages are so low working people have to resort to programs like food stamps, school lunches, welfare, etc. then the government is subsidising businesses by letting them pay wages that are below a basic standard of living.
Now, the conservative argument for not raising the minimum wage (which, with the effect of inflation, is actually lowering the minimum wage), is that it’s an increased cost to businesses, which costs people jobs, lowers profits, and/or increases prices. Based on that logic, would you support a maximum wage? It could be formulated to apply to a similar percentage of the population (3-4%) who make the most. According to the same logic, it would lower business expenses, thereby lowering prices, increasing profits and creating jobs. Just for the sake of argument, let’s assume there was a reasonably straightforward way to implement a maximum wage. Would you support it? If not, why not?
Mr Furious
I’ve been trying. For a year! I wish life would come as easily to me as it does for Darrell and Buckets.
Nutcutter
Well, to me this thread is just acting out the “political football” syndrome, as described by Mac.
I haven’t seen anything to move me off my original postition: I don’t find that having a minimum wage is certifiably a good idea, but if we have one, it ought to be raised, and raised regularly to adjust for inflation.
Otherwise, having one and not doing that just exacerbates the problem, and the footballness of the problem, at the same time.
Let me say, I don’t find anything about a wage floor to be particularly American or good. Single payer health care, yes. Guaranteed wage floor, no.
I can be convinced otherwise on the wage thing, but nothing even close to a convincing argument is seen here.
It’s all boilerplate righty-lefty so far.
Surely I am not the only person on the left who thinks that “Guarantee me $7 an hour or I’ll go on welfare” sounds like blackmail? Sorry, it’s bad enough I have to get fucked over by the government every day, now I have to get blackmailed by a large demographic too?
Pb
So, I’ve heard enough blathering from you guys about the potential effects of this… let’s get down to brass tacks. How much money are we actually talking about here. Who will actually be affected. etc. Here, I’ll start.
There are about twenty states that already set their minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage. In those states, this change will have a lesser (or in some cases no) impact. These 20 states include some of our most populous and successful states, so it should not come as a surprise that they actually comprise > 50% of the total population of the United States as well.
Mac? Darrell? Any facts you’d like to share?
Mr Furious
Hmm. That implies the dads are deadbeats, and that the single mom has a wide assortment of do-nothing relatives to choose from to babysit. Where would Darrell come up with an idea like that?
Maybe if that welfare queen just sold her Cadillac…
Kimmitt
The conventional wisdom is that about 30% of min wage jobs are held by heads of household or others contributing to basic household expenses. Of course, there are a lot of other jobs which will be bumped upwards a bit due to the new wage floor which also qualify for this number, but they’re harder to track.
The minimum wage argument boils down to one question: Are people making minimum wage really only producing about $5.15 + SS benefits per hour, or are employers getting more value from their employees due to their superior bargaining position? That is, when a person takes a min wage job, is it because the employer’s only getting a little bit more than the minimum wage of value out of that person, or is the employer getting quite a bit more and (like any sane person) taking advantage of a good deal in the labor market?
The fact that numbers min wage jobs seem to be so resistant to changes in the minimum wage seems to me to imply the latter — that, at least at the levels which characterize min wages in the US, there is a lot of give in terms of what employers are actually getting out of their workers, and there is a lot to be said for increasing the min wage.
That said, of course businesses are going to pass on higher costs, but at the same time, they’ll enjoy greater demand for their products from people who consume a great deal of their income. These two effects can create unpredictable outcomes — what happens, for example, when a depressed city block suddenly has enough potential business to move from a convenience store to a decent grocery store? Then prices go down for the average person, and people are making more money.
Anyways, those of us who live in areas where fast food places pay min wage will probably eat a few pennies more on our bills, and janitorial services will become more expensive. I figure that’s part of the cost of knowing that the people who are serving me are receiving something resembling sane compensation for their time.
George W. Bush
I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t use the money that they inherited from their family and the money their Daddy’s rich Saudi friends gave them to start some oil companies to bankrupt before asking for another loan to buy 5% of a baseball team that needs my political connections to confiscate some private land to build a ballpark for the Rangers and office park for Halliburton and then sell that 5% and buy themselves a brush ranch in the middle of Texas instead of relying on this “minimum wage,” if it even exists.
Geez, some people just don’t get it.
RSA
Don’t you know that poverty is a moral failing?
carpeicthus
For the record, McDonald’s has paid all of their staff above the minimum wage at least since 1994, when I had my first paycheck job there. It’s a matter of policy. That’s why I’d rather eat there than Burger King, which does often pay the minumum — the BK workers are the ones McD wouldn’t hire.
Darrell
A subsidy would be an external gift handed to business, whereas minimum wage laws dictating higher wages: even if an employee is not worth the minimum wage to you, you have to pay him that amount or not hire at all. That’s why I was ridiculing the assertion that minimum wage laws are a “subsidy” to business
You are assuming that the problem is one of low wages rather than overly generous social benefits.
Btw, how many of you minimum wage advocates advocate vigorous crackdowns on illegal aliens who depress wages for the least skilled in our society?
jaime
We’re still waiting for you to man up and respond Mr. 39%
Calvin
I’m a WacArnold’s guy myself.
Nutcutter
I know you mean well, carp, but using the huge difference between unemployables at BK as compared to unemployables at McD as a selling point for a higher minimum wage?
Maybe fast food is different where you are. Out here, it’s all “buyer beware” all the time. Abandon hope, all ye who enter the fast food lobby at lunchtime.
Darrell
El pendejo ha llegado
Nutcutter
Been there and done that. You can’t describe such a “crackdown” that would actually work, which is why in five plus decades of this problem, there has never been one.
Steve
Sure, except no one is literally saying that, of course. We try and set policy based on the assumption that people will act in an economically rational manner, that’s all.
If welfare pays some group of people more money than a minimum-wage job, a large chunk of that group is going to pick the option that makes them more money. It’s as simple as that. And saying “Well, they’re a bunch of assholes if they demand higher wages before they’re willing to go to work” isn’t really a helpful guide in setting policy. They’re acting in their economic self-interest and policymakers shouldn’t expect anything different.
Frankly, I know I’m just a bleeding heart, but if someone is trying to support a family on a poverty-level income, and they choose to do whatever will make them the most money and put the most food on their table this week, I don’t feel right sitting here and judging them as I sip my frappucino. That’s why we simply try to set good policy. It doesn’t help anything to set bad policy, policy that incentivizes people to make decisions we disapprove of, and then call them bad names when they make those decisions.
Krista
And nutcutter, to address your question as to whether or not there should even be a minimum wage:
I’m not an economist, but I see it almost as a supply-and-demand thing. The vast majority of minimum wage jobs are jobs that do not require elaborate skill sets or higher education, correct? I’m operating on a presumption here that for those jobs, there are traditionally more applicants than there are openings.
Typically, those who are against min. wage say that the “market” will sort everything out, and that if an employer does not pay high enough wages, then they will simply not be able to retain employees, as they will want to go to the higher-paying unskilled jobs.
The problem with this theory, however, is the fact that those against min. wage are assuming that there will actually BE job openings in those higher-paying unskilled jobs. And even if there were job openings, there certainly would not be anywhere near enough of them to employ all of those who apply.
Therefore, you’d have people who are stuck at the job that pays little to nothing, because the employers who pay more have no job vacancies. Without minimum wage protection, their employers could then pay them a veritable pittance, knowing that the employee’s chances of getting on with a higher-paying employer are slim. You’d then have more and more of these people saying, “Fuck it, I can’t even afford the bus fare to GET to work anymore” and going on welfare, which would only exacerbate the problem of able-bodied people on the government teat.
That’s my explanation, anyway.
Andrew
Two things that bear repeating:
1) Lots of “welfare” is consumed by people with jobs. It is not just employment insurance. Food stamps, EITC, medicare, etc.
2) Darrell’s solution of cutting benefits to reduce incentives to be at a minimum wage leads to, guess what, crime! If you can’t feed yourself with a job or welfare, why wouldn’t you start robbing wealthier people?
chriskoz
Nuttcutter Says:
Why does it have to be a threat? how about a plea?
“Please, give me $7 an hour so I can live without welfare.”
Do you see the difference in the mind set? One assumes people are trying to screw you. The other assumes people are trying to survive.
jaime
#1 So I take it you’re NOT going to acknowledge getting your nose pushed down in your own shit.
#2 Is there a reason you’ve decided to insult me in spanish?
Punchy
Tim–
Can you or Mr. Cole get a thread going on this Israeli/Lebanon thang? Since it’s everything but a declared war at this point…perhaps it’s worthy of discussion?
Darrell
The problem with your point of view Krista, is that you assume employers can attract the kind of employees they need ONLY with minimum wages. You ignore the fact that there is a BALANCE.. a balance between employer wanting to pay less vs employees who want more. At present unemployment levels, there are plenty of jobs available, and many more being created every day
Steve
Well, let’s attempt a fact-based answer to that question.
My impression is that the costs of a “vigorous crackdown,” which sounds great on paper but seems rather difficult to implement in practice, would far outweigh the couple of percentage points we could expect to see wages of low-skilled workers go up as a result.
Because a “vigorous crackdown” would have any number of consequences, it seems difficult to me to quantify exactly what the overall costs would be, but it doesn’t seem like a close call in comparison to the rather small benefit that could be realized. There are plenty of other potential benefits, of course, besides simply raising low-skilled wages a couple of percentage points, but that wasn’t the question.
Andrew
The government is paying for many workers to eat and recieve health care so that they can show up for work and create profit for private industry. Obviously an indirect subsidy, but a subsidy nonetheless. A direct subsidy would be for the government to pay the company to supply such services, but the net cost to taxpayers and the profit to business is the same, indirect or direct. (See, these are the terms I learned in econ 101!)
jaime
tick tick tick Mr 39%?
Pb
I’m not seeing those facts, Mac and Darrell… any day now.
So, continuing on, raising the federal minimum wage to $7.25/hr would raise the salaries of 7-8 million Americans or so (according to the Christian Science Monitor), and the net per capita cost of this would be something like 18 cents a day, per citizen, if we assume that only Americans bear these costs (which is false, of course we have exports too). Then again, as GOP4Me mentioned above, the disproportionate amount of money that is spent by these 7-8 million Americans on necessities should be far more efficient in fueling our economy than any tax cuts for the rich might have been to date.
Steve
I dunno if I’d call the EITC “welfare.” Maybe it depends on your definition, but if we decide that we’re not going to tax people who make under X per year at all, is that really “welfare”?
Darrell
Except that’s not a “fact-based” answer, it’s an estimate of something that’s unknowable to any meaningful degree. For example, the BLS demonstrates that average wages for carpenters (not apprentices, carpenters) here in Houston is less than $14/hour. Can I ‘prove’ carpenter wages were affected by illegal aliens? No, but it’s true that they did
chopper
that’s it in a nutshell.
Nutcutter
Well, remember, I didn’t say I was against it. I said I haven’t seen a convincing argument for it.
Labor is one of the most basic commodities in the marketplace. I am not sold on the idea that the government should be in the business of manipulating that commodity. Even if well intentioned, Mac’s “political football” syndrome sets in, and you get a bad result.
Once you set an artificial and dysfunctional floor for the value of labor, such as we have now, then you skew the whole labor marketplace in ways you didn’t want or predict.
But once you have the floor in place, you can’t ignore it just because it’s annoying. It needs to be raised. Raising it, in lieu of the courage to take a serious look at getting rid of it, is the right thing to do. Whether the concept is ultimately good or not, the thing needs to be raised.
Wonderful! My dream thread … I can piss off both sides at the same time. Why can’t all threads be like this?
Why, oh why, I ask you, John and Tim?
fwiffo
Seriously, you need to read slowly and carefully. Take some ritalin or something. Minimum wage laws obviously aren’t a subsidy to business. Reducing minimum wages (or letting them get lower naturally by inflation) is effectively a subsidy.
If somebody is making minimum wage, and they still need to resort to social programs in order to feed their family, then yes, obviously the problem is that their wages are too low. Cutting social programs won’t somehow magically help them afford food. Raising their wages will help them afford food.
Now, if you want to argue about the economic costs and/or benefits of a higher minimum wage, fine. But if a person is working full time, and being a good citizen, but making minimum wage, I have a really hard time seeing how social programs are the reason they can’t afford to feed their family at that wage.
Steve
I see we’re right back to a competition between a bipartisan consensus of over 500 prominent economists and other scholars, versus Darrell’s anecdotal assumptions about the carpentry industry in Houston. Well, having fought this battle before, I don’t think I need to stick around for the sequel.
Darrell
Please explain the reality based ‘logic’ of how “natural” wages are a subsidiary?
Steve
Where do you stand, as a philosophical matter, on collective bargaining?
If collective bargaining doesn’t magically materialize in the labor market by its own devices, should the government be in the business of enforcing it as an affirmative right?
SeesThroughIt
Amen to all of this, Mike in SLO.
It is rather telling that in a situation wherein welfare is more attractive than working, conservatives–aside from trying to claim that this is the widespread norm when it comes to welfare–think we should make welfare worse (for everybody that is, not just the people to whom this situation replies; of course, this is made all the easier by simply believing that this situation is the norm) rather than make employment better.
Darrell
Steve, an ‘estimate’ on something so unquantifiable is not a “fact-based” answer as you claimed. Consensus estimates of economists have a horrible track record on a whole host of matters, especially those which are not knowable
John S.
That’s because they, lemme see someone said it up thread, “are having an emotional reaction to this issue rather than a rational one. They prefer to cite anecdotes and hypothetical ones, at that.”
chopper
Consensus estimates of economists have a horrible track record on a whole host of matters,
whereas anecdotes are still running a 100% average. go anecdotes!
Nutcutter
You meant “subsidy.” Sloppy diction for someone who was lecturing on math skills just a while ago!
Nutcutter
Cola, shooting from nose.
Steve
No, I understand… if you feel in your gut that the consensus of economists is off, then we should just go with that. I’m not sure how good your track record is, however, like on the claim that increasing the minimum wage would result in a 39% across-the-board price increase.
Krista
If employers cannot attract the kind of employees they need by paying minimum wages, then they need to raise the wages that they are offering. Let’s assume that they do that, and therefore attract more skilled applicants. Skippy for them. That still confirms what I was saying, that there would be many people who, due to lack of skills, would be “stuck” in the lower-paying jobs. If there were not the protection of minimum wage, you would then see more and more of these able-bodied people going on to social assistance, rather than staying at a job that does not pay them enough to get by. Unemployment would rise, as would the number of people dependent on government services.
Nutcutter
There’s a disconnect between the two parts of your question. How does the magic materialization hang on the enforced right? I don’t see the connection.
The right can be codified without causing any expansion of collective bargaining, can it not?
Organized labor is still labor, and it’s still a commodity.
Darrell
Thanks for reverting to your usual pedantic ways Steve. I cited carpenter wages in Houston as a verifiable example. That was a “fact-based” example, yours was conjecture which you were trying to pass off as fact. Do you have any idea how poor economists track record is?
Mr Furious
1. Never.
2. Perhaps because of how you spell your name?
(translation = “the asshole has arrived”)
Steve
Presumably if we codify a federal right to collective bargaining, there’s going to be more collective bargaining than would otherwise occur in the unfettered free market, right?
I’m afraid I simply don’t understand your answer.
fwiffo
Because social programs that are intended for people who are, for example, disabled and can’t work end up going to people who are working but at wages that are so low they can’t afford the basic costs of living. Instead of their employer paying their living expenses via their wages, the government is paying for it.
Before you come back arguing that the employee should find a better paying job and therefore let the market drive up wages – understand that someone making very low incomes is already desperate. They don’t have the bargaining leverage necessary to have that kind of market effect. Being unemployed, even for a short time, might mean starving, or forgoing vital health care or shelter. And if they have to work two jobs just to keep up with basic living expenses, there’s no way they’ll have time to improve their skills in order to get a better paying job.
Yeah, and your unproveable anecdote that maybe, possibly (we can’t know for sure, but maybe), carpenter wages in Houston might be lower because of illegal immigration is totally fact based! Also, your awesome facts about how a 39% increase in the minimum wage translates to a 39% price increase.
I’m going to ask again, but you’ll ignore it again – would you support a maximum wage?
Nutcutter
It’s not an answer, it’s a quetion, because I don’t understand your question.
Are you asking whether I support a codified right to collective bargaining? The answer is yes.
Are you asking whether such law would be a good thing even if there were not yet any actual collective bargaining?
My answer would be no. But that’s in the realm of the deeply hypothetical, isn’t it? What does it have to do with a minimum wage?
Darrell
How about we take a more ‘reality based’ assumption, that they raise wages above minimum to hire the skilled workers, and the unskilled and unreliable ones make minimum wage. I understood you to be arguing from the assumption that there would not be enought jobs for these workers
Mr Furious
That was funny, but for some reason, your reaction was ten times funnier to me today.
jaime
I thought we revoked your smug license Mr. 39%
Nutcutter
Steve
Let’s take a trip in the Not-So-Wayback Machine…
This is what Darrell considers a “verifiable,” “fact-based” example.
I’m unaware of any scientific comparison that’s been done between the track record of a widespread consensus among economists, and people’s “gut feelings” that just happen to correspond with their political beliefs, so I don’t have much to add. My sense is that when top economists agree on something, they will be right most of the time. I’m sure they will be spectacularly wrong on occasion, but it’s not the way the smart money bets.
Anyway, one of these days when someone writes a history of the anti-intellectual movement in America during the present period, it’s going to be a fascinating read. I just hope I don’t have to read it in crayon.
Darrell
Some are, most are not. Most are part time workers. And even the most desperate are usually looking for ways to improve their skills and wages, so again, how are “natural” wages in any way a subsidy (apologies for my prior mispelling)?
Krista
No, I don’t doubt that there are plenty of jobs that pay minimum wage, and that the higher the wage becomes, the scarcer the jobs are, and the more skills one needs to get those jobs. That’s just basic.
What I was arguing was in regards to nutcutter’s question as to whether or not there should be a minimum wage in the first place. I think there absolutely has to be that minimum wage protection there for those workers who do not have the skills to obtain the higher-paying jobs for which the competition is much more fierce.
Nutcutter
You meant “were” but who’s quibbling?
But anyway, nobody here believes that your carpenter wages are depressed by aliens. For one thing, you failed to prove the case when you had a chance. For another, it’s nonsensical. The border is not being overrun by skilled carpenters. Nor is the trade being overrun by illegals.
Carpenter helper? Somebody to clean up after the carpenters? Maybe. Skilled carpenters? No. It takes years to make a skilled carpenter. Years, and tools.
Steve
My point was that a government-enforced right to collective bargaining is a huge interference with the free labor market, if you want to look at it that way. The principle that “I don’t want the government interfering in the labor market” seems overstated to me.
My personal sense is that if we enforced the labor laws the way they’re meant to be, we could actually do without a lot of other government tinkering with the free market.
How many major industrialized nations have no minimum wage law, by the way? I doubt there are many.
Darrell
Since you live in New York, why don’t you ask some of the more successful “smart money” wall street investor types. I’ll bet you’ll hear that the ‘smart money’ has become filthy rich precisely by betting against the economic consensus. Go ahead and ask around. I’ll take you at your word when you report what you’ve learned
And is economics even a “science”?
chopper
i don’t think darrell was ever taught about painting and corners, or the wisdom of digging holes.
Mr Furious
More like fecal smears on the cage walls.
Mr Furious
Hmm. Does your “source” for that information count a person with three part time jobs as one motivated hard worker, or as three lazy, shiftless teens living at home.
fwiffo
I already answered that. How about you answer some questions for a change?
Nutcutter
You may be right. But on the minimum wage thing, I need to see some serious convincin’ that it’s a good idea at the end of the day.
Given a choice between a law like that, and uncertainty, I’d err in favor of the uncertainty.
And I don’t see how collective bargaining and minimum wage are connected exactly.
Just because they spring from the same
socialistliberal soil doesn’t explain the connection to me.Darrell
Sorry, but it’s not just basic. A growing economy typically sees wage growth AND an increase in total number of jobs
I’m not sure that the job competition isn’t more fierce at the bottom tier
Andrew
Again, every business that offers a job that pays under the living (not minimum) wage is being subsidized by the government.
I am willing to consider arguments that this is beneficial to overall economic growth. I haven’t heard any though, and I believe that the current minimum wage is muh lower than any optimal rate.
However, it is foolish to suggest the labor is a free commodity. Minimum wage is only one externality. Welfare itself is another, and the only way that labor will be a freely traded is if welfare is also eliminated. (Yeah, that crime thing again.) So, if we are unwilling to eliminate welfare, then a labor price floor will exist.
With a set labor price floor, any job that pays less leads to a government cost of the difference between the wage and the price floor.
Any wage under the living wage leads to taxpayer costs.
Mr Furious
I think a couple of people have already tackled this, Mr Obtuse.
First, no one but you is calling this a “natural wage” whatever the hell that is. When businesses are not required to increase the wages of its workers to keep up with inflation and the governement is forced to pick up the slack, that is in effect a subsidy for those business letting the wages “naturally” languish behind inflation, cost of living, and most likely profit margins.
You following yet? Go ask one of your Houston carpenter/economist friends. They can explain it to you.
Darrell
Well, this source says that of minimum wage workers:
and this
sort of shatters the narrative being pushed by lefties here
John S.
1. This assumes Ferrous Cranous can be taught.
2. This assumes one can obtain wisdom without learning.
John S.
Ah, The Heritage Foundation.
What a fantastically unbiased ‘source’.
Andrew
Wow, that Heritage quote has got to be one of the most bat shit insane things I’ve ever seen from them, and that’s saying quite a bit. Soon, Bill Gates will walk into the bar, and, on average, we’ll all be billionaires.
Steve
Well, I could, but you’d disagree if the consensus went against your “gut feeling,” so what’s the point, really? You feel it in your bones that carpenters’ wages in Houston have been significantly affected by illegal immigration, and that’s really the end of the story. In fact, if the consensus of economists is that illegal immigration has only a tiny effect on low-skilled wages, that actually makes your gut feeling MORE likely to be correct, because those pointy heads are wrong so often.
There’s really no point in arguing with someone who constantly demands more and more evidence, only to disregard all evidence that disagrees with their gut feelings. No, says Darrell, I can’t ‘prove’ that carpenters’ wages have been affected, but proof is overrated. Most things that are proven turn out to be wrong, so it’s better to stick with unproven things.
Darrell
Actually, “naturally occuring” or similar such wording was in fact used earlier in the thread. And it’s typical ‘reality based’ lunacy to suggest that the government paying welfare to those who don’t work is in any way “subsidizing” businesses.. when in fact businesses pay higher taxes in part, to pay for welfare.
You lefties aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, that’s for sure.
RSA
I wonder if we’ll see a growing economy, by this definition, before Bush leaves office?
chopper
You lefties aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, that’s for sure.
39% sharper than you are, to be sure.
Darrell
To be clear, you are arguing that the massive illegal alien influx we have experienced, has not depressed wages of the unskilled laborers to any significant extent.. And I am the extremist?
Kimmitt
Steve — the EITC is refundable, so it can very easily be a subsidy, as it can lead to a negative net income tax bill (though of course payroll taxes are still relevant).
Nutcutter — My argument for the minimum wage goes as follows:
1) The economic arguments in my post above, that is, the fact that instituting a minimum wage appears to have very low societal costs and in fact may simply substitute for collective bargaining in high-turnover industries.
2) I see the minimum wage as part of a suite of policies which preserve buy-in into the system. We all need to have a capitalist system that produces winners and losers — even losers who work very hard — in order to maintain the kinds of incentives that get people to both go to work in the morning and try to innovate. At the same time, however, we don’t want to create such a large class of people who’ve lost despite working very hard that they view their participation in the system as untenable. If they do, that means poverty-based crime (think Les Miserables), political and labor unrest (think Haymarket), and other such expensive, brutal, and bad things. These costs are much larger than the costs of the various safety nets we provide (min wage, Employment Insurance, Social Security, Medicaid, et cetera). So it’s kind of a win-win; not only do we shuffle money toward people who really need it while maintaining the fundamental vitality of the capitalist system, but, if we’re sensible about the structure of the safety net, we prevent problems which would be far more costly and unpleasant than the costs of the safety net.
That’s how I view it, anyways.
Nutcutter
But wait. Your erstwhile alien rants were about “skilled carpenters.”
Aside from the absurdity of aliens coming over the barbed wire dragging carpenter tool boxes behind them …. what does that have to do with “unskilled laborers?”
And … are you in favor of higher rates for unskilled labor? If not, why would you complain about low rates for them?
Darrell
Steve, the crux of your argument is that illegal aliens have not depressed wages of the least skilled to any significant extent. You cited as “fact” an estimate of economists who claimed that the illegals depressed wages between 0% and 8%. Somehow I don’t believe many of those unskilled Americans competing with the illegals for jobs would agree with you.
Tim F.
No!
[ducks]
Darrell
Let me clarify.. I believe illegals aliens have depressed wages of the unskilled laborers most significantly, but I believe they have also depressed wages for skilled labor positions in industries such as construction and agriculture.
fwiffo
Of course, that’s not actually what I said. I said the purchasing power of the minimum wage naturally gets lower because of inflation. You invented the “natural wages” language.
That’s what inflation is, by the way. When the purchasing power of a fixed sum of money becomes less. If your wages don’t go up to keep pace with inflation, you can’t buy as much with them. Is that simple enough for you to understand, or should I repeat myself again?
If you actually had been reading this thread, you’d notice, we’re talking about welfare that goes to people who are working but who have low wages, not people who don’t work.
Steve
There you go. Anti-intellectualism in a nutshell. Why ask the economists, when we can just ask the unskilled laborers whether they “feel” their wages would be much higher if not for illegal immigration?
Mr Furious
Hey, Mr Sharp Knife,
Yeah, I know. they used in in much the same connotation I did. Here’s where you really show off that sharp Ginsu edge of yours…
What I, Andrew and others pointed out had nothing to do with people on welfare who are not working. We all said that the governement making up the difference between the minimum wage and a living wage acts like a subsidy.
Back in the drawer, jackass.
Mr Furious
I guess all the Houston carpenters now qualify as “unskilled.”
Keep your bullshit straight, Darrell.
Nutcutter
Let’s leave aside the fact that the healthcare crisis is going to do just that to a lot of hardworking people …. do we really think that the big risk in America is one of a large class of people working really hard and having nothing? Sorry, I’m not seeing that as a believable scenario in this land of plenty and opportunity.
I see an underclass, of course, but I can’t calculate that the cure for it is to pay lettuce pickers and construction cleanup crews higher wages. In fact I can’t see that we are ready to have an economy without an underclass of some size. I don’t agree that the existence of some underclass means that the overall system has failed.
Darrell
That distinction is irrelevant. Their labor is worth what it is worth, irregardless of whether they receive welfare assistence. Furthermore, businesses pay higher taxes, in part to pay for this welfare. So again, there is no rational way to claim, as you have done, that business is subsidized by welfare. That assertion is absurd on it’s face
Nutcutter
Belief in the absence of proof, or despite evidence to the contrary, is called “faith.”
When you show me a picture of an illegal coming over the fence with his box of carpenter tools, then I’ll believe that aliens are getting skilled carpenter jobs without working their way up the trade ladder and getting the skills and tools the hard way like everybody else who has them ….. then I’ll believe it. Not until.
Pb
Heh. :)
Darrell
Again, you have asserted as “fact” that illegal immigration has no significant effect on wages of the unskilled. That is your position.
You can call it ‘anti science’ all you want, but most people can see right through your bullshit whether you realize it or not.
Mr Furious
I give up. Darrell has obviously suffered head trauma from years of bashing his head on all of the out-of-plumb doors in his house built by unskilled Houston carpenters and illegal aliens.
Darrell
Do those of you who support a hike in minimum wage also support more vigorous crackdowns on illegal aliens? The only way one could square that inconsistency is by pretending that illegal aliens have no significant on wages of the unskilled.
fwiffo
You’re assuming that laborers get paid what their labor is worth. I see no reason to make such an assumption — in fact, I see many reasons to assume the opposite.
Now, since you want to get people off the welfare rolls (I do too), don’t you think it would be a good idea that someone working full time were to make enough that they would be able to afford a basic standard of living?
Kimmitt
Agreed on all counts, and I’m sure both of us have separate opinions as to how to address those concerns.
Historically, that’s what happened, until the labor movement really kicked in, right? We can also see some fairly high-income places (Venezuela, for example) where the same issues aren’t being worked out. I mean, yeah, we’re richer, but I believe that that’s because we’re addressing this issue in an ongoing fashion and thereby avoiding the destructive conflict that characterizes, say, Venezuelan or Bolivian politics. Yes, we’ll have an underclass of some size. But boy howdy do we want it to be as small as reasonably possible.
Anyways, that’s my thinking. I’m off to teach an econ class, which I suppose tells you that I’m worth listening to, if not agreeing with. :)
Andrei
Darrel said:
I can’t seem to find the defintion of “irregardless” in the dictionary.
Andrew
Yes.
Nutcutter
Already asked and answered.
fwiffo
I would support a crackdown on employers who hire illegals as part of comprehensive immigration reform (the details of which would off topic and I won’t get into here.) Now that I’ve answered your question – how about you answer any of the questions I’ve asked you in the rest of this thread.
I’m beginning to think that Darrell might actually be head trauma…
Crazy C
Darrell,
Yeah, the Dismal one.
and as for this:
You’re right, massive profits are often made by going against “smart money”, but it almost never happens if you always go against the smart money, you analyze the situation and act appropriately with your model, sometimes that means bucking the trend.
let’s try a normal NYC example:
When Jay-Walking, you can jay-walk with everyone else – generally you’ll get across the street, but it won’t be faster than anyone.
You could also look at the traffic (analyze the situation) and walk when there’s a clear spot – sometimes it will be with the crowd, sometimes it won’t (if you’re either faster/luckier/braver or less so than the crowd)
Or (to take your example to a rediculous level) you could cross when nobody else is – that one gets you hit by a taxi (or probably someone from jersey)
So which do you choose?
Darrell
In some cases they are paid much more than they are worth, in others, less. If they feel they are underpaid, they are usually free to pursue other better paying employment.
Not if it means forcing employers to pay them more than they’re worth.. To follow this ‘logic’, why not force retail stores to pay store clerks a minimum of $150k/year? That should really help clear welfare rolls, right?
chopper
yes, that’s his assertion. you’re asserting the opposite.
he says he has a consensus of economists backing him up.
you say you have an unproven anecdote.
see through what now?
Darrell
That’s not what I said.. I said going against the “economic consensus”. Those investors are referred to as ‘smart money’, because they are more successful. Anyone consistently betting against ‘smart money’ would soon not have much money to bet
Steve
Yep, and in case anyone missed it, over 500 top economists and other scholars, representing both liberal and conservative viewpoints, have signed their names to this exact proposition. Darrell’s use of the word “pretending” in this context is positively comical.
To be clear, I don’t claim that this consensus is written in stone, that there’s no possible way it could be wrong, etc. I don’t think it’s nearly as reliable, for example, as the scientific consensus on global warming. But I do think it’s quite silly for Darrell to suggest that it’s “extreme” for our public policy to be based on the consensus views of top economists and scholars.
RSA
Oh, that’s helpful. Keep this response in mind the next time you talk about lower taxes–why not just get rid of taxes altogether? (Assuming you’re not a hardcore libertarian.)
Darrell
By most accounts, we have about 12 million illegal aliens in this country, most of which I think it’s safe to assume, are working at jobs paying less than $30k/year. The laws of supply and demand say that all things being equal, if the supply (of labor) drops, then prices (wages) would rise. But like I said upthread, so many of you are too stupid to comprehend even the most basic economic concepts.
Steve
This is what I mean. Darrell actually thinks it’s plausible that over 500 top economists and scholars simply don’t understand basic concepts of supply and demand. That’s how committed he is to defending the position that he “feels” in his gut must be right. Everyone who disagrees with him, never mind their credentials, never mind if they were top economic advisors to Republican and Democratic Presidents alike, they all must be “too stupid to comprehend even the most basic economic concepts.”
That’s Darrell’s position. Read it and weep.
fwiffo
Many people do not have that freedom. That’s what this is about.
Cause $150k a year is a “basic” standard of living. And the Laffer curve says that reducing taxes to zero will maximize tax revenue.
I’m still waiting for you to answer my earlier questions.
Mr Furious
Do those of you who support a hike in minimum wage also support more vigorous crackdowns on illegal aliens?
fwiffo and andrew beat me to it. Yeah, i support a crackdown too, but something tells me it would look different the Darrell’s “crackdown.” And I also think it would actually work, as opposed to whatever plan he has yet to unveil.
Mr Furious
Forgot to blockquote that part from Ginsu Darrell.
Darrell
If you will go back in the comments Steve, my initial reaction to your post was to question your characterization of it as “fact-based” to which you overreacted as usual..it was, after all, only an estimate of something that cannot be accurately quantified. For example, CNN reports:
Illegal immigrants depress wages? No way!
Darrell
fwiffo, if I understand your position, you have stated that wages paid do not correspond to what an employee is worth. Your exact words:
I’m not sure if it’s possible to have a rational discussion with someone this disconnected from reality
RSA
Of course, there are more nerve endings in the gut than in the brain [/colbert].
Pb
Darrell,
OMG, is that a reference to news? I was about to keel over from sheer shock and congratulate you–but then I saw that you were quoting from a column by Lou Dobbs on immigration–that’s like asking Sally Struthers if there’s a problem with starving children.
Darrell
Can someone explain why a meat packing job which paid $19 in 1980, only pays $9 today ($4 in 1980 dollars?), if not because of illegal immigration?
Steve
I said I was going to attempt a fact-based answer.
To most rational people, a consensus of 500 top economists and scholars is a relevant “fact” in evaluating an economic issue. That’s the fact on which I based my answer.
Now, let’s look at your definition of “fact-based.”
And what you said about carpenter wages in Houston was:
Your citation to carpenter wages in Houston, about which you admit you can’t ‘prove’ anything, is a fact-based argument. The 500 top economists and scholars whose consensus backs me up, on the other hand, are “too stupid to comprehend even the most basic economic concepts.” That’s an extremely solid position. I certainly hope the legislators whose policy goals mirror your own decide to run with it.
Pb
Is that so hard to understand? It’s possible for people to be ‘underpaid’, or ‘overpaid’, you know. Theoretically, you could even quantify how much money a given employee has made for a corporation over a year, say, and then compute if that’s more or less than would be expected or warranted given that employee’s wages.
Shawn
Poverty is a hot button issue for me. I have never applied for or received any government subsidies, food stamps, etc., but I have tried to survive on minimum wage. Obviously I did survive. I’m here, but poor people have to make decisions the rest of us can’t even imagine.
Have you ever been pregnant? In pre-term labor? Had to decide whether to risk the baby by continuing to work, or starve? Naturally you continue to work. If you starve, the baby starves and dies anyway.
Miscarried because you had to keep working in pre-term labor? (So much for the compassionate conservatism pro-life crowd)
Did you know that babysitters charge at least $2.50/hour? Per child??
So a divorced woman, with 2 kids working for $5.15 minimum wage would be making 15 cents an hour. Nice! Why would that lazy bitch want more money? She wants to eat and feed her children! Bah! They’re probably fat anyway. /channeling personal responsibility crowd
P.S. Not everyone has a dozen relatives sitting around waiting to babysit their kids.
Rent? Forget it. A car? Won’t happen. Living in a refrigerator box or a homeless shelter? Probably.
But wait… that woman should be getting child support from the deadbeat dad. An attorney charges a $1000 retainer to even talk to her. She can’t even afford to feed her kids. Where’s she gonna get $1k for an attorney? Hmm?
I live in one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states and I see everyday the grinding poverty that some people upthread apparently can’t even imagine. People working 2-3 jobs is the norm here… and yes, they’re still living in poverty.
I know, some of you are thinking they should be happy to starve working 40 plus hours per week. At least they live in the US. Right?
I have never name-called on a blog before and I’m struggling not to now. But some of you people upthread need to get a fucking clue and get a fucking heart while you’re at it.
fwiffo
Darrell – I personally don’t know if illegal immigration is having a significant impact on wages, but you’re cherry picking two specific examples from thousands of industries. That doesn’t even qualify as a trend, let alone establish causation. On top of that, it ignores possible industry-specific trends that could just as easily account for the decrease in wages. Maybe carpentry wages in Houston are lower because of a cooling housing market. Maybe meat-packing wages have descreased because of increased automation in the industry, or changes in meat farming practices, or because of the prices of meat, or a thousand other things. Illegal immigration isn’t the only event that’s happened since 1980. Even if wages are lower in the two examples you cite, you haven’t linked them in any definitive way to illegal immigration, let alone established any broader trend.
You’re like a psychic or astrologist who makes 1000 predictions than brags that you’re right all along when two turn out to be true just by chance.
Since myself and others have suggested that we would support a crackdown on businesses who hire illegals – what is your point?
Once again, I’d like to hear some answers to questions I posed you earlier in this thread.
Darrell
And I have stated exactly that, if you read my response to him. But fwiffo is saying something very different. He is asserting that there is no overall relationship between wages and what the employee is worth, and that’s irrational as hell imo.
Crazy C
Sorry, I meant economic consensus in my text not smart money – but that’s the point, you’re arguing with current economic consensus, so you might be absolutely right or spectacularly wrong…
any idea if these numbers are adjusted for inflation (it didn’t say in the article, and I didn’t see a link back to the treasury comments)?
Pb
Darrell,
You’re going to love the answer…
It was due to the disappearance of the union, and the appearance of the big, non-union meat processors:
Steve
Well, there’s a subject I sure don’t know much about, but I can try to answer it Darrell-style, with Google:
So, in this article, we see a number of factors which contribute to lower wages for meat-packing employees:
1) Movement of jobs from urban to rural areas;
2) Automation;
3) A decline in unionization;
4) Legal immigration;
5) Illegal immigration.
Kind of common-sense stuff, really.
I’m in favor of punishing the meat-packing plants that hire illegal immigrants, absolutely. Is Darrell, friend of the common man, in favor of re-unionizing those plants?
Darrell
Why isn’t the daddy of those children paying? Where the fuck is he? And does she have a mother, aunt, grandmother or sister who could help watch the kids? Why not? I’m sure there are some cases where good reasons exist, but many, many situations where alternatives to expensive child care exist
Except CPS offers this legal service FREE. Let me say it again: FREE. In fact, you don’t even have to be a legal resident to use CPS to get money from dad. They even have cross border agreements to track his ass down in Mexico
Steve
Whom do the non-union meat processors hire, by the way? It’s not necessarily an either/or issue.
Mr Furious
My money is on the dissolution of a Union.
Darrell
Good answer Steve, thanks. I still believe that 12 million illegal aliens has a signicant detrimental effect on wages, particularly in the lower pay levels.
Krista
Shawn, thank you for that. That’s the point I was trying to make, but you did so much more convincingly. A lot of these “free market” proponents have never been in the position of being genuinely, crushingly poor. And yet, they bleat to all and sundry that their ideas are the ones that will help the poor the most. It’s insulting, frankly.
fwiffo
That’s obviously not what I said, but since you’ve misrepresented my position basically ever time you’ve stated it, it’s what I’ve come to expect.
Here’s what I’ve said, and this is the last time I’ll repeat myself: Some low wage workers are not paid what they are worth because their desparate situation denies them bargaining leverage. The get cheated. It works just like price gouging. There is an effect that happens at the opposite end of the spectrum too (many CEOs get paid much more than their economic value to their company).
You still have not responded to my questions, so I’ll just assume you don’t have supportable answers.
Mr Furious
Wow, a bunch of others jumped in with more on that. Plus links!
Darrell
fwiffo you whackjob, when was the last time you stated your question? and how far will I have to scroll up to find it?
John S.
Yes, Darrell.
But your Republican masters DON’T. In Colorado:
Source
Pb
Steve,
Read the whole article, it’s very good. As for immigration (illegal or otherwise), that’s been an issue in the meatpacking industry for quite some time, it seems.
Darrell
Perhaps ‘Shawn’ will come back and acknowledge that it doesn’t take a $1000+ retainer fee to legally pursue child support. It’s free through CPS
Pb
Does your browser have a *Find* feature, or is that hidden from you along with the facts…
fwiffo
It’s not my fault you’re too lazy to read other people’s posts the first time through. It’s a thing you might want to try some time – actually listening to what a person is saying before you respond. I don’t expect you to have any sort of coherent response, so it’s not worth my time to repeat myself again.
Damn the facts! Good thing you can just ignore them!
Krista
There are so many cases where people just don’t have that support system, Darrell. Families are spread all over the country, so in a lot of cases, these women (or men – I won’t say that all single parents are female) are alone.
And in regards to the legal thing: you can’t squeeze blood from a stone. In some cases, the father simply can’t afford to pay any child support. In other cases, the mother has to chase him down every goddamn month to get the money out of him. Or, she may have given up the right to child support in order to keep him from having any form of visitation rights, if it turns out that he was abusive or dangerous.
I know that you don’t want to face these unpleasant truths, Darrell, but they’re very real. Problems aren’t solved as blithely as you would hope, with benevolent grandparents swooping in and taking care of children, or remorseful employers realizing that they have to pay their employees more in order to keep them. Most people don’t have a deus ex machina who will get them out of a sticky situation. So before you offer all of these suggestions and pat answers, and praises for the “free market”, I would suggest that you perhaps stop and think for a moment what it would be like to be in a situation like what Shawn described. Those oh-so-socialist government programs are often the only thing standing between people in in that situation and the gutter. (And if they were in the gutter, you’d probably be one of those well-dressed people who would tell them to “get a job”, right?)
Darrell
John S you lying sack of shit, read the fucking article. The Republican governor was pissed as hell at the Democrat controlled state supreme court which would not allow a ballot measure which would let voters decide whether to offer services to illegal aliens. That’s right, Democrats voted against letting voters decide.
THAT is what the governor was so upset over. He didn’t want Dems dictating to him
Mac Buckets
That’s a mighty big assumption. Name a corporation that will just eat an imposed increase in labor cost, and I’ll show you an imaginary corporation. Yes, 100% of that cost — and more in some cases — will be pushed to the consumer as fast as it can be done. I absolutely guarantee that.
I think you might be ignoring the complexities here. You fail to address the offset of increased disposable income for the 4% with the marginal decrease of disposable income for the 96% not affected. Even if that’s just a wash, what we have here is what I said it was — an implicit tax on those not affected by the wage hike in order to benefit the mostly student, mostly parttime workers.
If you’re happy with that, fine. I really don’t mind it personally, but I’m not the poor guy making $8/hour trying to support a family. I just wish that lawmakers would stop insulting our intelligence and have the guts to call it what it really is, rather than pretending that someone is getting something out of the evil, deep corporate pocket.
Mr Furious
Funnily enough, Darrell, through his meatpacking example, did stumble into something.
I will wager that automating, consolidation and the de-unionization of meatpacking jobs were the primary causes of those wages falling so precipitously. But, those jobs are well-known for being manned by illegals. Now.
If those plants or industry were still unionized that could never happen. Aside from the obvious incentive for the agri-conglomerates to slash wages and save there, employing illegals instead of union pros allows them to run the plants on the cheap in other ways besides wages. Illegals are in no position to demand safe working conditions.
I will stipulate that the big business killed the unions, drove the jobs to the boondocks and then the illegals filled the gaps after the fact.
Darrell
In many other cases, the father has a job and assets which can be garnished/seized if the mother would only pursue action rather than make excuses.
you’re the one not facing truths Krista, making excuses for Shawn misrepresenting the legal effort required to pursue child support and in your earlier attempts to frame the welfare issue as primarily one of aid for the disabled.
RSA
In return, do those of you who oppose a hike in the minimum wage support a reduction instead? If raising the minimum wage will hurt the economy, shouldn’t lowering it improve the economy? Feel free to take a principled political stand on this.
John D.
Darrell is, as per usual, full of shit.
It may be free if you are already on public assistance. It varies by state.
FCIC: Handbook on child support enforcement
Kimmitt
Isn’t this a state-by-state thing?
Steve
If it’s as easy as that for them to charge the consumer a higher price, they would have been charging that price all along. I’m not saying they wouldn’t like to, but it’s just not that easy to jack up your prices to recover 100% of a new cost.
Why does big business spend so much money opposing a minimum wage increase, if they’re going to recover 100% of the cost, and “more in some cases”? Maybe it’s an inconvenience, but they’re hardly going to spend millions of dollars in lobbying fees just to avoid an inconvenience that has no economic cost to them.
I hear these Republican arguments all the time, that there’s no point in imposing any added costs whatsoever on corporations because they’ll just pass them on, but the Herculean efforts of those same corporations to avoid the added costs seem to belie the argument.
Shawn
Darrell says:
Ah! But then the woman and her children would be subsidized by the government, right? According to your posts above, minimum wage is sufficient and does not need to be increased.
What about the rest of my post, Darrell? Okay, just to make you happy, I’ll say CPS tracked down the deadbeat Dad. (It took them about a year, BTW) She’s:
making $5.15/hour working 40 hours per week
paying $5.00/hour for childcare
getting $400.00 per month for child support
So after childcare she has $406.00 to pay rent, buy food, etc. I don’t know about your area, but where I’m at rent is $600.00/month minimum.
You think maybe she should get another job, making $5.15/hour for another 20 hours/week? Do you think that extra $3.00 (after childcare) will help her out? Yeah, I guess so, she could buy a couple of packs of Ramen noodles with that 20 hours of work.
Krista
Oh you silly, silly, lying man. Once again, and I’ll say it slowly for you:
There. Are. Some. Who. Are. On. Social. Assistance. Because. They. Are. Disabled. And. Unable. to. Work.
Twice now, you’ve tried to say that I framed it as “primarily” for the disabled. I really don’t know why I should bother engaging with you if you can’t even make your point without bald-faced lying about what others have said.
Steve
Where I come from, Legal Aid is the primary instrument for pursuit of child support. Back when I worked for them, I actually used to go to battered women’s shelters and the like to give presentations on child support rights, it was an interesting experience. Mind you, Republicans have slashed the Legal Aid budget all to hell.
jg
But to whom are they making that argument? A liberal usually. Because of that the response they are making doesn’t have to be factual in order to be received by their audience. Truthy is good enough.
Darrell
Because Krista, in like your second post on the subject you came back out of left field with “why do you want to take away social services from the disabled”. You know that’s what you did.. talk about not bothering to engage, trying being honest for a change
chopper
what i find stupid is how you keep at the same point, acting as if it’s gospel truth, with no more than an anecdote to back you up. yet you rail against the opposite POV, which does have backing by a number of economists, as ‘stupid’.
seriously, does your head whistle in a crosswind?
Darrell
Let’s be clear halfwit, this is my ‘controversial’ statement to which you so strenuously object:
Nutcutter
I don’st see anything in this excellent writeup about illegal aliens, Darrell
Shawn
Krista
Thanks for that. As far as Darrell is concerned I might as well have been banging my head against a brick wall. But… all conservatives are not like Darrell. Some care about people; they just don’t know how bad it is. Darrell just plain doesn’t care. It’s all about one-ups-manship for him. People like Darrell make the baby Jesus cry.
chopper
You know that’s what you did.. talk about not bothering to engage, trying being honest for a change
talk about the pot and the fscking kettle. you deliberately completely misread her statement, and when called on it multiple times defended it by saying that the fact that it was her second post on the subject magically breathed some kind of non-existant context that completely changed the meaning of the post.
talk about dishonest.
Steve
But you know, it’s a pretty fair point when someone is talking about cutting welfare, to point out that it’s not just about making some spoiled welfare queen eat one less cheeseburger per day. If you want to punish people who “choose” not to work, you’re also going to be punishing people who have no choice. That’s the fact Krista asked you to deal with.
chopper
dumbass, 1) i didn’t object to your statement. learn to read. 2) i objected to the fact that you offered nothing more than ‘this must be true cause i’m saying it’ and an anecdote vs someone with a number of economist behind him, calling the latter ‘stupid’. this is why i’m laughing at you.
seriously, if i were you i’d take a valium, then work on my reading comprehension for a month or so. then come back when you’ve figured out how to read a post.
Darrell
If I had been characterizing them as “spoiled welfare queens” or similar such descriptions, she would have been fully justified in her characterization of them as “why do you want to hurt the disabled Darrell” type of crap. But she pulled it out of left field
John D.
Interestingly enough, this is also false.
From OCSE profile of Tennessee:
I note a severe lack of Mexico in that list.
Darrell
Here is what you wrote (test of nested blockquotes following) verbatim:
if you weren’t responding/objecting to that statement of mine, then why did you single it out and hightlight it?
Krista
I was being snarky, Darrell. Jesus wept, man…you can be so incredibly obtuse when it suits your purposes, can’t you?
fwiffo
You seem to be implying that there are times when he hasn’t been so incredibly obtuse. I find that quite hard to believe.
chriskoz
Wow Darrell… how willfully dishonest of you.
Someone says he’s not “objecting” to your statement and you change it to “responding/objecting”.
Of course he was “responding”. But, even a 4 year old can tell you that is not the nessacarily same thing as “objecting”.
He was responding to you… pushing for something to back up your statement. You of course provided nothing. Typical.
Shawn
Shawn said:
Well I can’t wait around all night for Darrell to answer. I’m sure he’ll have some pie in the sky answer to how 3 people can live on $406.00 per month, but it will be as full of shit as all his other posts.
Have a good evening, all!
John S.
Darrell, go fuck yourself.
Just because the Governor refused to include a measure to crack down on companies hiring illegals because he didn’t want “Democrats to dictate the agenda” is total bullshit, and only a knucle-dragger like you would believe such phony nonsense.
The bottom line is that Republicans prefer to play politics on immigration and point the finger whenever someone tries to illicit meaningful change. Any dipshit with an IQ of 50 could discern that from reading the article.
Andrew
Well, the free market answer is, of course, to sell one of the kids.
chopper
you’re right, i was responding to the statement. first time you’ve been right all day. seriously, pat yourself on the back. you’ve earned it.
i responded to your statement because you were acting as if it was the gospel truth and calling the opposite point of view ‘stupid’ despite said opposite point of view having the backing of a large number of economists. while your point of view was backed up with a single anecdote.
Zifnab
Ironically, unions have historically been very against illegal immigration (or any immigration at all… unions function best when the job pool is small), but they have been dissolved over the past 30 years as jobs are moved over seas or become automated.
Unions who would normally be protesting, striking, petitioning their congress-people, and generally making alot of noise on the matter don’t exist in the south. So while there’s a lot of jawing on capital hill about building walls and 12 million deportations, there’s no one left to chant “dey took ‘r jobs!” because those jobs got took a decade ago.
Ancient Purple
Don’t bother waiting. You will never get an honest answer from Darrell. Ever. When you ask a question like you did, Darrell puts his fingers in his ears and says, “LALALALALALA I can’t hear you.”
In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter anyway. Darrell couldn’t care any less if someone is expected to live on $406.00 a month. Why?
Darrell hates his fellow human beings. Always has and always will.
GOP4Me
Selling plasma? If you sell your blood 3 or 4 times a month, you can probably get by. And if you STILL can’t make ends meet, where does it say you need two kidneys to survive?
Better you piss blood and die than cost Darrell’s wallet $.50, that’s for sure. Slash welfare benefits, slash the minimum wage, then cite statistice from the Heritage Foundation proving that people earning minimum wage are only overprivileged teenagers anyway. It’s the Republican way. The rhetoric and tactics have changed since the time of Herbert Hoover, but not much else has.
Poor people can’t do that because Big Government, led by decades of Democrat social experimenters, has passed laws forbidding it. Why, I bet they can’t even sell their own childrens’ blood and kidneys to pay for those same childrens’ food and medical care, thanks to these meddling do-gooders.
Why do Democrats hate poor people?
Anyway, can we please talk about f(l)ag burning right now? Speaking as someone who makes slightly less than $1k a month living in an apartment where rent is $600 a month, I can honestly say that the primary issue of concern for me this November is the threat presented by Mexican homosexuals crossing the border at night, lighting the way with burning American flags, intent on stealing jobs in the berry-picking and chicken-gutting industries away from me, then whisking me away to Massachusetts and forcing me to marry them.
ImJohnGalt
That’s interesting. Alberta, which is where Canadian wingers live, and Quebec, where the Frenchies are, don’t reciprocate in Canada. Why do the French hate child support?
Perry Como
Milton Friedman chats about the minimum wage.
Nutcutter
If Darrell’s theories are correct, most of those gay Mexicans are skilled carpenters.
I think we should look into the programs Mexico is running to get so many of its gay men into carpentry. We should be able to duplicate that success here.
Andrew
The gay skilled carpenters from Mexico are coming for our boy scouts! Soon, they will build tastefully decorated log cabins for summer camps, and destroy the morality of America.
John D.
Honestly? That’s probably more Tennessee’s fault than Canada’s. It’s an odd state.
Mac Buckets
So if we assume that you are correct, and a company is in a particularly price-competitive market in which they can’t raise their price beyond a certain point, then what happens, do you think? Do you think they eat the labor cost increase then and just accept less revenue, or do you think they cut labor costs elsewhere (firing workers) to compensate?
Steve
Would those be unprofitable workers or profitable workers they’re cutting? Wait, don’t answer that.
It’s like you keep reaching to prove that somehow, some way, other workers must necessarily get screwed. Maybe, but maybe not! It only makes sense to fire workers if they were marginally profitable before the wage increase and now they’re unprofitable because you have to pay them more. It’s not like you can just swing a cat and hit someone by that description, it’s a relatively small subset of workers.
Kimmitt
Alternately, why not mandate a maximum wage of $7 an hour? Then every company will have very small labor costs, and we’ll all be able to buy everything for nearly free!
Mac Buckets
Well, I don’t know that it’s a very long reach, since you and I both know that corporations won’t just eat the cost and take a loss on it! I’m trying to get you to commit to what you think the corporation will do to offset. So far, you haven’t offered your idea of what you think the affected companies will do in response. You’ve just tried to minimize my suggestions (raising prices, laying off workers), because I think you know that all the alternatives are rhetorically unpalatable for you.
It’s a far greater reach to believe that government can simply legislate an increase in wealth , no matter how meager, outside of the market and everyone will win and no one will lose. If they could legislate wealth, in theory, why haven’t they raised minimum wage to $15/hour, and why didn’t they do it fifty years ago?
Pb
Mac Buckets,
This is so stupid that I shouldn’t even bother responding, but… 38 years ago, the minimum wage was 78% higher than it is now (adjusting for inflation), and the economy was in better shape than it is now. Now I’ll posit that, given these facts, there’s some magic number for the minimum wage that is best for the economy, and that that number is probably higher than $5.15 an hour right now (surely some here will posit that this number is precisely $0.00 an hour; I disagree). As to whether that number is as high as $15/hr (or, for that matter, $15/hr 50 years ago!), I doubt it, but perhaps even something like that could work, given some other regulations.
Look at, for example, this thought experiment regarding the effects of a doubling of the minimum wage, and the equitable ways a corporation could deal with it. Or this one, regarding the possible effects on social security in the long term.
Now, one question I’d ask, given any increase like that, is this: holding the total amount of wealth in America constant, and given this wage increase, what would The Gini Index likely end up being in a year? Ten years? If that number is above 20-25 or so (ours is more like 45, more in line with Russia and China–higher = less equitable), then it’s not a totally implausible increase–many successful industrialized nations have similar distributions of wealth.
Mr Furious
Well, wouldn’t the same thing apply to their competitors? It’s a wash. They just all pass the cost on.
I’m not serious, but I think it’s a legit counter to your point.
Mac Buckets
I don’t really know where you’re going with this, or how it’s relevant in the least to my post, but I’m not sure all that all socioeconomic groups share your nostalgia for those carefree days of (cough) 1968.
Mac Buckets
When you look up “naive” in the online dictionary, it will now link to that “thought experiment” where executives just give the money to their workers out of their own pockets.
Pb
Mac Buckets Says:
Then maybe you should try *reading the rest of it*. Maybe read it a few times, if you have to. I’ll be happy to help you out if you get stuck on any hard words.
It’s all about that whole ‘potential effects of raising the minimum wage in the past’ thing that, you know, you brought up in the first place.
But, according to you, 1956 was just peachy? Fuck off.
Pb
Mac Buckets,
I happen to agree with you there, actually, and that is a problem–which is why I also mentioned in my post that “perhaps even something like that could work, given some other regulations“. Like I said, read it again.
Mac Buckets
OK, I see what happened — you took my original post too literally. My point wasn’t anything to do with 1956 in particular, or raising the minimum wage specifically to $15/hour in the past.
My point was simply that if governments could legislate wealth, they would all do it. They would’ve all been doing it for decades. And we wouldn’t be doing it in measly little increases like $2/hour every 10 years. I just chose an arbitrary wage and year.
Mac Buckets
No idea why that last paragraph blockquoted,
Pb
Mac Buckets,
I’d quibble with your usage of ‘equally hurting’, but interestingly enough, I think the converse is true as well–that there’s no way to increase the highest wages without hurting those at lower wages. And that’s just what happened–back when the minimum wage was at its height, CEO compensation was also ~10x lower than it is now. The difference being, those CEOs never had to worry about where their next meal was coming from…
Steve
I don’t know that at all. Of course the corporations WANT to pass the cost on, but corporations are getting smacked with increased costs every day from any number of sources. Yet you don’t see any corporation which manages to hold its profit margins steady from year to year. Sometimes you manage to pass the costs on, sometimes you don’t. It’s a matter of what the market will bear.
Let’s say we have a company with a 3% profit margin. Thanks to an increase in the minimum wage, now they have a 2.5% profit margin. What will they do?
1) If they can pass the costs on to consumers, they will (keeping in mind that if the market was ready, willing and able to pay a higher price, they probably would have raised their prices already!)
2) If they have any business units that have become marginally unprofitable as a result of the changes, they may consider layoffs or changes in that business unit
3) If neither of these applies, they’re still a profitable company, so they’re going to just suck it up!
Maybe, maybe not, but that doesn’t mean every legislation is a zero-sum game. The winners may collectively win more than the losers lose. There wouldn’t be a science of macroeconomics if government had no ability to affect the economy other than by redistributing wealth.
Some conservatives believe that tax cuts increase revenue, which I think is a very silly position, but they never explain why the Democrats bizarrely refuse to take this “everybody wins” position!
The real answer is that we can’t accurately quantify all of the effects of raising the minimum wage, which is why there’s not a consensus among economists on the issue. My position is two-fold:
1) I think that if we could get most people out of poverty and into a more livable situation, it would stimulate the economy enough to have indirect benefits for everyone, in the long term, by creating a bunch of new spenders and consumers.
2) Even if some people would be marginally worse off as a consequence of getting people out of poverty, I still think it would be the right thing to do. Overall, I think the benefit would outweigh the harm.
RonB
This thread is waaay too long to go all the way back into, but hasn’t anyone mentioned that the federal minimum wage simply is not experiencing a cost of living adjustment due to inflation? Every year, your dollar buys less. Salaries and wages typically increase to adjust for inflation.
Simply put, employers are getting away with paying entry level jobs less and less as the years go by, even though the minimum wage stays the same. They are pocketing the difference. That seem right to anyone?
I should also point out that the minimum wage went up 3 times in the 90s. The countries’ economic infrastructure was not destroyed.
Supporters of the minimum wage hike are merely asking that employers continue to pay unskilled/entry level employees what they made the year before, so they have at least the same purchasing power.
RonB
Oh, wait, looks like Tim F. got out of the gate on that from the get-go. How in the hell did the thread wander so far off from that?
GOP4Me
Anything’s possible, once Senator Darrell weighs in on an issue.
RonB
That’s what I figured.
Candidus
Up next on Balloon Juice: A thrilling discussion on how throwing bricks through windows can improve the national economy.