Actually Mr. President, we should get rid of the minimum wage

[ReformCollege]

It doesn't matter what it's "supposed" to be, what it is depends on the labor market ....



Unemployment isn't a minimum wage, its no wage ...

Also no one produces less than the minimum wage, infact most workers making minimum wage don't "produce" anything, they work in retail.

Also any company making a profit can afford to pay their workers more.

Also no company will hire more people than they need no matter what, if a company NEEDS a worker they'll hire them no matter what the minimum wage.

In other countries we have much higher minimum wages (in Norway its around $20) and better employment.

Norway is a bad example. Looking at the unemployment of the EU as a whole would be a better comparison in terms of scalability. It's like saying we could handle a minimum wage because two of the 50 states would still have low unemployment.


Apples and oranges.

 

[CanadaJohn]

Any attempt to raise the minimum wage at the federal level is not a jobs initiative but a misplaced poverty initiative. Minimum wage jobs are designed for low skilled and/or part-time employees, most suitably held by teenagers/students or seniors looking to supplement their retirement income or to keep active physically and socially. The only exceptions to this would be adults who have mental handicaps or those with physical handicaps that they need to overcome before their careers can advance.

No physically and mentally able adult, particularly one who has responsibility for a family, or who is above the age of 25 or below the age of 55/60 should be working in a minimum wage job. If you are, you have failed yourself and your family either by not attaining the skills necessary to start a career or by being irresponsible and unemployable - either way, you have no one to blame but yourself.

 

[Heebie Jeebie]

Absolutely and they do, infact they cut them when there ARE profits and they CAN cut wages.

Yeah wage cuts to existing employees are soooooo common. Guess it's because they are so good for morale.

 

[RGacky3]

Yeah wage cuts to existing employees are soooooo common. Guess it's because they are so good for morale.

No they cut jobs, and they don't raise wages when inflation goes up which amounts to a cut in wages.

 

[RGacky3]

Norway is a bad example. Looking at the unemployment of the EU as a whole would be a better comparison in terms of scalability. It's like saying we could handle a minimum wage because two of the 50 states would still have low unemployment.


Apples and oranges.

The EU doesn't have a standard minimum wage, you have to go country by country.

 

[Heebie Jeebie]

No they cut jobs, and they don't raise wages when inflation goes up which amounts to a cut in wages.

Wait you just they can cut wages when profits go away now you are saying the cut jobs.

Now which is it?

 

[ReformCollege]

The EU doesn't have a standard minimum wage, you have to go country by country.

That's not the point. Sweden has a population the equivalent of North Carolina or Georgia. Besides, they also have a 37% higher price level then what we have in the U.S. Purchasing power parity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Comparing PPP/capita Norway is the only country higher then the U.S. from the EU. List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Regardless, in this country, minimum wage results in higher unemployment, higher discrimination against minority groups, and higher poverty due to increase in prices.

 

[ReformCollege]

That's nonsense, your assuming that there are just tons of Jobs so workers can just leave for better pay ... they can't, they need to eat and there are not plenty of jobs around, also capital can withhold, labor cannot, if capital does'nt invest it can wait, or just keep it in a bank, labor needs to work or else the worker doesn't eat.

Wages are a market factor, but different from others, because wages end up being someones food and the demand in an economy, so you cut wages you'r gonna let loose a big problem, lack of demand, dwindling profits which end up cutting more wages.

Inceasing the minimum wage will bring people out of poverty and increase aggrigate demand.

1. There aren't jobs that people can just leave to go to for better pay because of the failure of maldistribution of skills and because of failed regulations of the labor market.

2. Minimum wage isn't meant to be a living wage. Its meant to be a point of entry for teenagers and young college students to get working experience. If you're raising a family of four on a minimum wage, you're doing something wrong.

 

[Oceandan]

Revisionist? You're unaware that we've lived under trickle-down for 30 years? Well, you absolutely should not trust a stranger on a blog. So check for yourself the pattern of distribution of wealth in the US over the last 30 years.

from your argument I gather you have no problem with the policies that CAUSE economic crashes to begin with and that you are more bothered by how LONG they take from which to recover? That doesn't make sense. For one thing, there is no way to prove that other policies would have caused a faster recovery. They might have even caused a more slow recovery.

Also, the policies up to now have continued to benefit the top 1%, so I'm not sure how you get to a conclusion that it's been Democratic, socialist policies that have done anything.

Thirdly, whether implemented by a Dem or Repub, it's actually been conservative policies (deregulation, lax government oversight, redistribution of wealth to a tiny percentage of the population) that got us into the mess we're in.

It is not enough to just say buzzwords, like "Socialists". It actually has to make sense, and making sense mean rooting your argument in reality and evidence, NOT in feeling something and repeating what you're told to repeat by FOX and Limbaugh and Frank Luntz.

See?

The US is hardly a socialist country. I mean, wow.

You are completely inaccurate. We've not had a true free market economy in this country for much longer than 30 years. The government does not redistribute wealth to a tiny percent. Another falsehood. Nothing you say holds water in realville. Sure pull out the strawmen. Fox and Limbaugh that's all you have. Get out of the propaganda influence of your news. Governmental interference in our economy is why we are here now. The policies you claim caused the challenge are not factors. Quite the opposite. Repeal of Glass Steagall did not cause the housing bubble to burst. Thats absurd. Left to their own, banks would never have made the loans Dodd & Frank were forcing from a governmental position. You never have the toxic loans packaged and sold to unknowing investors. The banks knew it was a bad idea. Now the opposite has happened due to governmental interference.

"Trickle down" works. You can't change the results under Reagan. Typical revisionists like to garble the true principles. They also like to change the meaning, but you can't deny the results.

 

[Danbury]

You are completely inaccurate. We've not had a true free market economy in this country for much longer than 30 years. The government does not redistribute wealth to a tiny percent. Another falsehood. Nothing you say holds water in realville. Sure pull out the strawmen. Fox and Limbaugh that's all you have. Get out of the propaganda influence of your news. Governmental interference in our economy is why we are here now. The policies you claim caused the challenge are not factors. Quite the opposite. Repeal of Glass Steagall did not cause the housing bubble to burst. Thats absurd. Left to their own, banks would never have made the loans Dodd & Frank were forcing from a governmental position. You never have the toxic loans packaged and sold to unknowing investors. The banks knew it was a bad idea. Now the opposite has happened due to governmental interference.

"Trickle down" works. You can't change the results under Reagan. Typical revisionists like to garble the true principles. They also like to change the meaning, but you can't deny the results.

We've never had a fully free market. That is an impossibility. But what we HAVE had in the last 30 years is a MORE free market than in the past ,namely with the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
so you are the one revising history here.

If you think trickle-down works, then stop complaining about an inevitable consequence: the bottom 90% not keeping up and needing government assistance.

Never answered my questions, btw. I thought only libs did that.

 

[KLATTU]

80 % of economists agree- a minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers.

 

[Oceandan]

We've never had a fully free market. That is an impossibility. But what we HAVE had in the last 30 years is a MORE free market than in the past ,namely with the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
so you are the one revising history here.

If you think trickle-down works, then stop complaining about an inevitable consequence: the bottom 90% not keeping up and needing government assistance.

Never answered my questions, btw. I thought only libs did that.

Repeat your question. The bottom 90% don't need government assistance. That's only when government gets in the way and doesn't allow free market principles to correct. See the difference is when it self corrects the recovery is much faster and much less painful.

 

[Danbury]

Repeat your question. The bottom 90% don't need government assistance. That's only when government gets in the way and doesn't allow free market principles to correct. See the difference is when it self corrects the recovery is much faster and much less painful.

It's headed that way, thanks to your Reaganomics, trickle-down economics.

Saying trickle-down/Gush-up economics don't lead to stagnation underneath the top 1%, and therefore more people needing assistance is kind of like denying that water can run upward, that gravity is not a factor, and then complaining about arid conditions where water is not able to get.

 

[YoungConserv]

Do you know the percentage of the working population that works full time for minimum wage?

 

[Cardinal Fang]

What would it solve?

The problem of minimum wage workers continuously losing purchasing power thanks to the de facto pay cuts that inflation provides every month.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

Or (cynically) everyone dependent upon handouts is a sure-fire voter. People who are self-improving and moving up the economic ladder, not so much.

Contrary to fact. Which is why ACORN was such a threat to Republicans that they had to commission all those doctored videos and run a massive smear campaign to drive them out of business. In fact, if eligible low-income and minority Americans had registered and voted in 2006 at the same rates as eligible white and middle-income Americans did, seven million more ballots would have been cast. THAT'S what scared the pants off Republicans.

 

[Diogenes]

The problem of minimum wage workers continuously losing purchasing power thanks to the de facto pay cuts that inflation provides every month.

Sounds like the economic equivalent of a hamster wheel... :roll:

 

[Cardinal Fang]

This idea of using the MW as a "free" stimulus program is indeed clever, it transfers part of the expense of low income based entitlements from the gov't to the employer.

You have the logic backwards. The minimum wage needs to be increased in large part because greedy employers simply seek to externalize as large a share of their costs as possible onto the taxpayer. That's why we need pollution laws, and it's why we need wage and health care laws. Employers who do not pay a wage that with full-time hours would allow a worker to support himself are simply stealing money from the rest of us. In China, they execute corporate criminals. Maybe we should try that.

What is overlooked is that the resulting inflation (all rents, prices and wages will creep up as well) resulting in the need for matching COLA adjustments in SS and gov't retirement benefits. Rinse and repeat...

The reason all this inflation is overlooked is that it doesn't exist. The number of affected workers and the amount of a typical minimum wage increase are both small in the grand scheme of things and combine to produce an effect that canot be measured as any actual inflation or actual unemployment at all.

 

[ttwtt78640]

You have the logic backwards. The minimum wage needs to be increased in large part because greedy employers simply seek to externalize as large a share of their costs as possible onto the taxpayer. That's why we need pollution laws, and it's why we need wage and health care laws. Employers who do not pay a wage that with full-time hours would allow a worker to support himself are simply stealing money from the rest of us. In China, they execute corporate criminals. Maybe we should try that.


The reason all this inflation is overlooked is that it doesn't exist. The number of affected workers and the amount of a typical minimum wage increase are both small in the grand scheme of things and combine to produce an effect that canot be measured as any actual inflation or actual unemployment at all.

So what should that minumum wage be? It is now (gross) about 133% of the federal poverty rate for a 40 hour work week.

Federal Poverty Guidelines

 

[Salty]

Yeah I've heard that all before. If there was no MW some employers would pay a dollar an hour.That is a fact. You might say people won't work for that and an employer pays you what you are worth. WRONG! The kids who built the pyramids were expert craftsmen and probably didn't get paid at all. Eli Whitney's slave invented the cotton gin, a friend of mine (now deceased) designed the wing span of the Boeing 747 and ended up laid off from restructuring... and on and on. Not only that but wages would eventually go down and down till they hit rock bottom. May take a few years but it would happen. And in the current screwed up climate that does not transfer into lower cost of living. Besides ALL that, the best thing for any economy for the rich and everyone else too is for there to be a vibrant middle class. In order to have that there has to be a way to get-there-from-here. Actually 14 dollars an hour is more of a starting wage in this country. imo

 

[Cardinal Fang]

Any attempt to raise the minimum wage at the federal level is not a jobs initiative but a misplaced poverty initiative. Minimum wage jobs are designed for low skilled and/or part-time employees, most suitably held by teenagers/students or seniors looking to supplement their retirement income or to keep active physically and socially.

What a joke! Perhaps you were a marketing major or something. Minimum wage jobs are not "designed". They are not products offered for sale. Some commercial and industrial processes require inputs of low-end labor. Just as the maker of chocolate chip cookies cannot get by without inputs of chocolate chips, many enterprises cannot get by without inputs of low-end labor. Chocolate chips are of course objects, while labor of any sort is people. The question here quickly becomes one over the degree to which powerful companies should be able to exploit and extract profit from powerless people.

No physically and mentally able adult, particularly one who has responsibility for a family, or who is above the age of 25 or below the age of 55/60 should be working in a minimum wage job.

About 20% of minimum wage workers are over the age of 25 and are married with a spouse present in the home. That compares to about 23% who are teenagers.

If you are, you have failed yourself and your family either by not attaining the skills necessary to start a career or by being irresponsible and unemployable - either way, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Way to build to the big finish!

 

[Heebie Jeebie]

The problem of minimum wage workers continuously losing purchasing power thanks to the de facto pay cuts that inflation provides every month.

And you think that's the problem?

 

[Heebie Jeebie]

The question here quickly becomes one over the degree to which powerful companies should be able to exploit and extract profit from powerless people.

Can you name a powerful company that has a significant number of people making minimum wage after 1 year on the job?

 

[Cardinal Fang]

Regardless, in this country, minimum wage results in higher unemployment, higher discrimination against minority groups, and higher poverty due to increase in prices.

It actually results in none of those things at all. Those are all nothing but nonsense scary stories that right-wing corporate-lackey types have had to make up and tell due to a complete lack of any actual arguments to put forward.

 

[KLATTU]

"The question here quickly becomes one over the degree to which powerful companies should be able to exploit and extract profit from powerless people."
Powerless huh? Can't work harder- can't go to school- can't open their own business ( those are only handed out to white male Republicans by the RNC-secretly- shhhhhhhh)
That sickening, patronizing attitude of limo libs is a huge part of the problem.