California lawmakers approve hiking minimum wage to $15

[ludin]

The starving eat day by day and will be satisfied with that much.

they will still do that after an automated machine says place your order.
and no they won't find another job because they just priced themselves out of it.

 

[ludin]

Fair enough.

The amount of rise is hard to determine due to all the FUD propagated, so I guess we'll just have to watch Seattle for some clues.

But I'm not aware of any serious legit problems there, at this point in time.

some places in seattle are charging 10-15% on top of the bill with
the added line minimum wage on it.

that is a huge price increase and something that you will see elsewhere.

I know when LA did their 15 an hour chipotle I think it was raise their prices 20%
across the board.

 

[SocialD]

Okay, I'll go for $30 an hour and most large corps would still rake in profits.

meanwhile the small businesses go out of business.

 

[Paleocon]

It's not even that it causes increases, but that it changes no underlining issues.

Exactly. Minimum wage won't do anything unless it's accompanied by maximum prices.

 

[Chomsky]

having a job is better than pricing yourself out of one.
we will see how well these people that do manage to retain their job
will react when they find out they lose their government benefits as well.

when people in seattle found out they started demanding less hours.

what about people just entering the market? no one is going to hire them.
they just set new workers up for failure. teenage unemployment is already
high I see it getting worse. even more so for minorities.

it is only going to get worse when all those people that were making 15 an hour now
want more for doing more work.

You've got an interesting point with government benefits, and this is a big problem when you pick winners & losers by giving certain bennies to specific individuals based upon their income. You get reverse incentive to work! But if it helps getting people off welfare rolls, I'm all for it.

I believe your "entering the market" paragraph is flawed though: Hiring is supply and demand dependent, not wage dependent. If demand is there, a person will be hired at the prevailing wage; if there's no demand, that individual will not be kept on the payroll.

Wage level may matter in a hire/fire decision when choosing amongst individual employees, but it won't effect the number of employees to a substantial degree.

You also bring an interesting point with wage creep amongst all employees (supervisor, manager, etc.). I honestly can't say how strong that would be or what it's exact effects would be. But if it's putting more money in the hands of the American consumer middle-class, I'm all for that too.

 

[Chomsky]

some places in seattle are charging 10-15% on top of the bill with
the added line minimum wage on it.

that is a huge price increase and something that you will see elsewhere.

I know when LA did their 15 an hour chipotle I think it was raise their prices 20%
across the board.

I'll take a look into that Ludin, thanks for those figures.

I'm not sure what would be an acceptable increase. I think something along the lines of single digits (percent) would be reasonable and not very disruptive. But if we start seeing 20%, I'd start to have concerns.

It's been awhile since the legislation was enacted in Seattle, so I suppose it's time I took a closer look at it.

Regardless, I'm glad it's being tried somewhere so we can see real-world results.

 

[ludin]

You've got an interesting point with government benefits, and this is a big problem when you pick winners & losers by giving certain bennies to specific individuals based upon their income. You get reverse incentive to work! But if it helps getting people off welfare rolls, I'm all for it.

I believe your "entering the market" paragraph is flawed though: Hiring is supply and demand dependent, not wage dependent. If demand is there, a person will be hired at the prevailing wage; if there's no demand, that individual will not be kept on the payroll.

Wage level may matter in a hire/fire decision when choosing amongst individual employees, but it won't effect the number of employees to a substantial degree.

You also bring an interesting point with wage creep amongst all employees (supervisor, manager, etc.). I honestly can't say how strong that would be or what it's exact effects would be. But if it's putting more money in the hands of the American consumer middle-class, I'm all for that too.

more than likely there won't be wage creep. just like that guy that decided to pay everyone 70k the people that were already
making that or above just got told screw you.

same will happen here. supervisors and or possibly managers will be working for minimum wage.

actually hiring is wage dependent. it is also skilled dependent. the person has to be able to justify paying you what you want.
also don't forget there are other increase that are not seen.

things like workers comp etc ... all will go up as well. it was figure that a person making 10 dollars actually costs the company 13.
so a worker making 15 will end up costing 18 or 19 at least.

 

[Grand Mal]

Directly? The employer.
Ultimately? Customers.

This the part where the chicken little stuff begins?

A big mac goes up 15 cents and a single mother stays off welfare. Beginning of the end.

 

[Grand Mal]

Exactly. Minimum wage won't do anything unless it's accompanied by maximum prices.

No. Prices are set by the market but minimum wages left up to the market will turn the US into Cambodia.

 

[Chomsky]

Isn't great how we can just legislate this stuff? Why haven't we thought of this before? And really, is $15 enough? Shouldn't we just go to $30? Or even $50? There can't be a downside to this, the genuses that are doing this would have thought of that already.

Oh come-on now, we chose what we think are reasonable standards throughout society: Minimum age for a child to work (16), poverty line (24K for family of 4), limit to pay payroll taxes (118K), etc.

Minimum wage is just another one of them.

 

[ludin]

I'll take a look into that Ludin, thanks for those figures.

I'm not sure what would be an acceptable increase. I think something along the lines of single digits (percent) would be reasonable and not very disruptive. But if we start seeing 20%, I'd start to have concerns.

It's been awhile since the legislation was enacted in Seattle, so I suppose it's time I took a closer look at it.

Regardless, I'm glad it's being tried somewhere so we can see real-world results.

Chipotle Raises Prices in San Francisco After Minimum Wage Hike

they lowered it to 10%. one report at 20%.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/24/b...say-no-to-tips-yes-to-higher-prices.html?_r=0
while they did away with tipping there were huge price increases but a lot of those had to do with the minimum wage increase as well.

 

[ludin]

No. Prices are set by the market but minimum wages left up to the market will turn the US into Cambodia.

no because at some point people won't work.

 

[Paleocon]

No. Prices are set by the market but minimum wages left up to the market will turn the US into Cambodia.

I'm aware of how the current system works. I'm saying, I disagree with it. Prices shouldn't be set by "the invisible hand".

 

[Grand Mal]

I'm aware of how the current system works. I'm saying, I disagree with it. Prices shouldn't be set by "the invisible hand".

If prices were set by the visible hand the underground economy would soon wreak havoc.

 

[Northern Light]

umm unless you want to just ignore the past minimum wage increases sure.
however history has a tendency to repeat itself.

Raising minimum wage won't lower poverty - CNN.com

I'd rather wait to see what actually happens. The point I was trying to make before is that there are more variables at work and simple economic assessments don't always pan out as a projection tool. CA has multiple unique factors like its tech boom and its housing bubble, which are all affecting job markets and demand for higher wages. I'd like to see what the economic data says in 5 years about the consequences (good or bad) of raising min. wage.

 

[Paleocon]

If prices were set by the visible hand the underground economy would soon wreak havoc.

You mean the black market?

Somehow that wasn't a deal breaker for the many societies in history that did use the "visible hand".

 

[joG]

California lawmakers approve hiking minimum wage to $15



The beginning of fairness.

Eliminate jobs worth less than $15 an hour! How many will you employ around your household at that price?

 

[joG]

If prices were set by the visible hand the underground economy would soon wreak havoc.

Societies that have tried have gone down in smoke. That was what the Great Competition of Systems in the last century was about.

 

[ludin]

Eliminate jobs worth less than $15 an hour! How many will you employ around your household at that price?

yard maintenance people will jack their prices through the roof. no more 30 dollar yard cuts for people.

 

[Paleocon]

Societies that have tried have gone down in smoke. That was what the Great Competition of Systems in the last century was about.

Such are the lessons taken (that price setting by the state is bad) who's historical knowledge extends no more than a century into the past.

 

[Deuce]

now they won't either as businesses will replace them with automation machines.
they just priced themselves out of a job.

so I guess if you consider making 0 more fair than 10 dollars which is the minimum wage now in CA
then yea I guess that is fair.

Hahahah listen buddy, if a business could replace an employee with a machine they'd do it already. $7.50/hour or $15/hour isn't going to be the financial difference.

 

[Blue_State]

Arguably, higher wages means more spending power, which means more business revenue, which means business can afford to pay the new minimum wage.

How can people making the current minimum wage in CA afford to buy luxury goods?

Just saying it's not as cut and dry as supply/demand economics. If you don't make enough money to afford survival goods then it falls to the government to provide, and then taxes go up. Raising the minimum wage is one way to transfer the burden from the general public/welfare to the private sector.

The price of goods and services goes up with wage increases. There will be no increase in spending power.

 

[Blue_State]

meanwhile the small businesses go out of business.

But they are the 1%

 

[Anthony60]

Hahahah listen buddy, if a business could replace an employee with a machine they'd do it already. $7.50/hour or $15/hour isn't going to be the financial difference.

If it costs them $12p/hr to run the machine, well then... those jobs that are really only worth $10p/hr will be done by machines, instead of paying $15p/hr to a person.

 

[ocean515]

California lawmakers approve hiking minimum wage to $15



The beginning of fairness.

So the idea is that the unemployed will have more company, so that is fair?

Interesting take.

Of course, the intellectually/physically lazy, along with the greedy, have never been known to display rational thinking.