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What should the minimum wage be, or should we not have one at all?

https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-07/CBO-55410-MinimumWage2019.pdf
The $15 option would affect family income in a variety
of ways. In CBO’s estimation, it would:
Boost workers’ earnings through higher wages,
though some of those higher earnings would be offset
by higher rates of joblessness;
• Reduce business income and raise prices as higher
labor costs were absorbed by business owners and
then passed on to consumers; and
Reduce the nation’s output slightly through the
reduction in employment and a corresponding
decline in the nation’s stock of capital (such as
buildings, machines, and technologies).
On the basis of those effects and CBO’s estimate of the
median effect on employment, the $15 option would
reduce total real (inflation-adjusted) family income in
2025 by $9 billion,
or 0.1 percent


Comments.
 
Really the market should determine minimum wage.
I disagree with a flat national minimum wage because not all area's are equal.

by artificially increasing the minimum wage the government hurts places that can't actually support
itself. it also falsely increases prices more than what some people can afford lowering their pay checks.

if a state wants to increase their minimum wage then at least the voters can decide and should decide.
that way small town USA doesn't get busted and go broke.

In other words, you support no minimum wage. Thanks for your input. Next.
 
The actual minimum wage is $0, because unemployment exists.

If you wish to maximize the number of people employed, then you should

A) get rid of the minimum wage, and
B) ensure that public support to the poor or working poor don't discourage work below a certain threshold.


Otherwise people have to choose between low paid work and low paid leisure, and the latter will often win out.


This is why the conservative viewpoint on this has no merit. Maximizing the number of people employed without taking into account the employee's wages, benefits, and happiness is a fool's errand. Let's say we have 0% unemployment with people working 2 or 3 jobs with no healthcare or retirement. How is this good for the United States? What conservatives chronically fail to realize is that there is a big difference between quality vs. quantity. I'd personally rather there be 5,000 well-paying jobs than 10,000 minimum wage jobs. The unemployment rate isn't just a number to boast (or to get angry) about, it represents the livelihood of individuals and small families who are trying to eke out an existence in an era of sky-high economic inequality. When businesses say, "I can't afford $15 an hour", where is the evidence? And, I mean that sincerely. Where are their balance sheets for us to inspect why they cannot afford $15 an hour? Why are we just supposed to take their word for it. And, if these businesses can't afford $15 an hour, then let them go out of business. We need an economy for everyone, not for those who are already wealthy because of their inheritance. We have people who are working 2 - 3 jobs with no health insurance or living off medicaid (our tax dollars). That's unacceptable.
 
In other words, you support no minimum wage. Thanks for your input. Next.

In other words you have no argument next.
nor can you read. i do not believe in a national minimum wage.

it should be state by state if a state wants to implement a minimum wage.
 
And.... be willing to go where needed. I'm sure Wheeling, West Virginia is a beautiful place, but you're not going to earn a good wage there.

Good advice! Maybe people need to search better jobs more aggressively.
 
In other words you have no argument next.
nor can you read. i do not believe in a national minimum wage.

it should be state by state if a state wants to implement a minimum wage.

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This is why the conservative viewpoint on this has no merit. Maximizing the number of people employed without taking into account the employee's wages, benefits, and happiness is a fool's errand. Let's say we have 0% unemployment with people working 2 or 3 jobs with no healthcare or retirement. How is this good for the United States? What conservatives chronically fail to realize is that there is a big difference between quality vs. quantity. I'd personally rather there be 5,000 well-paying jobs than 10,000 minimum wage jobs. The unemployment rate isn't just a number to boast (or to get angry) about, it represents the livelihood of individuals and small families who are trying to eke out an existence in an era of sky-high economic inequality. When businesses say, "I can't afford $15 an hour", where is the evidence? And, I mean that sincerely. Where are their balance sheets for us to inspect why they cannot afford $15 an hour? Why are we just supposed to take their word for it. And, if these businesses can't afford $15 an hour, then let them go out of business. We need an economy for everyone, not for those who are already wealthy because of their inheritance. We have people who are working 2 - 3 jobs with no health insurance or living off medicaid (our tax dollars). That's unacceptable.

if you believe in this so badly then start you own business and pay people 15 an hour for jobs that can't support it.
you will end up doing the same thing that other business owners are doing.

reducing staff or raising prices or both.

how are people losing their jobs and being priced out of the market helping america because that is what your 15 dollars is doing?
what you and other people fail to realize is that there are other business costs that must be paid.

it isn't just paying a person 15 an hour. that 15 an hour cost a business 18-19 bucks and hour.
that is on top of other businesses expenses.

then they need to doing something else an stop working 2-3 jobs.

minimum wage was very designed to be a living wage.
 
I'd personally rather there be 5,000 well-paying jobs than 10,000 minimum wage jobs.

Minimum wage laws do not increase wages. If the government passed a minimum price law of $2000 for used cars, the law would not increase the worth of your $500 junker by even one additional penny, and you would not be able to legally sell it. You would be made worse off by the law. A $15 minimum wage law means no one whose labor is worth less than $15 may legally work. There is no benefit to setting a minimum price for wages or used cars.


When businesses say, "I can't afford $15 an hour", where is the evidence? And, I mean that sincerely.

Wages are a cost just like rent is. If a shop owner claims he can't afford rent above a certain price, would you need evidence before you believed him?
 
All it does is create unemployment and make white liberals feel good about themselves.

If Joe's labor is only worth $8 per hour and the minimum wage is $10 per hour then Joe cannot legally work.
Prove how he cannot legally work.
 
Minimum wage laws do not increase wages. If the government passed a minimum price law of $2000 for used cars, the law would not increase the worth of your $500 junker by even one additional penny, and you would not be able to legally sell it. You would be made worse off by the law. A $15 minimum wage law means no one whose labor is worth less than $15 may legally work. There is no benefit to setting a minimum price for wages or used cars.




Wages are a cost just like rent is. If a shop owner claims he can't afford rent above a certain price, would you need evidence before you believed him?
Thus post is untrue garbage and incorrect terminology.
 
Post withdrawn by author.
 
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Wages are a cost just like rent is. If a shop owner claims he can't afford rent above a certain price, would you need evidence before you believed him?

Two points:

First point: Remember Reagan's: trust, but verify? I would verify the shop owner's balance sheets and tax returns. Here's an example. I owe quite a lot for student loans and believe a fair payment to the government each month would be about $150 - $200 per month for my loans. The Department of Education does not care about what I think I can afford, it wants to my adjusted gross income and the agency makes a determination on what's a fair payment per month. I pay about $500 per month for my student loans because the government has determined that I can afford that amount. What's good for the individual, is good for business. Isn't that the whole conservative mantra? Treating the individual and business the same? Don't bother answering that, it was a rhetorical question. If I were a business owner, I'd be screaming to high heaven that about not being able to afford $15 an hour. Why wouldn't I? Not doing so cuts into my bottom line.

Second point: Your screen name borders on obsession. If I were a woman and you lived near me, I'd warn the local authorities to keep an eye on you. There is no way you should have so much hatred for a woman you don't even know. And, because of that, this'll my first, last, and only response to you.

Have a great weekend.

ImpracticalDisgustingDarklingbeetle-size_restricted.gif
 
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This is why the conservative viewpoint on this has no merit. Maximizing the number of people employed without taking into account the employee's wages, benefits, and happiness is a fool's errand. Let's say we have 0% unemployment with people working 2 or 3 jobs with no healthcare or retirement. How is this good for the United States?
Well, 0% unemployment by itself is really bad: nobody’s changing jobs and everyone is stuck with what they have. But if unemployment was that low, then there’s a severe labor shortage and businesses are competing fiercely for workers.

What happens to wages and benefits in those circumstances?
 
Really the market should determine minimum wage.
I disagree with a flat national minimum wage because not all area's are equal.

by artificially increasing the minimum wage the government hurts places that can't actually support
itself. it also falsely increases prices more than what some people can afford lowering their pay checks.

if a state wants to increase their minimum wage then at least the voters can decide and should decide.
that way small town USA doesn't get busted and go broke.

^^^
Cost of living is different t/o the U.S. Meager wage in CA is great pay in KY
 
Thus post is untrue garbage and incorrect terminology.

actually he is pretty spot on.

if you have a car with 500 and the government comes along and sets the minimum price for 2000 on all used cars.
you are stuck with a car you are trying to sell. why? no one is going to buy it for 2000 when it is only worth 500.

you would have to do some major work and make it work 2k before someone would buy it if it was even possible.
some might not even see it worth 2k then.

the same applies to labor. someone that has 0 job skills or little job skills is not worth 15 and hour.
as business i can't afford that labor rate on someone that can't do the job right from the get go or requires a ton
of training. so guess what. i am not going to hire them.
 
Well, 0% unemployment by itself is really bad: nobody’s changing jobs and everyone is stuck with what they have. But if unemployment was that low, then there’s a severe labor shortage and businesses are competing fiercely for workers.

What happens to wages and benefits in those circumstances?

everything goes up when companies have to compete for workers.
this is basically laws of supply and demand.
 
everything goes up when companies have to compete for workers.
this is basically laws of supply and demand.

Exactly. But Huey doesn’t seem to think market forces exist. Many extreme liberals don’t, and think the government needs to do everything.

To be fair, many conservatives refuse to accept that market forces don’t always work and the government is often needed to step in.
 
Exactly. But Huey doesn’t seem to think market forces exist. Many extreme liberals don’t, and think the government needs to do everything.

To be fair, many conservatives refuse to accept that market forces don’t always work and the government is often needed to step in.

those republicans are few and far between.
 
Much of employment in the private sector is small business, including retail. The rapid decline of brick and mortar retail sales due to the Internet and Amazon combined with most of American industrial jobs shifted to foreign child slave-labor sweatshops, it is unlikely the wages-economy can provide jobs to another 20,000,000 unskilled, uneducated immigrants competing for these declining jobs -while the ever increasing national debt and foreign balance of trade deficits will continue to lead to inflation rapidly reducing the value of the US dollar.

Increasing the minimum wage won't really help much as the value of their wages might be less than the inflation a higher minimum wage could cause.
 
Minimum Wage: Catching up to Productivity
BY JOHN SCHMITT

Between 1979 and 2012, after accounting for inflation, the productivity of the average American worker increased about 85 percent. Over the same period, the inflation-adjusted wage of the median worker rose only about 6 percent, and the value of the minimum wage fell 21 percent. As a country, we got richer, but workers in the middle saw little of the gains, and workers at the bottom actually fell behind.

The economy did not always work this way. From the end of World War II through 1968, the wages for workers in the middle, and even the minimum wage, tracked productivity closely. The economy, bolstered by the labor, civil rights, and women’s movements, greatly expanded opportunity and delivered strong wage growth at the middle and even at the bottom. By the 1970s, however, conservatives and corporate interests had had enough. They regained control of the political system and enacted a series of economic changes that, taken together, greatly reduced the bargaining power of workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution. The link between productivity growth and wages was broken.

The refusal to pass legislation maintaining the value of the federal minimum wage—now $7.25 per hour—was one of the most visible manifestations of the shift in policy. At first glance, it may be hard to see why the minimum wage is relevant to the middle class. But the relevance jumps out if we consider where the minimum wage would be today if, as was the case during the early postwar period, the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity growth from its high-water mark in 1968.

If it had, the minimum wage today would arguably be about $22 per hour. Even if we use a more conservative measure of productivity growth suggested by my colleague Dean Baker, the minimum wage today would still be about $16 per hour.

Minimum Wage: Catching up to Productivity : Democracy Journal

2-EPI-Productivity-compensation-chart-1024x625.jpg
 
Much of employment in the private sector is small business, including retail. The rapid decline of brick and mortar retail sales due to the Internet and Amazon combined with most of American industrial jobs shifted to foreign child slave-labor sweatshops, it is unlikely the wages-economy can provide jobs to another 20,000,000 unskilled, uneducated immigrants competing for these declining jobs -while the ever increasing national debt and foreign balance of trade deficits will continue to lead to inflation rapidly reducing the value of the US dollar.

Increasing the minimum wage won't really help much as the value of their wages might be less than the inflation a higher minimum wage could cause.

Immigration interferes with nearly everything else liberals want to achieve in the United States.
 
A minimum wage should the minimum wage both an employer and an employee agree to. Government should become involved only if the employer does not pay the employee what they had agreed to for the time spent, while the employers recourse would only amount to termination of the employee should their work be worth less than the agreed upon wage.
 
Where are their balance sheets for us to inspect why they cannot afford $15 an hour? Why are we just supposed to take their word for it.

This tells us two things. First of all, that finance and accounting are not your forte. Balance sheets contain information mostly about stock variables, not flow variables. The flows therein indicated are indirect and are not properly understood without access to results and cash flow statements. If you had to look at one table out of all financial statements, you would probably ask for result statements to look at the profit margin and operational costs which, hopefully, are detailed enough to settle this matter. Second of all, it tells us that your actual intentions are to manage the lives of other people. Apparently, it is up to you to determine whether a business for which you bear no risk and receive no compensation is sufficiently profitable to warrant even bothering to engage in it.

Businesses may close, even if profits are positive, just as many businesses that would otherwise open may not see the light of day in spite of expected gains. Time and capital have multiple uses. The entire question hinges on if what you get is enough per your own lights and with knowledge of what else could be done. If you want to settle the matter, look not at what businessmen say, but at what they do. You have great examples of cities enforcing these minimum wages. You may compare the outcomes and see what businessmen did in response.

And, if these businesses can't afford $15 an hour, then let them go out of business. We need an economy for everyone, not for those who are already wealthy because of their inheritance. (...)

The law might say that your time is worth 15 dollars an hour, but nothing says that you can produce enough value in an hour to be compensated in this way. The law might say that your time is worth 15 dollars an hour, but you only touch that money for the hours that you do work. The law might say that your time is worth 15 dollars an hour, but, if you do not work, it is hard to acquire experience and habits that might one day make you more productive.

To make the economy work for everyone, you need to extend a ladder to everyone. Pricing them out of the market and trying to cope with their unemployment through government benefits is more like trying to pull them up with a rope. What the government has given, so too can it take back and drop the rope along with you. What you are creating is a class of dependent citizens and it is of no service either to them, no more than it is to the business community.


If you are concerned about inheritance and upward social mobility, you should take a look at surveys that track the same household or the same people over multiple time periods. This way, you can compute turnover rates across income brackets. If you did, you would realize there is a lot more movement than you think.
 
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