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Help me understand $15 minimum wage

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Because it sounds utterly impossible to flatly apply to all companies and all age workers

Two things:

1) Increase in wages = increase in consumption = increase in revenues.

2) Profits aren't the only place you can cut from to increase wages for low-wage workers.
 

KingBroly

Banned
One thing I always wondered about, people say that by increasing to a $15 minimum wage we'd see productivity increases. Where in the world do people get that idea from? If a person is lazy and working the minimum wage, they are still going to be lazy working the new minimum wage. They could not get paid any less than what they are, they still have no incentive to work harder (other than of course to excape a minimum wage lifestyle, but it seems many people dont actually think that way).

Less jobs overall would people work harder to keep their jobs since it'd be easier to get fired since any mistake made is increased due to a higher salary and fewer co-workers. If someone's increasing your wage, they will expect more from you in order for you to keep it.
 
A significant problem I have with higher minimum wage is that they would put certain unskilled jobs or jobs that don't require a college education at the same level of pay as skilled jobs or jobs with a college education. So then they would have to adjust skilled/college educated jobs at a higher pay to compensate for the $15 minimum wage. This would be a huge economical problem.

What would happen, is that those that are currently 15 dollars would would have wage increases over time. Capitalism does adjust itself well in this way as monetary rewards is structured based on skill, entitlement and workload.
That is why upping the wage at the lowest levels historically has had a trickle up effect. At least here in Scandinavia.
 

BumRush

Member
To everyone that replied to my comment...you really believe a nationwide increase to $15 (instantly) would have no impact on unemployment? That's ridiculous.
 

Pagusas

Elden Member
We get it. People should not be able to afford housing and food if they are 'lazy". Fuck em, right?

Who said that? I just said the argument that there will be a productivity increase is not a sound one.

As for what lazy people deserve or dont, thats not for me to decide. I think a true guaranteed income would be nice as it would get the people who really just dont want to work or have no contributing bone in their body out of the work force, they wont exactly be living in riches but thats obviously a lifestyle they arent willing to work towards anyway so no loss.
 

boiled goose

good with gravy
On a macro scale, increasing wages is good for the economy.

Many extremely profitable corporations pay their employees terrible wages forcing them to work multiple jobs and sometimes even receive welfare.

Society is paying for these costs. In essence society is subsidizing the profits of these companies. Look at executive pay now. Look at increasing wealth inequality. All the wealth is getting funneled to the top.

The marginal benefit of a dollar given to a poor person or a rich person is different. Almost every single dollar given to a poor person will be spent back into the economy.

Companies hire not because wages are low. Companies hire when they need labor. They need labor when people are buying their shit.

Is 15 the right number? I don't know. Is it too high? Hahaha no. It's still a borderline survival wage.
 

Corpekata

Banned
One thing I always wondered about, people say that by increasing to a $15 minimum wage we'd see productivity increases. Where in the world do people get that idea from? If a person is lazy and working the minimum wage, they are still going to be lazy working the new minimum wage. They could not get paid any less than what they are, they still have no incentive to work harder (other than of course to excape a minimum wage lifestyle, but it seems many people dont actually think that way).

Pretty sure this is from studies and workforces that think happier employee = better employee. Someone that doesn't have to worry about if they can afford room and board and basic needs like food will thus will be more focused. Presumably a part of this is also in that hiring would decrease and so maintaining the job is more important.

Of course there will always be people that just take advantage of it, but that doesn't mean everyone would.
 
The idea is to shift the return on capital from the owners to the labour applying work to the capital.

A higher minimum wage would shift the burden of welfare from the state to the employers.

A higher minimum wage would increase consumption which would further increase demand for labour.

The price of goods would rise but not anywhere near 1:1 because the cost of goods sold is not made up entirely of US minimum wage labour.

This is the best answer I've read on this subject and it makes sense to me.
 

Maxim726X

Member
We get it. People should not be able to afford housing and food if they are 'lazy". Fuck em, right?

No, that's not really what he's saying.

He's simply saying that adhering to a new minimum, though higher, isn't going to have major effects on worker productivity. I don't think it's a particularly bad point.

But to answer his question, to the best of my limited knowledge on the subject, is that people will have more buying power and thus infuse more money into the economy... So it's not necessarily that the workers will be more productive, but that these workers will stimulate the economy more through increased spending.
 

cjdunn

Member
Why a $15 minimum wage won't unleash jobs Armageddon
Jeff Spross - April 6, 2016
In a few years, it will be illegal to pay almost one-in-five American workers less than $15 an hour. That's thanks to two minimum wage laws just passed by New York and California, which will phase in the new threshold between now and 2022. This has lots of economists and pundits — even ostensibly liberal ones — all aflutter that these states are leaping dangerously into the unknown.

So are they? Recent work by economists at UC Berkeley suggests not.

TL;DR - Don't Panic!
 

Gutek

Member
Why is the health of a corporation valued over the health of an individual and their ability to receive a living wage?

Because the thinking is that it's their fault (for not studying, working hard enough, bootstraps, etc.). The thing these people don't realize is that those people currently saying that kind of shit are the poor of the future. We're all fucked.

No, that's not really what he's saying.

He's simply saying that adhering to a new minimum, though higher, isn't going to have major effects on worker productivity. I don't think it's a particularly bad point.

But to answer his question, to the best of my limited knowledge on the subject, is that people will have more buying power and thus infuse more money into the economy... So it's not necessarily that the workers will be more productive, but that these workers will stimulate the economy more through increased spending.

It's a straw man, though. People should be able to feed their families if they work 40 hours a week. Period. I don't care about productivity or other distractions.
 

Tagyhag

Member
California's cost of living is the same as the rest of the country?

Nah 2022, and we're doing it in increments.

It's the smart thing to do.

Min should be higher everywhere but not universally $15.

There's a big difference in living wages between Cali and Oklahoma.
 

boiled goose

good with gravy
This is the best answer I've read on this subject and it makes sense to me.

Giving rich people more money Creates jobs is a right wing lie.

Jobs are created when people are buying your goods and hiring people will increase your profits.

Ironically it's a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism. If wages are low, you won't hire more people. You will hire just enough to maximize your profits.
 

TI82

Banned
McDonald's president on why pay raises are making their employees work better

http://fortune.com/2016/03/09/mcdonalds-wages/

It has done what we expected it to—90 day turnover rates are down, our survey scores are up—we have more staff in restaurants,” McDonald’s U.S. president Mike Andres told analysts at a UBS conference on Wednesday. “So far we’re pleased with it—it was a significant investment obviously but it’s working well.”
 

Apharmd

Member
I always feel like $15 minimum wage proponents have zero understanding of businesses and the economy and a complete inability to play through scenarios in their head. They act like raising the minimum wage (doubling it in most areas) will have zero effect on employment numbers. But that's obviously not true. If you double the cost of anything, there will be less demand for it (if gas prices rise, you try to drive less). Less demand for workers at $15/hr means more unemployment for low wage workers.

I don't believe you can accuse us of having zero understanding of businesses, economy, inability to play through scenarios in our head when you completely fail to account for the proven fact that when families of lower income receive additional income, they inject the money back into the economy.

Even if businesses can keep most or all of their employees, a $15/hr employee is different from an $8/hr employee. You expect more out of a $15/hr employee, because you're paying him more. They need to justify their high cost to the business. There's a reason low-skill employees make low wages, because each individual employee contributes a small amount to the business. It's only through the accumulation of skills over time that an employee becomes more valuable and justifies a higher wage.

*Turnover rate decreases with increased wages.

I don't know why I said retention.
Forcing employers to treat all new hires as $15/hr employees means that only the employees with the most potential value will be hired, which hurts teenagers, because they haven't had a chance to accumulate any skills, and minorities, because their cultural and economic backgrounds lead to a lower accumulation of pre-employment skills, such as time management and communication.

They will get hired when newly injected money spurs growth.

If you think it through, it's impossible to both argue that minorities are systematically underprivileged due to their backgrounds AND that a $15 minimum wage will help them, because a $15 minimum wage makes it harder for people from different social backgrounds to find entry-level jobs at which they can learn the skills necessary to be better workers. But most people don't think it through, and most people don't really want a $15 minimum wage to help the lowest-skill workers. They want it to help themselves.

No.
 
Your math is wrong. $13.38 is the average, some make more, some make less. $15 would be the minimum. Presumably, they have employees who earn more then $15 an hour. This means that a minimum wage of $15 an hour would lead to an average that is above $15 an hour. We can't say how much they would lose without knowing the distribution of employee wages.

It would likely be more than just raising the wages of people who make below $15 up to $15, because employees further up the ladder who now make the same as the day one trainee people will also want a raise.

Maybe the Walton family should share some of that 149 billion dollar windfall they've "earned"? I mean they, a handful of people, are worth more than the economies of many nations on earth. That they can't absorb the rise in a 15 dollar minimum wage is bullshit of the highest order. You've played yourself.
 

FStop7

Banned
California's cost of living is the same as the rest of the country?

http://livingwage.mit.edu/states/06/locations

When you look at areas where the most jobs are it's closer than you might think. Or more to the point when you look at areas where the jobs are the $15 minimum in CA may not even be enough (even if you exclude an outlier like San Francisco) and it falls in line with a lot more of the country than you might expect.
 

Aureon

Please do not let me serve on a jury. I am actually a crazy person.
Because as productivity and employment have increased, the share of the economy going to wages instead of return on capital has decreased.

Goodwin2_fredgraph.png
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
That's why the federal minimum wage is misleading: its higher in places where cost of living is way higher.
 
Is this a Draconian law you are proposing?

This is a scary road to go down. In what world does this make any sense?

Business owners are taking a huge risk and if they have zero responsibility to pay entry level workers a "living" wage.

Min wage isn't meant to be a living wage. It's a starter job to gain skills. Skills equals more money.

You two know that quote was by FDR when minimum wage was established in the US right?...
 
Wouldn't bumping it up to $15 put a lot of people in a weird position where they're making more money, but not little enough to receive subsidies like food stamps and Medicaid?
 

nkarafo

Member
I like how in Greece we get like 3 euros per hour and half of the people are still unemployed.

This thread is like out of this world to me.
 

hollomat

Banned
Walmart makes about $7,500 per employee. Average hourly wages are currently $13.38. An increase to $15 (i.e. +$1.62 an hour), assuming 34 hours worked a week and 48 weeks worked a year, is a reduction in $2643.84, leaving them still making about $5,000 per employee in profit. This is also a worst-case scenario. Walmart's $7,500 per employee is after tax and the minimum wage increase occurs before tax, so Walmart's tax liability would not be as high, and additionally minimum wage increases tend to be associated with higher productivity, which increases output per worker at the same cost and so increase profit per worker. You'd also raise consumption in the economy, which means Walmart makes more sales, which you'd expect to mean an increase in profit.

This is really, really not a problem for Walmart.

Your math here is off. Average wages at Walmart may currently be $13.38, but that includes many workers making the current minimum wage offset by workers in management and corporate (if corporate is included in the calc). Raising the minimum wage to $15 wouldn't raise walmarts average wage to $15, because the workers currently making more wouldn't have their hourly wage reduced to $15.

Not sure what the new average would be, but it would certainly be higher than $15.
 

Protein

Banned
It should be $15 and no less. Higher in major cities. Businesses would explode from higher consumer spending power. Businesses are shutting down because people aren't spending money. Period. If they cut hours or raise prices to offset costs, theyre only fucking themselves. The highest paid CEOs in large companies need to take a pay cut. Their salaries have ballooned hundreds of times in the past few decades. The problem is not just wage, however, it's laws that enable large businesses to take advantage of their workforce (and government) and ignorant people that believe that certain minimum wage workers don't deserve a living wage.
 

Zophar

Member
I don't believe you can accuse us of having zero understanding of businesses, economy, inability to play through scenarios in our head when you completely fail to account for the proven fact that when families of lower income receive additional income, they inject the money back into the economy.



Retention rate decreases with increased wages.



They will get hired when newly injected money spurs growth.



No.

I'm glad that ridiculous post got called out.
 

FStop7

Banned
BTW - CA's $15 minimum applies to businesses with more than 26 employees.


This is going to happen no matter what the minimum wage is. It's as inevitable as cars replacing the horse and carriage and the Internet replacing newspapers. Using the threat of automation as some sort of deterrent against raising the minimum wage is silly. Not saying you're doing that but I've certainly heard that argument before.
 

Gotchaye

Member
Maybe the Walton family should share some of that 149 billion dollar windfall? I mean they, a handful of people, are worth more than the economies of many nations on earth. That they can't absorb the rise in a 15 dollar minimum wage is bullshit of the highest order. You've played yourself.

None of this sort of talk is very fair. Obviously the argument being made is not that the Waltons shouldn't take less money while paying their employees more. The argument is that if they were forced to pay their employees more they'd instead hire fewer people and spend that money on other things that perhaps don't provide as many jobs.

This is not a dispute that you can easily resolve with really generic arguments - this is an empirical question. Obviously there is a minimum wage that is so high that it is worse than having a not-so-high minimum wage (a $100/hr wage would probably be a disaster). Likewise it's pretty clear that differences in bargaining power between employees and employers can mean that there is a minimum wage that is better than a lower minimum wage. But exactly how high of a minimum wage is best, for whatever plausible sense of "best" you want to use, is going to be a really hard question, and to my knowledge there's not a whole lot of useful work that sheds light on how $15/hr would work out in many parts of the country.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Automation is going to crush minimum wage jobs so none of this matters.

It's part of the reason I hate transferring this burden to corporations.

Problem is SOMETHING has to be done, and the US isn't ready for some kind of guaranteed minimum income. So this is how it's gonna go for now.

That being said similar to how I dislike healthcare being tied to working I also hate livable wage being tied to that as well.
 
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