Personally i'm a fan of tax cuts overall but this is just me talking so it's easier said than done. But yes I feel like tax cuts on lower income Americans is more productive in a sense.
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US lawmakers introduce bill to raise minimum wage, restaurant groups raise opposition
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Personally i'm a fan of tax cuts overall but this is just me talking so it's easier said than done. But yes I feel like tax cuts on lower income Americans is more productive in a sense.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
I do. Tax cuts are government spending and I support them especially for the working/middle class. Stuff like Social Security should not be funded by taxes.
Doing nothing which is what we have been doing for the past 30 years is harming us.
You're really not this dense, dude. I've talked to you before. Come on.
The poorer you are the more likely you are to spend your money when you get it, and the less likely you are to be able to save. The richer you are the less likely you are to spend extra money that gets to you. Yes tax cuts for Americans (that aren't rich) can indeed spur growth and cause them to spend. The thing is, though, those at the very very bottom of the rung largely don't pay a whole lot of taxes. So when you advocate for lower taxes it's very weighted toward the higher rungs (even when you take the completely rich out of the equation). If you raise the minimum wage, however, that is a very targeted way of pretty much only hitting the very poor who will, again, have the greatest chance of spending that money right away (or soon).
Looks like you can add inflation to the list of things you don't understand.
Mr. Wonderful
Member
I see economist GAF is here in full force.
The restaurant industry has some of the lowest profit margins out of all businesses BTW. Thought I'd throw that out there.
The restaurant industry has some of the lowest profit margins out of all businesses BTW. Thought I'd throw that out there.
Here's the show I was talking about. It's the last 10 minutes of a Bill Moyers episode.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-taming-capitalism-run-wild/
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-taming-capitalism-run-wild/
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
No.
1) I already expressed that I think offering exploitative positions is bullshit.
2) A business that relies on such a model is bullshit, grasping straws at the utter fringe of the impulsive opulence of our society.
3) Those businesses provide something. There is either sufficient demand or not. If there is sufficient demand, people will pay for the cost of what is required to offer it.
4) Many of those fields serve people from those same fields. Give those people more money to live and they may make up the difference in business themselves.
5) In their current exploitative nature, such businesses often fire and hire at their fancy. The jobs not only pay shit, they are often not secure. Whatever good you think they do, they likely do not.
6) Pay people a wage they can live on and see what happens. You think all that money will simply be swallowed up by less than the existing businesses? Go ahead and fucking try it.
And yet high expansion rates. Gee, I wonder how they manage that if they can't even pay their workers decently?
As someone who deals with small business owners on a daily basis for the past 8 years I can unequivocably confirm that the majority of them are in fact morons and many do have issues paying their employees. Also, a large amount of them inherit their businesses from their parents/families. Just wanted to throw that out there.
I have no problem with the minimum wage hike. I'm just bummed that I probably won't see a hike in my own salary in relation to said hike.
Boom Boom Pow
Banned
everyone on GAF thinks restaurants are all owned by mega billionaires
I mean look if this policy happens and it ends up doing some overall good then i'm not against it. We'll just have to see what happens when it's implemented.
You could, you know, explain it to him and how he's wrong.
He didn't feel it was necessary to explain the reasons behind what he was saying in the first place.
Boom Boom Pow
Banned
if. or more like, not a chance in hell
ClassyPenguin
Banned
That won't change no matter what the minimum wage laws are. It's just the nature of the business but to say that screw helping out the working poor just because it's a hard business makes no sense.
Not all restaurants, just some.
Also, businesses aren't sacred cows. If it can't survive without paying sub-poverty wages to its employees then maybe it shouldn't exist.
Does an increase in the minimum wage not create a risk in causing the price of goods and services to increase though? Americans really need an increase in the purchasing power of their money I think.
Good. More money in the economy is a good thing.
Plus how many restaurants do we already eat at with people making well above the minimum wage? Lots, so restaurants can make it work.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
And that won't happen unless we force business to pay fair wages which they have not been doing. That's the point.
perfectchaos007
Member
I also believe, since minimum wage would now = livable wage, it should be even harder to qualify for food stamps and other forms of welfare. In 2006, 26 million Americans were on foodstamps. Today, 47 million Americans are on food stamps. Note that between that time span, federal minimum wage jumped from $5.15 to $7.25
There is no real evidence that it does. The cost of things is going up anyway, regardless of minimum age laws.
Boom Boom Pow
Banned
here's the thing though.
If everyone in the middle class does not get a wage increase the same, then all this is gonna do is take money from the middle class and move it to the lower class.
Case in point: let's say I make $15. Is my pay gonna go up with the new increase? most likely not.
But now, most likely, my cost will increase. So now I will have less disposable income.
This can only work, if like, everyone making less than say, $30 an hour gets that same increase across the board
Even if it does, an increase in the price of goods due to increased cost of labor is not monetary inflation, which is what minimum wage will be tied to if this bill passes. And even if we only consider price inflation a higher cost of labor is not the only cause of that, which is what he implied.
You don't think something else happened between that time, too?
There was also the recession where tons of people lost their jobs, or did you forget that?
So what's been causing inflation in all the years the minimum wage didn't change?
Wasn't there something else that happened in that time frame...? Something that might have necessitated more people than usual to seek government aid? Something big.
I dunno.
Moving the goal posts a little?
The failure of the classical economics system was a result of labor no longer being a purely flexible input do to explicit and implicit rise in wages. The institutions today which rely upon an inflationary environment, are the creation of that shift.
Where do you think some of those lower class people's money is going to? Yes it's a bit of a wealth transfer in the way you describe, but it hikes demand up, because those with almost nothing immediately have to spend it. The businesses of those middle class workers will experience more growth, more hiring opportunities, etc.
And some of those middle class people will get raises as pay structures slowly change, anyway.
Yes people should watch this. Great recommendation.
Ontario did something similar to this from 2004 to 2010, raising minimum wage from $6.85 to $10.25 after it had been stagnant for close to a decade.
People who were getting paid $7/hr got a huge pay bump. People who were already making $10/hr in 2004 typically became minimum wage workers with no raise at all.
People who were getting paid $7/hr got a huge pay bump. People who were already making $10/hr in 2004 typically became minimum wage workers with no raise at all.
No? You wondered why people wanted minimum wage tied to inflation and then demonstrated that you didn't understand what we're talking about. Prices going up because of labor costs is not the kind of inflation the minimum wage will be tied to in this bill.
They're not charging a realistic price for the food and service if thats the case. Maybe the true cost should be reflected in the pricing rather than hidden behind tips and service charges.
My fresh water degrees are a little rusty, but read above, I was refering to the labor function and the shift away from classical economics.
There's no way for them to pass a law into effect for something like that so it will never happen. You'll get a couple of businesses that will increase their employee's wages to compensate the same way some businesses increased their employee's wages in January of this year to offset the increase in the Social Security percentage back to 6.2% this year.
I agree with you though.
That is what you said. The type of inflation you mention in the first sentence is not the type of inflation you mention in the second.
fredrancour
Member
Nowhere near the only cause. As has been said a few times in this thread, inflation has continued during periods when the minimum wage has been static. Economies are absurdly complicated things and the only thing that could keep the value of currency static forever would be some flawlessly-executed dystopian, authoritarian communism.
I don't know what all the causes of inflation are, but I'd imagine one cause is investment in private companies. Investors pressure companies for growth. Companies roll with the highest prices they feel they can get away with. Spending power decreases because of it.
Sure i'm not disputing that. I know very well that things are getting more expensive. My argument is that this policy could POTENTIALLY make the costs go up even more.
It could also POTENTIALLY help the economy such that this would be pretty much moot.
There is potential for everything, we should decide on policy based off of what we can prove not what we feel.
Exactly so really this can go both ways. We can't know until it's tried but some people might be so skeptical of the policy that they might think it can do more harm than good.
Out of curiosity, what do you guys think of Germany, Sweden, and Denmark's collective bargaining model?
Earthstrike
Member
Not true in competitive industries, the CEO's that choose their own pocketbook over competing in a market succesfully will lose to the CEOs that don't, which makes the competitive CEO's more money in the long run.
FutureZombie
Banned
As Thomas Sowell says: As imposed wage rates rise, so do job qualifications, so that less skilled or less experienced workers become unemployable. Think about it. Every one of us would be unemployable if our pay rates were raised high enough.
Just what is a living wage? It usually means enough income to support a family of four on one paycheck. This idea has swept through various communities, churches and academic institutions. Facts have never yet caught up with this idea and analysis is lagging even farther behind. First of all, do most low-wage workers actually have a family of four to support on one paycheck? According to a recent study by the Cato Institute, fewer than one out of five minimum wage workers has a family to support. These are usually young people just starting out.
The minimum wage is one of the ultimate "sounds good, makes you feel good" ideas that does not hold up to scrutiny. It only works to keep people with no experience out of the job market. Also, it's ridiculous that the government should step in between an exchange between two consenting adults.
Just what is a living wage? It usually means enough income to support a family of four on one paycheck. This idea has swept through various communities, churches and academic institutions. Facts have never yet caught up with this idea and analysis is lagging even farther behind. First of all, do most low-wage workers actually have a family of four to support on one paycheck? According to a recent study by the Cato Institute, fewer than one out of five minimum wage workers has a family to support. These are usually young people just starting out.
The minimum wage is one of the ultimate "sounds good, makes you feel good" ideas that does not hold up to scrutiny. It only works to keep people with no experience out of the job market. Also, it's ridiculous that the government should step in between an exchange between two consenting adults.
What the hell is the bolded supposed to mean?
Minimum wage is problematic because it outsources the value of goods to the government. It's understandable to prevent exploitation in a situation where there is unequal bargaining power as there usually is in employment contracts but it still stands that its created the situation where businesses will just pay the minimum whatever it is instead of coming to a valued determination of services between the parties. The benefit is that it prevents some businesses from paying too little.
Regardless, the minimum wage is here to stay, Im ok with that and in the US it probably should go up. How much? No idea.
Regardless, the minimum wage is here to stay, Im ok with that and in the US it probably should go up. How much? No idea.
makingmusic476
Member
To those saying this is necessitated by terrible inflation, what would you propose as a better alternative to persistently low levels of inflation?
Deflation strangles an economy, as the rising value of each dollar encourages saving, which reduces active money in the economy, which further raises the value of each active dollar, which further encourages more saving, aka a deflationary spiral, and obviously high inflation is terrible, thus we aim for low inflation.
How is this bad??
Deflation strangles an economy, as the rising value of each dollar encourages saving, which reduces active money in the economy, which further raises the value of each active dollar, which further encourages more saving, aka a deflationary spiral, and obviously high inflation is terrible, thus we aim for low inflation.
How is this bad??
Thought experiment is stupid. Yes me individually would become unemployable if my pay rate was raised high enough, but it doesn't work when you collectively raise the bottom bar. In the individual scenario someone else can do my work for less. In the collective no one can. Is McDonald's just going to have no one working at all anymore? Is there going to be no one stocking Wal-Mart's aisles because literally 100% of Americans just became unemployable?
Yes it's totally ridiculous that the government should force businesses (entities making money by using our government, our country, our infrastructure, and our people) to pay a living wage to those who are working, even though when the business doesn't the government just has to come in and subsidize it by paying for food for those people anyway. Just totally ridiculous....
ugh...
makingmusic476
Member
You're acting as if these "two consenting adults" have equal leverage in determining wages. They don't. Not in any way.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
wat
Oh "Chicago school" so completely clueless about modern economics and some of his positions are outright laughable such as calling the BP oil spill fines are unconstitutional.
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