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Posted

Sorry, but I disagree. The proposal you make is just another form of corporate welfare funded by the taxpayer. There should be a minimum wage, and it should be adjusted annually to allow for changes in cost of living. How high should be? Well, I definitely would not favor something on the level of some of our progressives here, but it should at least be comparable to say, the highest it has ever been in the past, adjusted for inflation into 2011 dollars. What would the impact be? I really doubt it would force employers not to hire, folks to be unemployed, etc. It would drive up some prices at places like Walmart and fast food franchises. Would it kill Americans to pay 7.50 for a #5 instead of 6.50?

 

Yeah - this is something that well intentioned people can disagree about, so feel free to continue disagreeing, but please consider the following arguments.

 

1. We already have a negative income tax via the EIC on top of the existing minimum wage laws, so - despite having the minimum wage in place, we've already decided that incomes below a certain threshold in certain households qualify for tax refund checks that exceed their income tax payments.

 

Some of this money undoubtedly makes it back into the hands of corporations via the purchases that the recipients of the EIC make - but that's individual consumers playing favorites and giving their money to corporations, not Uncle Sam.

 

2. Something like ~3% of the working population actually makes the minimum wage, and the vast majority transition to higher paying jobs relatively soon after entering the workforce.

 

This isn't because the folks paying them get nicer, it's because they get more skills and experience over time, and are able to parlay those into jobs that pay more than the minimum wage. Not getting a job in the first place is much much more damaging to people than spending the first phase of your working life working for low wages.

 

3. Employers only hire people when the employees make more money for them than they have to pay them in wages. In order to pay higher wages, employers have to either raise prices or raise output. Both are difficult, and the specific operational changes that employers have to make to increase their output are often complicated, costly to implement, and take time. If the cost of employing someone increases more rapidly than a particular employer can increase their output or prices - then that person is out of a job.

 

That's not a concern for your average engineer, but if you're a high-school dropout with relatively few skills and a limited education there are lots of jobs where the total value of the output that you create puts you very close to that line.

 

4. Once you get to a high enough wage level - everyone concedes that it'd be to high for employers to pay and stay in business. This is easy to see when the number is $200 per hour - but the logic is no different at the minimum wage level.

 

5. The minimum wage that employers pay the unemployed - the real minimum wage - is zero. Most people will be better off with a combination of non-zero wages coupled with skills, contacts, and all of the other intangibles that come with getting paid than they will making nothing for doing nothing.

 

More arguments here if you managed to make it through the above:

 

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/MinimumWages.html

 

 

 

 

 

Posted

 

Jay,

 

A couple points from a quick google search:

 

1) Calculated in real 2010 dollars, the 1968 minimum wage was the highest at $10.04. It's just over $7/hr now.

 

2) In 1968, the minimum wage was 90% of poverty. It's around 60% now.

 

You say only 3% of jobs are minimum wage. True. But what percent of jobs are up to $10.04 an hour?

 

I think historically-speaking, if you let the market dictate wage with no oversight you will have abuses - what some here call "slave labor". You also have folks who are gonna be better off doing something besides work. And why is it that so many illegals come here to work at jobs that supposedly nobody else wants? We've allowed ourselves to go backwards from where we once were, IMO.

 

And yes, we can disagree w/o calling eachother regressive corporate shills, neanderthals, or claiming the other does not believe what they say because they supposedly watch Fox news, read Ayn Rand, and voted for 40+ years of regressive red-baiting Bush-Reagan deregulatory unfettered baron capitalism.

 

 

Posted

If you think you can run away from your record of extremist interventions in this forum (ranging from full blown attacks on popular social programs to Neanderthalian red-baiting), you are even more delusional than I thought. Flip-flopping opportunists who finally found a regulation they liked after arguing for years (literally) that any attempts at regulating markets amounts to socialism are just not very convincing.

Posted
If you think you can run away from your record of extremist interventions in this forum (ranging from full blown attacks on popular social programs to Neanderthalian red-baiting), you are even more delusional than I thought. Flip-flopping opportunists who finally found a regulation they liked after arguing for years (literally) that any attempts at regulating markets amounts to socialism are just not very convincing.

 

Here comes the goon squad!

 

 

Posted

 

But is he qualified to run the most powerful country in the world? Was a "community organizer"?

 

 

He's done a good job serving the interests of corporate capital. So there's that.

Posted

OK. Supposing he is "qualified". What is the likelihood that conservative Red State voters will even entertain another person of color in the WH? Keep it real now.

Posted
OK. Supposing he is "qualified". What is the likelihood that conservative Red State voters will even entertain another person of color in the WH? Keep it real now.

 

I'm not sure he is qualified. He's not a moron, that's all I'm saying. That and the bar is getting lower and lower on presidential qualifications.

 

 

 

 

Posted
Reagan was probably a smart guy too. But not so much after he began developing Alzheimer's and got elected.

 

The most qualified candidate we had in recent memory was Bush 41, and all the press did was lambaste him as being a "wimp". And he was no idealogue, he did raise taxes, did he not?

 

 

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