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The "quiet catastrophe" is particularly dismaying because it is so quiet, without social turmoil or even debate. It is this: After 88 consecutive months of the economic expansion that began in June 2009, a smaller percentage of American males in the prime working years (ages 25 to 54) are working than were working near the end of the Great Depression in 1940, when the unemployment rate was above 14 percent. If the labor-force participation rate were as high today as it was as recently as 2000, nearly 10 million more Americans would have jobs.
The work rate for adult men has plunged 13 percentage points in a half-century. This "work deficit" of "Great Depression-scale underutilization" of male potential workers is the subject of Nicholas Eberstadt's new monograph "Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis," which explores the economic and moral causes and consequences of this:
Is it an aberration, or a harbinger of things to come?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:50PM
Its so heart warming to see the typical classist mindset at work. I know, you don't think that is you, but it is. Your head has been filled by old presumptions that you don't even question...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:39PM
"typical classist mindset"
I wonder - have you ever been in business? If Jack and Judy are making a living off of a restaurant, but not getting wealthy, while paying their employees $10, then Big Brother tells them they have to increase wages by 50%, something has to give.
Either J&J restaurant tells Big Brother to "fuck off", or they raise prices, or they go out of business. Assuming that all other costs stay the same, they simply cannot justify operating the restaurant at a loss after the minimum wage goes through. Can't be done.
GOVERNMENT might operate anything and everything at a loss, but that's only because they can demand more money from us gullible taxpayers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @07:30PM
That is a simplistic assessment proven wrong by a handful of businesses that are able to compete just fine paying above minimum wage. The businesses that would actually be affected are places like Walmart and fast food chains. They make plenty of profit, and besides which any price increases would be quite marginal and well worth the benefit to your fellow citizens. As I said, you've just swallowed the koolaid that pits the working class against each other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @03:57PM
The businesses that pay above minimum wage aren't under discussion here. The topic is people who can't be economically employed at minimum wage levels. If you can't make some kind of reasonable return (allowing for taxes, expendable items, interest rates and so on) when paying minimum wage, that job has to go or the employer loses money.
As for the fast food chains, the head offices might make money, but many of the individual franchises are a bad week or three away from going out of business. This has already happened in a few of the areas where they jacked up the minimum wage, or people moved their franchises out of the relevant jurisdiction.
A lot of this federal minimum wage rhetoric totally ignores the fact that Mississippi and Massachusetts are completely different places, and that trying to apply rules that make sense in one to the other is just stupid. $15/hour in much of (especially rural) Mississippi is not bad money, but in Boston it's starvation wages.
One size does not fit all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @12:27AM
So a hell of a lot of people just got 50% raises, wow !
Time to take the family out to dinner and celebrate, this J&J's looks nice.
Giving an extra Billion dollars to a handful of rich people, how many are going to go to J&J's to spend it?
Give that extra Billion to poor people and they will spend it on places like J&J's, along with everything else people spend money on. Everyone wins, the extra demand creates more jobs and gives even more people money that they also spend.
(PS. You know governments can just print money right. They don't need to make a profit like a business does.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @04:10PM
What you're fumbling for is the multiplier effect on spending.
The multiplier effect is not infinite, and in fact has fairly limited scope. There's no particular reason to believe that the incremental benefit to a hypothetical J&J would keep pace with the additional wage burden. This goes double once you account for the inflationary effect of the helicopter drop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:14AM
No it's not infinite. But giving more and more of the money to the rich is exactly how we got into the problem in the first place.
Simple fact is the poorer you are the more likely you are to spend any extra money you receive. The rich have plenty of money to invest if only there were good investments to be made. Companioes have record amounts of cash just sitting around waiting for demand to pick up.
If only there was a simple way to kill all the birds with one stone...(give poor some money and increase demand)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:54PM
Far from being infinite, it's actually pretty small.
What does Joe Minimum do when his wage gets raised? He spends it, as you correctly observe. Where does he spend it? Chances are, the vast majority of his expenditures are on cheap commodities, most efficiently provided by ... gigantic corporations.
The actual real-world multiplier of increased money going to the bottom of the income curve is barely over 1. Now this is not an argument to keep them there, but it does mean that the belief that raising the minimum wage will mean more revenue at local, small players is rather flawed.
What you want to do, is increase revenue at all levels, and funnily enough that is what has been happening. If you actually look at the federal census numbers, the lowest income households have been shrinking pretty substantially as a proportion of the population (with income measured in real, i.e. inflation adjusted terms) for decades. America is doing a good job of upliftment.
The number one thing holding corporations back from investment is the federal government itself. From stupid laws like Sarbanes-Oxley (causing companies like EMC to go private) to suffocating regulations on things like repatriation of taxes.
In short, if you want a better economy, tell the feds to stop being dicks.
Good luck with that one.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday October 10 2016, @02:32AM
This experiment has been run successfully several times across the US:
The result? Increased wages for staff, relatively flat net-effect for customers and restaurant owners. Staff liked it because it improved conditions for everyone at the restaurant, not just the wait staff (why should the person who actually cooks your food not get equal consideration to the person who just brings it out to you?). Customers liked it because they didn't have to agonise over how much to leave, calculate some percentage etc
There are other examples for other industries, but how about instead I just point you to just about every other developed country in the world? Most have higher minimum wages and lower unemployment than the US
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 10 2016, @03:01AM
Just making sure here -
You do realize the whole tips thing is a reflection of corruption about a century ago? When minimum wages were established in this country, originally, some food service people had the ears of the law makers. They lobbied to make food service exempt from the minimum wage.
I agree that there should be no tipping. Honest work is honest work, and all workers should enjoy the same benefits and protections from the government.
Not very many years ago, there was a restaurant and bar in SE Oklahoma that was very popular, with the guys at least. They paid the ladies a dollar an hour plus tips. The skimpier the women dressed, the better the guys tipped. Now, I'm no feminist, but that is blatant exploitation of women. It's so freaking obviously exploitation that no county judge should ever have permitted the operation to go on.
Tipping is one of the symptoms of our screwed up society.
Printing money? Our government has been printing worthless paper ever since the Greenback was obsoleted. They just print more and more of it.
Have you noticed that the dollar is being replaced as the reserve currency in the global market? Even the Chinese Yuan has been accepted as a reserve currency. Where the dollar once ruled supreme, today many people place their faith in other currencies.
Printing money has it's own unintended consequences.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 13 2016, @11:27AM
why should the person who actually cooks your food not get equal consideration to the person who just brings it out to you?
Because they're not the ones interacting with the guest. Plus the restaurant can already set aside a portion of tips for the kitchen staff. It's not rocket science. And the people who cook your food already get paid much higher wages than the wait staff does.
Most have higher minimum wages and lower unemployment than the US
Sure they do. US is middle of the pack [oecd.org]. And I think the US would have a better employment rate if it weren't for the viciously anti-business Obama administration currently in power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @11:52AM
GOVERNMENT might operate anything and everything at a loss, but that's only because they can demand more money from us taxpayers at gunpoint.
FTFY