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https://www.bendbulletin.com/business/6503418-151/study-minimum-wage-increases-in-6-cities-working:
The minimum wage increases that started four years ago in Seattle are spreading across the country, but economists continue to study — and disagree about — the impact.
The latest look at increased wage floors in six U.S. cities, including Seattle, finds that food-service workers saw increases in pay and no widespread job losses. That reinforces the conclusions the same group of University of California, Berkeley, researchers reached in 2017 after studying just in Seattle.
This time, the Berkeley researchers examined Seattle; San Francisco; Oakland, California; San Jose, California; Chicago; and Washington, D.C., where minimum wages at the end of 2016 ranged from $10 to $13.
"We find that they are working just as the policymakers and voters who enacted these policies intended," said Sylvia Allegretto, co-author of the report and co-chair of Berkeley's Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. "So far they are raising the earnings of low-wage workers without causing significant employment losses."
abstract https://www.nber.org/papers/w25043
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @01:23PM (12 children)
Minimum wage gives my money to poor people who don't deserve to have my money. I expect huge returns on my investments and I don't get huge returns when the companies I invest in have to waste my money on worthless poor people who don't deserve to get paid for the poor work they do.
I am a Soylentitled Asshole and the economy exists for my benefit, not you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @01:57PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 27 2018, @02:10PM (10 children)
If you made an argument that minimum wage is bullshit, I might go along with you, depending on how you made the argument. But - what you've actually posted makes it clear that you don't value your fellow man. YOU are worth thirty, fifty, maybe a hundred and fifty dollars per hour? But, the schmuck who prepares your meal is only worth seven dollars per hour? And, the wait staff who place your meal in front of you are only worth two or three dollars per hour, plus tips - IF they give good wait service?
You are just as much a part of the problem as those who demand higher minimum wage. Your waiter/waitress DESERVES a decent wage, not because government mandates it, but because all working people deserve a living wage.
Your attitude is, "Fuck you, I've got mine!"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @02:33PM
And yours is fuck you, give me that.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @08:23PM (5 children)
I don't entirely disagree with you... but at some point jobs were not meant to be careers. There are no versions of "first jobs" for kids in highschool if they're expected to be able to raise a family off of the income from it. Living wage jobs SHOULD be more accessible, but not every job is a job that should pay a living wage.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 27 2018, @08:35PM (3 children)
May I suggest that you change your perspective? Let us go back to the origins of the idea of minimum wages. Congress, the senate, and hordes of talking heads debated the issue, and the country was pretty much sold on the idea. But - some rich ranchers, and rich hotel owners, and rich restaurateurs held out for exemptions. Farm and ranch hands were exempted, food service people of all categories were exempted, wait staff were exempted. Some of the richest bastards in the nation lobbied for these exemptions, so that they could stay filthy rich, at the expense of their labor forces. And, of course, less wealthy farmers, ranchers, etc echoed those lobbyists.
Sum it up to say that a special clique of rich people decided that certain categories of people were less valuable than other categories of people.
If you've successfully wrapped your mind around that, then I ask you: Why isn't waiting tables an appropriate career, if that's what a person likes doing? Or cooking? Or cow punching, or driving a tractor around a farm? All are honest work. There are passionate people in each of those professions, who genuinely love their work, and can't imagine doing any other kind of work.
Why are we still under the sway of those long-dead rich bastards who refused to pay their laborers what they were worth? An hour of a waitress' time is just as valuable to her, as an hour of an auto mechanic's time is to him. And, both are as valuable as a programmer's time is to him.
In effect, we took a step backward in time, and created a class system that isn't much better than any other class system.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:36PM (2 children)
Runaway! By God, you're *making sense!* Either the doctors finally found the right medicine, or someone hooked you up with some goooooood shit. In either case, please continue.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Friday September 28 2018, @12:23AM
I was starting to think you had hijacked his account. Maybe it was someone else.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 28 2018, @02:46PM
No doctors, no meds, no drugs, licit or otherwise. Still the same old asocial asshole. This asshole has always had a problem with sons of bitches who think they are better than anyone else. Typical shit from a Californian, if you should have a disagreement with him: "How much money do YOU make? I make six times that much, which settles the argument." If I had a dollar for everytime I've heard something like that, I could buy a nice steak dinner, with drinks.
I'm sure I've mentioned here that I have very few superiors. I do meet one now and then. Often enough, my superiors have worked in fields that are exempt from minimum wage.
Now, don't let ANY of that go to your head. Just 'cause you enjoy making bagels doesn't make you superior to anything at all.
(Score: 1) by DeVilla on Friday September 28 2018, @10:15PM
Well, if you expect a living person to keep doing those jobs ...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DrkShadow on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:16PM (2 children)
Not to suggest the grandparent is correct in any way, shape, or form, but
Do they? Are they capable of performing decent work? Are they capable of performing _any_ work that a machine can't do? a machine for a one-time cost of 1/3 what they'd be paid at minimum wage for one year, and that would last for 3-5 years?
There's a real problem with the whole wage structure: those that just aren't worth being paid for anything they can do. Janotirs? They deserve a life. Wait staff? They deserve a life. Garbage men? Likewise. Further, all of these are _important_ jobs. People with down's syndrome? What can they even _do_? Muscular Dystrophy? What, retrain for software development? What _can_ they do?
This is where the basic income, mentioned in a comment higher up, comes in. People deserve a decent _life_, not a decent _wage_. I don't care what people make, as long as they get everything that they actually need to live -- everyone, regardless of ability, because society developed one way and it's not properly accomodating for those who don't fit well into that _one_way_, and because society declares that everyone shall live and it's not proper to suffer.
Yes. I realize this is what you're trying to say, but we're technical people -- we need to iteratively hash through things until they're what we mean -- and this is about living, not _necessarily_ about working. The difference is important. (I'm not even convinced there's enough work for people -- probably why the grandparent has any job at all.)
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 28 2018, @01:39AM (1 child)
Actually, no, it isn't what I'm trying to say. Not *everyone* deserves even to live. The career criminal, as well as the career politician, should simply be put out of our misery. I'm not sold on the whole concept that every congenitally deformed child should be the recipient of "heroic" efforts to save his/her life. I'm not a socialist, and I don't believe that non-contributors deserve society's support, for life. The so-called universal wage looks like nonsense to me. Someone has to pay for that. Socialist think they can conjure that money out of thin air. The universal wage is just as unsustainable as our military industrial complex is today.
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Friday September 28 2018, @02:50PM
On the other hand, if the US spent half as much as it does now on the military, it would still be the largest spender in the world and it would free up $300M, or 1.5% of GDP, for other projects.
Thanks to WIkipedia, some other spending figures:
- Social welfare programmes: $927B in 2010 so likely easily > $1T by now. Half was for medical care (not medicaid) so let's say $500M
- Social security: $900M
Total costs of current programmes >= $1.4T Say you can reduce the overhead by a very conservative 10% by moving to a single system (UBI vs. 100 other social programmes), add in $300M in reduced military spending, and you're up to $1.5T (sticking to two significant digits). Divide by 300M Americans and that's $5100 per American per year. Man, woman, child. Take out a conservative 30% in the workforce who will pay 100% of that back in taxes (e.g. you get $x in UBI but you pay $x more in taxes per year) and you're up to $6800/year.
That's before factoring in costs from scrapping unemployment insurance and all the other programmes I've probably missed here, plus other savings like a simplified tax code. Add in a medical system like every civilized country in the world and suddenly you've paid for universal basic income without even raising taxes.
Remember, it's universal BASIC income. Maybe it's not enough to live in NYC, but that's OK.