Remember States That Raised Their Minimum Wages Are Experiencing Faster Job Growth?
The states that raised their minimum wages on January 1 have seen higher employment growth since then than the states that kept theirs at the same rate.
The minimum wage went up in 13 states Arizona, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington either thanks to automatic increases in line with inflation or new legislation, as Ben Wolcott reports in his analysis at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The average change in employment for those states over the first five months of the year as compared with the last five of 2013 is 0.99 percent, while the average for all remaining states is 0.68 percent.
Ken Zahringer refutes this:
In the ebb and flow of interventionist politics, there are some issues that surface periodically regardless of how many times and how completely they are proven to be harmful to the very people they are purported to help. Currently the tide is once again carrying the minimum wage to the forefront of collective attention.
His analysis covers: The Ceteris Paribus Principle (that the states are not the same - too many externalization); Labor Market Heterogeneity (the markets for labour are not the same); Proper Basis of Comparison (the state should be compared with themselves under both conditions); and Time (six months is not long enough to measure the impact).
Related Stories
The Center for American Progress reports:
Think a higher minimum wage is a job killer? Think again: The states that raised their minimum wages on January 1 have seen higher employment growth since then than the states that kept theirs at the same rate.
The minimum wage went up in 13 states Arizona, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington either thanks to automatic increases in line with inflation or new legislation, as Ben Wolcott reports in his analysis at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The average change in employment for those states over the first five months of the year as compared with the last five of 2013 is 0.99 percent, while the average for all remaining states is 0.68 percent.
Digging deeper, all but one of those states are experiencing increases in employment, and nine of them have seen growth above the median rate.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by emg on Tuesday August 26 2014, @06:39PM
Clearly companies will hire more people if they cost more to employ. We should increase minimum wage to $100 immediately!
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by BasilBrush on Tuesday August 26 2014, @06:52PM
Demonstrates quite nicely that minimum wage opponents can't think logically.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by emg on Tuesday August 26 2014, @08:03PM
So, if I'm planning to hire ten people at $10 an hour, why do you think I'll suddenly decide to hire eleven if the minimum wage is increased to $11 an hour?
Most likely, the only states which can afford to raise minimum wage are the one whose economies need more people. So, surprisingly, they end up hiring more, even though wages are higher.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @08:18PM
You might not hire more, but by paying people more, it's given them more spending power. They'll spend more, which allows other businesses to hire more people to deal with the extra demand.
Pretty basic stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @09:19PM
>You might not hire more, but by paying people more, it's given them more spending power. They'll spend more, which allows other businesses to hire more people to deal with the extra >demand.
>Pretty basic stuff.
So basically you agree with the OP, and we should immediately raise the minimum wage to $100? Just think of all the extra spending power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @09:56PM
$100 is pretty absurd, but enough to make the cost of living seems like it would be a more reasonable number.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 27 2014, @12:33PM
Why does someone always make this ridiculous claim? Like if a small change is good, then a massive change must be awesome...I like one beer, so obviously I would be happier if I drank fifty. Before lunch. I'd like the thermostat raised two degrees, so obviously I should work in an oven. The argument makes you look ridiculous. Let me try to explain.
In a capitalist system, there's three qualitatively different groups that benefit from business: the shareholders, the management, and the labor. All three of them have a claim on the business revenues, and what we're arguing about is how best to distribute those revenues. Shareholders have a strong claim, because without their contribution, there would be no factory (or whatever). Management has a strong claim, because without their contribution there would be chaos. Labor has a strong claim, because they're actually doing the work. Calls for raising the minimum wage come because, just maybe, the profit distribution has become a little biased towards the executives. Because at the same time as corporate profits are rising to record levels, the price of labor is growing slower than inflation. Considering that executive compensation has risen something like 100x faster than employee compensation over the past 20 years, I think there might be something to this argument.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 26 2014, @08:51PM
Because everyone who works for somebody other than you has an extra $120 per month available to spend that they didn't have before, increasing your sales, making it profitable to hire more people to produce and sell the additional product. But, you cry, you don't sell directly to consumers, but to businesses. Well, that's fine too: If you sell to businesses who sell to consumers, then your customer's sales increased, increasing their available funds to buy your product, which means your sales might well go up, which means you need to hire more people to produce and sell more product.
The classic argument against a higher minimum wage is from micro-economics: If something is more expensive, I buy less of it. The response from macro-economics is: As soon as you look at groupings of more than one market, it stops working that way, because one person's costs are another person's income, and one person's savings are another person's loan.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 27 2014, @01:50PM
You realize you almost word for word stated the broken window fallacy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window [wikipedia.org]
http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/ [steshaw.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fadrian on Wednesday August 27 2014, @03:18PM
You realize that most of our economy is based on fixing broken windows? Take out police, military, healthcare, government and you've removed most of the economy. Why? Entropy happens. Windows break. And you don't have anything else to do that makes more money, anyway.
You seem to be looking for some post-barter "natural economy" that doesn't exist in the real world. As soon as an economy grows past the point of barter, you always have some sort of artificiality due to cultural and social factors introduced, if only to stabilize and guarantee the value of whatever exchange medium you're using by some organization, be it public or private. All economies are artificial constructs. All of them exist to fix broken windows of one kind or another (even if that broken window is the non-fulfillment of some desire by someone). And, yes, we break windows (or have them broken for us) all the time...
Planned obsolescence, fads, war, use of shoddy materials, "creative destruction" - the world is a lovely place full of windows being broken - what's wrong breaking one or two more in order to boost the economy? How is this not "creative destruction" which free marketeers love to crow about?
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 27 2014, @12:19PM
It all depends on why you're hiring people. If you're hiring people as charity, then yeah, raising the minimum wage will reduce the number of people you can pay.
Most businesses hire people they need to produce a product or provide a service that they can then sell for more than the cost of production. Labor is not that much different than any of the other costs of production: do you think McDonalds' buys less beef when the price of beef goes up? Maybe GM reduces their steel use when the price of iron ore goes up... When the cost of production goes up, businesses have three options: 1) increase volume 2) raise prices 3) cut profits (close up and go home).
Raising the minimum wage is supposed to encourage more of the profits to go to labor and allow your business to increase volume - less profit on every Big Mac, but make up for it in volume. If your business is only profitable because your employees are living on Government Cheese, then you do not have a successful business and you should close up and go home: let your employees go do something useful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @02:51AM
What will these people do if they CANNOT create a product or service enough people are willing to DIRECTLY pay them money for to 'make a proper living' WITHOUT relying on 'Government Cheese'/Gov't benefits(income replacement) or becoming a politician or some sort of public servant/worker (basically EMTs/cops/firemen/soldiers/general gov't employees of some sort)?
PLEASE NOTE: FOADIAF-style answers/replies are NOT ACCEPTABLE!
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday August 27 2014, @01:17PM
Because you NEED 10 people, so you reluctantly hire 10 people even at the higher wage. So does everyone else. There is now more money going around out there so your business improves. You get busier so you need another person to keep up and so you hire that 11th person.
(Score: 1) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday August 26 2014, @11:05PM
Here's the flaw I see in that whole "raising the minimum wage will cost jobs" argument.
It seems to assume that, for example, fast food restaurants are currently employing some surplus of people that will loose their jobs. That's not the case. Like most employers..probably even more so, they employ as few people as they can get away with, and make them work as hard as they can get away with. My guess is that for the most part such employers have already pushed that to skeleton crew status. Personally I think it's more likely that they'd just simply have to pay them more.
You could argue that that could possibly raise prices etc, but I think that whole argument about costing jobs it totally flawed.
Never mind that our current minimum wage is an embarrassment in this day and age ffs...I mean fucking seriously. All it does it make the public subsidize the companies involved because a huge portion of their workers make so little that they need food stamps etc.
Demand creates jobs, and demand comes from people having money to spend. History proves that over and over again, and we seem to do everything in our power to believe otherwise.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by phantomlord on Wednesday August 27 2014, @02:53AM
I have more than a decade of restaurant management experience, some of it in fast food right after high school, most of it in a family restaurant (not my family, I oversaw daily operations, with pay being handled strictly by the owners and them meddling constantly with things in an effort to say they did something). I only stayed as long as I did because I was taking care of a disabled parent that I could bring to work with me...
First, profit margins in the restaurant industry are pretty slim these days. On sales of nearly $500k, there was typically around $40k in profit and that's with the building mortgage already paid off. That's about 8% profit. Not horrible, but not exactly a killer return, particularly when you figure it can cost $250k to properly outfit a commercial kitchen (stainless everything, cooking equipment, refrigeration, fire suppression systems, etc), to say nothing of buying land and building, renting and converting space, etc. Excited about investing $350-500k up front to maybe earn 40k/year (assuming you aren't giving all of that up on paying for your space)?
Despite the claims of low inflation, food and energy costs are way up over the last decade. Prices have already been raised to the point where people are considering staying home rather than eating out. There's no room to raise prices more without losing customers and if you're going to say "let it come out of the owners profits," first of all, if they're paying a mortgage, there might not be any profits and, second, if you aren't going to allow them a measly 8% profit, they'll question why they are even in business to begin with.
So... personnel. Universally, kids make minimum wage. They don't know how to show up to work on time, they don't know how to mop a floor, they don't know how to wash dishes, they have no work ethic and they'll cry, literally cry, when you tell them that they rang something up wrong because they've been given a false sense of self-esteem their entire life and cannot handle ANY criticism at all. Ideally, I wouldn't have ever had to hire a kid at all because they're mostly worthless. I can't think of a single adult that we paid minimum wage to, particularly if they managed to show up on time and actually work while they were there. Most, but not all, got a raise when the minimum wage went up... but as a percentage, they still lost buying power ($5.15->5.85 = 13.6% increase while $6.15->6.85 = 11.4% increase). Kids, whose income was almost entirely disposable, got more benefit out of a minimum wage increase than the adult it was supposedly raised for to help them live... but wait, say you were me. I was making $7 and after the minimum wage went up, I was making $7. Over that decade, I went from $7 to $9/hour (a 28.6% increase) while minimum wage went from $5.15 to $7.25 (40.8% increase). Compared to inflation (around 34%), as an adult making just over minimum wage, I lost ground, while the return of teens exceeded inflation.
But wait, that's not all... every time there was an increase in the minimum wage, it meant belt tightening at work... where we typically had 9 people on a shift in the late 90s, by the time I left, we were down to 5 and, instead of it being 3 adults and 6 kids, it was 4 adults and 1 kid, with those adults having to assume the duties of two people per shift. That meant worse customer service as they can't take time to make you feel special, but the owners can't raise prices (or customers won't come in) or take it out of profits (or they might as well close the business). Even worse, because we were always short handed, it meant that I couldn't actually manage the restaurant, I spent most of my time cooking (since cooks generally made more than non-cooks and I was the most expensive employee at the restaurant). And because daytime ran on a skeleton crew of 3-4, it meant the prep work that didn't get done was left for me to do at the end of the night while everyone else got to go home. I typically worked 8-9 hours per day, 6-7 days per week during the summer because, even though I was the most expensive employee at $1.75 above minimum wage, I was the only person there capable of not only doing everything, but being reliable enough to get it done.
So... before you go off on your theory that capitalism and ownership are evil, that minimum wage increases don't hurt anyone, try actually getting down and working for just above minimum wage for a prolonged period of time. Watch as prices go up at a rate that doesn't match your lack of pay increases. Watch as you fall further and further behind while teenagers seem to live it up if they were that lucky one that got a job making $1/hour less than you while you do most of the work for them. Want a "living wage" instead? Watch as more jobs shift to the unofficial economy where people are employing illegals that are happy to work for $3/hour in your place and realize that, if you're lucky enough to still have a job, if they got paid what they were supposed to, you really wouldn't be able to afford anything despite your demand.
On the investment side of things, ask yourself why people would go into business in the first place if they aren't allowed to make a profit.
Wanna know why NY gained jobs despite raising the minimum wage? Because of Wall Street robbing us blind through their privately owned fiat currency cartel and the help of a corrupt government, which brings disposable money from outside the state into the NYC economy. The rest of the state continues to sink into economic despair and, if not for the financial sector in NYC, NY wouldn't be doing all that well (and it's still a pretty pathetic "growth" as it is). The reason why the middle class is disappearing isn't because of greedy small business owners, it's because of the fat cat institutional investors, investment banks and their friends in the government deliberately setting out TO destroy the middle class, so we can revert back to the oligarchy where they rule over us and we're grateful for whatever scraps they let us have.
(Score: 2) by monster on Wednesday August 27 2014, @10:53AM
So your wage increases were percentually lower than minimum wage increases during the same period. OK. Since you also show that they were also lower to inflation, you lost purchasing power, but that means squat for minimum wage variations: Even if minimum wage had stayed flat you would have lost purchasing power anyway due to inflation. In other words, your problem was not with minimum wage, was with raises below inflation.
You also say that you were in a manager-like position, but also constantly doing other people's job. I would say that you were a bad manager: A good manager ought not to be a dictator, but should make his underlings perform anyway. A kid may not know how to wash dishes or mop the floor, that's ok: You show him how it is done and then check that he does it, you don't allow him to do whatever he pleases to and later do it yourself because he didn't work but it has to be done, you are not his mother. Anyway, that isn't meaningful towards minimum wage increases.
As for fast food profit margins, you are allowed to make a profit, but you aren't entitled to make a profit. If you select to entry a high upfront cost, low return, tight margin enterprise, it's your decision. You were already betting a lot on a dubious enterprise and you have to take things like inflation into account anyway: Expecting minimum wage to change according to inflation should be a no-brainer in your calculations, like any other normal costs. What if property tax goes up?
(Score: 1) by phantomlord on Wednesday August 27 2014, @02:59PM
So your wage increases were percentually lower than minimum wage increases during the same period. OK. Since you also show that they were also lower to inflation, you lost purchasing power, but that means squat for minimum wage variations: Even if minimum wage had stayed flat you would have lost purchasing power anyway due to inflation. In other words, your problem was not with minimum wage, was with raises below inflation.
and yet, the biggest proponents of the minimum wage also tend to be big proponents of mandatory inflation, saying it is a good thing. They don't care that both contribute to hollowing out the middle class.
You also say that you were in a manager-like position, but also constantly doing other people's job. I would say that you were a bad manager: A good manager ought not to be a dictator, but should make his underlings perform anyway. A kid may not know how to wash dishes or mop the floor, that's ok: You show him how it is done and then check that he does it, you don't allow him to do whatever he pleases to and later do it yourself because he didn't work but it has to be done, you are not his mother. Anyway, that isn't meaningful towards minimum wage increases.
Yep, it was entirely my fault that the owners decided to cut staff as the minimum wage increased. You also act like I didn't teach kids to wash dishes and mop floors... what your missing is that the minimum wage gets paid to everyone, regardless of the complete and utter lack of skill they bring to the table. Would I hire someone for $15 that didn't know how to wash dishes and didn't care to learn how to? Hell no. Doubly so given half the kids brought their parents in to protest on their behalf, because, gasp, Snowflake should never be reprimanded or expected to actually do their job. I actually witnessed one parent come in with a cop one time because the owner was holding a final check since he wanted to explain to the parent why the kid got fired (parent was slightly embarrassed as the cop stood there listening to stories about the 16 year old kid not coming in for half her scheduled shifts because she was hung over after the parent kept buying her and her friends booze).
When you're advocating raising the minimum wage, it's not just for hard working adults down on their luck, it's for people like that too. The harder you make it for an employer to give someone a chance, the less likely the employer is to actually take a chance on someone.
Ultimately, someone had to get the job done and, as management, that fell to me when all was said and done.
As for fast food profit margins, you are allowed to make a profit, but you aren't entitled to make a profit. If you select to entry a high upfront cost, low return, tight margin enterprise, it's your decision. You were already betting a lot on a dubious enterprise and you have to take things like inflation into account anyway: Expecting minimum wage to change according to inflation should be a no-brainer in your calculations, like any other normal costs. What if property tax goes up?
Never said anyone was owed a profit... just that the business wouldn't exist, nor the jobs that come with it, if the costs associated with that business continue to rise on the assumption that nothing gets hurt but a few pennies of profit. That includes the ever increasing property tax costs as well (which have also tripled in just the last 20 years in said town).
(Score: 2) by monster on Wednesday August 27 2014, @03:36PM
That is another discussion entirely. But, given that inflation exists, wages must also grow to not lose purchasing power. That includes minimum wage, too.
Please don't take it as a personal attack, it wasn't intended as such, but getting your underlings to do their work and weeding out the useless junk was what would be a good job for your part. It Little Snowflake sees that he can avoid work because you will do it, he'll exploit that. It doesn't make you a bad person, just a bad manager.
The minimum wage should be set such that a person working 40 hours per week earning it could rise above poverty. The fact that many hard working people earn the same as crappy do-nothing snowflakes talks more about the exploitative nature of many workplaces than about the "just" nature of the value. And it's always the same: If the snowflake worker isn't worth minimum wage, you are losing money with him, so fire him and get a worker that performs.
Wouldn't exist... as a low-price, fast food enterprise. People still have to eat anyway. Just make the food worth more for your customers, so you can charge more. If you take part in a race to the bottom you should understand that you will end fighting with other bottom-dwellers.
(Score: 1) by phantomlord on Wednesday August 27 2014, @03:53PM
The minimum wage should be set such that a person working 40 hours per week earning it could rise above poverty. The fact that many hard working people earn the same as crappy do-nothing snowflakes talks more about the exploitative nature of many workplaces than about the "just" nature of the value. And it's always the same: If the snowflake worker isn't worth minimum wage, you are losing money with him, so fire him and get a worker that performs.
I'm not sure it's entirely possible to mandate a minimum that everyone can live off of while ensuring the employers get enough return on that wage to justify the cost. It's not PC to say, but some adult employees, frankly, aren't even worth the current minimum wage much less double or triple it. Raising the minimum wage significantly will also mean raising the minimum standards that someone will require unless they are absolutely desperate, which in turn, means kids aren't likely to get hired at all and then as young adults, they're likely to continue to not get hired because they don't have any previous work experience/skills to bring to the table.
Likewise, if we went to a mandatory living wage provided by the government instead, I'm sure there are plenty of people that will be complacent with it and seek to do nothing productive with their life.
At one point (18, first job, second location), I managed a fast food chain restaurant in what was basically known as the welfare town of my county (bolstered in large part by a state prison, since girlfriends and kids would move there because it was too far away to regularly drive from elsewhere in the state). It was normal for people receiving welfare benefits to be forced to get a job (or else be cut off), then after the required 30 days, do anything they could to get fired again (it would be something petty like intentionally stealing food in front of management, repeatedly claiming they were sick and not call/show for work until they got fired, etc). Simple fact is, some people are content to do nothing but consume the resources of others and to think they will suddenly be productive is to ignore reality, and that needs to be taken into account as well. I just don't think the solutions are anywhere near as easy as people that come up with a one liner want them to be.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by monster on Wednesday August 27 2014, @04:53PM
Well, it's done in many countries in Europe, so it's possible after all. As for employees' worth, if some of your employees aren't worth their salary then fire them.
It still amazes me how such a pro-hard work mentality as USA usually shows pairs with the will to punish those who don't go with the current, preferring to unjustly punish hard working people at the mere thought that there may be someone someplace taking advantage of the common goodwill. Minimum wage is not a matter of morals, it's an economic tool for the improvement of society.
(Score: 1) by phantomlord on Wednesday August 27 2014, @05:06PM
Well, it's done in many countries in Europe, so it's possible after all. As for employees' worth, if some of your employees aren't worth their salary then fire them.
and yet, there are places in Europe with chronic unemployment, particularly amongst younger workers, where it is nearly impossible for employers to fire bad employees, etc. Let's not pretend Europe is anywhere near perfect or has their own problems solved.
It still amazes me how such a pro-hard work mentality as USA usually shows pairs with the will to punish those who don't go with the current, preferring to unjustly punish hard working people at the mere thought that there may be someone someplace taking advantage of the common goodwill. Minimum wage is not a matter of morals, it's an economic tool for the improvement of society.
Is it morally right to take food off the table of a child so that someone can sit at home all day playing video games because they're content to live off a minimum guaranteed benefit? Regardless of the morality, how does that lead to an improvement of society? Or is that something we need to overlook for simplicity because to actually examine the full effects might lead to simple ideas not being so good or simple? These people exist... I have them in my extended family.
(Score: 2) by monster on Wednesday August 27 2014, @06:02PM
There are places wirh high unemployment amongst younger people, true. These places are also the most affected by austerian measures. When those places had low unemployment figures there also was minimum wage, so it's not as if minimum wage is the cause of current numbers. As for nearly impossible to fire employees, I think you are ill informed: It's more expensive in some places, but it's possible nevertheless and the current trend is lowering these costs.
The 'taking food off a child to feed a vagrant' argument is false at best, demagogue at worst. Freeloaders may make the system as a whole more expensive, but don't take from other needy people unless the total amount is really limited and there's no oversight over compliance. That's more a political restrain to the system than a flaw of the measure. And even then, minimum wage is paid by the same people who better benefits from checking that the worker complies and can act if don't.
The full efects are known. Yes, there will be freeloaders, but that doesn't mean it's a bad move. Think of OSS, for example: Many corporations use it without contributing anything, effectively becoming freeloaders, but that doesn't nullify the positive effect of OSS in software.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 27 2014, @12:04PM
It sounds like you're not very good at negotiating your compensation. Remember, your employer's interest is to pay you the least amount possible. 10 years ago, your skills were worth a 36% premium over those kids who can't even show up on time. Now that you've got 10 more years experience, you're only worth 24% more than someone who fails at washing dishes? You need to go market your skills somewhere they'll be appreciated and compensated.
Raising the minimum wage might be described as "trickle up" economics, in the same sense as tax cuts are "trickle down." Trickle up economics imagines that po' folk get more money and will spend it, reducing the empty tables at your restaurant and increasing sales. Trickle up economics imagines that raising the floor wage makes it easier for $9/hour peons to negotiate better wages, in part by making it less painful to lose that wage premium.
If you're not happy that the kids are getting paid so much more these days, consider that the answer may be to demand more for yourself rather than to deny others.
(Score: 1) by phantomlord on Wednesday August 27 2014, @03:18PM
Is it that I'm not good at negotiating or that I was stuck in a bad situation and had no leverage, you know, like most adults that are making minimum wage or just above it?
and for the record, the way a flat increase works, is that, as you go above that baseline number, the percentage gain decreases... meaning that, yes, people making just over minimum wage will always receive a lower percentage gain than people making the minimum wage. We worry about minimum wage increasing with inflation, yet we don't consider that people making just above minimum wage LOSE buying power as their percentage gains decrease while inflation, particularly inflation caused by minimum wage increases, outpaces the meager gains for those people just above minimum wage.
There are entire cascades of consequences that people summarily dismiss while they beat the drum over a single facet, as if that's the only thing that changes. Trying to mandate an entire economy is a lot more difficult than adjusting a single variable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @04:17AM
You can NEVER 'get ahead' in life if you get paid out of someone elses' wallet.
Behavior like that will get you laid off or fired in a heartbeat. Management can ALWAYS find someone to replace you to avoid paying you any more money than they are willing to pay you. In one case, they COMPUTERIZED THIS PROCESS but got caught later...
http://everything2.com/title/Continental+Can+and+BELL [everything2.com]
Any business not owned and operated by the employees themselves (or self-employment) is ultimately doomed to fail for the workers. They create more value than the wages they are paid by their employers--otherwise there is ABSOLUTELY NO POINT TO OWN/OPERATE A BUSINESS filled with 'expensive' employees.
This is why owners/management and labor have been at each other's throats since time immemorial--Both parties want the better deal instead of treating each other as equals. This usually results in the workers geting exploited through overwork and underpayment. Do that long enough and a strike breaks out--no wories for the owners/management as they can either dissolve the company or fire all the strikers and replace them with other workers willing to do the job for whatever pay they can get.
There are readily only two ways out of that trap:
1) SUCCESSFUL self-employment where you create a successful product/service that pays you enough that you can LIVE off of. This will likely mean working more than 40 hours a week but the potential rewards could surpass the capped wages paid to you by an employer.
2) You band together with other people to create a worker-owned business that is ran collectively for the TRUE benefit of all who are employed there. If the goal is not profit for profit's sake, I'd imagine such a business could be run successfully enough to pay all its workers a wage they can LIVE off of working no more than 40 hours a week.
(Score: 2) by Daiv on Wednesday August 27 2014, @02:30PM
Prices have already been raised to the point where people are considering staying home rather than eating out. There's no room to raise prices more without losing customers
I live in a major metropolitan area. There are NO restaurants of any type within roughly 15 miles in any direction which does not have a wait to eat every single night, including weekdays. While you say people are "considering staying home", they sure as hell aren't. There IS room to raise prices. Since portion sizes have decreased over the same decade you're referring to, that's the next logical step and it should be done.
Universally, kids make minimum wage. They don't know how to show up to work on time, they don't know how to mop a floor, they don't know how to wash dishes, they have no work ethic and they'll cry, literally cry, when you tell them that they rang something up wrong because they've been given a false sense of self-esteem their entire life and cannot handle ANY criticism at all. Ideally, I wouldn't have ever had to hire a kid at all because they're mostly worthless.
You're an asshole. I really wish no one ever hired you until you turned 25 and you could have experienced that attitude from the other side. As someone who interviewed and got their first job at 15, promoted twice in my first two years and went on to interview, hire, train and supervise "kids" and adults for a decade and a half, I can place the blame on your impression of "kids" on you. Interview/screen better, train better and I shouldn't have to say this, but communicate better. Not coddle, actual communication.
Your whole post reeks of "poor me". Life sucks. Sometimes you get kicked, sometimes you kick others. You took an admittedly shitty job from an obviously shitty family. They took advantage of you and it looks like they made you think it was reasonable and justified. There are so many other variables you're leaving out of your story, I'm not going to address specifics.
If you have a problem with minimum wage earners (and they ARE earners, nothing that gets paid minimum wage is glamorous) getting higher percentage pay increases than you, do something about it. Go to school and learn a skill that pays more. Go to any chain restaurant that probably would have given you much bigger pay increases.
Your post in no way justifies not raising minimum wage.
(Score: 1) by phantomlord on Wednesday August 27 2014, @03:36PM
I live in a major metropolitan area. There are NO restaurants of any type within roughly 15 miles in any direction which does not have a wait to eat every single night, including weekdays. While you say people are "considering staying home", they sure as hell aren't. There IS room to raise prices. Since portion sizes have decreased over the same decade you're referring to, that's the next logical step and it should be done.
Because your one city is typical of every location in the country, right? BTW - that's a pretty absolute statement that there are NO restaurants at all within 15 miles that you can walk into and be seated. Ever consider that, maybe where you live might be an exception to the rule, or do you just assume that the entire country is exactly like your city? Given the arrogance, I'd guess you were from NYC, but I know there are plenty of empty restaurants there...
You're an asshole. I really wish no one ever hired you until you turned 25 and you could have experienced that attitude from the other side. As someone who interviewed and got their first job at 15, promoted twice in my first two years and went on to interview, hire, train and supervise "kids" and adults for a decade and a half, I can place the blame on your impression of "kids" on you. Interview/screen better, train better and I shouldn't have to say this, but communicate better. Not coddle, actual communication.
Yep... I'm an asshole because kids are overly spoiled today. I'm the one that sets up the unreal expectation that, with a mere 2 year community college degree, you can expect to make $150k per year (seriously, had someone expecting just that because her dad started off on the loading docks of a company back in the 60s with just a high school diploma and eventually became an account executive there). I'm the one that taught them that it doesn't matter when you get around to wiping off tables, so long as you're happy to sit there chatting with your friend that stopped in. I'm the one that never taught them to mop a floor. Kids today are lazy and entitled precisely because they've been coddled their entire lives and don't know how to handle it when someone tells them no, or that they have to do something they don't want to do, much less to have to do it now. I never asked them to do anything they haven't seen me do before myself.
I got my first job at 17 and was promoted three times in my first 18 months too. Why? Because unlike most of the people around me, at work, I actually do my job, I took direction and I improved my skills. I wasn't complacent and I didn't expect anything to be handed to me. That has completely changed with today's generation of kids. I left that job when there was nowhere else for me to rise to and because I was doing all of my lazy boss's work and not being recognized or paid for it.
Your whole post reeks of "poor me". Life sucks. Sometimes you get kicked, sometimes you kick others. You took an admittedly shitty job from an obviously shitty family. They took advantage of you and it looks like they made you think it was reasonable and justified. There are so many other variables you're leaving out of your story, I'm not going to address specifics.
Never said it was the greatest job... but like most adults working for low pay, my life's circumstances put me there. Isn't that what the proponents of raising the minimum wage are supposedly about, helping the people busting their ass that deserve more than where their shitty place in life gets them? But when you talk about the people that actually do a little better than their peers, show a little more hard work and dedication, fuck 'em if their buying power decreases.
If you have a problem with minimum wage earners (and they ARE earners, nothing that gets paid minimum wage is glamorous) getting higher percentage pay increases than you, do something about it. Go to school and learn a skill that pays more. Go to any chain restaurant that probably would have given you much bigger pay increases.
Never said they weren't earners... and you assume school is an option for everyone and that chain restaurants (my first job btw) pay better. I'd say you're completely out of touch with reality given your statements about your city, the work ethic of kids these days, the opportunities available to hard working people stuck in the upper lower class/lower middle class gap, etc.
Your post in no way justifies not raising minimum wage.
and you've done nothing to justify it... only attacked me, but I'm the asshole.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by RobotLove on Wednesday August 27 2014, @04:10PM
I think the fact that there are many restaurants in countries with minimum wages radically higher than in the US would imply that your anecdote owes its failure to some cause other than minimum wage levels.
(Score: 1) by phantomlord on Wednesday August 27 2014, @04:48PM
Or could it be that those societies are structured entirely differently to begin with?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday September 02 2014, @03:51AM
The reason illegals are popular hires for low-paying jobs isn't because they get paid less than minimum wage. It's because the cost to the employer isn't just the wages; it's payroll taxes, workmans comp, health insurance, and all the other mandated costs today. In California, these costs come to 70% of the cost of an employee. That $7/hour employee actually costs the business around $20/hour.
But if they hire an illegal at $10/hour cash under the table, the employee makes more money while costing the business less, because it lets the business duck out of all those state-mandated costs. The business can then afford to hire two people when before it could afford only one, and therefore the business makes more money and can potentially expand. They're ahead even if they can't declare all their costs (ie. those cash wages) come income tax time.
[Incidentally that $10/hour is a real number taken from employers I knew in SoCal. They actually paid their illegals more than minimum wage -- because minus all the mandated costs, they could afford to pay more to keep better workers. Conversely those I knew that were 100% legal paid minimum wage for the same work.]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday August 27 2014, @04:43AM
My opinion on this issue isn't popular, but what we're talking about is trying to make "part-time-beer-money-jobs" something that a person can do for life and just barely eke by on. That focus seems ridiculous -- the focus should be on building an industrial base that once again provides real living wage jobs to people because those jobs are inherently valuable, and let the McJobs help kids learn basic working skills. Germany somehow manages to have a first world economy, powerful trade unions, health care, and an export surplus. I doubt they got that by making beer-money jobs their major focus.
As for the current minimum wage, I believe in 1985 I was getting $3.25/hr stocking shelves and bagging groceries. That would amount to $6.93/hr in 2013 dollars. In WA state, in 2013, the minimum wage was $9.19/hr, exceeding inflation by a pretty wide margin -- don't know why you would consider that an embarrassment.
Here's the inflation calculator I used: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ [westegg.com]
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Wednesday August 27 2014, @09:26AM
Nobody's defending that minimum wage should be $100. Your argument is a strawman.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Tuesday August 26 2014, @06:41PM
the idea that, to me, minimum wage is training wheels for teenagers first entering the workforce. IMHO, if you're 30 and working for McDonalds and not as manager/owner, then you've made some bad life decisions and you need to figure out how to fix it.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:05PM
LOL thats like 1960s economic thinking. Times haven't been that good for about two generations.
Times are not bad for us CS / IT type people, not bad at all, but for almost everyone else, ugh.
You'll tend to run into a lot of disinfo along the lines of the store pays 50 cents over minimum wage therefore the workers will get nothing if it goes up 25 cents. Well, duh, its competitive between employers so obviously they'll end up getting 50 cents over the new wage, either at that store or a competitor paying 50 cents over. This kind of delta is a pretty big issue until you get above $15/hr or so. Which is probably about 1/3 of all employees.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday August 26 2014, @08:55PM
Riiight, hope you can speak Hindi [liveleak.com] because your corporate masters have decided that a Master's degree should be a "mcJob" and pay the same as some internship. You might have some luck if you move to China [businessinsider.com] otherwise all a degree is gonna get you in today's USA is months of unemployment and the "chance" to compete with a guy from Bangalore who paid maybe 10k for his degree, if he even has one. Oh and enjoy your crushing student debt [forbes.com] that will never go away because the corps want ever more degrees for ever shittier wages.
Or maybe, just maybe, you should realize we are in the midst of the biggest theft in America's history, the theft of a working class by the 0.01% and that these corps will take your gift of lower wages, say "thanks!" and then hire illegals or send the jobs to China anyway, its good for profits. Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson...."Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Common Joe on Wednesday August 27 2014, @04:04AM
This is the same argument that I've heard in the programming world. "If you're over 40 and not managing people, you've made some bad life decisions and need to change." What if I like programming? What if I know that I would make a bad manager and don't want to be part of the Peter Principle? What if a person likes flipping burgers for a living? What is wrong with that? Yeah, sure, they shouldn't pull in six figures a year, but why shouldn't they be able to make a living doing something they like?
That should be the case, but it isn't. The big companies are squeezing the little companies out the market. On top of that, the big companies are forcing the majority of people to work for peanuts and somehow support their family.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday August 28 2014, @02:43AM
I was in my 30s when I got my first management position. Didn't like it. As it is now, when I get a new chip/board, plug a JTAG into it, and turn on a green LED I get a little thrill. When I'm in management and one of my worker bees gets a new chip/board, plugs in a JTAG, and turns an LED on, to me it's "Oh great, now I get to open Microsoft Project, update the milestone, make a status report, and figure out an appropriate atta-boy to my worker bee".
A fun little accomplishment got turned into a series of not-fun little tasks.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday August 27 2014, @01:21PM
So, tell me, what decision is it that has them living in a decent economy that pays what labor is worth? I ask because that's what is actually wrong.
You can think of minimum wage as whatever you want, but the realities of the economy clearly disagree with you.
You are also free to believe that food is grown by rainbow colored glittery unicorns, but again, reality disagrees.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Thursday August 28 2014, @03:51AM
Damn. I think something is wrong with Soylent News. I didn't get a notification about this reply so I didn't see it until just now. I'll have to try to find some examples and report it.
sjames, I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
What decent economy? You look at the reports given by the government and the news media and you see that things are glowing. Look beneath the surface and you'll see a lot of unemployed that aren't counted anymore and underemployed. It's pretty bad.
What realities are you talking about? Are you saying that you think people should be earning minimum wage to support a family? According to Google and Wikipedia, minimum wage is between $7.25 / hour and $9.32 / hour. That is between $14,500 / year and $18,640 working 40 hours per week for 50 weeks.
I don't understand what you are specifically talking about. Respond with specifics.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Thursday August 28 2014, @04:25AM
sjames, ignore my other comment. I had too many threads open and got confused as to who was replying to whom.
I think I need a vacation. :P
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday August 28 2014, @09:03AM
I did notice that some of the notifications went missing for a while after the upgrade, but they seem to be cback now.
As for the rest, it happens to the best of us :-)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @06:49PM
He's writing for a laissez faire, libertarian, Austrian economics lobbyist/website. If reality shows that the Minimum Wage is a good thing, increasing employment, then he has to come up with a reason why reality is wrong. It's his job to do so. Accepting the evidence isn't acceptable to his employers.
Just to add to the evidence for the data, the UK passed minimum wage legislation more than a decade ago. Before the legislation business spokesmen, conservatives and libertarians were all saying how disastrous it was going to be, decimating some industries and creating mass unemployment. Yet in the following decade none of that happened. Employment went up, and no industry found it uneconomic to pay their lowest workers a little more. Of course that trend of increasing employment ended in 2008, but that was down to international bankers not to the minimum wage.
Is there anywhere in the world where paying a minimum wage did cause economic damage? I've never heard of one. I've only heard from libertarians who's mistaken ideology makes them believe that it shouldn't be a good thing, even though it is.
(Score: 1, Troll) by jasassin on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:24PM
I have no idea what the fuck are trying to say and I read your bullshit thrice.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snow on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:44PM
He's saying that every time anyone talks about raising minimum wage by $0.50/hr, all the 'small business owners' bitch and whine that they just can't afford to pay their valued workers any more and that there will be mass layoffs if the minimum wage increases at all.
Then they raise the wage, and somehow, there are no massive layoffs. So what is it? Are they really working on such razer thin margins that an extra $5/week/employee is going to sink their business, or are they just trying to keep a bigger piece of the pie?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:53PM
Where's there a historical list of State GDP per capita with PPP factored in? It wouldn't surprise me if with PPP, there was almost no change at all from the adoption in the long run. Economics is a series of equilibria, and if you have a closed system as soon as something is made apparently better, something else can kick in to absorb that. (Inflation being a simple quick example of one thing which can turn more into less.) Of course, with interstate commerce and federal taxes etc. you don't have a closed system, so relative to other states things may change, hence PPP being important.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @10:32PM
I do think that it's certainly too soon to be judging whether the recent changes have had a positive or negative effect
I am of the thought let the market sort it out as creating caps usually has long term negative effects. Short term they are usually good. I however, completely agree with your analysis.
They are also playing fairly fast and loose with numbers here to make it seem like some huge jump. They are comparing .99 to .69. That is 00.99% and 00.69%. Across 100k jobs that is a difference of about 300.
Those #'s were also from earlier in may. What is it now? Is that seasonal? Is it in line with other growth in those states?
The thing is with min wage you just never see the job as it will never be offered. Eventually most people move away from min wage jobs. Either because they dislike the job or simply moving up the ladder. Also they come with a fairly poor standard of living. Where as you may have 3 dudes to take care of something 1 guy leaves the other 2 pick up the slack and the 3rd job is just eliminated. You can not measure what does not exist. That is the reason you see a short term bump in overall wages. However, long term productivity is reduced. As the job is just no longer offered as the accountant in the back says 'yes you are able to hire 1 more guy' or 'try to see if you can make do as your marginal rev is about the same as your marginal cost'. On the flip side lets say you lowered min wage. Companies are not going to run out and suddenly hire more people. They will coast for a while then as opportunities arise they may hire more as they already have a pretty good thing going. You can not measure the possibility of a job existing or not. Anyone who tells you otherwise is making something up.
Basically creating scarcity does not create wealth except for those who 'own' the resources.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 27 2014, @10:12AM
There may have been almost immediate effects cauised by the legislative changes. And as so often seen in dynamic systems, those effects may have overshot, and will take time to stabilise.
I've seen this in the most amateurish (honestly, the politicians simply had *no clue*) and grotesque way with alcohol tax legislation in Finland. Tax is *wayyyy* too high, everyone's buying all their booze from Estonia where the tax is much lower. This is bad for Olvi and Hartwall, ... Conclusion - significantly slash alcohol tax! Now there's no incentive to jump on the boats, and the ferries can no longer sell tons of overpriced buffets and 'tax free' to drunk Finns, as they can't even sell the ferry tickets initially. This is bad for Viking line, etc. Conclusion - significantly increase alcohol tax! Suddenly, everyone stops buying local booze, and goes back to Estonia again for it. At no point was any attempt at reaching the equilibrium attempted, it was all just overshoot after overshoot. I think it happened 4 times in the space of a couple of years.
Ditto marijuana legislation. *Of course* for a few months after passing a decriminalisation bill you're gonna see way more stoners than you think is healthy. The novely will wear off, but the knee-jerk think-of-the-children (or whatever) lobby will get it repealed before the steady state is found.
Ditto drinking in public legislation (very pertinent for me currently, our country's just made it legal). Believe it or not, there are now more people drinking in public, as they've finally got the chance to legally - and within 6 weeks of the law taking effect, there are some who want it revoked already. (I think in some towns it's *already* been overridden by local legislation banning it. They don't seem to have realised that the people who were drinking and causing a disturbance were causing a disturbance because they were causing a disturbance, and there's already legislation that covers that.) Yet again, an overshoot met by a backlash.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 27 2014, @02:14PM
Same AC again :) I agree with your 'too soon'.
I have seen it here in the states with 'the lottery'. Almost every last one is sold as a way to help 'the children in schools'. At first it does. As the budget does not change right away. But eventually the budget get whittled back down to what it was. But instead now they are dependent on the whims of people buying lottery tickets. They will have many short fall years. That eventually catches back up. They will then be on tv asking for bonds and more taxes to cover the shortfall. Because the money that used to be earmarked for schools is now doing something else. But they still want that something else. Usually takes 10-15 years after a lottery goes into effect for it to happen.
Most economic theories are sunshine and roses. At first. Like communism sounds good until you realize you have to motivate the person who does not want to help. Pure capitalism sounds good until you realize money buys influence and laws to create monopolies. People rarely look out and see what sorts effects it will have. Like in your case businesses will be created.
I like this particular book as it describes many of the side effects of the policies we enact. We as a society however, have decided many of those side effects are worth it. We however usually chose short term gain and long term loss :(
http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/ [steshaw.org]
Short term you see little to no change with min wage. Long term you will see declines in jobs at the min wage line and bellow. 3-6 months is not enough time. Over longer times you may not even be able to tell. As unemployment can move 1-3% a year... And inflation moves at 2-3% a year. You may be in the noise. Which means the level was just moved but did not do anything other than make people feel good about themselves.
If you look at gov policy as 'does this grow our economy' or 'does it just move money around' or 'are we doing this to punish'. If you keep doing the first one you will do good. If you do the other 2 long term you will hurt yourself. As people will play games with the money or just move away.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday August 27 2014, @04:29AM
I think that is because no one sees the real picture. We're all blind men trying to identify an elephant. Let's look at things logically.
We know that raising minimum wage will have some kind of an effect -- good or bad. Some people believe that raising the minimum wage will always have a positive effect, but (as someone else already said) by that logic, we should raise the minimum wage to $100 / hour and that would make things really great. That idea is, of course, absurd. So, we know raising the minimum wage may have a positive effect only up to a certain point. Where is that point? I think it is also worth considering (through the well liked American idea of supply and demand) that lowering the minimum wage can be good because it generates more jobs. There's a lot of truth in both ideas that our two party ideology likes to ignore.
So, back to a form of your original question: can raising minimum wage cause economic damage? Answer: It's a straw man. If kids learning the ropes get minimum wage but people raising families are earning significantly more, then that is a healthy economy and raising the minimum wage every so often to keep up with (actual) inflation should be good. If everyone is earning minimum wage (including those with families), then raising the minimum wage will cause prices to jump in the food aisles and gas stations. Things may look good for a brief moment but then quickly balance out -- supply and demand.
Armed with this information, let me fire back another question at you: which side of the spectrum are we on? A healthy economy or too many people with families earning minimum wage? Before you answer, don't forget that you're a blind man just like me.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Wednesday August 27 2014, @03:28PM
So, what do you do if you want to know more about the world? You do a fucking experiment. Why not trying indexing the minimum wage to inflation? Why not increase it by some percentage per year (or every five or ten) until you actually see an indication of it harming the economy a bit and then stop? How come all you "scientists" all of a sudden become big pussies just because you're talking about an economy, rather than something else?
It's just a fucking system, after all. And we built it - unless you're so stupid as to think that things like government and society have no impact on the economy. But, no... instead you're all here with your ideologically-based economic models (or as I like to think of them, your economic religions). Bunch of fucking hypocrites you are. Either you believe in science or you don't. DO THE EXPERIMENTS!
That is all.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday August 27 2014, @06:39PM
Um... I'm not sure who you're replying to. Me? This rant didn't seem to address anything I was saying. I'll try to reply, though.
I'm not an economist and I'm not the right person to make economic experiments. I am, however, a computer programmer who thinks in logical terms. From my perspective of the world, I'm seeing the upper echelon manipulate a lot of people into getting emotional in their responses. (Like you in this post... and sometimes like me. I get worked up when someone hits my hot buttons too.) A lot of things said about our economy simply do not make sense. From a logical stand point, raising the minimum wage because "it seems to work" is a horrible answer... but it is a good start to understanding the extremely complex economic model that no one person understands. Even if it were proclaimed that the nuances were understood by the experts, I'd have trouble believing it because the experts have been very wrong recently... mostly because those at the top want to line their pockets. Where the heck do we go for good answers? That's why I try to fall back on logic and any good science that I can come by. Unfortunately, in the end, the best answer will always be elusive, but logic and good science can help illuminate a good path.
I'm tempted to address more specific points in your post, but I think I'll let this sit here as is before I get too long winded.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:56PM
You act as if there are no models available. There are many of them. We simply do not currently know which ones are correct. And how do you find out? You do experiments to find out which ones are right and what range of economic activity hey are useful for. But we don't seem to ever do anything more than "natural experiments". Fuck that. If all we ever did to nature was watch it, we'd still be living in caves.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:32PM
Ah ha... that makes a lot more sense to me. I agree with you 100%... except for the "You act as if there are no models available" thing. I know there are different models. A lot of them don't seem to work (as spouted by the experts or as implemented by the current powers that be), but I think that is because we as a society don't know which ones are correct or which forms of them are correct or why some things work here but not there... which means, I basically agree with you.
I'm still not the right person to make any of that happen... and until it does, I'll have to sit on my ideologically-based butt and throw in my two cents from the side lines. I know enough to realize I don't have the right answer, but I do feel like a giant WTF goes on all the time and feel inclined to say something. People often see something positive happen (raise minimum wage and economy gets better) then push that ideology until it fails. (The idea of going into debt is like that. After WWII, we found out that debt can give advantages under certain conditions. Of course, too much debt is a bad thing and we're experiencing that now.) When you said "ideologically-based economic models (or as I like to think of them, your economic religions)", I'm right with you on that as well.
I think I get frustrated because I don't see well thought ideas. I see a lot of crap. Or if there is a good idea, it gets usurped and abused until it fails. If there is a way to test these ideas without destroying people and families and entire generations, I am all for it. And I think you're right... it's entirely possible to test these things, but I don't think we (as a society) are doing a good job of it.
Thanks for the clarifications.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @06:56PM
Apparently if you pay people enough that they can afford to buy things, they will spend money to buy things. This gives other people enough money to buy things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @05:53AM
In the eyes of the business owners, they pay people enough to do the following:
1) Buy cheap processed food with barely enough nutrients in it to keep them alive and healthy--if you can call it that....
2) Buy new underwear, towels, washcloths, soap, socks, and shoes--the rest of their clothes have to be saved up for or donated to them.
3) Pay someone some money to stay off the streets and out of the elements when the weather gets bad--no guarantee if it is enough for apartment rent or a mortgage payment for a home.
All that money spent eventually finds its way back into the pockets of the business owners and their investors so the people who bought the stuff do not have anything lasting to show for their purchases. Everyting bought above--except (maybe) for the home mortgage payment--is a consumable commodity that is here today and worn out/gone in the (near) future.
Business owners answer only to themselves and their investors--NOT the employees--which is why they ALLWAYS get 'shafted' day in and day out.
The only way out is self-employment or a business owned and operated solely by its employees where EVERYONE has an equal say and share in the profits, survival, and future of the company...
(Score: 5, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:24PM
Hello pipedot folks! If you'd like to see these comments as they're posted instead of as they're plagiarized by pipedot's cron job scraper, feel free to visit us at https://soylentnews.org/ [soylentnews.org]
Have a nice day!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday August 26 2014, @08:05PM
What is going on with that? Pipedot seems to have the exact same stories, and all(most?) of the comments are from here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @08:24PM
If going in 5-page increments and seeing nothing but SN content until the 50th page is any indication, pipedot has been doing nothing but scraping content and comments wholesale (but incorrectly attributing posts to whatevereditor@soylent-news.org, note the -) for a month and a day.
Oh, except for the poll. He may not have figured out how to scrape that yet. Also, according to cafebabe, soylent-news.org is registered to the same postal address as pipedot. Hm.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @08:36PM
I was a bit hasty. There are a few pipedot originals every once in a while.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @09:20PM
Ooone last correction. They've scraped *everything*.
http://pipedot.org/story/2014-02-12/welcome-to-soylentnews [pipedot.org] - ha.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday August 27 2014, @04:57AM
Not quite everything.
Actually, I hadn't looked at enough to see if what goes before a blockquote gets lost. So this is a test.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday August 27 2014, @05:02AM
So whatever comes before a single blockquote makes it through to pipedot. Everything after is lost.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday August 27 2014, @05:19AM
The answer is, everything after the first blockquote is lost.
(Score: 1) by khedoros on Tuesday August 26 2014, @08:53PM
To anyone reading this on Pipedot: I don't have an account there, and I didn't write this comment there. All those comments from people "@soylent-news.org"? Yeah, Pipedot stole their comments. Classy.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday August 27 2014, @05:08AM
One solution is to put something like that as a blockquote on the tops of your posts. The scraping software craps out and omits everything after a blockquote. As a result, all of the comments on pipedot would be comprised solely of the blockquote text. Which would be kind of hilarious to see.
(Score: 2) by bryan on Wednesday August 27 2014, @06:23AM
Pipedot and SoylentNews both launched at nearly at the same time in reaction to Slashdot's obnoxious disregard of its user base. While each site has its own strengths, they both fill nearly the exact same roll as an alternative to Slashdot. Because I don't want to split our already rather small community and duplicate the same effort, the policy of Pipedot is to direct all users to SoylentNews for daily news and discussion.
Many new and interesting web technologies exist today that simply didn't exist in the Perl CGI script era that Slashcode was originally created in. Thus, the Pipecode rewrite project is an effort at a more modern slash-like framework.
One major goal is the self-hosting ability of the software. I believe that anyone should be able to fire up a copy of Pipecode on their own web server and immediately have access to the existing collection of stories and comments submitted by the community. Similar to the venerable Usenet of that long lost September, the canonical website (Pipedot.org, SoylentNews.org, etc..) is simply a "viewer" of the underlying network. If all the users in the community have access to the entire database, problems such as the recent "beta" debacle simply cannot occur. If any one site becomes obnoxious towards its users, the users can simply switch to a different portal of the network.
Stories and comments posted on SoylentNews are mirrored by the Pipedot - SoylentNews gateway. Please do not take this to mean that I'm "stealing" content or trying to redirect other's efforts to Pipedot. It's just a mirror and you still "own" your own comments just as much as you do with the copies indexed by Google, Coral Cache, or the Wayback Machine. Even the green site states that comments are owned by their original poster!
For more information please see the about page on Pipedot [pipedot.org].
(Score: 2) by romlok on Wednesday August 27 2014, @09:08AM
That's a very noble excuse, however as far as I can tell:
SoylentNews is not "simply a "viewer" of the underlying network". Unless pipedot has direct access to the Soylent database, which I very much doubt, SoylentNews is the underlying network. Pipedot is just a content scraper.
That's an admirable dream, but AFAICT that's all it is; a dream.
If you really want to achieve this, then create a public NNTP network, and build pipedot as an NNTP client. Or, even better, find or help build a truly P2P (DHT, etc.) network/platform for posting news stories and commenting on them. I would be *ecstatic* if such a p2p platform would become reality (hmm, perhaps Twister [twister.net.co] could be adapted).
Only then could you claim people are free to choose their client.
You say that, but pipedot is not attributing comments to the poster of that comment, but to some fictional address at a domain *you* own. A domain which masquerades as one belonging to another site, yet leads to.... pretty much nothing.
Yet by having non-scraped stories, and allowing pipedot-only commenting on the scraped stories, pipedot is clearly NOT "just a mirror". It's simply using other peoples' content to flesh out the site's lack of activity, and in doing so encouraging the kind of community fragmentation you claim to want to avoid!
If it were a Microsoft site "embracing" (mirroring) and "extending" (adding their own content and comments), would you be okay with that?
Ownership of comments is useless if nobody can tell who the owner is (see my earlier comment). But even with correct assignation, I did NOT give ANYONE but Soylent News a license to display MY commentary.
...
If you really want to avoid fragmentation of the slashfugees, cede victory to Soylent, and either shut down pipedot, or - with the explicit agreement and consent of Soylent, make it a read-only mirror.
I would much rather see more talented developers working toward making Soylent a more elegant and modern website, than have multiple communities just because a couple of guys think "Slashcode sux".
Maybe they could set you to work on beta.soylentnews.org...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 27 2014, @11:04AM
IANAL, but I think an important facet here is "fair use" of copyrighted works published in a public site. My own gut feeling is that the wayback machine as a simple archiver is fair use, but a site mixing new content into the context of the original discussion (especially if for-profit) is not fair-use.
But given that AT&T and 75% of U.S. mobile carriers apparently feel content to expose the geolocation of every mobile phone on their network to anyone in the world with moderately deep pockets, and the U.S. government has been happy to allow the situation and consume the data itself while masking the scope of the insecurity from the public... well, pipedot's sleazy scraping is the least of my cyber concerns at the moment.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khedoros on Wednesday August 27 2014, @08:36PM
A re-write of Slashcode is a good idea. Grabbing another site's content to fill out your own is dishonest, unless you're explicitly clear where the content originated. If there was an "underlying network", that wouldn't be an issue, and you'd be correct in seeing the sites as just gateways to common content. As far as I can tell, that's not how things are working right now.
(Score: 1) by takyon on Tuesday August 26 2014, @08:43PM
Wow, they even have "Where do You Find Stories to Submit?"
The comments themselves link to a "username.soylent-news.org"
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @09:31PM
Perhaps someone should submit a story to soylent bringing this seedy behaviour to light. I would do myself, but it's my bed time.
In particular:
* Trademark infringement (is Soylent News a registered trademark yet?) or at least "passing off" [wikipedia.org], for registering and linking to soylent-news.org.
* Copyright infringement. Even Google only displays snippets of the content they scrape, and they got into trouble for just that. And further than simply duplicating the content, pipedot appear to be mis-attributing every article and comment to non-existent people at their own domain.
(Score: 1) by engblom on Wednesday August 27 2014, @05:15AM
Personally, I find it very nice if Soylent and Pipedot could share the content. This would allow one to pick the UI one likes better. That would make us much better than that green site where the choice will be forced in the future.
I find it a bit strange Pipedot did not talk with Soylent before doing this... That is the only bad thing. I hope this will be sorted out in a friendly way ending with both projects working together.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:29PM
http://xkcd.com/164/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @09:36PM
There is a hidden cost to a low minimum wage. Namely, if people cannot survive on what their paid then they will survive by some other means. Sometimes that means mooching off family members. Often it means taking government handouts. A minimum wage that is too low to allow people to survive amounts to a gift, via taxation, from the taxpayers to the companies that pay that low wage. I would think this would be an important talking point for supporters of a higher minimum wage, but I rarely see it mentioned.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday September 02 2014, @04:12AM
There's a basic wrong assumption being made by nearly everyone here -- which is that everyone making minimum wage has to survive entirely off that wage. The best stats I've seen (no doubt someone still awake can dig them up) say that only 8% of minwage workers have to live entirely off those earnings. The rest are secondary wage earners in a household where the primary wage earner makes a decent living. In other words, kids still supported by their parents, and spouses needing part-time work, are 92% of minwage earners.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday August 26 2014, @11:30PM
When this article came up the first time, I noted [soylentnews.org] that there was a difference in outcome between those states with automatic increases in minimum wage and those with impromptu increases in minimum wage. The former group appears to have notably better outcomes. It may just be statistical noise or due to a condition unrelated to minimum wage law (like the states with automated processes being more competent than the ones without).
(Score: 1) by tonyPick on Wednesday August 27 2014, @05:47AM
The Ceteris ParibusPrinciple (that the states are not the same - too many externalization); Labor Market Heterogeneity (the markets for labour are not the same); Proper Basis of Comparison (the state should be compared with themselves under both conditions); and Time (six months is not long enough to measure the impact)
Well, that sounds like a blinding flash of the obvious. Or to put it more correctly - This is why many (many, many) studies use various methods to account for these factors. So the TFA's "regardless of how many times and how completely they are proven to be harmful...", which then fails to go in to how everybody has missed these "proven to be harmful" studies of the minimum wage don't exactly put it on the smart side of the argument.
Everybody could save themselves some time and read
Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment? [cepr.net]
Maybe you could even skip that, and read the summary here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/14/why-economists-are-so-puzzled-by-the-minimum-wage/ [washingtonpost.com]
At which point a variety of people (lets be honest, from both sides of the argument) will, of course, complain *about* correcting factors and longer timescales in studies that they don't agree with, with a "You're fudging the numbers" response.
"If they don't correct complain, if they do then complain about the correction" seems a fairly common tactic here...
Frankly until you figure out a way to rewind reality and/or some other method of running a proper trial people will just argue over this and, to quote the studies:
The weight of that evidence points to little or no employment response to modest increases in the minimum wage
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 27 2014, @06:30AM
The weight of that evidence points to little or no employment response to modest increases in the minimum wage
Which is pretty explicitly in favor the pro-increase crowd because, for them, the economic benefits to society on average are only secondary. They are focused on improving the situation of the people who are paid the minimum wage. If the more fortunate are little less fortunate as a result, that's not a concern.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Wednesday August 27 2014, @09:21AM
It is wonderfully easy for one to sit in a comfy cubicle and argue against a livable minimum wage.
That is, until said cubicle gets outsourced to Calcutta and one has to live on it oneself.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday August 27 2014, @01:38PM
The data isn't matching with my precious theory of why the poor must suffer si I can get rich one day, therefore reality is wrong!
This is the most sincere pumpkin patch I have ever seen! I can't fail to see the Great Pumpkin this year!