from the consumers-with-more-money-to-spend dept.
NPR (formerly National Public Radio) reports:
By a 44-5 vote, Chicago's City Council set a minimum-wage target of $13 an hour, to be reached by the middle of 2019. The move comes after Illinois passed a nonbinding advisory last month that calls for the state to raise its minimum pay level to $10 by the start of next year.
The current minimum wage in Chicago and the rest of Illinois is $8.25. Under the ordinance, the city's minimum wage will rise to $10 by next July and go up in increments each summer thereafter.
[...]The bill states that "rising inflation has outpaced the growth in the minimum wage, leaving the true value of lllinois' current minimum wage of $8.25 per hour 32 percent below the 1968 level of $10.71 per hour (in 2013 dollars)."
It also says nearly a third of Chicago's workers, or some 410,000 people, currently make $13 an hour or less.
[...][In the 2014] midterm elections, voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota approved binding referendums that raise their states' wage floor above the federal minimum.
Media Matters for America notes that The Chicago Tribune's coverage tried to trot out the *job-killer* dead horse once again, to which the response was
According to a March 2014 report(PDF) prepared for the Seattle Income Inequality Advisory Committee titled "Local Minimum Wage laws: Impacts on Workers, Families, and Businesses", city-wide minimum wage increases in multiple locations--Albuquerque, NM; Santa Fe, NM; San Francisco, CA; and Washington, DC--produced "no discernible negative effects on employment" and no measurable job shift from metropolitan to suburban areas.
Related:
Seattle Approves $15 Minimum Wage
Mayor's Minimum Wage Veto Overridden by San Diego City Council
States That Raised Their Minimum Wages Are Experiencing Faster Job Growth
Related Stories
The NYT reports that in a unanimous vote, the Seattle City Council went where no big-city lawmakers have gone before, raising the local minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than double the federal minimum, and pushing Seattle to the forefront of urban efforts to address income inequality. "Even before the Great Recession a lot of us have started to have doubt and concern about the basic economic promise that underpins economic life in the United States," says Council Member Sally J. Clark. "Today Seattle answers that challenge." High-tech, fast-growing Seattle, population 634,535, is home to Amazon.com, Zillow, and Starbucks. It also has more than 100,000 workers whose incomes are insufficient to support their families, according to city figures and around 14% of Seattle's population lives below the poverty level. Some business owners have questioned the proposal saying that the city's booming economy is creating an illusion of permanence. "We're living in this bubble of Amazon, but that's not going to go on," says businessman Tom Douglas. "There's going to be some terrific price inflation."
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.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports
The San Diego City Council voted Monday to override Mayor Kevin Faulconer's veto of gradual increases in the local minimum wage to $11.50 an hour by 2017, starting the clock on a referendum campaign that business leaders have said they'll pursue.
If opponents can collect the 34,000 valid signatures required for a referendum by Sept. 17, the wage increases will be held in abeyance pending an election in June 2016.
If the signature drive falls short, the wage hikes will go into effect in January with an increase for local minimum wage workers from $9 an hour to $9.75.
Faulconer's veto, which he issued Aug. 8, was overridden by six members of the council, the two-thirds of the nine-member panel required by city law. All of those who voted to override are Democrats.
Of the council's three Republicans, two voted against the override and one — Lorie Zapf — was absent from the vote. The mayor is a Republican.
Bob Filner, a Progressive Democrat who previously represented a San Diego district in Congress, got himself elected mayor in 2012.
There would have been a lot less drama to this workers' rights issue if he hadn't had to resign after a groping scandal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @07:07PM
NPR (formerly National Public Radio)
They changed their name 4 years ago..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/07/AR2010070704578.html [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday December 08 2014, @07:14PM
Neoliberal [wikipedia.org] Public Relations [wikipedia.org]
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday December 08 2014, @07:30PM
This reads like a dig on liberals, but since you purposefully linked the wikipedia page, you have to know neoliberalism isn't liberalism. I think whatever joke you're trying to make is going to be lost in the lack of understanding most people have towards neoliberalism(many thinking it like the left equivalent of neoconservatism, a rebranding of fascism).
I'm only making it worse by trying to digest your joke, but it's just to vague to work.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday December 08 2014, @07:43PM
No. It's not a joke. Planet Money and all that crap. Neo-liberal post-colonial boosterism. NPR sounds like PR flacks from Wall Street, the State Department and Pentagon.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday December 08 2014, @07:50PM
Yeah, okay. I get that, at least.
"To discuss this issue here's an expert on the subject matter who works at a prominent university, and with me also a biased douchebag from the Cato institute to mindlessly disagree with everything he says"
Sometimes Cato Institute is filled in for by American Enterprise Institute of the American Chamber of Commerce.
But that still doesn't keep people from constantly accusing them of liberal bias.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday December 08 2014, @07:58PM
Smokescreen and pantomime opposition. ;-)
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Daiv on Monday December 08 2014, @08:23PM
Have you listened to Planet Money or just read or heard the name? The whole point is to educate people on how things work. Explain terms relative to what is going on. It's about a neutral as you can get when explaining fairly complex economical concepts to people who have no idea what anything means. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/127413729/podcast/ [npr.org]
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday December 08 2014, @09:20PM
Read a little. PM is financial industry propaganda. It still fundamentally blamed a "Giant Pool of Money" - some aimless, Adam Smith free market Shuggoth, for the 2008 meltdown.
http://shameproject.com/profile/adam-davidson/ [shameproject.com]
http://fair.org/blog/2012/12/18/fracking-too-much-of-a-good-thing-says-planet-money-guy/ [fair.org]
In fact, just look under "Planet Money" tag at the FAIR website: http://fair.org/blog/tag/planet-money/ [fair.org]
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by Daiv on Tuesday December 09 2014, @01:02AM
I read a lot, actually. I've also listened to nearly every episode of Planet Money from its inception. When I listened to Giant Pool of Money, I didn't hear what you apparently heard. I heard that banks and such were packaging mortgage bundles and selling them and in 2005/2006 outside investors decided that with the interest rates of mortgages, they could make some predictable, dependable returns. A whole wave of money came in, banks started packing riskier and riskier loans, often paying off ratings companies to rate them higher to sell easier. Banks issued loans with no verification, appraisers were appraising homes for astronomical increases and banks asked no questions. Ultimately in 2008, some investors called in their chips, others got cold feet and called in the same. Banks didn't have the funds to pay them out, locked up all credit, caused untold chaos to businesses of all sizes.
All from the episode you are referring to. Did you listen or just read a little?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:34AM
MUCH better.
Richard D. Wolff, PhD, Professor emeritus (Economics)
10MB every Friday
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/show/88660#yui-main [kpfa.org]
...or save some clicks and edit this URL (Dec 5, 2014)
archives.kpfa.org/data/20141205-Fri1000.mp3
(Only 2 weeks worth archived there)
A more extensive archive (Files are 2x larger).
http://www.rdwolff.com/economicdemocracy#main-content [rdwolff.com]
Available over the air and streamed via many Pacifica affiliates as well.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Monday December 08 2014, @08:14PM
Your American-centric viewpoint is showing. The French are not amused.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by linuxrocks123 on Monday December 08 2014, @07:55PM
States That Raised Their Minimum Wages Are Experiencing Faster Job Growth
Yes, and if I do a rain dance in India and not in Libya, India will get more rain, and that will prove what I did was a good idea.
Having a minimum wage is just bad economics. It's a price floor. Price floors do nothing if they are below equilibrium and mess things up if they're above equilibrium. It's been a fad among a minority of politically liberal economists like Krugman to try to handwave this away with a demand inelasticity argument, but, even if labor demand is inelastic in the short term, in the long term employers will find a way to use fewer employees. Maybe they'll work them harder. Maybe they'll force them to do unpaid overtime (illegal, but doable). Maybe they'll just shut down the restaurant during unpopular hours, or convert it to self service, or respond in any number of clever and hard-to-measure ways.
There are better ways to help the poor than through minimum wage. We should focus on those rather than on distorting the labor market.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Kromagv0 on Monday December 08 2014, @08:07PM
Or instead they might do what one business did here which was to add a minimum wage surcharge [twincities.com] when it last went up.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Monday December 08 2014, @08:21PM
These things mostly just help highlight how small the employees' chunk of your bill is. It's great marketing for the portion of your audience that are republicans, but it's crummy as an actual political message.
"Hey, this is costing you a penny on the dollar, so the people helping you aren't below the poverty line, how unfair is that?" just isn't a resounding message with most people.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:53AM
Not even that much.
A $10.10 minimum wage would add 1c to a $16 item [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [thinkprogress.org]
The amount of profits that are skimmed off by people who perform no labor is astounding.
The last items on that page mention companies that ALREADY pay better wages and are doing great.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 09 2014, @01:14AM
A $10.10 minimum wage would add 1c to a $16 item
I see that they're claiming only a $200 million annual increase in labor costs for Walmart across over 2 million employees. That's bullshit from the start since it's not only the lowest wages that will increase as a result. Further, if it's that little a change, then how about the people who care, actually pay for that increase themselves?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Monday December 08 2014, @08:28PM
The problem is you'd have to smoke all the rest of the .gov programs, otherwise its basically just a "rob the middle class, give to the rich" system.
What I'm getting at is walmart paying below a living wage doesn't mean the employees cease to live. The .gov just figures out how much extra they need for all kinds of programs, taxes me about 200% more than that expense, and keeps the substantial change. Whole herds of social workers and accountants graze like bison on my tax dollars so the walmart family can get richer at my expense. Let those cheap welfare queens pay for their own employees, instead of making me pay for their employee's expenses, then it might be fair.
One problem is the .gov is terribly inefficient and Americans are fairly stupid. The .gov needs like $3 from me to give a walmart employee $1 worth of food stamps. Stupid Americans think they're saving money because they pay 10 cents less for a pack of toilet paper, while they pay $3 extra in taxes because walmart won't pay a living wage.
An private organization that relies on the government to provide for their workers is inherently parasitical in nature and those welfare queens SHOULD go out of business. As a nation we're better off without them distorting the free market.
I'd much rather pay Target 10 cents more for a roll of TP while also paying $3 less in taxes because their employees don't have to take my tax money to buy their food. That is a much fairer, freer, more ethical way to do business.
(Score: 1) by RedGreen on Monday December 08 2014, @09:24PM
Shocking a comment that makes sense on this hot button, thoroughly abused by the right, issue to have mod points...
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @09:30PM
I have found places other than Target to purchase TP.
I also make sure the brand I buy doesn't have anything to do with Georgia-Pacific (Koch brothers).
I recently mentioned how Wal-Mart hands out forms/instructions to new hires to help them sign up for federal assistance programs.
I also mentioned that the workers at a single Wal-Mart location require over $900,000 each year in gov't assistance to get them out of poverty while having a job.
Bad ecomonics indeed.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 08 2014, @11:50PM
An private organization that relies on the government to provide for their workers is inherently parasitical in nature and those welfare queens SHOULD go out of business.
This is a typical consequence of a welfare society. There's a simple solution: end the welfare. No food, no parasites.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:16AM
No society.
Just a bunch of people killing people for food.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 09 2014, @07:20AM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:02AM
An private organization that relies on the government to provide for their workers is inherently parasitical in nature and those welfare queens SHOULD go out of business. As a nation we're better off without them distorting the free market.
And in these days, when every thing goes through computers nearly instantaneously, this situation would seem to be solvable in short order.
The extent to which the government has to subsidize an employee to bring them up to some standard, could be charged back to the employer at some rate designed and calculated to induce higher wages and full time employment vs permanent part time.
Especially when the entire staff is made up of part time employees given enough hours such that the employer does not have to pay various government mandated benefits.
However, your statement...
An private organization that relies on the government to provide for their workers is inherently parasitical in nature and those welfare queens SHOULD go out of business.
...just doesn't fit with the rest of your post.
It was the government that created these loop-holes and incentives to keep hours low and escape paying the full burden. If there wasn't a financial incentive to hire 6 half time employees to avoid paying 3 full time employees, companies wouldn't do it.
Walmart is simply doing what is economically the most expedient and financially responsible thing to do: Minimizing costs. They are doing exactly what the government enables them to do.
[I don't discount the possibility that walmart and friends lobbied the government strongly in favor of these provisions, or that congress didn't fill their own pockets in passing them.]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by BradTheGeek on Tuesday December 09 2014, @01:06AM
VLM, this is one of the mot insightful posts I have read in a while. While agree in theory, in practice the cynic in me thinks that the $3 saved would go to other herds of useless waste and not back to the taxpayer. Or, perhaps more likely, instead of causing a reduction in personal taxes, it would cause a reduction in corporate taxes instead. After all they are paying more and earning less.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday December 09 2014, @07:10AM
I notice here that a number of people are bashing Walmart because it's not willing to pay an imaginary and arbitrary, "living wage" to its employees. There is absolutely no consideration or understanding of the value such businesses provide to society or the difficulties that these businesses face. Nor is there understanding of the economic consequences of punishing these employers for bad social policy. There are numerous things wrong with this viewpoint and argument and it's worth it, I think, to go through these flaws of reasoning.
First, Walmart does a variety of things that help the poor. They provide a huge variety of goods at cheaper prices. That is, they directly reduce the cost of living and indirectly, by creating more efficient delivery of goods, reduce the demand for goods that the poor use, like fuel and land. They also employ over two million people directly. Finally, they help match developed world wants with developing world labor. Millions of people are being helped out of poverty throughout the world as a result of Walmart's efforts. When one advocates bankruptcy of such a useful business, they aren't just advocating the harming of a couple of million employees and several hundred million customers or the increased consumption of a variety of scarce resources, but also the vast supply chains that deliver these goods sold by Walmart and the billions of people whose economies benefit from this trade.
Second, these low-end jobs serve a very important societal purpose. They allow one to demonstrate that they can be a valuable and trustworthy worker and they enable the would-be worker to pick up useful work skills. That in turn allows one to command a higher wage than a person who has sat out of the labor market for years. It is painful to have to note that in the US, there is vast unemployment among youth and various highly urbanized ethnic groups (particularly, African Americans) and that minimum wage law has a big role in making that happen.
Third, there is this fantasy that merely paying more to workers makes for a stronger economy. What is routinely and roundly ignored is that the other side of the coin here is that workers are employed to do useful things. And unfortunately, quite often, there are a bunch of employees who just can't do that much in the way of useful things. Raising minimum wage doesn't help these employees become more valuable. It doesn't give businesses more money with which to pay these employees. Thus, it is folly to expect a higher minimum wage to result in no decrease in employment. Similarly, why expect that massive bankruptcy of the businesses that employ people near the minimum wage are somehow going to create more such businesses or help anyone's economy? I think one of the worst aspects of this debate is the Pollyanna assumption that something I want is automatically good for society or the economy. Sorry, that just isn't true.
I'd much rather pay Target 10 cents more for a roll of TP while also paying $3 less in taxes because their employees don't have to take my tax money to buy their food. That is a much fairer, freer, more ethical way to do business.
This last line is typical example of how such do gooding creates problems. If there were no social programs, then there would be no such claims of parasitism. It's only a problem because you insist on paying for such things (at a claimed rate which is grotesquely inefficient no less). Why is it that Walmart gets singled out for being a parasite rather than the grazing social workers and accountants? For example, by your admission, if we culled the herd by 50%, then we would save $1 of your money. That's the same as the savings from ten rolls of toilet paper. At least Walmart provides something of considerable value for that alleged parasitism (which kind of makes it not parasitism, you know?).
Further, this is a classic example of how a social program creates zero sum thinking. Walmart is collectively benefiting the entire world, but it's all about how they're milking social benefits for cheap labor. Would you rather that businesses just not employ low skill people than that they enjoy a slight benefit of a social program which was intended to provide such benefit?
All these social policies and the various problems they create are textbook examples of the principle of "unintended consequences" as well as callous disregard of the actual circumstances of the poor. They also promote zero sum thinking (such as the scapegoating of businesses) and magic thinking (such as "what I want has to be good for society" meme). Humanity has a vast capacity to rationalize anything.
Finally, this whole mess ignores the fundamental dynamic of labor today: namely, that the global labor market has over the past fifty years, expanded by something like a factor of five due to the access by the entire world's labor to global markets, which is called "globalization". This process won't halt until most labor is near parity with developed world labor. If you want your country to be on the high end of that eventual labor market, then you need to enact policies that make your workers more valuable and less costly. Minimum wage laws just don't help.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday December 08 2014, @08:33PM
I thought the point of raising the minimum wage was to drive the people looking for minimum wage jobs elsewhere. Particularly for something the size of a city, a raise in the minimum wage encourages businesses requiring those workers to relocate outside of the city borders. Additionally, the higher wage means better qualified applicants would be willing to perform the jobs remaining in the city.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @08:56PM
better qualified applicants would be willing to perform the jobs remaining in the city
Unless you do not even have the means to pay to move somewhere else.
Min wage laws long term hurts the very people it is trying to help.
http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/ [steshaw.org]
http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap19p1.html [steshaw.org]
There is only one cure for low wages. That is more jobs, not limiting jobs people are willing to offer. Jobs are a commodity like bubble gum and socks. Scarcity and demand drive the price market for jobs the same as socks. You do not pay 500 dollars for a stick of gum. Why? Because it is common. The same with jobs. The more people than there are jobs the less demand there is for them. Less demand means less pay. You can game the system short term (min caps) because short term the market is sort of inelastic. But long term that never works. Within 2-3 years business owners *will* adjust. Either by going out of business or hiring less people.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday December 08 2014, @08:58PM
encourages businesses requiring those workers to relocate outside of the city borders
Those businesses are welfare queens and the city has a net benefit if they leave.
Lets say it costs 2 units to live a minimal life. A honest .gov and honest business (LOL as if either exists) would pay 2 units. I pay 2 units total of product cost and tax. All is well with the world.
A welfare queen of a business will cry and moan that it can only pay 1 unit. Reality is they're just skimming off ever more profit. Now it costs 2 units to live and they only get 1 unit, and .gov isn't going to just let them die in the streets, however much of a neocon wet dream that would be. So .gov being incompetent skims off maybe 3 units of tax revenues and 1 unit of the 3 units goes to the employee, the rest to .gov salaries and waste. So the employee needs 2 units to live, and gets 1 unit from her welfare queen employer, 1 unit from gov. Meanwhile the welfare queen employer skimmed off an extra unit of profit. And the .gov social workers and program coordinators and tax collectors get paid 2 units worth of money in salaries. Sounds like everyone wins, right, oh whoops as one of the few remaining customers and few remaining taxpayers, I paid 5 units total of product cost and tax for only 2 units worth of product. What a horrible deal.
For the sake of argument, say it costs $13/hr to live in Chicago. Now you decide if you life big government or not. If you're a big government sympathizer type, you'll want the minimum wage to go back to $3/hr and let the .gov collect and redistribute wealth from the remaining taxpayers at the rate of almost $10/hr. It'll probably only cost them like $30/hr. That means as a taxpayer and a consumer you'll be paying $33/hr to keep that store clerk alive. If you believe in small government, you'll want the minimum wage to be about $13/hr so the employees don't rely on .gov anymore. That means as a taxpayer and a consumer you'll be paying a mere $13 to keep that store clerk alive.
Seems like a no-brainer decision, unless you're a big government supporter aka socialist, you'll support a higher minimum wage like a real free market capitalist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @08:44PM
Would you like a time machine so you could go try out your ideas working for a coal mine? Earn less than they charge for room and board, become an indentured servant through the power of economics! Without minimum wage we'd have working conditions lime China, but maybe you think that's fine?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @11:30PM
You know, I may live in a different country (New Zealand) but every single thing you list as "If you have a minimum wage this happens..." absolutely occurs with my employer.
They pay us minimum wage, and steal a chunk of it back.
We work at least 45 minutes for free every week, that's when my employer doesn't choose to steal my wages to cover his budget. Some of us have worked more than 10 hours a week unpaid overtime.
They refuse to pay for public holidays, which we are entitled to be paid for, and won't pay for more than 40 hours a week regardless of how much work they give you.
All of this is in violation of the law. There is a catch, though: approximately a third of our regular staff are unpaid (volunteer) staff.
But one assumption that you're making is that if we had no minimum wage all would be well, and people would be paid what they're worth. This is wrong.
I don't know what it's like in America, but in New Zealand if we're on unemployment we are contractually obligated to accept any job offered to us, no matter what the pay rate, no matter what the conditions.
If we had no minimum wage, my employer - and the bulk of employers in my city, Dunedin - would offer just a couple of bucks an hour. I know this, because I've been (indirectly) privy to senior management meetings where they were plotting the best ways to rip off employees.
Hell, they hired one of our current staff members because he's already independently wealthy so he wouldn't complain if they demanded overtime without pay.
My previous employer demanded 50 hours a week, minimum, but only paid me for 40 (and it was above minimum wage).
Minimum wage is a safety net to stop the sociopaths running businesses from paying less than it costs to live, transferring the remainder of the costs to the state unemployment benefit.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday December 08 2014, @11:44PM
So, is there no place to drop an anonymous tip to get the place investigated for such illegal practices?
Why even have a law on the books if it has no teeth?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:09AM
Just sayin'...
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:09AM
By all means, best policy is to keep them starving untill they start roasting rich people on a spit in the park!
I keep hearing all about the horrors of a raised minimum wage complete with doom and gloom forecasts and yet everywhere that does it, life goes on or improves. It seems reality disagrees with your political ideology.
Perhaps you enjoy subsidizing the payrolls of some of the wealthiest corporations in America with your tax dollars, but I don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09 2014, @06:31AM
Walmart, Fast Food, and day care are run by minimum wage job employees. Raising their prices will hurt the middle class.
(Score: 1) by terryk30 on Tuesday December 09 2014, @11:38AM
Up front I don't know enough about economics, but having said that I'd still like to know why a minimum wage couldn't be regarded as a cost like that of a raw material - e.g. since all restaurants need to pay more or less a certain nonzero amount for ground beef or all manufacturers a nonzero amount for electricity, they just shrug and pay the invoice along with all the others. Although from time to time they may adjust their efficient use of that resource and/or negotiate a slightly better price, they know that there's a level below which it just can't go - but they don't get indignant about it, they just get on with things.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday December 10 2014, @05:49PM
..as opposed to the current situation, where most employers are perfectly happy to hire people to sit around all day doing nothing? Even if the minimum wage was $1/hr, they'd still be trying to minimize their workforce. That's what businesses do. If they're not reducing costs, they're going bankrupt. Or getting bailed out....
I do agree though that raising the minimum wage is not the ideal solution. The problem is unemployment -- as long as there's a significant number of people unemployed, businesses will always be able to find someone willing to work for less. We can directly limit how low their wages can get with a minimum wage, but it seems like a better and more fair approach would be to simply try to shrink the available labor supply, altering the supply/demand equation to give more power to labor. Either remove people from the job market and let them do something else (lower the retirement age; relax restrictions on social security benefits; increase funding to higher education) or remove them by hiring them for some other purpose (like fixing our public infrastructure).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @08:13PM
SHITTER WAS FULL!
(Score: 2) by Zyx Abacab on Monday December 08 2014, @09:04PM
Seriously, Soylent, can we please do something about posts like these? There are lots of insightful, relevant threads where no post has a score above 2, and this post alone is more visible than all of them!
I really appreciate SoylentNews' mission, but the fact that graffiti is more apparent than real discussion is appalling, and does nothing to draw people here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @10:35PM
Don't re-use the Subject line of the poster to whom you object.
Now, what are you suggesting? Censorship?
As demonstrated by the Larry Flynt case, [wikipedia.org] to have free speech, you sometimes have to tolerate the ideas of people you find objectionable.
The moderation system works, but if you're expecting instantaneous results, you are going to be eternally disappointed.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 10 2014, @07:25PM
SHITTER WAS FULL!
Fuck your censorship
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @08:21PM
I got paid $4.25 an hour in 1995/1996 because that was minimum wage. It was a fast-foot job and the pay matched the skill level of the work. Comparatively, my other big expense at the time, gasoline, was right around $1.00 a gallon. Roughly 15 minutes of work paid for a gallon of gas. Today, minimum wage in my state is $8.15. Gasoline is roughly $3.00 a gallon. Relative to each other, you get a whole lot less on minimum wage these days.
I'm not saying to tie the minimum wage to gasoline, that's absurd. Also as a retail employee for 16 years and management for the last 10 of it, I am fully aware there are plenty of jobs that middle school drop-outs could do. Those jobs should earn no more than minimum wage to start out.
Working a minimum wage job should motivate people to do something to earn more, not think they can life forever at that pay, unless they've got some extremely low expectations of life. However, minimum wage doesn't have to be so absurdly low relative to the prices of everything else. Find a decent amount and then peg it to the rate of inflation or something similar, and review it every 4-5 years. People trying to suppress minimum wage are so far removed from knowing what that life is like, it's crazy. They're arguing from pure speculation and theory, while receiving 4+% annual raises plus their bonuses.
Up until a couple years ago, I strongly believed that if we just got rid of minimum wage and people just started calling out companies that pay nothing over social media, the backlash would keep companies in line. Now, I know there would be too many horrible companies, and there would be too much noise. We have had a minimum wage since 1938 and I dare say that the US benefited greatly from it. The scare-mongering needs to stop and people need to see that there are no job-losses or drops in employment after increases.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 08 2014, @08:36PM
unless they've got some extremely low expectations of life
That assumes anyone's expectations have anything to do with their local economy. Or their local economy is somehow bound to reflect their expectations. Or for that matter, the local economy has anything to do with their actual ability. Sure... go ahead, get that early childhood education degree... only half of you are getting teaching jobs, the other half get to waitress for minimum wage. Median student might not be some kind of hero, but they will be working for minimum wage as a waitress/bartender, at least in that sector. Get that petroleum engineer degree in 1985 in Texas, or Aerospace Engineering in the 70s, hope you like driving taxi.
"Oh well, turn them into Soylent Green" seems kinda harsh.
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:27AM
get that early childhood education degree.. only half of you are getting teaching jobs
I would think that would be a fairly safe and sensible degree to get, in a country where the general situation is that both parents need to work to support the family. **Somebody** has to raise the kids.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 09 2014, @01:16AM
Or for that matter, the local economy has anything to do with their actual ability. Sure... go ahead, get that early childhood education degree... only half of you are getting teaching jobs, the other half get to waitress for minimum wage.
Sadly, that is one degree that is very disconnected from ability.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday December 10 2014, @06:15PM
This assumes a practically infinite number of skilled jobs are available. Not everyone can be a theoretical physicist or software developer, and SOMEONE has to flip those burgers.
There are more college grads than ever working minimum wage jobs today. You expect me to believe that half a million people just spontaneously decided that they didn't feel like doing anything with their sixteen+ years of education?
Ideally we should be looking to reduce the labor supply by 10-20% so that the problem fixes itself through supply and demand. I think moving to a 4 day work week would be just about perfect. But either way we've gotta do SOMETHING to raise wages. Because why the hell am I paying the wage of some Walmart workers, when I haven't set foot inside a Walmart in nearly a decade? The way it is now, even if you go out of your way to only shop at businesses that pay a fair living wage, you're still paying thousands of dollars in welfare to corporations that won't. We're forced at gunpoint to pad their profit margins. Profits that they then spend to buy our politicians and take away more of our rights...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @08:47PM
1. Unlike a lot of people, I agree that a $10.10 minimum wage today makes sense.
2. Assume we start from that. Now estimating annual inflation at either 2 percent (left column) or 2.5 percent, we arrive at the following schedules:
2014 10.10 10.10
2015 10.30 10.35
2016 10.51 10.61
2017 10.72 10.88
2018 10.93 11.15
2019 11.15 11.43
2020 11.37 11.71
So, somewhere between $11.15 and $11.43 for 2019 seems reasonable to me.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @09:35PM
If wages had kept up with inflation, the minimum wage would be over $22 today.
If wages had kept up with productivity, the minimum wage would be over $23 today.
All workers in Denmark make over $20/hr.
Neoliberalism, trade deals, killing off tariffs, and exporting manufacturing jobs have made the USA a third-world country--with tiny pockets of extreme wealth.
Unemployment is currently almost 24 percent (if you don't cook the numbers the way the gov't does).
Rick Perry likes to brag about how Texas is gaining jobs.
What he doesn't say is that they're mostly poverty-wage jobs.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Fauxlosopher on Monday December 08 2014, @10:00PM
Where and how did this come to be? What is inflation? What causes inflation? Why aren't wages keeping up with inflation?
Do understand that I am not suggesting that your claims are false; I am asking about what you see as the cause for the problem, as without knowing the cause, a working solution is unlikely to be found.
While inflation, which I define as an increase in fungible monetary units (both credits as paper and positive bank balances AND debts as mortgages and credit card balances), is actually a vital tool to allow an economy to expand in proper proportion with population growth, when abused it can destroy a nation's economy... or a world's.
In short, every $100 the US government (Federal Reserve, what-have-you) creates out of thin air, every $100 bill a North Korean counterfeit press turns out, and every unbacked emission of $100 worth of credit that a bank issues all have the exact same impact on each and every $1 that you have. Inflation (in all of its forms) in excess of population growth is theft, an insidious form of theft that has managed to steal straight though bank vault walls and from under mattresses without requiring the thief to bother with laying his physical hands on your property. Done at ~2-4% a year over the course of a hundred years, we are now feeling the powerful negative effects of compounding theft.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @11:36PM
Why aren't wages keeping up with inflation?
In a word: Capitalism.
In the Cold War days, there was a joke:
Under Capitalism, man exploits man; under Communism, it is the inverse.
This demonstrates a misunderstanding of what Communism actually is.
It also shows that anyone can call anything by any name (Totalitarianism and State Capitalism with a fraudulent veneer).
Now, the part about Capitalism was right on the money.
French economist Thomas Piketty researched the previous 250 years of Capitalism and recently published his 696-page tome. [wikipedia.org]
He concluded that Capitalism results in ever-increasing concentrations of wealth which then translate to political power.
This is an unstable system and periodically the undamped system tears itself apart (French Revolution, numerous financial panics and depressions).
Economics professor Richard Wolff thinks Piketty identified the cause correctly (Capitalism) but thinks he got the solution all wrong (wealth tax). [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [redfortyeight.com]
(FDR's 94 percent billionaires tax worked for a while--until the New Deal was disassembled piece by piece by the folks with enough wealth to buy off the political system.)
The correct permanent solution, however, is to disassemble the unstable system and replace it with something more stable.
On a small-ish scale, the Mondragon worker-owned cooperative in the north of Spain (currently ~6000 workers) has had this figured out since 1956.
In northern Italy there are numerous worker-owned cooperatives that are also successful.
On a larger scale, northern Europe has figured out how to do this via a form of Socialism.
Venezuela and Ecuador are moving in a similar direction.
A guy in a tech forum I frequent has in his sig:
It takes a lot of money to create poverty.
Truer words were never spoken.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday December 08 2014, @11:37PM
Modded you interesting, but not informative.
Inflation is not necessarily linked to the increase in the money supply as you seem to suggest.
That a bank loans out your deposits (Your $1000 deposit remains in your account, while $800 loan appears in another client's account), does not mean that inflation is going up or down. The convenience of the increase in money supply is paid for (over time) by the borrowers. It imposes no penalty on the economy as a whole.
Just because a farmer borrows money for a new tractor doesn't mean you will pay more a pound of potatoes. The farmer can't raise his prices above the prevailing price and still expect to sell them.
Government debt is a whole different matter, and when the government simply prints more money used to buy goods and services it is still dramatically different than when a government borrows money to buy goods and services.
The problem comes in when the government retires debt by printing money.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Fauxlosopher on Monday December 08 2014, @09:10PM
From http://viral.buzz/seattles-15-minimum-wage-crash-for-many-their-new-wage-is-zero/ [viral.buzz]
While it seems counter-intuitive for those like myself who have struggled to live while working at a minimum-wage job, raising the cost of labor raises the price of goods and services - and the increased labor costs can mean that jobs that were possible to provide at (say) $10/hr are not possible to provide at $15/hr. Absent government largess (sourced from money taken out of productive persons' pockets), businesses succeed when they make a profit, and fail when they are not making a profit. A failed business also provides only $0 wages.
Rather than focus on the minimum wage as a mechanism to force an economic fix that cannot mathematically work, perhaps we should start by looking at why the purchasing power of the US dollar has almost completely evaporated over the last generation, and continues to degenerate. (Consider the melt value of the silver in a 90% silver 1964 half-dollar when compared to its face value of fifty cents. Then consider this problem only gets worse the farther back in time you move the timeline's start.)
The barriers for bootstrapping one's own self [mindfully.org] are also continually increasing. I was fortunate enough with my last job to obtain a six-figure salary in a field still mostly untouched by heavy-handed government restrictions, yet Texas wants people who might want to follow the path I took to add to the burden their onerous restriction of becoming a licensed Private Investigator [techrepublic.com].
There are many reasons many people are suffering economically; however, a low minimum wage is far removed from the root of the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:07AM
You're saying that these businesses had an excess of people on the payroll and they could magically be excised without any effect on the business?
I'm calling bullshit.
In these companies, there are now tasks left undone and the level of service to customers has gone down.
IOW, the slash-and-burn types are now less competitive.
(Their competitors had to deal with the very same change.)
N.B. Costco is in the same business as Wal-Mart but, unlike Wally World, doesn't pay poverty wages.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday December 09 2014, @01:05AM
I said no such thing. Both examples I quoted had definite impacts on the related business: cutting both amenities and business hours of operation; moving business operations out of the area.
I don't believe I can respond properly unless you restate your premise after correcting the error.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09 2014, @01:57AM
You didn't mention how the COMMUNITY was affected.
I'm guessing they barely noticed the difference.
I'm going to assume that a competitor (who did not slash and burn) got all the business that the incompetent business owners lost.
I'd bet those competitors were -already- getting the bulk of the business.
They are now able to expand and hire the former employees of the businesses that couldn't keep up.
(This assumes, of course, that those people are worth having.)
Sounds to me like the market at work.
Additionally, I have a post on this page that mentions that moving from a sub-$8 wage to a $10.10 wage would add 1c to a $16 item at Wally World.
I also mentioned here that Costco competes with the company known for worker abuse and Costco doesn't pay poverty wages.
Success is not guaranteed and change is inevitable.
You've simply pointed to companies whose business models failed.
Rigid, inflexible, poor adaptability--you pick the term.
This stuff happens all the time and for all kinds of reasons.
...and, as mentioned in the summary, the pros have said "no discernible negative effects".
Again, you are pointing at outliers.
...meanwhile, workers who have more money spend it into the community, increasing the Multiplier Effect.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by srobert on Monday December 08 2014, @10:54PM
All the college boys here, who fancy that they understand how the economy works because the took Econ 101, need to read a copy of the Economics Anti-Textbook. The Invisible Hand isn't working the way we were told it would.