I agree that Minimum wage in an actual working job (IE: Anything that qualifies for minimum wage atm) should allow one person, under normal circumstances, to afford a personal living space (small apartment/flat nearby) within a reasonable commute of their job, food, and whatever necessary benefits that aren't provided by their job (If suburban/rural, this would likely include car payments/auto insurance).
However meeting these requirements as minimum wage varies depending on what's necessary to perform the job, and nature and location of the job being worked, one minimum wage does not fit all scenarios, a minimum wage meeting those requirements for working in the city of LA would be relatively luxurious in areas with a much lower relative cost of living, though more likely it would damage job growth in those regions where it's not viable to employ people for that wage.
However a trend I've been noticing taking hold is the increase in employers using a loophole to employ people as 'Independent Contractors' wherever they can get away with it as it's much financially much easier to do this with rather low, if any, liability for hiring the employee. This practice is risky for most places but some businesses are able to get by more easily by accommodating their business to hire people as contractors instead of as employees, this is however more complicated for the employees and has less benefits than they would get as an employee. Though this is less relevant to the conversation it's a hint that if you make it too difficult to hire employees without financially tanking yourself, alternatives will be used, either out of necessity or profit, this will not likely be to the benefit of the employees.
Basically what I'm saying is that I agree with the notion that most employees should be paid enough to live rather comfortably if they work around 40 hours a week steadily, but that if you still want this wage to rise that money needs to routed from somewhere else (national healthcare payed for via Tax instead of employer would be a good start), because what we're doing right now is incredibly suffocating to people who actually do want to employ people in the states. Something that's important to realize is that the needs and service requirements of people living within the states is not going to decrease, rather it will continue to increase regardless someone's ability to employee people here, and with the trend we have going we'll end up with a huge percentage of people who are unable to find work because no one is willing to take the risk of hiring them, and everyone who does manage to find employment will be expected to take on the burden of both providing for them through their work, and paying for the work they are providing them. The only way this could work is if the government took either an ever increasing amount of control over those jobs, or ever increasing taxes, or both. I don't like the idea of going that route.
I think it'd be interesting to see what would happen if changes were made to allow minimum wage to be made on a county-by-county basis, rather than state or federal.
minimum wage scaling to living costs is more of my personal opinion and i get that a lot of people will disagree and that it's likely to never happen. It'd be ideal if thats what the minimum wage could offer but it just won't. The argument that wages should be scaling with inflation and productivity still stands though.
If it could be done correctly I'd agree with it but quite frankly I don't trust the accuracy of something like the CoLI over time; and I don't want it to become a political tool to use policy changes directed at the cost of living calculation to force through minimum wage changes indirectly.
edit: on a state by state basis at most, not federally.
[QUOTE=cdr248;51506731]god now i'm honestly just fucking livid
I am going to have to be a fully independent adult very soon and I am very worried about the world that I'll have to navigate when that happens. Regardless of how much Trump does or doesn't do during his presidency doesn't matter as much considering the current attitudes of americans are already fucked six ways from sunday. I remember conservatives decrying the way Obama handled the country's debt and yeah I get it. The way the debt was handled was stupid, shortsighted, and overly political. However, now those folks are voting for and enthusiastically supporting a candidate that [I]practically promises[/I] to balloon the debt far more than Obama could have. YOU LITERALLY CANNOT FUCKING REDUCE TAXES AND CLOSE THE DEBT AT THE SAME TIME. I like to defend government spending and the debt because I know it can work very well under careful hands. Unfortunately the Obama administration didn't handle shit too well, but now all I see is that the debt is not only being handed down to worse hands, but [I]literally the worst[/I] hands. It's an avoidable situation that I can only predict is going to become a big, fat, and fucking tangible problem. I can only wish that Trump has a handwritten IO-fucking-U from the big JC himself.[/QUOTE]
Try not to worry about it too much. Worst case scenario, Trump causes society to collapse and we all go back to hurling spears at deer for a living, which is much simpler than dealing with this bullshit.
[QUOTE=Paramud;51508875]Try not to worry about it too much. Worst case scenario, Trump causes society to collapse and we all go back to hurling spears at deer for a living, which is much simpler than dealing with this bullshit.[/QUOTE]
yeah don't worry about all the people who can't do that
[QUOTE=elowin;51509174]yeah don't worry about all the people who can't do that[/QUOTE]
Anarcho-primitivist communism when?
[QUOTE=elowin;51509174]yeah don't worry about all the people who can't do that[/QUOTE]
do you know what a joke is
Is there anything that could be done to deflate the economy?
[QUOTE=Covalent;51505782]Just give every 90k a year
I don't see the big deal it's not like money doesn't just grow on trees? it's made out of paper!![/QUOTE]
I'm sorry but money is made of metal, cotton and various plastics.
[QUOTE=dimitrik129;51511390]Is there anything that could be done to deflate the economy?[/QUOTE]
yes but no one wants to do it. We might want to start toning things down, but since 2008, economic theory has kind of been turned on it's head and people aren't really sure what to do right now. Right now interest rates are practically 0, normally interest rates would be much, much, higher because our economy is growing so fast, but since the rules of the game have changed no one is willing to bring them up any higher. This is kind of a problem though because in the case of a recession there isn't much the Fed do to stimulate the economy in terms of monetary policy. Interest rates can go negative but that's not really a great thing to do. Interest rates are probably going to stay low because the current consensus is that we might as well just grow as much as we can before the next recession hits.
and again, inflation is not really a dire problem for the economy right now. Inflationary periods (depending on what they're caused by) are typically easier to fix than recessionary periods. The big problem is the wealth inequality is kind of fucking with our consumer spending and the velocity of our money.
[QUOTE=cdr248;51513031]yes but no one wants to do it. We might want to start toning things down, but since 2008, economic theory has kind of been turned on it's head and people aren't really sure what to do right now. Right now interest rates are practically 0, normally interest rates would be much, much, higher because our economy is growing so fast, but since the rules of the game have changed no one is willing to bring them up any higher. This is kind of a problem though because in the case of a recession there isn't much the Fed do to stimulate the economy in terms of monetary policy. Interest rates can go negative but that's not really a great thing to do. Interest rates are probably going to stay low because the current consensus is that we might as well just grow as much as we can before the next recession hits.
and again, inflation is not really a dire problem for the economy right now. Inflationary periods (depending on what they're caused by) are typically easier to fix than recessionary periods. The big problem is the wealth inequality is kind of fucking with our consumer spending and the velocity of our money.[/QUOTE]
And Wealth inequality is gonna be impossible to solve without using force in one way or another, because it seems like those who made money (especially) on others misfortune during the recession isn't gonna suddenly invest it in a positive way.
Yeah, like, um... totally the prices wouldn't go up if the cost of employees would raise significantly.
[QUOTE=Trebgarta;51513898]Cost of minimum wage employees dont account for 100% of a company's expenses, resulting in a net benefit for minimum-wage folks while a deterioation for anyone better off. (Assuming you mean that company would increase costs accordingly, to the point of previous profit)[/QUOTE]
You don't think minimum wage has any impact on non-minimum wage jobs? Or that someone who's work isn't worth the new minimum wage will be fired?
[QUOTE=Silly Sil;51513885]Yeah, like, um... totally the prices wouldn't go up if the cost of employees would raise significantly.[/QUOTE]
Good thing significantly was not used in this 10 second clip
[QUOTE=Silly Sil;51514024]You don't think minimum wage has any impact on non-minimum wage jobs? Or that someone who's work isn't worth the new minimum wage will be fired?[/QUOTE]
Many of the jobs in today's labor market are being taken up by people who work more than 1 job. The fact that the minimum wage is not a living wage guarantees this. I personally work with 2 people who work a second job that they need in order to feed themselves. Jobs may decrease but the need for second and third jobs will as well meaning that the loss in jobs will be mitigated somewhat. As for non minimum wage jobs, if an employee was valuable enough to ensure that they have an above minimum wage salary they are in a position that gives them enough power to allow them to negotiate a higher wage after the increase.
[QUOTE=Silly Sil;51513885]Yeah, like, um... totally the prices wouldn't go up if the cost of employees would raise significantly.[/QUOTE]
its a little more complicated than that and given the right circumstances a raise in wages could be mutually beneficial
technically businesses could gain more profit than they do currently if CEOs took a pay cut and raised wages without raising prices
[QUOTE=KillRay;51514072]Good thing significantly was not used in this 10 second clip[/QUOTE]
Good thing it's proportional.
[QUOTE=doomkiwi;51514156]Many of the jobs in today's labor market are being taken up by people who work more than 1 job. The fact that the minimum wage is not a living wage guarantees this. I personally work with 2 people who work a second job that they need in order to feed themselves. Jobs may decrease but the need for second and third jobs will as well meaning that the loss in jobs will be mitigated somewhat. As for non minimum wage jobs, if an employee was valuable enough to ensure that they have an above minimum wage salary they are in a position that gives them enough power to allow them to negotiate a higher wage after the increase.[/QUOTE]
And there's lots of people who are studying and working under-livable wage job. When you make it so minimum wage = livable wage all jobs that aren't that profitable to the employer are gone. You can dance around this as much as you want and it will not change.
Also you are not changing the fact that the job market is going to adjust to the new minimum wage. If doing 5 more years of education is going to give you 200 more dollars a month than your starting, no-education no-experience job, why would anyone bother? Employees who want educated workers will have to offer more to get those employees. It's a good thing you say? Guess where from they will take the money to pay those higher salaries, that's right, increase in product prices. All you're doing is causing inflation.
[QUOTE=cdr248;51514230]its a little more complicated than that and given the right circumstances a raise in wages could be mutually beneficial
technically businesses could gain more profit than they do currently if CEOs took a pay cut and raised wages without raising prices[/QUOTE]
Well yeah the more variables you change the more complicated it gets. You just added cutting CEOs salary. It's not as simple as "raise wages and everything is going to be great".
My point there was that theoretically its possible for some businesses to [I]not [/I]experience a large loss in profits if the raised wages for its workers without having to downsize. Of course raising wages aint gonna fix everything but it's still a big problem for our economy and the reason why increasing wages is such a big problem now is because we haven't been doing a good job of improving equity and fair wages for the past couple of decades
change will have to come slow but letting the problem fester is a horrible idea, the longer we sit on this the madder people will get and the harder it will be for it to change
[QUOTE=Silly Sil;51514556]Good thing it's proportional.
And there's lots of people who are studying and working under-livable wage job. When you make it so minimum wage = livable wage all jobs that aren't that profitable to the employer are gone. You can dance around this as much as you want and it will not change.
Also you are not changing the fact that the job market is going to adjust to the new minimum wage. If doing 5 more years of education is going to give you 200 more dollars a month than your starting, no-education no-experience job, why would anyone bother? Employees who want educated workers will have to offer more to get those employees. It's a good thing you say? Guess where from they will take the money to pay those higher salaries, that's right, increase in product prices. All you're doing is causing inflation.
Well yeah the more variables you change the more complicated it gets. You just added cutting CEOs salary. It's not as simple as "raise wages and everything is going to be great".[/QUOTE]
so do we just let the living wages and minimum wages fall and stay stagnant as much of the world has
because that's not fucking helping
[QUOTE=Silly Sil;51514556]Good thing it's proportional.
And there's lots of people who are studying and working under-livable wage job. When you make it so minimum wage = livable wage all jobs that aren't that profitable to the employer are gone. You can dance around this as much as you want and it will not change.
Also you are not changing the fact that the job market is going to adjust to the new minimum wage. If doing 5 more years of education is going to give you 200 more dollars a month than your starting, no-education no-experience job, why would anyone bother? Employees who want educated workers will have to offer more to get those employees. It's a good thing you say? Guess where from they will take the money to pay those higher salaries, that's right, increase in product prices. All you're doing is causing inflation.
Well yeah the more variables you change the more complicated it gets. You just added cutting CEOs salary. It's not as simple as "raise wages and everything is going to be great".[/QUOTE]
No one is really saying that it is.
Also those are a ton of assertions you're giving pulled right out of your ass. If you want to make a case against raising the minimum wage past our current value, put forth some US-Relevant evidence.
[QUOTE=Silly Sil;51514556]Also you are not changing the fact that the job market is going to adjust to the new minimum wage. If doing 5 more years of education is going to give you 200 more dollars a month than your starting, no-education no-experience job, why would anyone bother? Employees who want educated workers will have to offer more to get those employees. It's a good thing you say? Guess where from they will take the money to pay those higher salaries, that's right, increase in product prices. All you're doing is causing inflation.[/QUOTE]
Bear with me here because I'm not exactly an expert on economics, but at least from how I understand it that's not quite what inflation is?
How I understand it, inflation is the "increase" in prices that comes from the value of the currency dropping, not from the actual cost of production increasing. The actual value of the product does not increase, rather the value of the currency decreases. There's a lot of different factors to this but the primary one is the injection of more money into the system, which is a necessity primarily because of money being removed from circulation.
What you're describing is a price increase because of an actual increase in the cost of production, which is not the same. And yes, you are absolutely correct, there will be an increase in the cost of production, that much is a given. But it wouldn't be 1:1 with the increase in minimum wage, because wages do not make up the entirety of a company's expenses. So let's say, hypothetically you increase the minimum wage by 10%, and this increases a company's expenses by 5%. They then increase the prices of their products by 5%... but the minimum wage worker still has a 5% increase in their actual purchasing power.
As you say, everyone else will obviously also see their wages increasing. Again, I don't believe this would be on a 1:1 basis with the increase in minimum wage, I'd think the proportion would be decreasing with the higher their current wages are. So as an example, in my hypothetical scenario those close to minimum wage might see their actual purchasing power increasing a fair amount as well, maybe around 3-5%. More well paid workers their increased wages would give them roughly the same purchasing power they had before with maybe a small increase, while the very highest paid would have a decrease in their actual purchasing power as they can't increase their wages enough to keep up. In other words, then theoretically...
[QUOTE=Silly Sil;51514556]Well yeah the more variables you change the more complicated it gets. You just added cutting CEOs salary. It's not as simple as "raise wages and everything is going to be great".[/QUOTE]
...Increasing the minimum wage would effectively give CEOs a small pay cut, right?
I don't think you guys grasp how minimum wage increases (across the entire board) Actually affect product prices.
You're not just paying the cashier an extra 5%, you're paying everyone involved with getting that product onto the shelf and out of the store more, and for every service that they rely on to do so will adjust in price to accommodate the new cost of labor. It probably takes a good while for the price adjustments to come into full effect but I feel like you're underestimating it.
People like to point to places like seattle and go "See it worked there, it works!" but they aren't accounting for the fact that the actual increases in wage in Seattle is a very small portion of the people who didn't already make above the new minimum wage, and it's primarily only for the people who are working at Point of Sale, which is a very narrow portion of the total labor needed to get that product on shelves and sold. They're still relying on the people who work for less than Seattle's minimum wage to fabricate/produce, and transport those products, which consist of a larger portion of the total labor cost, and an increase in minimum wage in Seattle doesn't affect them.
You also have to account for things like the services that you rely on increasing in price to compensate, a good example being land owners, if suddenly all the services they use to provide adequate housing increase in price, they'll have to adjust rent to compensate, along with increasing it to account for the slight increase they need to maintain their own spending power.
Minimum wage is ultimately proportional, the problem isn't the exact wage, it's how little of the cost of employing someone actually goes to that employee in usable cash, employers are paying way more per employee than people seem to realize. Employing people is a bad investment with our current policy, that's what you want to change for this to turn around.
[url]http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/26/smallbusiness/employee_costs/[/url]
[url]http://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/hr-laws-and-regulation/the-true-cost-of-paying-an-employee/[/url]
[url]http://web.mit.edu/e-club/hadzima/how-much-does-an-employee-cost.html[/url]
Honestly I think minimum wage is a bit of a red herring. In many ways it's an admirable step to strive for, but as many in this thread have articulated, it's also a complicated issue that isn't as straightforward as it might sound at first.
The reason it's a red herring, however, is that lack of a livable wage is symptomatic of a system which hasn't been designed around the idea of achieving economic justice and the provision of the needs of all people. Rather, our system is orchestrated by different logics. Things such as productivity, capital accumulation have more salience than the elimination of wealth and income inequality for instance. Until we develop the capacity as a society to recognize the underlying tenets of our social and economic institutions which perpetuate the conditions which lead to the necessity of working three jobs just to survive, no amount of wage manipulation will solve our problems. Minimum wage may be one step towards that, but we need a thoroughly more in-depth approach as a society towards these problems which (like the 2008 crisis and the one that is likely coming next) threaten to destabilize our global society and plunge us into conflicts worse than any yet experienced.
[QUOTE=soulharvester;51515993]I don't think you guys grasp how minimum wage increases (across the entire board) Actually affect product prices.
You're not just paying the cashier an extra 5%, you're paying everyone involved with getting that product onto the shelf and out of the store more, and for every service that they rely on to do so will adjust in price to accommodate the new cost of labor. It probably takes a good while for the price adjustments to come into full effect but I feel like you're underestimating it.
People like to point to places like seattle and go "See it worked there, it works!" but they aren't accounting for the fact that the actual increases in wage in Seattle is a very small portion of the people who didn't already make above the new minimum wage, and it's primarily only for the people who are working at Point of Sale, which is a very narrow portion of the total labor needed to get that product on shelves and sold. They're still relying on the people who work for less than Seattle's minimum wage to fabricate/produce, and transport those products, which consist of a larger portion of the total labor cost, and an increase in minimum wage in Seattle doesn't affect them.
You also have to account for things like the services that you rely on increasing in price to compensate, a good example being land owners, if suddenly all the services they use to provide adequate housing increase in price, they'll have to adjust rent to compensate, along with increasing it to account for the slight increase they need to maintain their own spending power.
Minimum wage is ultimately proportional, the problem isn't the exact wage, it's how little of the cost of employing someone actually goes to that employee in usable cash, employers are paying way more per employee than people seem to realize. Employing people is a bad investment with our current policy, that's what you want to change for this to turn around.
[url]http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/26/smallbusiness/employee_costs/[/url]
[url]http://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/hr-laws-and-regulation/the-true-cost-of-paying-an-employee/[/url]
[url]http://web.mit.edu/e-club/hadzima/how-much-does-an-employee-cost.html[/url][/QUOTE]
It [I]still[/I] doesn't represent the entirety of a company's spending. If n% of costs went to employees and m% of that is actual wages, an increase of 10% in minimum wages would lead to an increase of less than 10% of employee costs (since not all of those are strictly proportional to wage and not all wages are minimum wage) and thus an increase of less than 0.1*n% in the final price.
There are also increases in resources costs when said resources come from companies affected by the wage raises, but again, that increase is less than a 10% increase on global costs, thus the associated price raises lower than 10%, which mean the global costs of the buying company still remains under a 10% increase. There's also importation and outsourcing, which are not affected by this change.
In a nutshell, a 10% increase in wages wouldn't lead to a more than 10% increase in prices, and would be beneficial to people who are at minimum wage.
It could put companies which rely on export at a disadvantage (if it mostly employs people domestically, which those kind of company tend not to), but it can't lower domestic buying power, that makes no sense.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;51514863]so do we just let the living wages and minimum wages fall and stay stagnant as much of the world has
because that's not fucking helping[/QUOTE]
Putting words in my mouth "isn't fucking helping" either? I never said "don't do anything". I only said it's not that simple.
[QUOTE=thelurker1234;51515228]No one is really saying that it is. [/QUOTE]
No one except the person that this thread is about?
[QUOTE=thelurker1234;51515228]Also those are a ton of assertions you're giving pulled right out of your ass. If you want to make a case against raising the minimum wage past our current value, put forth some US-Relevant evidence.[/QUOTE]
What assertions? That increasing costs for company raises their prices or/and reduces number of jobs? That if your work isn't bringing your employer more money than you are getting paid, then it's not profitable to keep you employed? That jobs requiring higher-skilled employees have higher salary than no-education no-experience jobs? You really want evidence for this? Just making sure because it's like asking for evidence for gravity. But okay when I get back home tomorrow I can "prove" these things for you if you still want that.
[QUOTE=elowin;51515937]Bear with me here because I'm not exactly an expert on economics, but at least from how I understand it that's not quite what inflation is?[/QUOTE]
I might be misusing the term but from what I understand if people are getting paid more and prices raise at the same time, then the value of the currency has dropped. If you were getting paid 100$ for a certain task and you could buy 100 units of something for that 100$ and now you are getting paid 200$ for the same task but you can buy not 200 units but say 150 for the 200$ (so it's not 1:1) then it seems to me inflation has occurred (even if not 1:1). Again I might be wrong on the term.
[QUOTE=elowin;51515937]Increasing the minimum wage would effectively give CEOs a small pay cut, right?[/QUOTE]
Yeah, but the way I understood him, he was talking about forcing by law increase of minimum wage AND a cut of CEO's salary. You're talking about CEO's salary getting a cut as a result of change in minimum wage. Different situations.
As my friend who is an economist told me:
"Economic consensus is that moderate minimum wage increases have little to no employment effect and can actually increase employment in markets with monopsony effects. See Card and Krueger (1994, 2000, 2001) or for more recent research, Dube (2012, 2013, 2014). Not to say that there is unanimous agreement or that a $15/hr min wage is good, but the labor econ 101 model only gets you so far. Plus much of the opposition research (e.g. Neumark and Wascher) are pretty subpar and ideologically driven."
[QUOTE=Silly Sil;51517921]
No one except the person that this thread is about?
What assertions? That increasing costs for company raises their prices or/and reduces number of jobs? That if your work isn't bringing your employer more money than you are getting paid, then it's not profitable to keep you employed? That jobs requiring higher-skilled employees have higher salary than no-education no-experience jobs? You really want evidence for this? Just making sure because it's like asking for evidence for gravity. But okay when I get back home tomorrow I can "prove" these things for you if you still want that.
[/QUOTE]
Hillary didn't explicitly say that increasing the minimum wage increase demand and thus jobs (at least from the video quote.) Just that higher wages increases aggregate demand necessitating more jobs. Abstractly there isn't anything wrong with that.
Also yes. I'm not doubting you on those things, because those are true in abstract but when we talk about the actual economy it gets a whole lot more complicated than what you and hillary said. And here we're talking about the minimum wage in America right now and potentially raising it.
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