So what you guys are saying is that the 10% unemployeed are either unwilling to work (too lazy), unwilling to give up social welfare benefits (benefits too good) or too proud (superiority complex)... I have a hard time believe this.

Welfare benefits are not that great. These unemployeed people are being subsidized by family. Right now they cannot provide their employer with $7/hr in productivity. Get that wage down to $3.5 and they will get off the couch. 40x3.5 = $140/week which is more than enough to pay for their food and ciggies on the week. This takes a large burden off of their family members who are supporting them now.

grunch

considering that it's virtually impossible to have a decent lifestyle at minimum wage, i doubt removing the minimum wage is suddenly going to open some floodgate of economic prosperity

it will just accelerate a race to the bottom that's been going for the last 30 years for [American] workers. it was typical for my parents' generation to buy a house right after getting a bachelors (or even HS diploma) and work 40 hours a week with vacation/benefits. nowadays it's not atypical for graduate of masters and phd programs to live with their parents or roommates while working 50+ hours a week w/o vacation/benefits.

http://www.prosebeforehos.com/wordpr...-rent-map1.png

You said it here, aside from your mention tied in to buying rims:

Just like to give a quick thumbs up to ILovePoker92 for adding some great content to this thread.

Some others ITT seem to be suffering from a severe lack of empathy.

You realize that, first of all, many unemployed or underemployed are more than capable of providing more than $7/hr in productivity, but there are simply more workers than needed. You make it sound like they're lazy, dumb pieces of crap who are only capable of providing $3.50 per hour in value to society.

Second of all, you realize that them working for $140/week for 40 hours of work is not going to do them much good in mobilizing upward, right? It might take some burden off of their family, but I could make a case that if they are at least high school graduates, it might be more +EV for them to spend 40 hours a week searching for a higher paying job than working for $3.50 per hour.

You also fail to account for the fact that slashing minimum wage to $3.50 per hour would not ONLY create a number of crap-paying jobs, but also cause people currently making $7.25-$10 per hour to make less, as companies could slash those wages too.

This would also have a negative effect on many workers, since a lot of people's wages/salaries are based on having received a series of raises in their life and people would be starting from a much lower number.

no longer grunching

cuserounder killing it itt

Do you see poor people mentioned once before Phil's strawman? That was me responding to the post whining about "record corporate profits".

Ok, so let me get this straight. There are too many workers, buuuut raising the minimum wage required to hire them is going to magically create more jobs for them to fill?

wat?

Some aren't, but a lot of them are. There's a reason their resume sucks and nobody has hired them for more. Please go hire some minimum wage employees and you'll understand.

If this logic was accurate and companies would just slash wages, why do big corporations like McDonalds pay over minimum wage when they don't have to?

True that...

Non monotonic functions....how do they work?

That's why I love this board. Where else you going to find non monotonic function used in a snarky way? Prolly wherever Max goes but you get my drift.

This is a classic example of what is called class bigotry:

And it's interesting to note that class bigotry is pretty rampant in this forum. As evidenced in this very revealing thread, 57.42% of those polled chose answers that were unambiguously bigoted. 42.58% chose the non-bigoted answers "unlucky" and "It's a little bit more complicated than that/I don't know". I also commented on this disturbing and fascinating result. (One can learn a lot about this forum just from reading that thread).

So one thing you got going for you loosbastard is your views will fit right in around here, but I can only hope that someday we will live in a more civilized society where such noxious views are easily recognized and frowned upon just like other forms of bigotry.

If making minimum wage $20 is much better than $8 why not $35? $20 is the exact perfect number? At $35 businesses will close down but at $20 they will stay open and thrive? Why is arbitrary minimum wages superior to the free market? Why don't any economists agree, only Liberal Arts majors?

Saying no economist thinks the minimum wage should go up is lol dumb.

Maybe I was unclear there. That was in reference to a comment that unemployed people weren't worth $7 per hour in productivity to employers, and we should drop the minimum wage to $3.50. I was pointing out in a general statement something like this: say there are 100 people capable of being good engineers at a job that pays the equivalent of $50 per hour, but companies only need 50 engineers. Fifty are thus unemployed, even though they would all be hired and performing fine for the companies at $50 per hour if they weren't in a field with twice as many people as jobs.

They might be unwilling to take a $7 per hour job, because they feel that their time spent looking for a full-time $50 per hour job they are qualified for is more +EV than working that job, or because they don't want to work it. Perhaps the person hiring does't want to hire someone who thinks they're smart enough to be the manager to run the cash register, as that might be a position better suited to someone who is using the job for money while working through school, working a summer job, or who never got an advanced degree. Either way, dropping the minimum wage to $3.50 would not do anything to "get them off the couch," so to speak.

As far as my suggestion that raising the minimum wage might create jobs, that is based on the following ideas, which I'm sure you're familiar with even if you disagree. This is more applied to people who are not students and live on their own, but are unable to or uninterested in advancing their education or career.

1. People who are making minimum wage are spending close to, if not, 100% of their income on things they and many Americans would consider basic needs.

2. These people believe they are not currently fulfilling their basic needs as well as they could.

3. Thus if they were making a higher minimum wage, they would immediately spend most, or all, of this money on their "basic needs."

Now, it is not for us to argue over whether these things are or are not basic needs. I may argue yes, you may argue no, somebody in a third world country would think we were crazy for arguing over whether buying a steak instead of a chicken breast or a real chicken breast instead of a frozen meal is a "basic need." That's not the point.

The point is that this money they are spending is being pumped right back into the economy. Whether they're buying more groceries, a cable tv package, or more clothes, someone has to stock the shelves and install the cable. That means more profit for businesses and more work to be done, thus more people to be hired.

From there, the debate would get into whether the increased labor cost would cause prices to go up. The cable company is probably paying more than minimum wage to the guy installing the box and running the wires, so they see only profit and their labor costs are unaffected.

The guy stocking the shelves might be a minimum wage employee, so the grocery store may be hit with higher labor costs, but their profits should go up too, because not everyone who is now buying more expensive food is an employee of theirs. They're also profiting off of the guy who was un/under employed and is now running more cable wires.

As I also mentioned earlier in this thread, I wouldn't be opposed to a provision allowing small business (or even all businesses) the option of hiring people who are, say, under 18 at the old minimum wage. There are still ways to allow for less of an increase in labor costs, once the basics of the benefits of increasing minimum wage are accepted and agreed upon.


I haven't hired minimum wage employees, but I've screened applicants for a couple of $10 per hour jobs with minimal qualifications. Some were lazy, some were dumb, others were recent college graduates who couldn't find work and some were college graduates who had been laid off from jobs where they worked for 10-20 years and were looking for any job to help support their families.

I'm 26 and I am a college graduate who has had to work internships that 10 years ago I wouldn't have had to work. I've excelled in them and been passed over for work, and I have tons of friends with similar stories or who are unemployed. I've also run into people who abuse the system for unemployment, who aren't qualified for any job because they are lazy/dumb, etc.

The thing is, I'm not going to generalize, especially when discussing policy. I'm going to figure out what is the best policy for the most people - especially the ones who are in tough places due to bad luck or their own prior stupidity, but who are doing the right things to try to improve their situation.

Sure, some do. Why? I don't know, I'm not an executive at McDonald's. Maybe they have a sense of corporate social responsibility, maybe they've found that it decreases turnover in a way that is profitable or maybe they find that it attracts better employees.

Are you going to suggest that a number of big corporations wouldn't quickly, if not immediately, find ways to cut the pay on their minimum wage jobs if given the opportunity?

Im curious, and I dont actually have a clue what the answer is, but what big corporations currently pay minimum wage?