So you have things like gold and diamonds and they are what you would call physical commodities. They are worth something because of their intrinsic value; that is, people want them due to their beauty/rarity, can't get them anywhere else, and are willing to work/pay for them.

Next we would have representative money, which is closer to what we have today. In this case, say you have 100oz of gold and you want to be able to use it's value to purchase some things from people, yet, you don't want to carry heavy gold around all day. Representative money allows you to take your gold to a trusted source, like a bank, and they store your physical commodities while giving you 'paper money' which represents that which you have stored in the bank.

Next is "fiat money", which we use today. "fiat" in italian/latin means "let it be done". As was pointed out by the other poster, this type of money is only valuable because the users of it have 'let it be done.'
The money we use doesn't represent a source of intrinsic value, nor does it have any of it's own intrinsic value - it is only valuable because a group of people have all decided it was valuable.

Thank you bjsmith I understand now.Still,do you think with the increase of the minimal salary in the US that this will bring more recreational players?

I think that in theory giving more money to low-level consumers will help the poker economy, yes.

lol A+

Why debate something that has been proven

lol no it barely buys 1 week for us anyway.

The rake is the drop. They are the same thing. And the cap is NOT dropped every hand in California. Also, California is a terrible example of any poker room explanation and its rake/drop. It is the only state with that type of way of doing it and is by far the most expensive.

California has the third highest minimum wage in the country and is 24% higher than the federal one. If anything, that proves my point about how rake would go up in the scenario proposed by OP. Thank you for helping me prove my point.

You do understand that you are not just giving more money to low-level consumers right? Everyone's wages will have to be increased. You can't just raise the wages of the entry level employees.

As far as your gas argument, you don't seem to understand that A LOT of other employees are involved in getting gas to the consumer. Everything involved in the manufacturing process including refineries, drivers, maintenance etc... would be affected.

Alright, so I'm from alberta, we produce a lot of oil here. A lot of the people I know in the oil&gas sector recently have seen pretty massive pay cuts, yet the price of gas still continues to rise. To me, this contradicts your idea that "the cost of gas rises and falls with the cost of labor"

Explain?

Oh, and you definitely can raise the wages of just the entry level employees. There isn't some economic rule in place that stops that from happening like you all seem to think.

This is true for a certain % increase. However, doubling the minimum wage would have an effect on all wages.

Gas prices are dropping. That is probably the reason their pay is going down. They either take a pay cut or get laid off.

http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/gas.aspx?timeframe=1y

A first year college graduate makes about $15/hr. If you raise no-skill labor and teenagers to what a first year college graduate makes, you will have to raise what a college graduate makes or else people will simply stop going to college and flip hamburgers. We will then run out of middle class, educated workforce. Also, the people that would have gone to school are now taking the entry level jobs from the people they would normally go to.

At $15/hr, he hamburger flipper will have made $125k by the time the college student graduates, not to mention the tuition the student will have paid. If tuition was $40k, even $5 an hour difference will take 33,000 hours to overcome. That is about 16 years.

Even Dems know this is a bad idea. They just know it is great politics because the general public (and media) is stupid.

I'm waiting for a republican to say "if doubling MW is good lets just quadruple it!" just to make dems admit that there is even a level where they have to admit increasing MW is a bad idea. Then we an start having a real convo.

That doesn't mesh well with the idea that changing the cost of labor affects the cost of gas. In fact, it shows that the price of labor is arbitrary when it comes to oil and gas.


This doesn't support your point. Yes, there is a fair chance that what you say will happen will happen, but there is nothing showing that scenarios such as that lead to weak economies.

There is way too much "this is the status quo so don't you ****ing dare try to change it" in American Capitalism. It really is a wonder how their economy has stayed so strong even this long.

You can't just pick an arbitrary level and say "this is where wage increases stop benefiting people", especially when you haven't even specified a time frame - there are just far too many other factors to consider.

With some exceptions, I would say that the average winning poker player is more intelligent than the average citizen/politician.

It is undeniable that raising minimum wages leads to MORE UNEMPLOYMENT on the lower end as employees that are no longer worth X+1 to an employer are fired/never hired/or replaced by automation. The real-world examples are everywhere and easy to find as are the academic studies (https://mises.org/library/yes-minimu...e-unemployment)

If you want to help people on the lower end raise their standard of living (money in their pocket) or get jobs, cut all payroll taxes and remove any direct taxes on any income below the poverty level. It is a an obvious solution, but one left-wing and some right-wing politicians do not favor because it reduces their and governments power/influence.

Vote accordingly.

Yes, we can pick a level and say this is where MW stops net benefiting people. That level is the market rate. Thus making MW at any level either useless or a net negative.

Could you perhaps more stringently define market rate

The market rate is what people would be paid if there wasn't price fixing.

The "economic rule" you are looking for is called common sense.

You should really stop posting. Everyone's tried being polite, but you are spewing "no it's not" as your argument for everything. Simply citing one example as proof of something is beyond ridiculous. You yourself have said that there are too many factors.

The fact that you believe that employees that were previously making $14/hr won't get a wage increase to keep them above entry level employees is assenine. Same for those making $20/hr and $30/hr. Employers reward employees for their hard work and skills. Thinking that leaving an employee at their existing pay level while new employees with no skill are making nearly as much as those who've put in years of hard work shows that you can't grasp common sense concepts.

Good luck fighting the "no it's not" battle. It should get you very far. I'm out.

Oh, so it's not arbitrary, at all. Cool.

Please, point me to the statistics that show that THERE ISN'T A MASSIVE ****ING GAP between mid-level employees and entry level ones.

If you can do that, your point won't fall apart quite so easily.

To be sure, minimum wage is $10 where I live; however, you can also find an entry level job for somewhere around $20-$25 if you're willing to do ****ty work, are talented/smart, etc. Mid level people I assume make 30-50 dollar an hour.

There really isn't anything to say that increasing the $10 to $15 would require the 30s and 50s to go up, or even the 20s and 25s.

Your argument here is predicated on the idea that today's actual wages go up proportionately with the value(to the economy) of the work being put in by the worker; which is NOT AT ALL TRUE. If it were, sheldon would deserve every dirty dollar in his pocket, which we all know isn't true.

You really really don't understand this as good as you think you do. You're just spewing ideas that have been ingrained into your head by other people. Try thinking for yourself for once.

The market rate changes everyday based on what the collective knowledge of the country thinks it should be.

I'm not arguing with you lol. I was when I thought you were supporting the other posters idea that there is an arbitrary rate of increase such as "double", where min wage increases become bad for the economy.

ITT: People who don't understand that people on minimum wage spend most/all of their money on products and services boosting demand for products/services and wealthy people do not (people making more than min wage can already afford to gamble, higher min wage redistributes wealth away from the wealthy/business class and to the working class)

Obviously a $15 min wage would be good for poker in America

The best thing for any gambling related occupation is an influx of new potential customers who have disposable income they did not previously have. Yes, cost of living will go up but not at the equivalent rate of the minimum wage increase, people earning min wage in the U.S right now are far worse off than people earning min wage in Australia/rich parts of Europe despite costs of living being higher. You actually have some disposable income on actual minimum wage without tips in Australia if you live cheap, I can't imagine that being the case in the U.S

I know this is a popular thing to say, but you are totally ignoring the fact that the money we are taking from the rich people would otherwise be sitting in a checking account (which allows banks to loan more money out), is being invested (which allows those companies to invest in themselves and new employees), employing more people (maids, nannies, lawn people, security, prostitutes, tudors for the kids, etc.) or going to other uses (all of which helps our economy). So really this idea is just taking money out of our left pocket and putting it in our right pocket.

Like so many liberal arguments you have a great point, but if we look at the whole picture your argument is dog ****.