So what kind of "LIVING" wage do people who can't offer a business 10 dollars/hour worth of productivity get?

Yeah, but, like, stopping rich people from crushing the poor is, like, class warfare, man.

Not necessarily against this. It seems worthy to try to find effective ways to make it so that an honest days work brings a basic minimum living standard (basically safe shelter, staple clothing, three squares, Id argue an internet connection). We have to acknowledge and be fine with the reality that the burden will be shared by some combination of lower profits, higher prices for consumers, andd higher unemployment.

It would be pretty lolz to advocate for a living wage then be surprised when businesses hire fewer workers or some percentage of businesses move overseas or the cost of food increases marginally because supermarkets are paying out more to their cashiers. Might be a positive cost/benefit trade off though.

I also give Einbert credit for honesty in pointing out that the costs won't be borne just by "the rich". He is willing to take money out of the pockets of the middle to upper-middle class small business owner as well in order to boost the lot of the true low wage worker. Im very encouraged whenever someone acknowledges that, while LDO the rich are going to have to contribute more, the middle class are going to have to pay more as well if we want to shore up the safety net. Leads to much more realistic and productive debates.

Minimum wage isn't keeping these people at home. A lot of time it's superiority complexes that keep them from working "menial" jobs or other jobs considered beneath them and their elite college education.

So people who arent of able body or able mind arent allowed to make enough money to live on and buy clothes and food for their kids too?

Wait what

So they paid more and it reduced turnover?

Also 6.45 or 10 for a security screener, lol.

Germany doesn't have minimum wages and they're doing great SUGGIT LIBRULS!

Why are you giving protections you think necessary for ******s to everybody?

Most min wage jobs that could be outsourced already have been. Also when the owners of Wal Mart stop being billionaires then there is probably a good argument than a slight increase in labour costs will have to be passed along to customers. Supermarkets are almost all huge chains making tonnes of profit.

Fwiw most of this is done through the tax system already and it would be more efficiently done if American's tax system wasnt regressive slightly above average salary all the way up to whoever makes the most money a year.

The widespread use of food stamps, state subsidised healthcare, subsidised housing and so on is the symptom that min wage is too low. So its really hilarious when you have the same people on the right who argue for a reduction in min wage and also want to cut back on things like food stamps.

Because the amount of people who could get better paid work but choose not to is pretty ****ing tiny.

Don't you think it is strange that the goal of every administration is to devalue the dollar? If the dollar is worth less and the same in produced then total revenues have gone up. Greatsuccess.jpg.

I don't know that it is even helpful to think of minimum wage in $ terms. If the currency is inflated then minimum wage goes down in real terms.

I personally think we should do away with minimum wage and issue a citizen's dividend for working, disabled and retired people. I think it would solve a lot of these problems. Want to stimulate aggregate demand? How about you give the consumers the money and watch how quickly things sort themselves out.

And this is exactly what would happen. Implementing a "living wage" would just drive up the price of consumer goods. We'd then be forced to raise the living wage again and the cycle would continue.

These kinds of threads make it pretty obvious who does/doesn't have any real world business experience. If you force me to pay my employees more, I either:

a) raise my prices to compensate
b) make do w/ fewer workers (specifically the more skilled/experienced ones obv)

A lot of small businesses are very marginally profitable/break-even to begin with, so just assuming all businesses can/will just take the hit is extremely misguided. We tend to make decisions that serve our own best interests and/or the interests of people closest to us, and voluntarily taking a pay cut is not something most business owners will take lying down.

Collective bargaining tho

My post was directed at people who are able-minded and able-bodied. The sad truth is a lot of people are so physically or mentally limited that they probably won't ever be self-sustaining. I'm not making any judgments about direct government assistance. I don't think there should be hugely overinclusive living wage laws just because a small percentage of people can't produce enough value to support themselves.

Not really. There are a huge number of people who are unemployed by choice.

There is another subset of people who can get benefits and would lose them if they started working, so they take the small hit by not working and enjoy the extra free time.

Phill - if someone offered you 10% less than your current pay, but you got to stay at home and watch cartoons all day, would you take them up on it?

Just another way to redistribute wealth upwards. Also another reason minimum wage needs to go up. Our inflation adjusted minimum wage is currently lower than it was in 1968. (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...s-a-raise.html)

Before we get into the viability of small businesses with increased minimum wages, etc, let's address the basic part of what I said. Do you agree or disagree that increasing the minimum wage would lead to increased spending due to the fact that those who make the least spend the highest percentage of their income?

I believe that's a pretty basic thing that all should agree on, and beyond that there are easy compromises to help businesses. For example, minimum wage could be $8 per hour for people under 18, and $10 per hour for people over 18. That would leave a supply of cheaper labor available for jobs that don't require skilled workers. You could also do something with tax credits.

I see your reasoning against raising the minimum wage as an overused talking point that people who oppose raising the minimum wage fall back on without really addressing the underlying problems that raising the minimum wage is trying to fix in any sort of imaginative ways.

Spend our way to prosperity!

LOL Keynesians.

There are a ton of people who just settle. There aren't many good reasons why someone in their thirties should be scanning groceries or flipping burgers. It's not so much that they are choosing not to find better work as it is they are choosing not to do doing anything to improve their opportunities for advancement.

There are a lot of people whose crummy circumstances are a direct result of their choices, not because they fell through the cracks or bad luck. People absolutely choose to settle for a relatively easy beginning to their adulthood, don't make any changes to reflect their growing responsibilities, don't realize that certain jobs aren't meant to be occupations, and before they know it, they're struggling to support a family and their resume is ten years of entry-level jobs that didn't teach them any skills. Did they "choose" to be destitute or live paycheck to paycheck? Well obviously there wasn't some binary choice between comfortable and poor and stupidly choosing poor. But there were a number of forks in the road of life where they didn't choose the path that offered a better future.

The exchange of posts:

Ikes: "Why are you giving protections you think necessary for ******s to everybody?" (dr Ikes' demonstrating the subtlety that will serve him well if he ever gets into med school)
Me: "Because the amount of people who could get better paid work but choose not to is pretty ****ing tiny."
You: "Wheeeeeeee, shift those goalposts"

Firstly, dropping min wage wont make these people get a job, ignoring the huge begging of the question of if you can cite these "huge number of people".

Secondly, if there is an incentive gap to the benefit system then that is a flaw of the benefit system. Again a huge goalpost shift and irrelevant to this thread. If those benefits didnt exist the min wage would have to be much higher anyway. DUCY?

Oh and thirdly, 9% and change in U3 unemployment, when America gets back to the ~4% that is normal then it would be right to talk about that incentive gap given around 5% of the working age population of America wants a job right now but cant find one.

Regardless of what Tim and Tom said, this is a completely nonsensical response. You're extending a wage to support their family when they don't have a ****ing family! Phil ladies and gentlemen.

I'm not a huge fan of government assistance in general, but virtually any welfare program would be better than a complete handout to every single person.

I started my IT career with most of a B.S. Computer Science and an A+ Certification, around the bulk of the recession (the UIGEA pushed me out of online poker). As an entry-level employee for all kinds of national firms, I was working alongside guys with 20 and 30 years experience. That job paid much better than minimum wage, but these are guys with tons of skills, experience, and qualifications that are working for the same as an entry-level guy.

In logistics, I worked as a package handler alongside a lot of smart, very capable people. The company was extremely good at pitting them against each other to fight for a few scraps of hours (to get over 20 hours/week if they were lucky), temp promotions that offered no pay raises (one of which I took, of course), and possible promotions years down the road that may or may never come. Noone was allowed to work full time, and overtime was a laughable concept. During peak season we were kept to strictly 25 hours or less. I was being groomed for those mid-level positions but I couldn't handle it when my manager was telling me all about the production-based incentives for management level positions.

A lot of these people were trying to raise a family, and let me tell you that job is physically extremely demanding. They worked as hard as anybody, in fact they worked much harder than anybody I've ever worked with in IT. The facility won award after award, but all the money went to the managers.

This company is rated one of the best companies to work for in the U.S.

To those who say I have no business experience, I now own my own small business. I've been supporting myself off of it since I resigned from the logistics company, and although business is scarce I do much, much, much better than I ever did working for someone else.

I don't agree with all your assertions that the workplace is a meritocracy. Poker was a meritocracy, and I'll agree with you if you say that I should have been better at it, and I wouldn't have been pushed out.

These working people used to be respected in America. It was Rosie the Riveter, not Rosie the Private Equity Capitalist. These people are the backbone of our country, they make it so amazingly fun to live in, and easy to do things in, they deserve a decent standard of living.

I also think this could result in a type of trickle-up economics where we create a rising tide that really does lift all boats, as it seems to me job creation is intrinsically tied to consumer demand and spending, over anything else really.

It might temporarily increase spending habits for those lucky/valuable enough to keep their job, but when the higher wages inevitably lead to higher prices, that wage no longer leaves people w/ any more discretionary income than they had in the first place.

Whether the pricing will be passed along to customers doesnt have anything to do with how much Walmart owners are worth. Customers would pay some percentage of the increase. Dont confuse what you perceive as fair with what would actually happen.

Supermarkets are not hugely profitable businesses FWIW. Margins suck.

I see no unintended consequences on capital structure and market time preference that will lead to volatile and overall degradation of societal wealth. Just well thought out utilitarian economic method. Proceed with instituting a national living wage.

But isnt that basically a constant. You will always have a reasonably fixed percent of people who make bad choices when the big forks in the road happen (admittedly im one of them who has screwed up a big chunk of my 20s, I know suzzer has talked about doing that too). So, I mean, what is the end game solution here? Keep min wage so low to incentivise people to make better choices? Those same people we can specifically point to as making bad choices a lot? Is it just a case of punishing them for their mistakes and if so is that the right thing to do, especially given reproduction is more or less fixed so instead of having someone making bad decisions but then getting their head back above water when they start hitting their 30s they will be worse off and arguable worse of longer term whilst bringing up the next generation of American workers - so long term is this a good thing for the economy let alone the morality of it?