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No that is not what I said. I suggested that the reason to have a minimum wage was to prevent the majority of people from being force into poverty.
It isn't free but wouldn't you agree it is worth the cost if it prevents us from all dieing in poverty.
But only a minority of people make the minimum wage, and many of them are teens or part-timers, people with other sources of family income.
If someone makes min wage, they are inherently being paid more than their market value. So pressures exist to replace them: with automation, by contracting out to foreign countries, by using illegals.
So, instead of working for below what some politician thinks they deserve, they have no job at all.
John
Given that "minority" is anything less than 50%, this is certainly a true statement.
These folks were against minimum wage hikes in 2006, although the data is somewhat interesting:
So much for telling kids that going to college will assure them of a decent future.
This is true enough, although it's not really an argument against the minimum wage, IMO... since if it were, you'd be on the slipperly slope of perhaps deciding that, hey, why do we burden companies with the extra expense of controlling their emissions and discharges anymore than what the "market" asks for? Those companies are being forced to spend more than (at least today's) market value of clean air and water, after all!
Yes.
It's not a zero sum game, John. Replacing workers with automation also results in economic growth so the idea is that the jobs transition to simply requiring more skills but being better paying and more comfortable for the workers -- which is good for the world as a whole. (Although I'm the first to admit that this whole idea of "modern society" requiring "highly-skilled workers" has somehow morphed into, "...so everyone should spend four years in college!" when, in actuality, most jobs still just don't require that level of training.)
Illegal workers should of course be eliminated as much as possible.
---Joel
Right. The premise is that all companies are evil and bent on starving people into poverty, that they have the wage-setting power to do it, and that only minimum wage laws prevent them from raping the planet.
And, it follows, with their absolute wage-setting power, evil, and generally sniveling, drooling, sinister nature, companies drive us all down to that minimum, because they can.
Except they don't, and can't.
Companies have no such pricing power nor intention, nor is it in their best interest to underpay. A low-paid worker is easily lost to another employer offering more, and all the time and expense training him is lost in the bargain. Only fools underpay.
The demographics of minimum-wage workers tell us that these are overwhelmingly starter jobs, entry positions for untrained workers which they quickly outgrow, then move to higher positions doing more valuable work, for more pay. As employees acquire more skills and become more productive, employers respond with raises because that's in the *employer's* interest. Everyone wins.
Too often would-be "liberals" are simply cynical, not liberal at all-- they see and assume the worst in all, trust no one, suspect everyone.
James Arthur
Understood. So since companies can pretty much bully workers into taking any pittance, obviously they would press us all--that same majority you mentioned--onto the minimum-wage ropes. That's why we all earn the minimum, and we're all poor.
Hmmm. Take young people's potential retirement savings from them, then disperse those at, say 40% effciency, to people whom you prevent from working.
Sounds like a winner to me. Why prevent poverty when you can ensure it?
Grins, James Arthur
In the long run, I think it's better to overpay than underpay.
As society gets more technical, and more low-tech jobs are exported, there are people, born without certain skills, who will be left behind. It's not in society's interest to let them be without the material and personal benefits of employment, even if they are marginally productive. But if employers are forced to pay more than they are worth, everybody loses. So programs like the earned-income tax credit make sense; income is redistributed from the more productive to the less employable, but as a direct government subsidy, a negative income tax. The employers aren't getting incrementally whacked, so the disincentive to create entry-level jobs is reduced, unlike minumum wage laws.
In other words, let the government make up the difference between market wages and minimum, in the form of negative income tax. The revenue source should be a national sales tax, which affects imports as well as domestic products.
The problem with leftists is that they don't understand what works. Because they generally don't think.
John
"It isn't that democrats are ignorant. Far from it... it's just that they know so much that just isn't so" -Ronald Reagan
...Jim Thompson
-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: "skypeanalog" | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at
OK, John, this is a reasonable argument -- I'm glad to see you're not a "No minimum wage! Anyone who can't work their way out of poverty deserves to starve in the street!" kind of guy. :-)
Yes, but that is setting the floor.
Automation should be used to replace things that people do so poorly that they are only worth the minimum wage doing. This is a good thing. We drive around in cars we aren't carried in sedan chairs.
Tarrifs can be set to prevent this. Every nation that has become an industrial power did so with tarrifs in place.
You can also employ slave labor or steal the raw materials or just go rob a bank. The mere fact that something makes it profitable to commit a crime is no argument against doing that thing.
They should go back to school or go out looking for a different job or start a small business.
Having a minimum wage is good for those who make much more than it.
There you make your first mistake grasshopper. The snake doesn't bite you because it is evil it bites you becauce it is a snake :)
The function of a corporation is to make a return on investment for its stock holders. In the US, by law, that is the thing the board is supposed to work to increase. If the board does an act knowingly that lowers the stock value, they are commiting a crime. This is the proper function of the corporation. It is like the proper function of a resistor is to obey Ohms law. It is neither a good nor a bad thing in that corporations are by their nature amoral.
No, their intent is to increase profits. If they could magically do so by throwing money off a bridge, that is what they would do. They optimize the amount they pay the workers to get the maximum profit. In an economy with no minimum wage, that would include paying just enough to let the worker buy the food to have the strength to work one more day but no more.
People say that a rising tide will raise all boats. But it isn't true. Those that are sunk to the bottom of the harbor don't go up at all when the tide comes in. The minimum wage is the amount needed to make the boat seaworthy so that it can rise with the tide.
In a place where the workers are at the bottom of a well, they do have that power. If the workers get enough that they can save up just a little to be able to move or find a new job or start a new business, the employer loses that power.
You are making a moral judgement about the laws of physics. We are not taking about good vs evil we are taking about the practical result. The choice about whether or not to have a minimum wage becomes a moral one once you understand the result of having it.
You seem to have a very strange view of economics and why people do things. Corporations don't drive the wages down "because they can". You need to understand why they drive the wages down before you can understand the need for a minimum wage. If you start of with wrong assumptions the conclusions aren't likely to be very good.
They can't drive them down and don't drive them down in the current situation. But in that experiment we have a minimum wage. So when we have a minimum wage, companies can't do the thing that we both, I assume, would agree are bad. What you need to now understand is that that experiment does not apply to the case without minimum wages.
with a minimum wage in existance
You are assuming the existance of another job that can be reached by the worker and another employer who is willing to pay more. There is nothing to ensure that such a thing would exist.
No, without a minimum wage law, everyone loses. Well nearly everyone that is. The extremely rich make out but everyone else ends up working for just enough to survive.
No, you seem to be projecting the point of view of some on the extreme right onto the liberals. You assume that people who vote for politicians that will set minimum wages don't know what they are doing and that the politicians aren't acting in the best interest of the nation. This last part is a very interesting thing in many of the extreme right because they insist that all politicians act against the interest of the country, then they become politicians and get elected and then act against the interests of the country fulfilling their own prediction about politicians.
You were ok right up to that last bit. A job that is so unproductive that a person can't get a reasonable wage doing it should be taken over by technology. There is not point in wasting the efforts of even the most uneducated among us on jobs that are better done by machines.
You have obviously thought about this but I think you have made an error in not seeing the downside of employing someone in a very non- productive job. The person doing that job is kept busy doing a marginal activity so there is no time for them to study up or get trained or just stumble onto something they can do better.
There was a case a very long time ago of a "retarded kid"[1] who it seems had an undiscovered talent for sexing chicks. The the chicken business figuring out the gender of a chick very quickly isn't easy but it was discovered that this kid could do it. He ended up supporting himself on what he made at it and lived nicely. His talent was discovered after quite a long time in which he could not find a job. If he had gotten a job more easily, the chicken business would have lost out.
[1] Back then we called them that.
I think other than the above, I like your idea. It really is still a minimum wage of sorts so it does the good things that a minimum wage does.
Actually the real quote was said of Reagan not by him.
Most publicly-held companies ultimately shoot themselves in the foot because it is not OK to just make a steady profit... profits must keep increasing... the quarterly goons dominate and the company gets decimated in a take-over. See "Other People's Money" for a good movie on the subject.
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: "skypeanalog" | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave
Citation please, so I can track it down.
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: "skypeanalog" | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave
I've answer much of this argument elsewhere but some further comments are needed here
I never said "bully" or "evil". You seem to want to put an emotional edge onto a subject that is best understood logically.
As I said elsewhere about the boats:
It is said that a rising tide raises all boats but this does not apply to those which are sunk to the bottom of the harbor. The minimum wage is enough to just make the boats seaworthy so that they do rise in the tide. You need the minimum wage[1] to be just enough to get ensure that the boats are seaworthy. Without it there will be people, perhaps most of the population, who will be making just enough to feed themselves but no more. People in that situation are not able to go find other work or go to school or the like because they can't take the time off work without starving. This is the trap of poverty that can hold a country down.
[1] Including John Larkins reverse incometaxYou take money for people while they are at there highest earning point and move it to people when they are at a lower earning point. It prevents the old from dieing in poverty and seems to have worked fairly well so far and it isn't going to break down any time soon inspite of all the chicken littles out there.
The economy in the US has greatly improved as has the lot of elderly and the poorest among us. Everybody has benifited from the system. Without it, people would be far less willing to start a new business or invest in startups or the like. The fear of living out your last years in a cardboard box makes you more risk averse than is good for the economy. People knew that even if it all went sour there was a minimum they would not be allowed to fall below. As a result, they started new businesses and created new industries and made us all better off.
Mondale in the 1984 debates. Oct 7.
[snip sig left by inadequate reader]
OK, Help me find the quotation... I can't find it from your URL.
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: "skypeanalog" | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave
The problem with way too many real and armchair deciders (voters) is that they do not have any experience at the low end of the job market. Nor as a small business.
What in the hell do you mean "can't go to school"? I did my college education while working full time. It slowed me down, it did not stop me. It is that difference in intention that makes the BIG difference.
Simply a pure non sequitur.
What floor? On the minimum competence to get a job at all?
Crap. The human visual system has no equivalent in the computer world.
Not in compliance with existing implemented treaties and international law.
If you cannot understand the insanity of that, there may be no point in dealing with you.
The right to fail IS important. That is why i continue to see to it that my eldest has that right.
If only they could. If only they would.
How in blue blazes do you support this wild pronouncement?
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