Re: First 100 hours
[QUOTE=88Mariner;428946]not at face value you're not. but at an abstract level, the very core of what you're saying is exactly what i've pointed out.[/QUOTE]
Well at an abstract level, you're describing fascism, but I don't think you're actually a fascist any more than you probably think I'm actually a communist, so let's drop the abstractions and name-calling.
[QUOTE=88Mariner;428946]
There's a junior college in Terra [sic] Haute? I think I appropriately used an ad hominem attack against you (retarded) in the context of the points you were making. [/QUOTE]
Well it doesn't really much matter if there's a junior college in Terra Haute, Terre Haute, or whatever the hell it's called. I'm not typically a fan of dickering over grammar, spelling, and whatnot, but it does bear mention that for someone anal enough to point out my misspelling of a tiny little town in Indiana, you sure have a lot of typos in your post.
And by the way, you DID misuse [I]ad hominem[/I], which literally means "argument to the person" and would either be me attacking you personally (which is kinda what you did to me) or appealing to sympathy, which really isn't applicable to anything I've said. There are a host of different reasons why bumping the minimum wage to keep pace with the CPI is a good idea, almost all of which are beyond, "because it would be a really nice thing to do" or "because people making minimum wage are suffering."
Ultimately, though, peppering your post with Latin phrases is so fucking pretentious, I feel duty bound to call you out on it when you botch it.
[QUOTE=88Mariner;428946]
Minimum wage laws make it illegal to pay less than the government-specified price for labor. By the simplest and most basic economics (regardless of whether you've studied at Terra [sic] Haute or...ahem...Chicago) a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when the prices are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market. The result is a suprlus, whether the price that is set artificially high is that of cars, computers, or in this case, labor. Minimum wage laws are almost always discussed politically in terms of the benefits they supposedly confer on workers recieving those wages. Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers recieve in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage. Because they lose thier jobs. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker's productivity worth that amount, and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.
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OK, but the "simplest and most basic economics" don't always behave as you think they should in the real world, do they? You may be able to pull out Hong Kong as an example that fits your argument, but you know there was a [B]lot [/B]more going on in Hong Kong at the time of the increase in unemployment you're talking about beyond a simple wage increase.
So that we can be assured that we're comparing apples to apples, a better comparison can be made by looking at the unemployment rate in the states that have enacted minimum wage laws that exceed federal standards. Do you see a lasting correlation between the states that increase the minimum wage and unemployment rates? I sure don't.
[QUOTE=88Mariner;428946]
The [URL="http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2004.htm#2"]U.S. Department of Labor [/URL]reports: "According to Current Population Survey estimates for 2004, some 73.9 million American workers were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.8 percent of all wage and salary workers. Of those paid by the hour, 520,000 were reported as earning exactly $5.15." Only about two percent of workers over 25 years of age earn minimum wages.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Sixty-three percent of minimum wage workers receive raises within one year of employment, and only 15 percent still earn the minimum wage after three years. Furthermore, only 5.3 percent of minimum wage earners are from households below the official poverty line; forty percent of minimum wage earners live in households with incomes $60,000 and higher; and, over 82 percent of minimum wage earners do not have dependents.
The U.S. Department of Labor also reports that the "proportion of hourly-paid workers earning the prevailing Federal minimum wage or less has trended downward since 1979."
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This is a great example of how stats can be used to show pretty much anything you'd like to show. OK, only a half a million people earn [B]exactly[/B] the minimum wage and 63% get a raise within 1 year, and 85% get a raise within 3 years. Raise to what? You don't jump from $5.15 to the corner office. I remember when I had my first job way back when at Baskin Robbins and I got a raise, it was like $.10 an hour. Big fucking deal. If you make dick, and you get a raise, you're probably still making dick. A better measure would be to figure out how many people are earning less than, say, $7.50 an hour.
[QUOTE=subterFUSE;429081]Small businesses, which comprise the majority of companies which actually pay minimum wages, are faced with increased costs for operation with no corresponding increase in productivity. When the government forces you to pay $7 for work which cost you $5 yesterday, you are simply getting a reduction in profit unless you pass on those costs to the comsumer. If you increase prices for the consumer, you will lower demand for your products.... which will, in turn, lower the need for workers. When worker damand is lower, companies lay off employees.
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Again, at the macro level, this would seem to make sense, but that assumes that increased costs are always passed on to consumers, which doesn't always happen in the real world. Also, it assumes a uniform elasticity for the demand of all products, and for the demand of labor. At the end of the day, it is an overly simplistic view. The reality is that over time, the cost of everything -- raw materials, labor, real estate, consumer products, etc -- has gone up, and the market always adapts.
[QUOTE=subterFUSE;429081]
Another consequence is that an increased minimum wage creates added incentive for younger people to abandon their education and enter the workforce. You see, by paying more money to low-income workers you increase the demand for people to seek those jobs. Young people will drop out of high school in greater numbers, because it simply pays better by a government mandate. So there will be an increase in the number of young people in the workforce, which will therefore push older people out of their jos..... because employers will be faced with the question of paying a younger, more productive... or keeping an older one. So the very people the law intended to help, namely the poor worker who is supposedly trying to support a family on $5.15 an hour, will get pushed out of their jobs by younger workers. And by encouraging young people to end their educations earlier, you decrease their potential for pulling themselves out of poverty over their lifetimes.[/QUOTE]
Now that is a stretch. Again, is this happening in the states that have increased the minimum wage? Any kid that is willing to bail out on getting even a high school education for the promise of [gasp] $7.50 an hour probably wasn't destined for great things anyway. Hope you've got shoes on with some good traction, because that's a pretty slick slope you're on...