Change of mind on minimum wage

[Nickman]

The following video is a quick interview with Ted Cruz. Although I am not a fan, this helped me realize something. Especially from the comments section. My YouTube name is Nickoliatan. See my comments there as well.

Raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour won't change anything. The economy will adjust to make $10 unlivable. The correct way, IMO, would be to deregulate the economy and allow social pressure, supply, and demand to determine the wage of workers. Minimum wage was put in place in 1938, and only for specific minority groups. Prior to this, wages grew with the market. Once a regulation was placed on the economy, wages became stagnant and rose only slightly with more regulation. If we get rid of economic regulation, no person will work for low wages for a job that is difficult, when the public demands higher wages. The corporations will have to meet the demand by supplying higher wages, or otherwise lose productivity and thus, revenue.

In North Dakota, wages are high. Why? Because the demand for workers to work hard, tough jobs. These companies couldn't get workers to move to ND and endure long hours, and in difficult conditions, unless they pay well.

If we let the economy move freely, society will be enough regulation, on its own, to make corporations pay descent wages.

I want to hear from Darius and Winepusher here, but also anyone and everyone. I would like to hear from some of my good friends such as Danmark, Goat, and DI. Everyone's input will be valued.

To debate: minimum wage only. Not other regulations, such as environmental. I would like to debate those as well but in their own thread.

[Youtube][/YouTube]

[Goat]

Oh yes/... BUSINESS was booming. But.. what about the PEOPLE?? Sorry, but business is not the people. That's the point. That is the whole thing you are missing.

Business is not PEOPLE. It is the PEOPLE who matter.

Which is why I am against minimum wage. Minimum wage is a legislated wage which segregates people. It, in essence, says these people can only make this much.

As far as the govenment of Australia being a monarchy, who cares?? It doesn't matter one bit.. not when it comes to minumumn wage and economics. Not one wit. That is what is known as a red herring.

You are the one who brought up Australia, not me. So the red herring is on you. Even though I love you.

Business is booming now. Did you know that the top 1100 billionaires combined net worth went from 1 trillion dollars to over still trillion dollars last year alone?

That doesn't help you, it doesn't help me. It just make income inequality that much of an issue.

Minimum wage forwards income inequality. You are in favor of legislating how much a lower class worker makes, yet why not how much CEOs make? Should we put a minimum wage on business owners?

Thing is .. history has shown, over and over again.. when there IS no minimum wage, things are 10 times worse. It's all fine and dandy to talk all this idealism, but, experience has shown that opposite happens. What looks good on paper can be horrible in practice, and when it comes to eliminating the minimum wage, the results are horrible.

What happens is that you get even lower pay, and more misery. In the mean time, you are letting the government subsidize big business, because those people without a living wage are dependent on food stamps, and that means, well, YOUR taxes are paying for Walmart and wall streets profits.

The minimum wage is what is causing food stamps. It is because a minimum wage is set and it takes legislation for wages to change at all. They cannot change on their own with the market. It is minimum wage that has every entry level position set at a low wage which unlivable. That is a fact and what is currently the issue. It takes an act of congress to change this legislation. Then they set it a another low wage that is just a little more, and when the economy fluctiates, it becomes unlivable again. Instead of letting the wage increase with the market, which it will, you are advocating that we do what the market can already do through legislation. Tell me, what happens when the market goes to crap and businesses have to pay entry level workers a wage that is above market value? They let people go. If wage was based on the market for entry level workers, they would be able to keep their jobs because business owners would not be tied to a minimum wage that is above market value.

As I stated before, wages and job competition would increase with the market if let be. Its not what's on paper. It is what has been evidenced by 162 years without a minimum wage.

Every dollar a minimum wage worker receives must have come out of somebody else’s pocket, either small business owners or their customers. The money for a higher minimum wage does not come from thin air. Workers must be paid for the amount of work they bring to the company. When you mess with that, people lose jobs.


Forbes
Congress raised the minimum wage 10.6% in July, 2009 (know of anyone else getting a raise then?). In the ensuring 6 months, nearly 600,000 teen jobs disappeared, even with nearly 4% growth in the economy, this compared to a loss of 250,000 jobs in the first half of the year as GDP growth declined by 4% Why? When you raise the price of anything, people take less of it, including labor. The unemployment rate for teens remains unacceptably high. Workers of all ages that are relatively unskilled are adversely impacted by this policy.

Minimum wage increases poverty as well. If companies must pay a higher wage for entry level positions, those who have no skills are least likely to be hired. The hiring process for these entry level positions becomes more strict. It weeds out many from the lowest class. So now that you have a higher minimum wage, these entry level positions are no longer in the reach of the lowest class. Get the minimum wage high enough, and businesses will require college degrees for entry level positions.

And, what did those 162 years bring??

Coal mining towns, where the only store was 'compnay stores. Give a listen to 'I owe my soul to the company store'. That's slave wages

You got the child labor.



You got the monopolies.. the extreme corruption.

NO.. I don't want to go back to that.

[Nickman]

Oh yes/... BUSINESS was booming. But.. what about the PEOPLE?? Sorry, but business is not the people. That's the point. That is the whole thing you are missing.

Business is not PEOPLE. It is the PEOPLE who matter.

Which is why I am against minimum wage. Minimum wage is a legislated wage which segregates people. It, in essence, says these people can only make this much.

As far as the govenment of Australia being a monarchy, who cares?? It doesn't matter one bit.. not when it comes to minumumn wage and economics. Not one wit. That is what is known as a red herring.

You are the one who brought up Australia, not me. So the red herring is on you. Even though I love you.

Business is booming now. Did you know that the top 1100 billionaires combined net worth went from 1 trillion dollars to over still trillion dollars last year alone?

That doesn't help you, it doesn't help me. It just make income inequality that much of an issue.

Minimum wage forwards income inequality. You are in favor of legislating how much a lower class worker makes, yet why not how much CEOs make? Should we put a minimum wage on business owners?

Thing is .. history has shown, over and over again.. when there IS no minimum wage, things are 10 times worse. It's all fine and dandy to talk all this idealism, but, experience has shown that opposite happens. What looks good on paper can be horrible in practice, and when it comes to eliminating the minimum wage, the results are horrible.

What happens is that you get even lower pay, and more misery. In the mean time, you are letting the government subsidize big business, because those people without a living wage are dependent on food stamps, and that means, well, YOUR taxes are paying for Walmart and wall streets profits.

The minimum wage is what is causing food stamps. It is because a minimum wage is set and it takes legislation for wages to change at all. They cannot change on their own with the market. It is minimum wage that has every entry level position set at a low wage which unlivable. That is a fact and what is currently the issue. It takes an act of congress to change this legislation. Then they set it a another low wage that is just a little more, and when the economy fluctiates, it becomes unlivable again. Instead of letting the wage increase with the market, which it will, you are advocating that we do what the market can already do through legislation. Tell me, what happens when the market goes to crap and businesses have to pay entry level workers a wage that is above market value? They let people go. If wage was based on the market for entry level workers, they would be able to keep their jobs because business owners would not be tied to a minimum wage that is above market value.

As I stated before, wages and job competition would increase with the market if let be. Its not what's on paper. It is what has been evidenced by 162 years without a minimum wage.

Every dollar a minimum wage worker receives must have come out of somebody else’s pocket, either small business owners or their customers. The money for a higher minimum wage does not come from thin air. Workers must be paid for the amount of work they bring to the company. When you mess with that, people lose jobs.


Forbes
Congress raised the minimum wage 10.6% in July, 2009 (know of anyone else getting a raise then?). In the ensuring 6 months, nearly 600,000 teen jobs disappeared, even with nearly 4% growth in the economy, this compared to a loss of 250,000 jobs in the first half of the year as GDP growth declined by 4% Why? When you raise the price of anything, people take less of it, including labor. The unemployment rate for teens remains unacceptably high. Workers of all ages that are relatively unskilled are adversely impacted by this policy.

Minimum wage increases poverty as well. If companies must pay a higher wage for entry level positions, those who have no skills are least likely to be hired. The hiring process for these entry level positions becomes more strict. It weeds out many from the lowest class. So now that you have a higher minimum wage, these entry level positions are no longer in the reach of the lowest class. Get the minimum wage high enough, and businesses will require college degrees for entry level positions.

And, what did those 162 years bring??

Coal mining towns, where the only store was 'compnay stores. Give a listen to 'I owe my soul to the company store'. That's slave wages

You got the child labor.



You got the monopolies.. the extreme corruption.

NO.. I don't want to go back to that.

This was due to zero labor laws, and no health and safety standards. It has nothing to do with minimum wage.

[Nickman]

You're just proving my point?

This was in response to

The majority of our American history (162 years) we had no such thing as minimum wage and business was booming. Workers had the choice and freedom to change jobs anytime they want for higher wages and better health and safety standards.

I said there are too many independent variables, e.g. war, for this to be an apt comparison, or to have any real consequence as an argument other than just be "coincidentally" rather than "incidentally".

I never said that I had an applicable comparison, I don't think there are any.

Not so, the war you spoke of was post minimum wage, not prior in the 162 years I mentioned. Then we had Vietnam, Cold War, Gulf War, Iraq War, Afghanistan, and so on. These have helped maintain our economy, not a minimum wage.

[Goat]

You're just proving my point?

This was in response to

The majority of our American history (162 years) we had no such thing as minimum wage and business was booming. Workers had the choice and freedom to change jobs anytime they want for higher wages and better health and safety standards.

I said there are too many independent variables, e.g. war, for this to be an apt comparison, or to have any real consequence as an argument other than just be "coincidentally" rather than "incidentally".

I never said that I had an applicable comparison, I don't think there are any.

Not so, the war you spoke of was post minimum wage, not prior in the 162 years I mentioned. Then we had Vietnam, Cold War, Gulf War, Iraq War, Afghanistan, and so on. These have helped maintain our economy, not a minimum wage.

Please support this claim.

[bluethread]

There isn't really enough empirical evidence for either of our assertions towards businesses, but businesses that pay their employees more and have higher health and safety standards don't seem to me to make more money necessarily. Firstly there's going to be a hard limit on employment because of location, they have much higher spending, they might not need more employees.

That is not necessarily true. Can you show the correlation between lower wages and lower health standards?

After much thought about the seeming contradictory nature of your position, it appears to me that you might be mistaking the problem with hourly based compensation for a minimum wage problem. When compensation is based entirely on an hourly rate, that can lead one to think that one is buying someone else's time and not their talents. This can lead an employer to expect a receptionist to do legal research, because the receptionist has the time. Minimum wage says nothing about work, it only talks about time. This is an inherently vague way to define an employment contract. This, combined with mandated benefits, ignores that employment is also about the employees competence, intelligence and productivity. Therefore, commission and salary are often better standards for evaluating compensation than pay per hour.

[Jashwell]

You're just proving my point?

This was in response to

The majority of our American history (162 years) we had no such thing as minimum wage and business was booming. Workers had the choice and freedom to change jobs anytime they want for higher wages and better health and safety standards.

I said there are too many independent variables, e.g. war, for this to be an apt comparison, or to have any real consequence as an argument other than just be "coincidentally" rather than "incidentally".

I never said that I had an applicable comparison, I don't think there are any.

Not so, the war you spoke of was post minimum wage, not prior in the 162 years I mentioned. Then we had Vietnam, Cold War, Gulf War, Iraq War, Afghanistan, and so on. These have helped maintain our economy, not a minimum wage.

I never made any comparison argument
I didn't mention a war (I just used it as an example of an independent variable after you brought it up)
You did.

I never said a minimum wage benefited or supported the economy

I said your comparison to a time/place without minimum wage was inappropriate because of all the differences.


If you go on to reply to this to talk about how minimum wage actually didn't support the economy like I apparently said or how apparently "my" comparison argument fails I'm not going to reply.i

[Nickman]

You're just proving my point?

This was in response to

The majority of our American history (162 years) we had no such thing as minimum wage and business was booming. Workers had the choice and freedom to change jobs anytime they want for higher wages and better health and safety standards.

I said there are too many independent variables, e.g. war, for this to be an apt comparison, or to have any real consequence as an argument other than just be "coincidentally" rather than "incidentally".

I never said that I had an applicable comparison, I don't think there are any.

Not so, the war you spoke of was post minimum wage, not prior in the 162 years I mentioned. Then we had Vietnam, Cold War, Gulf War, Iraq War, Afghanistan, and so on. These have helped maintain our economy, not a minimum wage.

I never made any comparison argument
I didn't mention a war (I just used it as an example of an independent variable after you brought it up)
You did.

I never said a minimum wage benefited or supported the economy

I said your comparison to a time/place without minimum wage was inappropriate because of all the differences.


If you go on to reply to this to talk about how minimum wage actually didn't support the economy like I apparently said or how apparently "my" comparison argument fails I'm not going to reply.i

My apologies if I misrepresented your post. Would you please reiterate what your point is.

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 47 by Nickman]

No problem, it seemed like you were implying that since for "162 years of American history that there was no minimum wage and business was booming" was some kind of evidence that minimum wage is bad for business. I was just saying that it might not be a good comparison, since there are many things that have changed in American history and not all of them are minimum wage.

I think this is the kind of debate that really needs proper economic simulations for empirical data, or some people properly taught in economics (I'm clearly not). Otherwise we're just asserting what seems intuitive about businesses with regards to minimum wage.

[Nickman]

You're just proving my point?

This was in response to

The majority of our American history (162 years) we had no such thing as minimum wage and business was booming. Workers had the choice and freedom to change jobs anytime they want for higher wages and better health and safety standards.

I said there are too many independent variables, e.g. war, for this to be an apt comparison, or to have any real consequence as an argument other than just be "coincidentally" rather than "incidentally".

I never said that I had an applicable comparison, I don't think there are any.

Not so, the war you spoke of was post minimum wage, not prior in the 162 years I mentioned. Then we had Vietnam, Cold War, Gulf War, Iraq War, Afghanistan, and so on. These have helped maintain our economy, not a minimum wage.

Please support this claim.

Wars boost the economy temporarily, and in some cases, long term. During wartime, companies receive contracts to supply boots, uniforms, ammunition, fuel, food, and many other necessities to support the war. This creates jobs that were not previously available. It creates a high supply and demand which is good for economy. However, there are better ways to boost the economy. I am not advocating that war is the answer. I am just stating the facts of what happened.


NyTimes
As I showed in an academic paper years ago, the war first affected the economy through monetary developments. Starting in the mid-1930s, Hitler’s aggression caused capital flight from Europe. People wanted to invest somewhere safer — particularly in the United States. Under the gold standard of that time, the flight to safety caused large gold flows to America. The Treasury Department under President Franklin D. Roosevelt used that inflow to increase the money supply.

The result was an aggressive monetary expansion that effectively ended deflation. Real borrowing costs decreased and interest-sensitive spending rose rapidly. The economy responded strongly. From 1933 to 1937, real gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of almost 10 percent, and unemployment fell from 25 percent to 14. To put that in perspective, G.D.P. growth has averaged just 2.5 percent in the current recovery, and unemployment has barely budged.

But World War II has something to tell us here, too. Because nearly 10 million men of prime working age were drafted into the military, there was a huge skills gap between the jobs that needed to be done on the home front and the remaining work force. Yet businesses and workers found a way to get the job done. Factories simplified production methods and housewives learned to rivet.

Here the lesson is that demand is crucial — and that jobs don’t go unfilled for long. If jobs were widely available today, unemployed workers would quickly find a way to acquire needed skills or move to where the jobs were located.

Finally, what about the national debt? Given the recent debt downgrade, it might seem impossible for the United States to embark on fiscal stimulus that would increase its ratio of debt to G.D.P.

Well, at the end of World War II, that ratio hit 109 percent — one and a half times as high as it is now. Yet this had no obvious adverse consequences for growth or our ability to borrow.

Wiki
The post–World War II economic expansion, also known as the postwar economic boom, the long boom, and the Golden Age of Capitalism, was a period of economic prosperity in the mid-20th century which occurred, following the end of World War II in 1945, and lasted until the early 1970s. It ended with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, the 1973 oil crisis, and the 1973–1974 stock market crash, which led to the 1970s recession. Narrowly defined, the period spanned from 1945 to 1952, with overall growth lasting well until 1971, though there are some debates on dating the period, and booms in individual countries differed, some starting as early as 1945, and overlapping the rise of the East Asian economies into the 1980s or 1990s.

During this time there was high worldwide economic growth; Western European and East Asian countries in particular experienced unusually high and sustained growth, together with full employment. Contrary to early predictions, this high growth also included many countries that had been devastated by the war, such as Greece (Greek economic miracle), West Germany (Wirtschaftswunder), France (Trente Glorieuses), Japan (Japanese post-war economic miracle), and Italy (Italian economic miracle).

[Nickman]

[Replying to post 47 by Nickman]

No problem, it seemed like you were implying that since for "162 years of American history that there was no minimum wage and business was booming" was some kind of evidence that minimum wage is bad for business. I was just saying that it might not be a good comparison, since there are many things that have changed in American history and not all of them are minimum wage.

I think this is the kind of debate that really needs proper economic simulations for empirical data, or some people properly taught in economics (I'm clearly not). Otherwise we're just asserting what seems intuitive about businesses with regards to minimum wage.

My point was that we didn't need MW for 162 years and business was fine. It grew exponentially. Since MW was put into practice, wages can't increase with the market as they did previously. They can only increase with more legislation. When minimum wage is increased, people get laid off so that companies can maintain their profits. [/list]