Minimum wage

[Sean]

The problem is the establishment of a Minimum Wage, not what it happens to be from one locale to another. It's a wage and price control. They never work. They create shortages and unemployment.

Funny, all the actual evidence says otherwise.

 

[mayfly13]

So the minimum wage issue is a complex matter with all sorts of unforessen domino effects.
So how else could blue collar wages be increased?

So far, I've read lots of "let the free market regulate itself" and "stop attacking freedom and capitalism and advocating for socialism and totalitarian State control" arguments.

But currently, the "free market" seems to regulate itself down, not up.

Just one example out of many:
How foreign workers are being used by employers, to draw wages down.
Medium-sizes businesses like construction, fruit picking and rest homes hire temporary Filipinos, Mexicans or East Europeans workers and increase their workloads, which makes these jobs even less appealing to locals, so the vicious circle begins. Corporations? "Suck it up or leave, I can always find an Indian desperate for an H1B visa, or a sweatshop worker in China."
Or see the Wallmart & Amazon warehouse workers scandals.

 

[oggbashan]

The minimum wage in the UK has just been raised.

Previous statistics suggest that having a minimum wage and increasing it, has NO effect on the jobs supply.

If a job cannot afford the minimum wage, the company isn't trading at a profit.

But the hairdressing industry relies on apprentices who are paid at a lower rate because they are too young for the adult minimum wage, and are fired when they reach that age. It is unfair but the industry's margins are too low and competition is too fierce.

 

[Conager]

Funny, all the actual evidence says otherwise.

When you were getting your imaginary law degree, did they not teach you that gratuitous assertion is not "evidence?"

 

[Sean]

When you were getting your imaginary law degree, did they not teach you that gratuitous assertion is not "evidence?"

https://assets.publishing.service.g...f_the_NMW_on_employment_-_a_meta-analysis.pdf

 

[Sean]

https://assets.publishing.service.g...f_the_NMW_on_employment_-_a_meta-analysis.pdf

Want to try again? Or perhaps you meant to address your post to Vettebigot?

 

[sigh]

Eat the rich.

Well-marbled, I'd expect, and tender when they're young. They'd sear nicely on the grill.

 

[LukSkyFokker]

Que doesn't do well when he sneaks out from under Wat's skirt.

 

[KimGordon67]

The driver of capitalism is profit. You can increase profit in two ways - increase the price at which you sell the goods you produce, or decrease the costs of production. For quite some time, goods were sold at a price that meant profit was 'acceptable' - consumer goods were relatively scarce, and people paid a fair chunk for a new fridge or whatever else they needed. However, increases in efficiencies in production meant that the production of consumer goods increased exponentially - not just the 'necessities' (like a fridge), but all sorts of new things that we were convinced we 'needed', so as to keep the engine of capitalism running. I think this is the 'better society' that what's-her-face is referring to. For her benefit, I'll point out that this is where the environmental degradation comes in - continuing to draw on finite resources, and engaging in production practice with no concern for the environmental impact is a large part of the reason why we're where we are with the planet. (Bamboo toothbrushes are not the solution.)

Now it's imperative to sell your consumer goods as cheaply as possible, because you're competing with a bazillion other producers. There's some things that avoid this because of the status or notion of quality that is attached to them, but by and large, when we buy yet another flat screen TV because somehow we need one in the bathroom, we're generally looking for the cheapest one we can (provided it meets a fairly short list of other criteria).

So, it's difficult to make more profit by raising prices. Capitalists thus look at the other end of the equation - lowering production costs. The actual production process is already pretty efficient, so they set their sights on wages. Politicians are voted in who don't protect workers rights, unions are dismantled, and people are worked harder and harder for less and less. When I was a kid, it was actual law that you had to pay a man enough to support himself and his family. (There's an obvious gender issue there that I won't go into right now.) It's hard to imagine that being the case now, because the current neoliberal ideology won't support that sort of thing. Once production processes become global, there's an enormous pool of labour to draw on, and wages are driven down even further.

As Longwood notes, wages *should* be, at minimum, enough to cover the costs of delivering that labour. But this becomes problematised by the huge pool of available low-skilled workers. Capitalism doesn't care if it's working one human being into exhaustion or homelessness, if there's another human being waiting in line behind them. And at the moment there is, and neoliberal policy-making means the state won't intervene (enough) to correct the situation. Ideally, we should be revolting, but the availability of cheap consumer goods (and cheap credit) means a lot of people are pretty comfortable, and they've also bought into the 'capitalist dream' that, if they just work hard enough, they'll be rich too. Thus they're able to blame the truly poor for their situation, attributing it, for example, to some supposed 'characters flaws' that are weirdly based in their ethnicity.

Capitalism has no morals. If you want a moral society, someone else needs to bring the morality to the table. If you keep voting in neoliberal politicians, it won't be them doing this. But if you let the logic of capitalism be the only game in town, there is no morality, and humans are dispensable (unless they become in short supply again.)

**Disclaimer - I'm fully aware that the history of capitalism and related economies is a little more complex than this, but the basic tenet remains true. There's no morality in capitalism.

 

[srgreene]

The minimum wage in the UK has just been raised.

Previous statistics suggest that having a minimum wage and increasing it, has NO effect on the jobs supply.

Various studies in in USA have come to inconsistent conclusions. But if that were true, why not raise the minimum wage to $50 USD or 50 pounds per hour?

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”


Benjamin Disraeli.

 

[KimGordon67]

Thank you Peter. Yes, I recently did admit on this site to some experience with "trains" in my youth, while explicitly denying "gangbangs". Well I never claimed to be a saint.

People like Kim Gordon have not a scintilla of integrity, to impugn someone the way he, she, or it did me with respect to the label of "racist". No, I'm sorry, it is not raacist to understand how devastating the considerable destruction of the American Negro family structure has been to, first and foremost, America Negroes. I take the percentage of out of wedlock births, and fatherless families, which provides fertile ground for a host of social problems, as evidence of that destruction.

Somehow, in Gordon's and mayfly's mind, recognizing reality makes a person a racist. It is abhorrent, but that is how the mindless left rolls today.

Your comment *literally* fits any definition of racism that you could find. Acknowledging the existence of negative social statistics within a minority group isn't racist, but *blaming* some inherent quality in that group for the situation is racism.

I get that most racist people don't think they aren't racist. But that doesn't change reality.

 

[srgreene]

Given the trouble employers are having attracting workers at those low wage jobs and how they are offering signing bonuses and higher wages to entice people to work for them it seems the marketplace IS deciding on a new higher level for the bottom of the wage scale. ... Thus as demand rises so does the price.

Exactly. And demand for labor, preferably accompanied by increasing productivity, which is associated with capital investment, is the best guarantee for everyone's income.

Minimum wage laws do guarantee employment for one sector though, and those jobs tend to be well paid positions: government bureaucrats and lawyers.

 

[KimGordon67]

Well-marbled, I'd expect, and tender when they're young. They'd sear nicely on the grill.

Accompanied by a nice Chianti, of course.

 

[Sean]

Accompanied by a nice Chianti, of course.

I usually find a more robust red, like a Rioja, pairs well with roast oligarch.

 

[Conager]

I see your bullshit googled citation of a singular study and raise you the most recent metastudy of all the available studies that says you are wrong, as per usual.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w28388

 

[Conager]

Given the trouble employers are having attracting workers at those low wage jobs and how they are offering signing bonuses and higher wages to entice people to work for them it seems the marketplace IS deciding on a new higher level for the bottom of the wage scale. The price of labor has fallen below the cost of delivering it (the "cost of living") and the marketplace law of price, supply, and demand is playing out as fewer sellers of labor are willing to sell at the old low price. Thus as demand rises so does the price.

No, that would be ill-advised government intervention in the market again. Overly generous unemployment benefits with no work requirements set a floor. Why work when you can get paid more to stay home?

 

[sigh]

Why are we discussing minimum wage? Well, because it then becomes a problem of the poor, and whether they want to work, or deserve to work, or really get minimum wage at all. The whole discussion is focused on the poor and all the old stereotypes get played back back and forth and old edges get sharpened and it's all bullshit.

So why are we talking about the poorest Americans as if they are a problem? Why not focus on the other end of the wage spectrum, where the problem actually lies and (no surprise) where reside too the only people that actually have the power change an obviously flawed system?

Substitution and diversion and clever marketing. "Look at the nasty poor, not me! Not a gentleman among them." *sniff*

 

[Champakian]

Eat the rich.

Destroy wealth and thusly destroy investment.

What a great plan, what a way to reduce everyone to the same level!

Do you think the rich are doing the Scrooge McDuck, swimming in money in the basement?

 

[Champakian]

The problem is the establishment of a Minimum Wage, not what it happens to be from one locale to another. It's a wage and price control. They never work. They create shortages and unemployment.

This is so very true, but to the Left the illusion of government-enforced "fairness"
is much more important a goal than actual fairness...

 

[Champakian]

So the minimum wage issue is a complex matter with all sorts of unforessen domino effects.
So how else could blue collar wages be increased?

So far, I've read lots of "let the free market regulate itself" and "stop attacking freedom and capitalism and advocating for socialism and totalitarian State control" arguments.

But currently, the "free market" seems to regulate itself down, not up.

Just one example out of many:
How foreign workers are being used by employers, to draw wages down.
Medium-sizes businesses like construction, fruit picking and rest homes hire temporary Filipinos, Mexicans or East Europeans workers and increase their workloads, which makes these jobs even less appealing to locals, so the vicious circle begins. Corporations? "Suck it up or leave, I can always find an Indian desperate for an H1B visa, or a sweatshop worker in China."
Or see the Wallmart & Amazon warehouse workers scandals.

Nobody is putting a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to work at substandard wages.

As Johnny pointed out, the Federal Minimum Wage is ineffectual
and one of the main reasons is that it is a one size fits all solution.

It takes a helluva lot more money to make it in Manhattan, NY
than it does in Manhattan, KS and forcing the latter to pay wages
more appropriate to the former is a job killer and a creator of
poverty and despair. It's also unfair, since that seems to be the
operative concept, to the poor in the big blue cities since it's
not enough for them to actually make a living and that should
be more important to those who wrongly lament that it's not a
"living wage."

 

[Rightguide]

This is so very true, but to the Left the illusion of government-enforced "fairness"
is much more important a goal than actual fairness...

Probably because they spend most of their time thinking about a world they'd like to see, instead of the World as it really is. They address their social and economic fantasies with fanciful, unrealistic, policy solutions that fail because their initial analyses are governed by ideological parameters instead of reality. For instance, crimes involving guns are always a "gun problem" not a "bad person" problem. So 23,000 left wing gun laws later the problem still exists.

 

[KimGordon67]

Nobody is putting a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to work at substandard wages.

This is the funniest thing I've read in ages.

 

[OldJourno]

The minimum wage is $0.
Your wage is generally determined by the job you do, its value to the public, and how many other people who can do the same job competently.

 

[Delawareguy]

I'm shocked.
A minimum wage earner in the US works 8 $ an hour, and that's before tax!

And it's not like they sit on their backside all day long for such an abysmal pay.
An acquaintance described to me how they are actually monitored by the clock and every minute is squeezed out of them, the multitasking is pushed to abysmal limits and it's a race against time. And work-induced chronic stress injuries are commonplace.
Think Amazon warehouse workers.

How can Republicans defend such modern-day slavery, while advocating for tax cuts for corporations? And why did Biden and Kamala refuse to change the system?

I don't know. Let's just make you President and I'm sure you'll have it all sorted out in a couple weeks.

 

[Champakian]

Tricky Dick Nixon and a plethora of Communist/Socialist paradises
should have taught you long ago about the pernicious danger
inherent in governments setting price floors and ceilings,
but alas, altruism is blind to the results of its desires
to make a world of limited resource a utopia
for all by governmental decree...

The top-down approach, which is ironic
since most of the same voices hold
the theory of "trickle-down"
(not an economic term
but a pejorative)
anathema..