CBO Says The Obama Plan To Raise Minimum Wage...

[Ishmael]

That is obvious but I think it is a bit old school. I wonder how they even get the number. It really is a number that can be used in so many different ways and to suit different needs especially when you compare races. I bet it changes more drastically when social economic groups are compared.

The cycle starts way before that. It starts when the dad leaves the home or is never there and there are few if any role models. Kids grow up hungry, develop poor learning habits, and no one can help them at home. They move into puberty with no role models, they fall behind in school, they act out because the world around them is not as great as the world on TV. They don't read well enough to keep up and they don't write well either. Their stuff gets taken by bigger kids, they get smacked around if they try to fight back. Their old brother's best friend is shot and the Aunt ODs. Are you getting the picture?

Who is going to help them. Either way we pay.

Lets look at 5th grade reading scores. I be you see the same numbers. Just saying.

Yup, all of that comes into play. Single parent families (those stats have been known for years), a for shit public school system (I've been pounding on that for years too).

As far as the socio-economic stat, I think we both know the answer to that one. Teens from better neighborhoods are more likely to be employed regardless of race.

Overall the fact remains that if the economy remains in the shitter it's just going to get worse and we're stuck with an administration that's worked on everything BUT the economy. Minimum waqe hikes are NOT going to do anything for the economy, neither is shoveling tons of money into alternative energy shit holes, and 90% of that $1 trillion stimulus went to anything but 'shovel ready jobs.' And threatening to raise taxes on the corporations is a real incentive for them to bring that off-shore money and off-shore jobs back here, right?

The answer is the economy but the national leadership is either uninterested or too incompetent to do anything about it.

Ishmael

 

[bill-pix-trade]

This is pretty much spot on though I think the tv comment is just pulled out of thin air.



Bored people do stupid shit and yes there are lots of studies on brain development. Within the context of the situation however dumb shit that isn't criminal doesn't count. If they are skateboarding down hill, writing raps, building toy trains, break dancing, or learning to code on the internet they aren't going to jail or hurting people.

TV was just to make a point. Show me a sit com with poor people and there are 10 where people have stuff. Hell the honeymooners is closer to poor people than most shows and that show is 60 years old


Kids steal on a dare, kids do drugs on a dare, kids sell drugs because big bro told them too. They know it's against the law but no ones getting hurt so who cares. Driving drunk is fine as long as I don't get caught. Come dude you were young once. Thank think think. We are not talking about skiing down a closed trail we are talking about stealing cars for money.

 

[bill-pix-trade]

Yup, all of that comes into play. Single parent families (those stats have been known for years), a for shit public school system (I've been pounding on that for years too).

As far as the socio-economic stat, I think we both know the answer to that one. Teens from better neighborhoods are more likely to be employed regardless of race.

Overall the fact remains that if the economy remains in the shitter it's just going to get worse and we're stuck with an administration that's worked on everything BUT the economy. Minimum waqe hikes are NOT going to do anything for the economy, neither is shoveling tons of money into alternative energy shit holes, and 90% of that $1 trillion stimulus went to anything but 'shovel ready jobs.' And threatening to raise taxes on the corporations is a real incentive for them to bring that off-shore money and off-shore jobs back here, right?

The answer is the economy but the national leadership is either uninterested or too incompetent to do anything about it.

Ishmael

Some great points I really feel that to get out of this shit house long term economic mess we are in will take a higher taxes directed at importers the top 1% and the rest of us. We will also need to cut programs especially the ones that provide very little benefit like military spending on needless weapon systems.

Until we take bold actions to rebuild our industrial base we are stuck paying for low wadge earners. That was the lower middle class in the mid 70s and earlier. The only way out was to have a low paying factory job or two. With those gone we are fucked.

 

[Sean Renaud]

TV was just to make a point. Show me a sit com with poor people and there are 10 where people have stuff. Hell the honeymooners is closer to poor people than most shows and that show is 60 years old


Kids steal on a dare, kids do drugs on a dare, kids sell drugs because big bro told them too. They know it's against the law but no ones getting hurt so who cares. Driving drunk is fine as long as I don't get caught. Come dude you were young once. Thank think think. We are not talking about skiing down a closed trail we are talking about stealing cars for money.

Well that's in part because people on television have an unrealistic amount of stuff. It's not that they aren't poor it''s that they are poor and have stuff.

I never did anything like that when I was young. I did "dumb" shit like racing on a stretch of road where the cops couldn't hide and there was nothing to hit, riding down the street in shopping carts, occassionally TPing a house or wrapping some guys car in ceranwrap. Not stealing cars for money. I'm not claiming I wouldn't do that if I'd been hungry or homeless but I didn't

Some great points I really feel that to get out of this shit house long term economic mess we are in will take a higher taxes directed at importers the top 1% and the rest of us. We will also need to cut programs especially the ones that provide very little benefit like military spending on needless weapon systems.

Until we take bold actions to rebuild our industrial base we are stuck paying for low wadge earners. That was the lower middle class in the mid 70s and earlier. The only way out was to have a low paying factory job or two. With those gone we are fucked.

Cutting those programs will not get us out of the shit house economically. It will, as austerity must, get us deeper into the shitter. There are definitely better uses but yeah.

I don't think there is any realistic way to rebuild our industrial base by the by and even less logical reason to do so.

 

[bill-pix-trade]

Well that's in part because people on television have an unrealistic amount of stuff. It's not that they aren't poor it''s that they are poor and have stuff.

I never did anything like that when I was young. I did "dumb" shit like racing on a stretch of road where the cops couldn't hide and there was nothing to hit, riding down the street in shopping carts, occassionally TPing a house or wrapping some guys car in ceranwrap. Not stealing cars for money. I'm not claiming I wouldn't do that if I'd been hungry or homeless but I didn't



Cutting those programs will not get us out of the shit house economically. It will, as austerity must, get us deeper into the shitter. There are definitely better uses but yeah.

I don't think there is any realistic way to rebuild our industrial base by the by and even less logical reason to do so.

These kids are not you. You did not do shit. I spent time in the city as a teen and I was wild. My older son was crazy too. He also had friends with nothing and did what they had to to survive. We had a few kids live in our home who ended up in jail a few years latter. My wife and I could not let some kid live in their cars or the woods. Not while we had so much. We NEVER had anything stolen, but these kids do scare the fuck out of me.


We need a lot to happen. Ditching on the industrial base is partially what lead to dependence. Not everyone can be am accountant. Come on dude think about it. You are smarter than this.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

Generally speaking they do do stupid shit.

If you are young and unemployed it's fairly certain you are also poverty stricken. How do you get out of poverty? You get a fucking job. Jobs instill responsibility, provide a legitimate income, and helps the individual develop the skills necessary to get an even better job. But if there are no jobs, ie the economy is shit, and you're young and away from family you aren't getting any unemployment because you have no job history, maybe some minimal public assistance. But being young it's unlikely that you're spending your days sitting on the porch stoop.

So there's all sorts of things out there that an enterprising young man can do, deal crack, smack, meth, jack cars for the chop shop down the block, or run a string of bimbo's who are collecting WIC benefits.

Eventually you're going to get busted because you're young and the young behave stupidly, so do old people but not nearly so often. And so the cycle starts, in jail, out of jail and unemployed, back to jail again.

Being in poverty is NOT an excuse to turn to a life of crime. There are others ways out of poverty, but a shit economy makes it all the harder to take the path that will lead to a place in civil society.

Ishmael

How many times as a youth did idle hands cause you to get arrested?

I live in Orlando. The mayor's teenage son doesn't have a job. Therefore the mayor & son must be poor.

 

[Sean Renaud]

These kids are not you. You did not do shit. I spent time in the city as a teen and I was wild. My older son was crazy too. He also had friends with nothing and did what they had to to survive. We had a few kids live in our home who ended up in jail a few years latter. My wife and I could not let some kid live in their cars or the woods. Not while we had so much. We NEVER had anything stolen, but these kids do scare the fuck out of me.


We need a lot to happen. Ditching on the industrial base is partially what lead to dependence. Not everyone can be am accountant. Come on dude think about it. You are smarter than this.

I didn't say there weren't far far worse kids. I'm contesting that boredom in and of itself creates criminals. Which is the case Ish was trying to make back there. Now a certain amount of people are just wild and will do wild shit no matter what but in general crime can be tracked by poverty and that's because it's something people do when they don't perceive other better choices. Not All, just most.

Here's the thing, we sling around dependence like it's a bad word. The thing is work has little if any inherent value. As a nation we're getting richer each and every year because productivity is up and it's up in large part due to automation and outsourcing. If we stop the automation we can employ more people while producing less. Which is stupid. If we stop the outsourcing. . .well we might be able to make it work but I would bet that the result would be fewer foreigners buying our products because the combination of them losing jobs and the increase (however minor since most currencies are far weaker than ours) would be a double whammy that would come back and actually effect the rich instead of being a minor annoyance.

Work is not the ends, it's the means. It's time we started stepping our shit up.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I know this much.

My grandsons stayed out of trouble because their fathers kept them busy. Two are now grown, and one is 17. The 17 year old plays AAU and high school baseball. His friends are major league baseball players...he's been to parties at Derek Jeter's house, his AAU coach played in 2 World Series. The kid is not loitering at the Quickie Mart. He's 6-3, a scholar, and is buried in pussy (forget it if you have tats or pink hair).

 

[about_average]

Well, either it's a job-killer or it ain't.

Pretty much what the CBO says. If you read the actual report they admit they aren't sure. Could be anywhere from nearly no job losses, up to 1,000,000.
How many people actually pay attention to a study that has that high a margin of error?

 

[Ishmael]

How many times as a youth did idle hands cause you to get arrested?

I live in Orlando. The mayor's teenage son doesn't have a job. Therefore the mayor & son must be poor.

I started my first business when I was 10 years old, my father co-signed for a Sears lawn mower for me. I mowed lawns for 50 cents a pop to make those $14/mo. payments and I still found time to cause mischief, fortunately I wasn't caught.

And the idle sons and daughters of the wealthy and politically connected go to jail too, you read about it all the time.

Ishmael

 

[Ishmael]

On a side note I notice that a few posters are taking other posters to task for even talking about unemployment and minority unemployment specifically. It's as if their attitude is that it's "none of our business" or some sort of a political ploy of convenience. Well, unemployment is everyone's concern and in times of economic malaise it is the minorities that are hardest hit and that's a concern as well.

But instead of focusing on the problem and expressing outrage at the policies that are prolonging this shit economy and seriously hurting the minorities they turn their ire on those that had nothing to do with the situation and can do little to correct it. I suppose that if they turned their anger on the true cause of the problem they'd have to face up to the fact that the Obama administration is, and has, done nothing to actually address the problem and that is a path they just can't bring themselves to tread.

Ishmael

 

[Adre]

The CBO report cites more than sixty previous studies regarding the minimum wage, many of which come to varying conclusions. And the CBO also acknowledges that the effects of the change in wage could be 'essentially zero.' It appears that as usual we have more of an ideological and political argument than an economic one, both in Congress and here on Lit.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Some great points I really feel that to get out of this shit house long term economic mess we are in will take a higher taxes directed at importers the top 1% and the rest of us. We will also need to cut programs especially the ones that provide very little benefit like military spending on needless weapon systems.

Until we take bold actions to rebuild our industrial base we are stuck paying for low wadge earners. That was the lower middle class in the mid 70s and earlier. The only way out was to have a low paying factory job or two. With those gone we are fucked.

Taxation and barriers to trade are the last remedy that you want to employ, for they are the vehicle by which we arrived at the sad, broken-down depot.

The problem with an Interventionist mindset is like the radical climatologist, the idea that we understand a complex chaotic system well enough to engage in some bold plan that will control it, the plan always though an exacerbating input. What is needed in more liberty from the Progressive tax cycle (I would posit via the Fair Tax) and the endless mind-numbing, time-consuming and expense-creating and job-killing regulatory structure that Interventionism has erected. In short, theonly big plan that will work is more Laissez-faire economics.

I would say that your analysis is probably more of a post hoc, ergo propter hoc line of reasoning. Any time you can have an economy of price (what the ignorant call shipping jobs overseas) you create more abundance of Capital to go into other endeavors that create more wealth.

http://mises.org/daily/6664/Tax-Consumers-Taxpayers-and-the-Cox-Box

I like this, it explains what has happened under the progressive tax code and the idea that you can make the rich pay taxes, when what they actually do is pay taxes. As for wage floors, I would download a free eCopy of Bastiat's Sophisms for what was true in the early 1850s is still true today as far as the Science of Economic Activity and Human Action.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The CBO report cites more than sixty previous studies regarding the minimum wage, many of which come to varying conclusions. And the CBO also acknowledges that the effects of the change in wage could be 'essentially zero.' It appears that as usual we have more of an ideological and political argument than an economic one, both in Congress and here on Lit.

CBO cannot go outside the bounds of the seen by law.

It is a difference between those of an altruistic mind-set and those of a scientific mindset.

 

[Ishmael]

Pretty much what the CBO says. If you read the actual report they admit they aren't sure. Could be anywhere from nearly no job losses, up to 1,000,000.
How many people actually pay attention to a study that has that high a margin of error?

But it didn't say any jobs were created, did it?

Ishmael

 

[RobDownSouth]

CBO cannot go outside the bounds of the seen by law.

It is a difference between those of an altruistic mind-set and those of a scientific mindset.

*ahem*

In Its Minimum-Wage Report, the CBO Places Its Thumb on the Scale

Regarding the CBO estimate...

This estimate involves no original research by the CBO. What they did is a survey of the various economic research that already exist, picking an impact that the office’s staffers thought was appropriate.

As it turned out, what they thought was appropriate involved a lot of adjustments in the direction for a higher impact. In the report, the authors themselves clarify that they are taking a more conservative line. All predictions, of course, amount to speculation of things that could happen in the economy, but in this one the speculating goes in a direction that is, to a surprising extent, in tune with Republican ideology.

Imagine that! I am shocked! Shocked I tell you!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

But it didn't say any jobs were created, did it?

Ishmael

That is a valid point. The only thing the Interventionists want to argue is job loss, which means they are afraid of the obvious conclusion, that even though it might not cause the loss of jobs right now, they cannot address will it prevent future jobs, for it is clear that future jobs must raise costs, therefore prices, making it an indirect tax on the economy.

Over the course of time (save for the grace of the "undocumented workers") who knows how many jobs our minimum wage (and union scales) prevented the creation of.

 

[Adre]

So in less than a day this thread went from the Venerable Vette stating that Obama is a job killer and the Dems will pay to 'who knows.'

And so it goes.

 

[contrifan32]

*ahem*

In Its Minimum-Wage Report, the CBO Places Its Thumb on the Scale

Regarding the CBO estimate...


Imagine that! I am shocked! Shocked I tell you!

Lets see now, the CBO is a non partisan government agency that reports to congress and The New Republic is a .... (someone please finish this for me... I need some coffee).

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Lets see now, the CBO is a non partisan government agency that reports to congress and The New Republic is a .... (someone please finish this for me... I need some coffee).

They were Golden and unquestionable when they told us ObamaCare would be budget neutral, create jobs and save us $2500 a year in insurance premiums. Of course, the Democrats passed them up cooked numbers because they held all the power...

 

[phrodeau]

Lets see now, the CBO is a non partisan government agency that reports to congress and The New Republic is a .... (someone please finish this for me... I need some coffee).

Tell us what AJ is too, after your coffee break.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Democrats still want to argue that there is an upside to this?

http://www.aei-ideas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/021814minwage1-600x364.jpg

The increased earnings for low-wage workers resulting from the higher minimum wage would total $31 billion, by CBO’s estimate. However, those earnings would not go only to low-income families, because many low-wage workers are not members of low-income families. Just 19 percent of the $31 billion would accrue to families with earnings below the poverty threshold, whereas 29 percent would accrue to families earning more than three times the poverty threshold, CBO estimates. Moreover, the increased earnings for some workers would be accompanied by reductions in real (inflation-adjusted) income for the people who became jobless because of the minimum-wage increase, for business owners, and for consumers facing higher prices.

CBO

Gee, that's the same thing that we Austrian Libertarians have been saying all along...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

In December, the president claimed that there is “no solid evidence” that raising the minimum wage costs jobs, an assessment that the Washington Post’s fact-check column awarded two Pinocchios. The president, the Post concluded, was “dismissing the research and findings of a significant part of the economic academy,” that being the not-entirely-controversial claim that buyers buy less of a good when the price goes up. But the president has not been alone in this claim: Joe Sestak argued that we could raise the minimum wage beyond $10.10 “and people would not lose their jobs.” Paul Krugman smugly dismissed these fears in the pages of the New York Times: “The answer is that we have a lot of evidence on what happens when you raise the minimum wage. And the evidence is overwhelmingly positive: hiking the minimum wage has little or no adverse effect on employment.” The New York Times editorial board joined in: “The weight of the evidence shows that increases in the minimum wage have lifted pay without hurting employment.” MSNBC’s Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, accused those critical of the proposed pay hike of ignoring the “evidence.”

CBO estimates are considered the gold standard for policy analysis — when they suit Democrats’ rhetorical needs. For example, the CBO dutifully produced reports showing that, if enacted precisely as written, the Affordable Care Act would reduce deficits — even as the CBO emphasized the unlikelihood of that outcome. Nonetheless, Obamacare critics were pounded over the head with the CBO estimate by such abject apologists as Ezra Klein, late of the Washington Post. Now the Democrats are in a pickle: They can dismiss the estimates of the CBO, which they have relied upon for so much support, or they can say that they do not give a fig about the half-million Americans that the Obama administration’s preferred policy would throw out of work. Mr. Klein, to his credit, has in the past acknowledged the relationship between the price of labor and the demand for labor: In his estimate, throwing low-income people out of work is worth it.

Presidential aide and White House tweeter-in-chief Dan Pfeiffer offered his characteristic dime-deep insight, writing: “The logical extension of the GOP position on today’s CBO report would be to call for lowering the minimum wage.” But that is in fact the tradeoff: Demand curves point south. You can have higher demand and lower prices or lower demand and higher prices. Stamp your feet all you like, you can’t stamp out supply and demand. The logical extension of this insight is not to lower the minimum wage, but to abolish it. The federal minimum wage is merely a statutory floor; the real minimum wage, which already is collected by our millions upon millions of unemployed and will be collected by a half-million more should the Democrats get their way, is $0.00. That’s what unemployment pays.

The stagnant wages of low-income and middle-class Americans are a national scandal, but the solution to it must be an economic one rather than a political one. Americans who are not bound for law school and high-tech jobs need a different and better model of education; the Democrats stop their having it. They do not need the importation of millions of largely uneducated and low-skilled workers from abroad; the Democrats insist upon it. (And so do a number of dangerously wrongheaded Chamber of Commerce Republicans.) American workers need massive capital investment to raise the value of their labor; Democrats desire to tax it. Economic reality is non-negotiable, and passing a law against awful job markets and the wages associated with them will not make that reality go away.

Editors, NRO

More Austrian reality...

 

[about_average]

But it didn't say any jobs were created, did it?

Low wage earners, those who the minimum wage will affect, tend to spend the additional money. Generally an increase in spending by people results in an increase in jobs.