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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On April 19 2014 04:56 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2014 21:44 RvB wrote:On April 18 2014 14:07 IgnE wrote:On April 18 2014 14:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 18 2014 13:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 12:36 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 18 2014 12:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 12:11 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 18 2014 11:56 SnipedSoul wrote:
It's actually the converse. Nationalized healthcare would help businesses be more competitive by removing the significant financial burden of providing healthcare to their employees. Those funds would then be available for additional investment, higher wages, or whatever else the business wants to do with them. That sounds like how a business subsidy is supposed to work ... On April 18 2014 11:57 SnipedSoul wrote:On April 18 2014 11:55 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
[quote]
If they reduce poverty than they are not subsidies to businesses. Taxpayer money is making up for a shortfall in wages. Government pays the bill instead of a business. How is that not a subsidy? I live alone and pay between $7 and $10 a day for food and that's with cooking everything myself and making it from scratch. The rest of my family is similar. If taxpayer money was making up for a shortfall in wages, than removing the money and doing nothing else would leave the worker no better or worse off. EITIC and the like do not depress the market price for labor. Nor are we talking about a subsistence level of income where less income means death. There's no natural force like starvation that demands wages be higher. Nor is there a market need demanding higher wages. In other words, there's no shortfall in an economic sense. It's only a shortfall because you think a wage lower than that is "gross". Sounds like you are using neoclassical economics to arrive at those conclusions? As if Neoclassical economics was a proven science? Your claims are tenuous at best. No, I'm not using neoclassical economics to arrive at my conclusions. There's little evidence that EITC and the like depress wages. There's a lot of evidence that these subsides increase incomes. Sounds like working as intended. If they weren't working as intended you'd see more evidence of wages being depressed and less evidence of incomes going up. Hmm because the evidence supporting your claim seems to stem from Neoclassical economics unless your referencing some evidence I can't find? Here's a piece suggesting many of the claims stemming from Neoclasssical economics (that are the only ones I can find supporting your claim.) just are not accurate or support the idea that a min. wage increase doesn't actually decrease employment in a significant way? (despite it's common use as a talking point) The weight of that evidence points to little or no employment response to modest increases in the minimum wage.
The report reviews evidence on eleven possible adjustments to minimum-wage increases that may
help to explain why the measured employment effects are so consistently small. The strongest
evidence suggests that the most important channels of adjustment are: reductions in labor turnover;
improvements in organizational efficiency; reductions in wages of higher earners ("wage
compression"); and small price increases.
Given the relatively small cost to employers of modest increases in the minimum wage, these
adjustment mechanisms appear to be more than sufficient to avoid employment losses, even for
employers with a large share of low-wage worker
At least concerning the type of wage raises reasonable people are suggesting... source I don't have a problem with a modest increase in the min wage. But to do away with EITC and the like you'd have to raise it a lot. CBO estimates that a $10.10 min wage would increase incomes for families up to 3X the poverty line by $12 Billion. Food stamps pay out $80 billion and EITC pays out $60 billion. sourceIf you want to do away with these programs (not to mention all the others!) you'll have to go well beyond what reasonable people are suggesting. On April 18 2014 13:27 IgnE wrote:Re: Walmart Jonny tell me what's wrong with this video: + Show Spoiler + Well it's a bit of a red herring - min wage won't affect just Walmart. It also ignoring the impact of higher prices on real wages, lower demand from higher prices, etc. I don't believe it advocated for a minimum wage. But even if it did, we all agree that minimum wage increases are a wash on unemployment. Lower demand from 1.4% price increases? Offset by worker raises? The effects of minumum wage on unemployment are highly debatable. I don't get how you can be so certain about such a widely debated topic. As far as I can tell it's actually pretty one sided to the idea that it doesn't matter much at all for employment. for every 10% wages you get a 0-1.5% decrease but only in the under 30 workers so it doesn't even really show up in unemployment. Most of the research claiming the decrease in jobs don't go over 1.5% and most if not all that say 1.5% are neoclassical based economic claims that have been shown to be wrong multiple times in the real world. So where is this data that supports the claim raising the minimum wage kills jobs? And is any of it supported by non-Neoclassical economics?
Only a couple percent of workers earn the minimum wage so it's hard to notice even a substantial change in the data.
CBO has a pretty middle of the road analysis on the issue:
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44995-MinimumWage.pdf
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On April 19 2014 05:05 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 04:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:So you are worried about Walmart's customers paying 1.4% more as a regressive tax? Walmart's employees are it's customers too. How much do you think people spend at Walmart per year? What is 2% of that to be conservative? My guess is that the average low-income Walmart customer spends maybe 4k a year at Walmart, again to be conservative. So you are worried about a potential tax of $80-100 per year on Walmart customers in exchange for bumping up the salary of Walmart employees by roughly 50%? Keep in mind that you're bumping wages by 50%, but income will not go up by nearly as much. On net it sounds like a net loss to the poor, unless you boost the benefits too - the very thing you're trying to downplay. And what happens when the market changes and Walmart goes into a decline? Do they become TBTF? Walmart is a standin for any big box retailer obviously. I do not care about Walmart except insofar much as I care about "Walmarts". I am not trying to downplay benefits. Bump the wages, you still will not be paying significant taxes on 26k a year income that you weren't paying on 16 or 20k a year. I'm not sure what the foodstamp cutoff is, but we can raise government benefits in the interim. I know you think that you were making a joke, but it's fine to get rid of corporate taxes if corporations have no profits because they are distributing them to the workers.
The analysis doesn't work when you go beyond Walmart. Not all retailers are profitable, raising prices at all retailers would have a bigger impact on real income, etc.
Currently the marginal tax rate including benefit cuts is close to 100%. Bumping the wages won't bump the income much. If you compensate for that by expanding the benefits, you are no longer saving money for the taxpayer. Again, why all the effort for so little gain? Because you don't like Walmart??
No profits and Walmart never existed and those workers never had jobs. You should drop this fantasy land line of thought.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On April 19 2014 04:46 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 04:42 IgnE wrote:
Let's look at it this way jonny. If you are concerned about regressive taxes of tiny incremental price increases, then we can look at corporate profits as a regressive tax on low income customers too. Why not decrease the prices even further while paying employees the same? So get rid of the corporate profits tax 
there needs to be a serious and sincere effort at fixing the whole tax structure, so that the removal of corporate tax in this particular form is compensated by higher cap gains tax and whatnot, so you get less business decision distortion but also manage to capture more capitalist wealth in your tax system.
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On April 19 2014 05:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 05:05 IgnE wrote:On April 19 2014 04:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:So you are worried about Walmart's customers paying 1.4% more as a regressive tax? Walmart's employees are it's customers too. How much do you think people spend at Walmart per year? What is 2% of that to be conservative? My guess is that the average low-income Walmart customer spends maybe 4k a year at Walmart, again to be conservative. So you are worried about a potential tax of $80-100 per year on Walmart customers in exchange for bumping up the salary of Walmart employees by roughly 50%? Keep in mind that you're bumping wages by 50%, but income will not go up by nearly as much. On net it sounds like a net loss to the poor, unless you boost the benefits too - the very thing you're trying to downplay. And what happens when the market changes and Walmart goes into a decline? Do they become TBTF? Walmart is a standin for any big box retailer obviously. I do not care about Walmart except insofar much as I care about "Walmarts". I am not trying to downplay benefits. Bump the wages, you still will not be paying significant taxes on 26k a year income that you weren't paying on 16 or 20k a year. I'm not sure what the foodstamp cutoff is, but we can raise government benefits in the interim. I know you think that you were making a joke, but it's fine to get rid of corporate taxes if corporations have no profits because they are distributing them to the workers. The analysis doesn't work when you go beyond Walmart. Not all retailers are profitable, raising prices at all retailers would have a bigger impact on real income, etc. Currently the marginal tax rate including benefit cuts is close to 100%. Bumping the wages won't bump the income much. If you compensate for that by expanding the benefits, you are no longer saving money for the taxpayer. Again, why all the effort for so little gain? Because you don't like Walmart??
Target is profitable. Any store that assumes Walmart's position because Walmart declined after raising it's prices 1.4% would be profitable. I don't understand why you always do this. You never argue openly about possibilities, instead you keep throwing out arguments involving completely irrelevant things ("all retailers") as if they defeated the initial proposition.
I don't know what you are talking about with marginal tax rates. The marginal tax rate is the same in the income range we are talking about. If you are arguing that increasing employee wages will result in no gain because they lose benefits of equal value you are going to have list which benefits they are losing, at what income, and how much those benefits are worth, because I think you are completely bullshitting. I don't give a fuck about Walmart per se. Walmart is just the current manifestation of a phenomenon that is gutting the middle class and adding to a vast underclass of poverty-ridden people who depend on government redistribution just so they can shop at Walmart.
No profits and Walmart never existed and those workers never had jobs. You should drop this fantasy land line of thought.
This is another disingenuous argument. No profits and capitalism never exists and the tragic demise of Jefferson's family farm vision of America never happened. If everyone existed as part of an organic community with access to resources, a right to work, and communal support, they wouldn't need to debase themselves with exploitative work at Walmart.
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On April 19 2014 05:30 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 05:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 05:05 IgnE wrote:On April 19 2014 04:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:So you are worried about Walmart's customers paying 1.4% more as a regressive tax? Walmart's employees are it's customers too. How much do you think people spend at Walmart per year? What is 2% of that to be conservative? My guess is that the average low-income Walmart customer spends maybe 4k a year at Walmart, again to be conservative. So you are worried about a potential tax of $80-100 per year on Walmart customers in exchange for bumping up the salary of Walmart employees by roughly 50%? Keep in mind that you're bumping wages by 50%, but income will not go up by nearly as much. On net it sounds like a net loss to the poor, unless you boost the benefits too - the very thing you're trying to downplay. And what happens when the market changes and Walmart goes into a decline? Do they become TBTF? Walmart is a standin for any big box retailer obviously. I do not care about Walmart except insofar much as I care about "Walmarts". I am not trying to downplay benefits. Bump the wages, you still will not be paying significant taxes on 26k a year income that you weren't paying on 16 or 20k a year. I'm not sure what the foodstamp cutoff is, but we can raise government benefits in the interim. I know you think that you were making a joke, but it's fine to get rid of corporate taxes if corporations have no profits because they are distributing them to the workers. The analysis doesn't work when you go beyond Walmart. Not all retailers are profitable, raising prices at all retailers would have a bigger impact on real income, etc. Currently the marginal tax rate including benefit cuts is close to 100%. Bumping the wages won't bump the income much. If you compensate for that by expanding the benefits, you are no longer saving money for the taxpayer. Again, why all the effort for so little gain? Because you don't like Walmart?? Target is profitable. Any store that assumes Walmart's position because Walmart declined after raising it's prices 1.4% would be profitable. I don't understand why you always do this. You never argue openly about possibilities, instead you keep throwing out arguments involving completely irrelevant things ("all retailers") as if they defeated the initial proposition.
No, you are ignoring my criticism. You are supporting a policy that would be overall regressive just to help a minority of the poor. That isn't good policy IMO.
I don't know what you are talking about with marginal tax rates. The marginal tax rate is the same in the income range we are talking about. If you are arguing that increasing employee wages will result in no gain because they lose benefits of equal value you are going to have list which benefits they are losing, at what income, and how much those benefits are worth, because I think you are completely bullshitting. I don't give a fuck about Walmart per se. Walmart is just the current manifestation of a phenomenon that is gutting the middle class and adding to a vast underclass of poverty-ridden people who depend on government redistribution just so they can shop at Walmart.
Posted before. Not bullshitting. + Show Spoiler +
Show nested quote +No profits and Walmart never existed and those workers never had jobs. You should drop this fantasy land line of thought. This is another disingenuous argument. No profits and capitalism never exists and the tragic demise of Jefferson's family farm vision of America never happened. If everyone existed as part of an organic community with access to resources, a right to work, and communal support, they wouldn't need to debase themselves with exploitative work at Walmart.
It's not a disingenuous argument. If there's no chance for profit, no one is going to invest. End of story.
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Obama administration continues to delay on both the Keystone XL and rail car safety regulations.
Much competence!
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On April 19 2014 05:08 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 04:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 21:44 RvB wrote:On April 18 2014 14:07 IgnE wrote:On April 18 2014 14:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 18 2014 13:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 12:36 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 18 2014 12:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 12:11 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 18 2014 11:56 SnipedSoul wrote:
It's actually the converse. Nationalized healthcare would help businesses be more competitive by removing the significant financial burden of providing healthcare to their employees. Those funds would then be available for additional investment, higher wages, or whatever else the business wants to do with them. That sounds like how a business subsidy is supposed to work ... On April 18 2014 11:57 SnipedSoul wrote:
[quote]
Taxpayer money is making up for a shortfall in wages. Government pays the bill instead of a business. How is that not a subsidy?
I live alone and pay between $7 and $10 a day for food and that's with cooking everything myself and making it from scratch. The rest of my family is similar. If taxpayer money was making up for a shortfall in wages, than removing the money and doing nothing else would leave the worker no better or worse off. EITIC and the like do not depress the market price for labor. Nor are we talking about a subsistence level of income where less income means death. There's no natural force like starvation that demands wages be higher. Nor is there a market need demanding higher wages. In other words, there's no shortfall in an economic sense. It's only a shortfall because you think a wage lower than that is "gross". Sounds like you are using neoclassical economics to arrive at those conclusions? As if Neoclassical economics was a proven science? Your claims are tenuous at best. No, I'm not using neoclassical economics to arrive at my conclusions. There's little evidence that EITC and the like depress wages. There's a lot of evidence that these subsides increase incomes. Sounds like working as intended. If they weren't working as intended you'd see more evidence of wages being depressed and less evidence of incomes going up. Hmm because the evidence supporting your claim seems to stem from Neoclassical economics unless your referencing some evidence I can't find? Here's a piece suggesting many of the claims stemming from Neoclasssical economics (that are the only ones I can find supporting your claim.) just are not accurate or support the idea that a min. wage increase doesn't actually decrease employment in a significant way? (despite it's common use as a talking point) The weight of that evidence points to little or no employment response to modest increases in the minimum wage.
The report reviews evidence on eleven possible adjustments to minimum-wage increases that may
help to explain why the measured employment effects are so consistently small. The strongest
evidence suggests that the most important channels of adjustment are: reductions in labor turnover;
improvements in organizational efficiency; reductions in wages of higher earners ("wage
compression"); and small price increases.
Given the relatively small cost to employers of modest increases in the minimum wage, these
adjustment mechanisms appear to be more than sufficient to avoid employment losses, even for
employers with a large share of low-wage worker
At least concerning the type of wage raises reasonable people are suggesting... source I don't have a problem with a modest increase in the min wage. But to do away with EITC and the like you'd have to raise it a lot. CBO estimates that a $10.10 min wage would increase incomes for families up to 3X the poverty line by $12 Billion. Food stamps pay out $80 billion and EITC pays out $60 billion. sourceIf you want to do away with these programs (not to mention all the others!) you'll have to go well beyond what reasonable people are suggesting. On April 18 2014 13:27 IgnE wrote:Re: Walmart Jonny tell me what's wrong with this video: + Show Spoiler + Well it's a bit of a red herring - min wage won't affect just Walmart. It also ignoring the impact of higher prices on real wages, lower demand from higher prices, etc. I don't believe it advocated for a minimum wage. But even if it did, we all agree that minimum wage increases are a wash on unemployment. Lower demand from 1.4% price increases? Offset by worker raises? The effects of minumum wage on unemployment are highly debatable. I don't get how you can be so certain about such a widely debated topic. As far as I can tell it's actually pretty one sided to the idea that it doesn't matter much at all for employment. for every 10% wages you get a 0-1.5% decrease but only in the under 30 workers so it doesn't even really show up in unemployment. Most of the research claiming the decrease in jobs don't go over 1.5% and most if not all that say 1.5% are neoclassical based economic claims that have been shown to be wrong multiple times in the real world. So where is this data that supports the claim raising the minimum wage kills jobs? And is any of it supported by non-Neoclassical economics? Only a couple percent of workers earn the minimum wage so it's hard to notice even a substantial change in the data. CBO has a pretty middle of the road analysis on the issue: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44995-MinimumWage.pdf
The EITC encourages more people in low-income families to work—particularly unmarried custodial parents,
often mothers, for whom the EITC is larger than it is for people without children.4 That increase in the number
of available workers tends to reduce workers’ wages,allowing some of the benefit of the EITC to accrue to
employers, rather than to the workers themselves.5 An increase in the minimum wage would shift some of
that benefit from employers to workers by requiring the former to pay the latter more.
See?
as for It's not a disingenuous argument. If there's no chance for profit, no one is going to invest. End of story.
You do realize how empirically false this notion is right? Unless you are just using the most narrow definition which requires profit for something to be an investment. Which could not be more pointless to say.
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On April 19 2014 05:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 05:30 IgnE wrote:On April 19 2014 05:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 05:05 IgnE wrote:On April 19 2014 04:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:So you are worried about Walmart's customers paying 1.4% more as a regressive tax? Walmart's employees are it's customers too. How much do you think people spend at Walmart per year? What is 2% of that to be conservative? My guess is that the average low-income Walmart customer spends maybe 4k a year at Walmart, again to be conservative. So you are worried about a potential tax of $80-100 per year on Walmart customers in exchange for bumping up the salary of Walmart employees by roughly 50%? Keep in mind that you're bumping wages by 50%, but income will not go up by nearly as much. On net it sounds like a net loss to the poor, unless you boost the benefits too - the very thing you're trying to downplay. And what happens when the market changes and Walmart goes into a decline? Do they become TBTF? Walmart is a standin for any big box retailer obviously. I do not care about Walmart except insofar much as I care about "Walmarts". I am not trying to downplay benefits. Bump the wages, you still will not be paying significant taxes on 26k a year income that you weren't paying on 16 or 20k a year. I'm not sure what the foodstamp cutoff is, but we can raise government benefits in the interim. I know you think that you were making a joke, but it's fine to get rid of corporate taxes if corporations have no profits because they are distributing them to the workers. The analysis doesn't work when you go beyond Walmart. Not all retailers are profitable, raising prices at all retailers would have a bigger impact on real income, etc. Currently the marginal tax rate including benefit cuts is close to 100%. Bumping the wages won't bump the income much. If you compensate for that by expanding the benefits, you are no longer saving money for the taxpayer. Again, why all the effort for so little gain? Because you don't like Walmart?? Target is profitable. Any store that assumes Walmart's position because Walmart declined after raising it's prices 1.4% would be profitable. I don't understand why you always do this. You never argue openly about possibilities, instead you keep throwing out arguments involving completely irrelevant things ("all retailers") as if they defeated the initial proposition. No, you are ignoring my criticism. You are supporting a policy that would be overall regressive just to help a minority of the poor. That isn't good policy IMO. Show nested quote +I don't know what you are talking about with marginal tax rates. The marginal tax rate is the same in the income range we are talking about. If you are arguing that increasing employee wages will result in no gain because they lose benefits of equal value you are going to have list which benefits they are losing, at what income, and how much those benefits are worth, because I think you are completely bullshitting. I don't give a fuck about Walmart per se. Walmart is just the current manifestation of a phenomenon that is gutting the middle class and adding to a vast underclass of poverty-ridden people who depend on government redistribution just so they can shop at Walmart. Posted before. Not bullshitting. + Show Spoiler +Show nested quote +No profits and Walmart never existed and those workers never had jobs. You should drop this fantasy land line of thought. This is another disingenuous argument. No profits and capitalism never exists and the tragic demise of Jefferson's family farm vision of America never happened. If everyone existed as part of an organic community with access to resources, a right to work, and communal support, they wouldn't need to debase themselves with exploitative work at Walmart. It's not a disingenuous argument. If there's no chance for profit, no one is going to invest. End of story.
You've labeled a nominal increase in price "regressive." Even if technically regressive it's so small as to be a nonfactor. Prices have to be set somewhere. It's morally reprehensible to argue that nominal price increases that affect worker wages are Regressive while nominal price increases for profit are not.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
i don't think profit is the problem. rather, extreme efficiency can lead to distribution problems. the small business retailers may not be as efficient as walmart, and that does mean higher prices, but they also leave a greater portion of value within the ecosystem.
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On April 19 2014 06:06 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 05:08 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 04:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 21:44 RvB wrote:On April 18 2014 14:07 IgnE wrote:On April 18 2014 14:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 18 2014 13:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 12:36 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 18 2014 12:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 12:11 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
[quote]
That sounds like how a business subsidy is supposed to work ...
[quote]
If taxpayer money was making up for a shortfall in wages, than removing the money and doing nothing else would leave the worker no better or worse off. EITIC and the like do not depress the market price for labor. Nor are we talking about a subsistence level of income where less income means death.
There's no natural force like starvation that demands wages be higher. Nor is there a market need demanding higher wages. In other words, there's no shortfall in an economic sense. It's only a shortfall because you think a wage lower than that is "gross". Sounds like you are using neoclassical economics to arrive at those conclusions? As if Neoclassical economics was a proven science? Your claims are tenuous at best. No, I'm not using neoclassical economics to arrive at my conclusions. There's little evidence that EITC and the like depress wages. There's a lot of evidence that these subsides increase incomes. Sounds like working as intended. If they weren't working as intended you'd see more evidence of wages being depressed and less evidence of incomes going up. Hmm because the evidence supporting your claim seems to stem from Neoclassical economics unless your referencing some evidence I can't find? Here's a piece suggesting many of the claims stemming from Neoclasssical economics (that are the only ones I can find supporting your claim.) just are not accurate or support the idea that a min. wage increase doesn't actually decrease employment in a significant way? (despite it's common use as a talking point) The weight of that evidence points to little or no employment response to modest increases in the minimum wage.
The report reviews evidence on eleven possible adjustments to minimum-wage increases that may
help to explain why the measured employment effects are so consistently small. The strongest
evidence suggests that the most important channels of adjustment are: reductions in labor turnover;
improvements in organizational efficiency; reductions in wages of higher earners ("wage
compression"); and small price increases.
Given the relatively small cost to employers of modest increases in the minimum wage, these
adjustment mechanisms appear to be more than sufficient to avoid employment losses, even for
employers with a large share of low-wage worker
At least concerning the type of wage raises reasonable people are suggesting... source I don't have a problem with a modest increase in the min wage. But to do away with EITC and the like you'd have to raise it a lot. CBO estimates that a $10.10 min wage would increase incomes for families up to 3X the poverty line by $12 Billion. Food stamps pay out $80 billion and EITC pays out $60 billion. sourceIf you want to do away with these programs (not to mention all the others!) you'll have to go well beyond what reasonable people are suggesting. On April 18 2014 13:27 IgnE wrote:Re: Walmart Jonny tell me what's wrong with this video: + Show Spoiler + Well it's a bit of a red herring - min wage won't affect just Walmart. It also ignoring the impact of higher prices on real wages, lower demand from higher prices, etc. I don't believe it advocated for a minimum wage. But even if it did, we all agree that minimum wage increases are a wash on unemployment. Lower demand from 1.4% price increases? Offset by worker raises? The effects of minumum wage on unemployment are highly debatable. I don't get how you can be so certain about such a widely debated topic. As far as I can tell it's actually pretty one sided to the idea that it doesn't matter much at all for employment. for every 10% wages you get a 0-1.5% decrease but only in the under 30 workers so it doesn't even really show up in unemployment. Most of the research claiming the decrease in jobs don't go over 1.5% and most if not all that say 1.5% are neoclassical based economic claims that have been shown to be wrong multiple times in the real world. So where is this data that supports the claim raising the minimum wage kills jobs? And is any of it supported by non-Neoclassical economics? Only a couple percent of workers earn the minimum wage so it's hard to notice even a substantial change in the data. CBO has a pretty middle of the road analysis on the issue: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44995-MinimumWage.pdf Show nested quote +The EITC encourages more people in low-income families to work—particularly unmarried custodial parents,
often mothers, for whom the EITC is larger than it is for people without children.4 That increase in the number
of available workers tends to reduce workers’ wages,allowing some of the benefit of the EITC to accrue to
employers, rather than to the workers themselves.5 An increase in the minimum wage would shift some of
that benefit from employers to workers by requiring the former to pay the latter more. See? as for Show nested quote +It's not a disingenuous argument. If there's no chance for profit, no one is going to invest. End of story. You do realize how empirically false this notion is right? Unless you are just using the most narrow definition which requires profit for something to be an investment. Which could not be more pointless to say.
How much gets shifted? Edit: and how does it compare to wages being shifted to government.
It's empirically true. We're talking about for-profit retailers. They aren't going to exist without profit. Or are we seriously proposing nationalization of the retail industry?
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On April 19 2014 06:19 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 05:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 05:30 IgnE wrote:On April 19 2014 05:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 05:05 IgnE wrote:On April 19 2014 04:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:So you are worried about Walmart's customers paying 1.4% more as a regressive tax? Walmart's employees are it's customers too. How much do you think people spend at Walmart per year? What is 2% of that to be conservative? My guess is that the average low-income Walmart customer spends maybe 4k a year at Walmart, again to be conservative. So you are worried about a potential tax of $80-100 per year on Walmart customers in exchange for bumping up the salary of Walmart employees by roughly 50%? Keep in mind that you're bumping wages by 50%, but income will not go up by nearly as much. On net it sounds like a net loss to the poor, unless you boost the benefits too - the very thing you're trying to downplay. And what happens when the market changes and Walmart goes into a decline? Do they become TBTF? Walmart is a standin for any big box retailer obviously. I do not care about Walmart except insofar much as I care about "Walmarts". I am not trying to downplay benefits. Bump the wages, you still will not be paying significant taxes on 26k a year income that you weren't paying on 16 or 20k a year. I'm not sure what the foodstamp cutoff is, but we can raise government benefits in the interim. I know you think that you were making a joke, but it's fine to get rid of corporate taxes if corporations have no profits because they are distributing them to the workers. The analysis doesn't work when you go beyond Walmart. Not all retailers are profitable, raising prices at all retailers would have a bigger impact on real income, etc. Currently the marginal tax rate including benefit cuts is close to 100%. Bumping the wages won't bump the income much. If you compensate for that by expanding the benefits, you are no longer saving money for the taxpayer. Again, why all the effort for so little gain? Because you don't like Walmart?? Target is profitable. Any store that assumes Walmart's position because Walmart declined after raising it's prices 1.4% would be profitable. I don't understand why you always do this. You never argue openly about possibilities, instead you keep throwing out arguments involving completely irrelevant things ("all retailers") as if they defeated the initial proposition. No, you are ignoring my criticism. You are supporting a policy that would be overall regressive just to help a minority of the poor. That isn't good policy IMO. I don't know what you are talking about with marginal tax rates. The marginal tax rate is the same in the income range we are talking about. If you are arguing that increasing employee wages will result in no gain because they lose benefits of equal value you are going to have list which benefits they are losing, at what income, and how much those benefits are worth, because I think you are completely bullshitting. I don't give a fuck about Walmart per se. Walmart is just the current manifestation of a phenomenon that is gutting the middle class and adding to a vast underclass of poverty-ridden people who depend on government redistribution just so they can shop at Walmart. Posted before. Not bullshitting. + Show Spoiler +No profits and Walmart never existed and those workers never had jobs. You should drop this fantasy land line of thought. This is another disingenuous argument. No profits and capitalism never exists and the tragic demise of Jefferson's family farm vision of America never happened. If everyone existed as part of an organic community with access to resources, a right to work, and communal support, they wouldn't need to debase themselves with exploitative work at Walmart. It's not a disingenuous argument. If there's no chance for profit, no one is going to invest. End of story. You've labeled a nominal increase in price "regressive." Even if technically regressive it's so small as to be a nonfactor. Prices have to be set somewhere. It's morally reprehensible to argue that nominal price increases that affect worker wages are Regressive while nominal price increases for profit are not.
I think we're getting to the point where your goal is to reduce profits on the assumption that it will benefit the workers.
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On April 19 2014 06:30 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 06:06 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 19 2014 05:08 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 04:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 21:44 RvB wrote:On April 18 2014 14:07 IgnE wrote:On April 18 2014 14:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 18 2014 13:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 12:36 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 18 2014 12:19 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]Sounds like you are using neoclassical economics to arrive at those conclusions? As if Neoclassical economics was a proven science? Your claims are tenuous at best.
No, I'm not using neoclassical economics to arrive at my conclusions. There's little evidence that EITC and the like depress wages. There's a lot of evidence that these subsides increase incomes. Sounds like working as intended. If they weren't working as intended you'd see more evidence of wages being depressed and less evidence of incomes going up. Hmm because the evidence supporting your claim seems to stem from Neoclassical economics unless your referencing some evidence I can't find? Here's a piece suggesting many of the claims stemming from Neoclasssical economics (that are the only ones I can find supporting your claim.) just are not accurate or support the idea that a min. wage increase doesn't actually decrease employment in a significant way? (despite it's common use as a talking point) The weight of that evidence points to little or no employment response to modest increases in the minimum wage.
The report reviews evidence on eleven possible adjustments to minimum-wage increases that may
help to explain why the measured employment effects are so consistently small. The strongest
evidence suggests that the most important channels of adjustment are: reductions in labor turnover;
improvements in organizational efficiency; reductions in wages of higher earners ("wage
compression"); and small price increases.
Given the relatively small cost to employers of modest increases in the minimum wage, these
adjustment mechanisms appear to be more than sufficient to avoid employment losses, even for
employers with a large share of low-wage worker
At least concerning the type of wage raises reasonable people are suggesting... source I don't have a problem with a modest increase in the min wage. But to do away with EITC and the like you'd have to raise it a lot. CBO estimates that a $10.10 min wage would increase incomes for families up to 3X the poverty line by $12 Billion. Food stamps pay out $80 billion and EITC pays out $60 billion. sourceIf you want to do away with these programs (not to mention all the others!) you'll have to go well beyond what reasonable people are suggesting. On April 18 2014 13:27 IgnE wrote:Re: Walmart Jonny tell me what's wrong with this video: + Show Spoiler + Well it's a bit of a red herring - min wage won't affect just Walmart. It also ignoring the impact of higher prices on real wages, lower demand from higher prices, etc. I don't believe it advocated for a minimum wage. But even if it did, we all agree that minimum wage increases are a wash on unemployment. Lower demand from 1.4% price increases? Offset by worker raises? The effects of minumum wage on unemployment are highly debatable. I don't get how you can be so certain about such a widely debated topic. As far as I can tell it's actually pretty one sided to the idea that it doesn't matter much at all for employment. for every 10% wages you get a 0-1.5% decrease but only in the under 30 workers so it doesn't even really show up in unemployment. Most of the research claiming the decrease in jobs don't go over 1.5% and most if not all that say 1.5% are neoclassical based economic claims that have been shown to be wrong multiple times in the real world. So where is this data that supports the claim raising the minimum wage kills jobs? And is any of it supported by non-Neoclassical economics? Only a couple percent of workers earn the minimum wage so it's hard to notice even a substantial change in the data. CBO has a pretty middle of the road analysis on the issue: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44995-MinimumWage.pdf The EITC encourages more people in low-income families to work—particularly unmarried custodial parents,
often mothers, for whom the EITC is larger than it is for people without children.4 That increase in the number
of available workers tends to reduce workers’ wages,allowing some of the benefit of the EITC to accrue to
employers, rather than to the workers themselves.5 An increase in the minimum wage would shift some of
that benefit from employers to workers by requiring the former to pay the latter more. See? as for It's not a disingenuous argument. If there's no chance for profit, no one is going to invest. End of story. You do realize how empirically false this notion is right? Unless you are just using the most narrow definition which requires profit for something to be an investment. Which could not be more pointless to say. How much gets shifted? Edit: and how does it compare to wages being shifted to government. It's empirically true. We're talking about for-profit retailers. They aren't going to exist without profit. Or are we seriously proposing nationalization of the retail industry?
CBO concludes that the net effect on the federal budget of raising the minimum wage would probably be a small decrease in budget deficits for several years but a small increase in budget deficits thereafter. It is unclear whether the effect for the coming decade as a whole would be a small increase or a small decrease in budget deficits
The more I read from your source the more ridiculous reports like this seem.
There is only a 66% chance that anything they said is right by their own admission.
I can't help but see the irony of referring to Neoclassical based estimates like the CBO or others as meaningful while simultaneously dismissing actual science about climate change.
When they bothered to ask outside economists about claims they make they didn't even get 51% of them to agree with them...
Our economic thought as a nation is such a joke, except no one is laughing.
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On April 19 2014 06:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 06:19 IgnE wrote:On April 19 2014 05:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 05:30 IgnE wrote:On April 19 2014 05:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 05:05 IgnE wrote:On April 19 2014 04:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:So you are worried about Walmart's customers paying 1.4% more as a regressive tax? Walmart's employees are it's customers too. How much do you think people spend at Walmart per year? What is 2% of that to be conservative? My guess is that the average low-income Walmart customer spends maybe 4k a year at Walmart, again to be conservative. So you are worried about a potential tax of $80-100 per year on Walmart customers in exchange for bumping up the salary of Walmart employees by roughly 50%? Keep in mind that you're bumping wages by 50%, but income will not go up by nearly as much. On net it sounds like a net loss to the poor, unless you boost the benefits too - the very thing you're trying to downplay. And what happens when the market changes and Walmart goes into a decline? Do they become TBTF? Walmart is a standin for any big box retailer obviously. I do not care about Walmart except insofar much as I care about "Walmarts". I am not trying to downplay benefits. Bump the wages, you still will not be paying significant taxes on 26k a year income that you weren't paying on 16 or 20k a year. I'm not sure what the foodstamp cutoff is, but we can raise government benefits in the interim. I know you think that you were making a joke, but it's fine to get rid of corporate taxes if corporations have no profits because they are distributing them to the workers. The analysis doesn't work when you go beyond Walmart. Not all retailers are profitable, raising prices at all retailers would have a bigger impact on real income, etc. Currently the marginal tax rate including benefit cuts is close to 100%. Bumping the wages won't bump the income much. If you compensate for that by expanding the benefits, you are no longer saving money for the taxpayer. Again, why all the effort for so little gain? Because you don't like Walmart?? Target is profitable. Any store that assumes Walmart's position because Walmart declined after raising it's prices 1.4% would be profitable. I don't understand why you always do this. You never argue openly about possibilities, instead you keep throwing out arguments involving completely irrelevant things ("all retailers") as if they defeated the initial proposition. No, you are ignoring my criticism. You are supporting a policy that would be overall regressive just to help a minority of the poor. That isn't good policy IMO. I don't know what you are talking about with marginal tax rates. The marginal tax rate is the same in the income range we are talking about. If you are arguing that increasing employee wages will result in no gain because they lose benefits of equal value you are going to have list which benefits they are losing, at what income, and how much those benefits are worth, because I think you are completely bullshitting. I don't give a fuck about Walmart per se. Walmart is just the current manifestation of a phenomenon that is gutting the middle class and adding to a vast underclass of poverty-ridden people who depend on government redistribution just so they can shop at Walmart. Posted before. Not bullshitting. + Show Spoiler +No profits and Walmart never existed and those workers never had jobs. You should drop this fantasy land line of thought. This is another disingenuous argument. No profits and capitalism never exists and the tragic demise of Jefferson's family farm vision of America never happened. If everyone existed as part of an organic community with access to resources, a right to work, and communal support, they wouldn't need to debase themselves with exploitative work at Walmart. It's not a disingenuous argument. If there's no chance for profit, no one is going to invest. End of story. You've labeled a nominal increase in price "regressive." Even if technically regressive it's so small as to be a nonfactor. Prices have to be set somewhere. It's morally reprehensible to argue that nominal price increases that affect worker wages are Regressive while nominal price increases for profit are not. I think we're getting to the point where your goal is to reduce profits on the assumption that it will benefit the workers.
No, we've reached the point where you're going to do whatever it takes to maintain your position even if it takes saying ridiculous things like "I think we're getting to the point where your goal is to reduce profits on the assumption that it will benefit the workers."
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On April 19 2014 07:05 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 06:30 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 06:06 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 19 2014 05:08 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 04:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 21:44 RvB wrote:On April 18 2014 14:07 IgnE wrote:On April 18 2014 14:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 18 2014 13:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 12:36 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
[quote]
No, I'm not using neoclassical economics to arrive at my conclusions. There's little evidence that EITC and the like depress wages. There's a lot of evidence that these subsides increase incomes.
Sounds like working as intended. If they weren't working as intended you'd see more evidence of wages being depressed and less evidence of incomes going up. Hmm because the evidence supporting your claim seems to stem from Neoclassical economics unless your referencing some evidence I can't find? Here's a piece suggesting many of the claims stemming from Neoclasssical economics (that are the only ones I can find supporting your claim.) just are not accurate or support the idea that a min. wage increase doesn't actually decrease employment in a significant way? (despite it's common use as a talking point) The weight of that evidence points to little or no employment response to modest increases in the minimum wage.
The report reviews evidence on eleven possible adjustments to minimum-wage increases that may
help to explain why the measured employment effects are so consistently small. The strongest
evidence suggests that the most important channels of adjustment are: reductions in labor turnover;
improvements in organizational efficiency; reductions in wages of higher earners ("wage
compression"); and small price increases.
Given the relatively small cost to employers of modest increases in the minimum wage, these
adjustment mechanisms appear to be more than sufficient to avoid employment losses, even for
employers with a large share of low-wage worker
At least concerning the type of wage raises reasonable people are suggesting... source I don't have a problem with a modest increase in the min wage. But to do away with EITC and the like you'd have to raise it a lot. CBO estimates that a $10.10 min wage would increase incomes for families up to 3X the poverty line by $12 Billion. Food stamps pay out $80 billion and EITC pays out $60 billion. sourceIf you want to do away with these programs (not to mention all the others!) you'll have to go well beyond what reasonable people are suggesting. On April 18 2014 13:27 IgnE wrote:Re: Walmart Jonny tell me what's wrong with this video: + Show Spoiler + Well it's a bit of a red herring - min wage won't affect just Walmart. It also ignoring the impact of higher prices on real wages, lower demand from higher prices, etc. I don't believe it advocated for a minimum wage. But even if it did, we all agree that minimum wage increases are a wash on unemployment. Lower demand from 1.4% price increases? Offset by worker raises? The effects of minumum wage on unemployment are highly debatable. I don't get how you can be so certain about such a widely debated topic. As far as I can tell it's actually pretty one sided to the idea that it doesn't matter much at all for employment. for every 10% wages you get a 0-1.5% decrease but only in the under 30 workers so it doesn't even really show up in unemployment. Most of the research claiming the decrease in jobs don't go over 1.5% and most if not all that say 1.5% are neoclassical based economic claims that have been shown to be wrong multiple times in the real world. So where is this data that supports the claim raising the minimum wage kills jobs? And is any of it supported by non-Neoclassical economics? Only a couple percent of workers earn the minimum wage so it's hard to notice even a substantial change in the data. CBO has a pretty middle of the road analysis on the issue: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44995-MinimumWage.pdf The EITC encourages more people in low-income families to work—particularly unmarried custodial parents,
often mothers, for whom the EITC is larger than it is for people without children.4 That increase in the number
of available workers tends to reduce workers’ wages,allowing some of the benefit of the EITC to accrue to
employers, rather than to the workers themselves.5 An increase in the minimum wage would shift some of
that benefit from employers to workers by requiring the former to pay the latter more. See? as for It's not a disingenuous argument. If there's no chance for profit, no one is going to invest. End of story. You do realize how empirically false this notion is right? Unless you are just using the most narrow definition which requires profit for something to be an investment. Which could not be more pointless to say. How much gets shifted? Edit: and how does it compare to wages being shifted to government. It's empirically true. We're talking about for-profit retailers. They aren't going to exist without profit. Or are we seriously proposing nationalization of the retail industry? Show nested quote +CBO concludes that the net effect on the federal budget of raising the minimum wage would probably be a small decrease in budget deficits for several years but a small increase in budget deficits thereafter. It is unclear whether the effect for the coming decade as a whole would be a small increase or a small decrease in budget deficits
The more I read from your source the more ridiculous reports like this seem. There is only a 66% chance that anything they said is right by their own admission. I can't help but see the irony of referring to Neoclassical based estimates like the CBO or others as meaningful while simultaneously dismissing actual science about climate change. When they bothered to ask outside economists about claims they make they didn't even get 51% of them to agree with them... Our economic thought as a nation is such a joke, except no one is laughing.
That's econ for you
It's also why so much econ related public policy is still influenced by personal frame of reference.
Ex. A business owner looks at his P&L and wonders how he'll be able to afford a higher wage. A economist may say that the higher wages will result in higher sales, but he's very skeptical of that.
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On April 19 2014 07:06 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 06:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 06:19 IgnE wrote:On April 19 2014 05:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 05:30 IgnE wrote:On April 19 2014 05:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 05:05 IgnE wrote:On April 19 2014 04:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:So you are worried about Walmart's customers paying 1.4% more as a regressive tax? Walmart's employees are it's customers too. How much do you think people spend at Walmart per year? What is 2% of that to be conservative? My guess is that the average low-income Walmart customer spends maybe 4k a year at Walmart, again to be conservative. So you are worried about a potential tax of $80-100 per year on Walmart customers in exchange for bumping up the salary of Walmart employees by roughly 50%? Keep in mind that you're bumping wages by 50%, but income will not go up by nearly as much. On net it sounds like a net loss to the poor, unless you boost the benefits too - the very thing you're trying to downplay. And what happens when the market changes and Walmart goes into a decline? Do they become TBTF? Walmart is a standin for any big box retailer obviously. I do not care about Walmart except insofar much as I care about "Walmarts". I am not trying to downplay benefits. Bump the wages, you still will not be paying significant taxes on 26k a year income that you weren't paying on 16 or 20k a year. I'm not sure what the foodstamp cutoff is, but we can raise government benefits in the interim. I know you think that you were making a joke, but it's fine to get rid of corporate taxes if corporations have no profits because they are distributing them to the workers. The analysis doesn't work when you go beyond Walmart. Not all retailers are profitable, raising prices at all retailers would have a bigger impact on real income, etc. Currently the marginal tax rate including benefit cuts is close to 100%. Bumping the wages won't bump the income much. If you compensate for that by expanding the benefits, you are no longer saving money for the taxpayer. Again, why all the effort for so little gain? Because you don't like Walmart?? Target is profitable. Any store that assumes Walmart's position because Walmart declined after raising it's prices 1.4% would be profitable. I don't understand why you always do this. You never argue openly about possibilities, instead you keep throwing out arguments involving completely irrelevant things ("all retailers") as if they defeated the initial proposition. No, you are ignoring my criticism. You are supporting a policy that would be overall regressive just to help a minority of the poor. That isn't good policy IMO. I don't know what you are talking about with marginal tax rates. The marginal tax rate is the same in the income range we are talking about. If you are arguing that increasing employee wages will result in no gain because they lose benefits of equal value you are going to have list which benefits they are losing, at what income, and how much those benefits are worth, because I think you are completely bullshitting. I don't give a fuck about Walmart per se. Walmart is just the current manifestation of a phenomenon that is gutting the middle class and adding to a vast underclass of poverty-ridden people who depend on government redistribution just so they can shop at Walmart. Posted before. Not bullshitting. + Show Spoiler +No profits and Walmart never existed and those workers never had jobs. You should drop this fantasy land line of thought. This is another disingenuous argument. No profits and capitalism never exists and the tragic demise of Jefferson's family farm vision of America never happened. If everyone existed as part of an organic community with access to resources, a right to work, and communal support, they wouldn't need to debase themselves with exploitative work at Walmart. It's not a disingenuous argument. If there's no chance for profit, no one is going to invest. End of story. You've labeled a nominal increase in price "regressive." Even if technically regressive it's so small as to be a nonfactor. Prices have to be set somewhere. It's morally reprehensible to argue that nominal price increases that affect worker wages are Regressive while nominal price increases for profit are not. I think we're getting to the point where your goal is to reduce profits on the assumption that it will benefit the workers. No, we've reached the point where you're going to do whatever it takes to maintain your position even if it takes saying ridiculous things like "I think we're getting to the point where your goal is to reduce profits on the assumption that it will benefit the workers."
Huh? That seems to be where he's going:
I know you think that you were making a joke, but it's fine to get rid of corporate taxes if corporations have no profits because they are distributing them to the workers
This is another disingenuous argument. No profits and capitalism never exists and the tragic demise of Jefferson's family farm vision of America never happened. If everyone existed as part of an organic community with access to resources, a right to work, and communal support, they wouldn't need to debase themselves with exploitative work at Walmart.
Prices have to be set somewhere. It's morally reprehensible to argue that nominal price increases that affect worker wages are Regressive while nominal price increases for profit are not.
I'm not scratching at desperation here. Transfers to the poor are effective at reducing poverty, it's well documented. Raising wages alone won't raise income much (see my source). There's no good reason to attack them.
Edit: I think I'm done with this discussion since it's just spiraling down to a desire for the proletariat's revolution (again).
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On April 19 2014 05:59 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Obama administration continues to delay on both the Keystone XL and rail car safety regulations. Much competence! We're way overdue on Keystone. This will hurt our relations with Canada-we can't even give them a yes or no ... just delay after delay after lawsuit after delay.
“We are disappointed that politics continue to delay a decision on Keystone XL,” the Prime Minister’s director of communications Jason MacDonald said Friday. “This project will create tens of thousands of jobs on both sides of the border, will enhance the energy security of North America, has strong public support, and the U.S. State Department has, on multiple occasions, acknowledged it will be environmentally sound.”
globe and mail
It's schizophrenic behavior with our friends. One moment you delay for the analysis, analysis is great go ahead ... next moment its frozen again.
WASHINGTON—The Obama administration is extending its review of the Keystone XL pipeline, citing ongoing litigation in Nebraska over the project's route through the state, according to people familiar with the matter.
The State Department is allowing more time for government agencies to weigh in on the project—a review process that was expected to end in early May, State Department officials told congressional staff on Friday.
It is unclear how much more time the State Department will allow for input, but it is likely to push a final decision on the pipeline—which has been under review by the Obama administration for more than five years—until after November's midterm elections.
TransCanada Corp. wants to send oil through a pipeline from Canadian oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries in the U.S. The pipeline project has stirred opposition from environmental groups, which warn it could lead to oil spills and exacerbate global warming. Business interests contend it will create jobs and offer a safer alternative than transporting the oil by rail. (WSJ/paywall)
Obama pleases environmental groups through the midterm elections and tries to avoid backlash from industry groups and workers by not actually saying no. It's even over the voices of Democrats, like Mary Landrieu. "This decision is irresponsible, unnecessary and unacceptable. By making it clear that they will not move the process forward until there is a resolution in a lawsuit in Nebraska, the administration is sending a signal that the small minority who oppose the pipeline can tie up the process in court forever. There are 42,000 jobs, $20 billion in economic activity and North America's energy security at stake."
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On April 19 2014 07:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2014 07:05 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 19 2014 06:30 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 06:06 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 19 2014 05:08 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 19 2014 04:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 18 2014 21:44 RvB wrote:On April 18 2014 14:07 IgnE wrote:On April 18 2014 14:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 18 2014 13:10 GreenHorizons wrote:[quote] Hmm because the evidence supporting your claim seems to stem from Neoclassical economics unless your referencing some evidence I can't find? Here's a piece suggesting many of the claims stemming from Neoclasssical economics (that are the only ones I can find supporting your claim.) just are not accurate or support the idea that a min. wage increase doesn't actually decrease employment in a significant way? (despite it's common use as a talking point) [quote] At least concerning the type of wage raises reasonable people are suggesting... source I don't have a problem with a modest increase in the min wage. But to do away with EITC and the like you'd have to raise it a lot. CBO estimates that a $10.10 min wage would increase incomes for families up to 3X the poverty line by $12 Billion. Food stamps pay out $80 billion and EITC pays out $60 billion. sourceIf you want to do away with these programs (not to mention all the others!) you'll have to go well beyond what reasonable people are suggesting. On April 18 2014 13:27 IgnE wrote:Re: Walmart Jonny tell me what's wrong with this video: + Show Spoiler + Well it's a bit of a red herring - min wage won't affect just Walmart. It also ignoring the impact of higher prices on real wages, lower demand from higher prices, etc. I don't believe it advocated for a minimum wage. But even if it did, we all agree that minimum wage increases are a wash on unemployment. Lower demand from 1.4% price increases? Offset by worker raises? The effects of minumum wage on unemployment are highly debatable. I don't get how you can be so certain about such a widely debated topic. As far as I can tell it's actually pretty one sided to the idea that it doesn't matter much at all for employment. for every 10% wages you get a 0-1.5% decrease but only in the under 30 workers so it doesn't even really show up in unemployment. Most of the research claiming the decrease in jobs don't go over 1.5% and most if not all that say 1.5% are neoclassical based economic claims that have been shown to be wrong multiple times in the real world. So where is this data that supports the claim raising the minimum wage kills jobs? And is any of it supported by non-Neoclassical economics? Only a couple percent of workers earn the minimum wage so it's hard to notice even a substantial change in the data. CBO has a pretty middle of the road analysis on the issue: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44995-MinimumWage.pdf The EITC encourages more people in low-income families to work—particularly unmarried custodial parents,
often mothers, for whom the EITC is larger than it is for people without children.4 That increase in the number
of available workers tends to reduce workers’ wages,allowing some of the benefit of the EITC to accrue to
employers, rather than to the workers themselves.5 An increase in the minimum wage would shift some of
that benefit from employers to workers by requiring the former to pay the latter more. See? as for It's not a disingenuous argument. If there's no chance for profit, no one is going to invest. End of story. You do realize how empirically false this notion is right? Unless you are just using the most narrow definition which requires profit for something to be an investment. Which could not be more pointless to say. How much gets shifted? Edit: and how does it compare to wages being shifted to government. It's empirically true. We're talking about for-profit retailers. They aren't going to exist without profit. Or are we seriously proposing nationalization of the retail industry? CBO concludes that the net effect on the federal budget of raising the minimum wage would probably be a small decrease in budget deficits for several years but a small increase in budget deficits thereafter. It is unclear whether the effect for the coming decade as a whole would be a small increase or a small decrease in budget deficits
The more I read from your source the more ridiculous reports like this seem. There is only a 66% chance that anything they said is right by their own admission. I can't help but see the irony of referring to Neoclassical based estimates like the CBO or others as meaningful while simultaneously dismissing actual science about climate change. When they bothered to ask outside economists about claims they make they didn't even get 51% of them to agree with them... Our economic thought as a nation is such a joke, except no one is laughing. That's econ for you It's also why so much econ related public policy is still influenced by personal frame of reference. Ex. A business owner looks at his P&L and wonders how he'll be able to afford a higher wage. A economist may say that the higher wages will result in higher sales, but he's very skeptical of that.
Except there are better ways of modeling that are shot down by Neoclassical defenders instead of embracing the obviously better methodologies.
So if we were actually using the best methods available you might have a point. But we aren't, people keep using Neoclassical methods which failed on the most epic of scales in our recent past.
I don't understand why you talk about claims made in these types of reports as if they are fact when you know there is barely more likelihood they are right than they are wrong and that's just because of the size of the rather useless ranges they estimate.
But then you and/or other conservatives/republicans are so skeptical of mountains of scientific data, reinforced by an overwhelming majorities of peer reviews, and appeals to common sense regarding climate change...?
It's just intellectually dishonest to assign more credibility to economic estimates than to climate science. So you can have it one way or the other but not both.
Either the climate science is more credible than economics or they are both relatively useless. You cant be intellectually honest and assign more credibility to economics than climate science.
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Must you mention climate science three times while talking about a CBO report? Is attempts to point out hypocrisy so central to your argument?
What grounds do you have that the Congressional Budget Office is using inferior methods of modeling? Everyone's a critic, and you haven't pointed to better analysis of minimum wage or EITC. Furthermore, you completely disregard the point that only 2% of workers actually earn the minimum wage and reach no point yourself.
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On April 19 2014 08:03 Danglars wrote:
Must you mention climate science three times while talking about a CBO report? Is attempts to point out hypocrisy so central to your argument?
What grounds do you have that the Congressional Budget Office is using inferior methods of modeling? Everyone's a critic, and you haven't pointed to better analysis of minimum wage or EITC. Furthermore, you completely disregard the point that only 2% of workers actually earn the minimum wage and reach no point yourself.
You would have to read several pages of the thread to understand. "Everyone's a critic", was that a way of introducing yourself into a discussion your 'critic'al statement clearly denotes you have incomplete knowledge/comprehension of? (the discussion, not the topic at large)
"Is attempts to point out hypocrisy" Is that your way of suggesting there is a reasonable way to assign more credibility to (Neoclassical) economics than to climate or other sciences?
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On April 19 2014 08:03 Danglars wrote:
Must you mention climate science three times while talking about a CBO report? Is attempts to point out hypocrisy so central to your argument?
What grounds do you have that the Congressional Budget Office is using inferior methods of modeling? Everyone's a critic, and you haven't pointed to better analysis of minimum wage or EITC. Furthermore, you completely disregard the point that only 2% of workers actually earn the minimum wage and reach no point yourself.
I haven't had time to read the CBO report jonny cited. But simply asserting that raising wages is futile because everyone making 15k-35k has roughly the same "disposable income" looks wrong on its face.
Either we save the government money by reducing benefits which is what the conservatives want, or we use the same amount of money for benefits as we do now so that more in wages doesn't necessarily mean less in benefits.
What do you think would happen jonny if Walmart suddenly paid $15 an hour on avg? Do you think people working at minimum wage would say, "well no point in trying to get paid more at Walmart since i get foodstamps now?" That is plainly absurd. Please try not to derail the question by changing the terms of the argument. Assume some combination of nominal price change and/or nominal reduction in profits to pay for it.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S6Gx6RCpyY4/ULFIkRAzu-I/AAAAAAAAAT0/YTzHr4bvJLE/s1600/marginal-tax_2.PNG)
