On September 27 2011 15:15 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 11:05 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 10:13 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 10:03 Kiarip wrote:On September 27 2011 09:56 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 09:37 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 09:28 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 09:17 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 09:06 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 08:16 FabledIntegral wrote:
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Economically speaking it heavily benefits the poor... overall. By reducing unemployment. Many companies can't afford to employ very many people in the U.S. due to minimum wage, and thus will move jobs abroad. An abolished minimum wage would almost assuredly create a TON of jobs in the U.S., significantly helping those who are unemployed, while simultaneously hurting those who already have jobs. The net result is always that the overall social welfare is larger, but it's more complicated than that. I'm not a supporter of the abolishment of minimum wage anyways, but I think it is a little on the high side at the moment.
And as I said before, I don't think you should be able to raise a family on minimum wage. If you think you should be able to raise children as well as provide for yourself while affording food, housing, transportation, clothing, etc. for your children on a single job wages by doing something that requires almost no critical thinking and can easily be replaced doing, I think you're crazy.
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I really dislike how people say "low taxes for the wealthy." I mean, they aren't low taxes for the wealthy, they're actually substantially (imo) higher than that of the rest. You can speak relatively, but once again I think it's a terrible argument to point to other countries in comparison. Rather, you should be saying
a) Keeping tax rates only marginally (as I'd presume you'd put it) higher than the poor
for your first point. I know you said "low" and not "lower" but it's very much so implied by a lot of people that rich people pay less, whether it be an absolute value or percentage, when it's clearly not the case. They most certainly are low taxes for the wealthy. While the exact precise amount they pay is a good deal higher than the poor, the relative amount they pay is quite a bit lower, especially considering the absurd amounts of wealth they have. They can easily afford to pay a much MUCH bigger share than they currently do without even having a noticeable impact on their lifestyle, but that fact seems to escape people. They'd still be extremely wealthy, I'm not advocating communism here. Should wealth one already possesses be related to their income tax, though? If someone has 1billion dollars, and made $50,000 in income last year, they should be paying in that tax bracket, irrelevant of their 1 billion. I don't see how they pay a relatively lower amount, whatsoever. They pay a relatively higher amount of their income for income taxes? I'm not sure where you define "absurdly wealthy" either. Someone making say $400,000 per year, while definitely now falling into upper class, having a stayhome wife and say four kids, is still going to have a mortgage, and most likely won't be able to afford driving a Ferrari or some shit. Sure, those that are EXTREMELY wealthy, like those making say $3 million+ per year, might not take as much of a hit, but then they're also paying in over a million dollars in taxes of that three million (well, at least in CA, accounting for state income taxes). I don't know how you don't think that's a huge amount, when it's a third of their income. It's not like they didn't earn that income. I'd say almost everyone making a $100,000 salary is working significantly harder than those making minimum wage. At that point, your decisions matter, jobs are in your hands, profits of the company are highly relevant to your personal choices (exception of huge corps), significantly more stress involved in terms of decision making, far higher prerequisites and investment to obtain said job in the first place, etc. On September 27 2011 09:10 jbee wrote:
@kiarip The pizza boy is gambling his job/career while the pizza parlor is gambling lost revenue (which could be entirely made-up by having somebody else cover for him). If you don't see the imbalance in that then I have nothing more to say.
@fabled I don't think they should or shouldn't, as I am morally nihilistic. People want different things out of the government which means it is like arguing about taste ( hence why I hate politics). I only asked about this because I couldn't think of any reason somebody would support this, unless they owned a business. What i said was as example of if it was removed. If it was removed, pay wouldn't go to a dollar an hour, but it gives the ability for your employer to undercut you. This ability decreases the stability in the Poors' income which is why I can't see it as good for the poor either. Without government protection you're also far more likely to be a more productive worker for fear of losing your job. If you're valuable to the company, said company will be far less likely to attempt to undercut you because they value your labor. Of course, generalizing sweeps across the board may effect you if you're a small person in a massive company, but isn't it that company's choice on how it wants to run itself? That's the theory at least, I personally agree with you that job stability is decently more important, as even amazing work ethic won't always save you from individually getting screwed. I was careful to mention that I meant the top 2% of the wealth bracket qualifies as 'super rich'. I also think something needs to be done about the tax system in general, I don't believe income taxes in and of them themselves are sufficient, simply by design. Long term capital gains, for example, are taxed too low. The current system has the wealth accumulated all at the top: almost all of it, and more of it keeps going up there, rather than being spread out. The distribution of wealth is INCREDIBLY uneven. While I'm not suggesting we attempt to make it perfectly distributed so that everyone has a fair share of wealth relative to their actual income, the system should not have half of the entire country with a net total of one fiftieth of the total wealth. Oops, I must have missed your 2% quotation, I didn't go back and read your posts, but I've only been glancing over things at this point so I'm sure you're right. Regardless, even if you say taxes on the rich are low, they are still higher in both absolute and relative numbers to the poor. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.
Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need. I don't understand the sentiment whatsoever that "the rich aren't paying their fair share." They're paying almost the entire share, and relying on them soley isn't feasible anyways. As the article continues But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion. And these numbers don't even mention the fact that a ton of that money paid in by the rich is being directly given back to the poor as handouts. I think the answer comes with needing to cut spending, heavily. Preferably starting with the military. On September 27 2011 09:28 Whitewing wrote:
Current unemployment rates have less to do with cost of employment than it does with demand for production btw. People aren't hiring because there isn't enough demand for their products, so there's no reason to hire to increase production. Make employment cheaper --> product comes out cheaper --> demand increases because people can now afford product with their lower amount of money in their possession. Not to mention jobs relocating to the U.S. means money is staying here, etc. Making employment cheaper by lowering wages means people don't have money to buy even cheaper products. If you can lower the cost of employment in some way other than lowering wages, then by all means. yes... you can lower the liability... but also, more money will get paid out some more products will get bought... yes, they will be more essential type of products, but in general the total income of hte population will rise, because businesses will hire more, and the increased productivity will only lead to more growth.
Yes, there would be less unemployment, but I'm not sure how much less. By removing minimum wage, you provide the ability to lower wages, but without an incentive to actually hire (demand for production), hiring won't occur. The additional jobs that would be created would be very low paying jobs, and the net amount of money being paid out would not increase, so the result is that people who do have jobs get paid less, and some people who didn't have jobs get some very low paying jobs. I don't think that fixes anything. I should also point out that most employers don't usually give significant raises out to the low earners. If anything, they might get a raise of 50 cents after a year
there will be hiring, because if you're paying the workers less, but hire more workers you're more productive, and you can sell more goods while still making same or bigger profit by lowerin cost, then if you make more profit, you can hire even more workers, and be even more productive, driving the prices even lower, and thus making the goods available to even more people... if the goods are essential, then you will constantly have an increasing demand as you lower the cost, because like you said there's so many people that are already unemployed/employed at very low wages, that their consumption would probably definitely increase if given the chance by lower prices. You're ignoring demand again. Simply having the ability to produce additional goods is insufficient, demand has to be higher for there to be any reason to produce more. Lower costs are great and all, but that doesn't mean they'll hire more. Essential goods being cheaper would increase demand, assuming perfect competition (which is a major question in and of itself, good luck preventing collusion or monopoly here). But if your income goes down, you don't really buy more goods if the cost of goods goes down by an approximate amount. If anything, this would have the net result of less luxury goods being sold, since they are non-essential, there's no way their prices would go down from this. I'm fairly certain that lowering minimum wages would not have any net positive effect, and would probably screw a lot of people over who are already just barely eeking by. Plus, it causes more net problems: if I am willing to work for $5 an hour, but not less, they can just fire me and hire someone who will accept $4 an hour. I have no real negotiating powers without unions, which once again become extremely necessary. I also don't know where you keep going on this demand thing. Demand will only rise as prices become cheaper. Also, as more jobs move to the U.S., more money is in the hands of U.S. consumers. Like I said previously, a more accurate scenario is that a company has 10 people here, 50 in Thailand, fires 20 in Thailand and hires 20 more here, meaning 30 people are employed at lower wages compared to the 10 that were previously, meaning more money being spent, stimulating the economy, creating more jobs and thus raising the wages of existing workers. To the last point, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, and you're willing to work for $5/hr, don't they deserve that job more than you? Also, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, why should the company even hire you at a more expensive pay? You shouldn't be able to live off either $4/hr or $5/hr imo (well, you could if you live extremely cheaply with roommates and no family). Since when have we come to the conclusion that you should be able to sustain yourself on any job out there in existence? Some jobs are meant to give supplemental income, not be your career, and if you're trying to make your career into a $5/hr job then that's your fault for being such a damn unappealing person to society. I quite frankly don't get how you can ignore demand. A lot of this supply side economics (if that seems what is being argued) seems to consider the effects on only the manufacturing jobs, but in most cases I don't see why businesses would bother to hire. Take the primary industries for example. Logging is an old boys club here in BC. Average age is 50 and I doubt they've seriously hired much for a couple decades. You could hack and slash their wages to below minimum wage and it wouldn't deal with the biggest operational costs which is the choppers they run to log. Most of the labour jobs have been replaced by technology and if you cut labour costs, the extra money is more likely to replace jobs with machines then the other way around. They don't need extra labour for what they did. And you wouldn't want to increase production all that much anyways as logging is limited by how fast the third growth is coming in/ the remaining second growth. Now take the service industry, which is where most of the jobs are and the most devastating impact of no minimum wage. Cut labour costs in half and there's no need to hire extra minions for make work projects. The service industry will continue to run on the same amount of employees because people only need so much food and clothes want so much luxury items. A restaurant only needs so many employees, cutting employees wages in half will not suddenly make the owner want to double his staff unless the number of clientele increases (demand). Furthermore, if no minimum wage is across the board, I'd think he'd get less customers with the sudden decline in wages all over the place. Or take a small business. A bicycle shop, let's say. Where they sell bikes and parts and repair old ones. Cut labour costs in half, but the same number of customers come in, so why hire another fellow to sit around with his hands in his pockets? So the only thing that happened is the business owner gains more money and his employees are poorer and have less means to participate in the market by buying stuff. Or even take the manufacturing sector. It's the same issue with the primary industry. Sure a lot of jobs are going overseas, but a lot are permanently lot to industrialization. But as industrialization itself creates jobs, the main thing is that increased productivity doesn't necessarily translate into sales nor is prices simply the thing that drives sales. People need to either need it or want it (or persuaded of either of those.) Because people only need/want so many refrigerators, tv's, and cars. Increased productivity without increased demand will only create the tail end of the roaring twenties where the market was saturated with goods that wouldn't sell no matter how they dropped the prices. Now they've come up with neat marketing techniques to avoid the bust post-twenties with the 'greatest and latest' new development that you must buy combined with goods designed to be replaced after a couple years. But those tricks of the trade will only take you so far and I fail to see how cutting minimum wage will lead to more hirings because if there's no demand why would a business try to increase productivity? You'll just end up with giant warehouses filled with refrigerators all selling for $10. Also, in regards to the Thailand example. Why would dropping the wages in the US lead a company to hire extra workers in US? Thailand will still be cheaper, so why wouldn't they hire 20 more workers in Thailand instead? Unless you propose devaluing labour to third world standards. But that makes no sense as money has far different value in those countries. Even if we consider a place like Malaysia that has rapidly urbanized, their wages are far lower, but then 10 Ringet equals around 3 Canadian and will buy you a chicken and rice meal from one of the kopi tiams (and maybe a fruit drink? I forget, it's been a few years). The cost of living is just so radically different that I don't see how we can ever compete.
lmao clearly it effects labor intensive industries, not capital intensive industries? Wtf kind of argument is that bringing up an industry that has supposedly massive operational costs? Please.... you come up with completely useless examples and insinuate "companies don't need to hire more, they're already at full capacity." LOL the stuff you're posting here shows you don't even have a minimal grasp on economics. Clearly companies aren't operating at full capacity within the U.S. or they won't be going abroad ffs. Why do you think taxes are getting sent abroad to India? All our tech support is being outsourced (and consequently often lower quality)? Textiles (the one relevant to the minimum wage discussion) has essentially disappeared from our country? Really now? Almost nothing you've posted makes sense.
Let me explain some absolute basic economics to you. Guess what happens when that bicycle shop has noticeably less labor costs. They drop their prices. That's how economics works. If they didn't drop profits, they'd be making a ton more profit, and lose out on competition that undercuts their prices. Why do you think so many companies offer price matching? Sell items below cost? The amount of profit most companies make on individual transactions are incredibly marginal, if you cut labor costs the companies would be forced to drop their prices or go out of business. And guess what happens when you drop your prices? You have more, not less, customers come in.
And you can't see how dropping wages in the U.S. would lead to jobs coming back? WTF? Are you kidding me? The entire reason companies go overseas is due to labor costs. Some companies try to survive here nonetheless, some make it, some barely get edged out. Those companies getting edged out.... wouldn't. I can't even tell if you're serious with your arguments, everything that actually happens in the economy goes exactly opposite as to what you're suggesting (what seems like off the top of your head as you literally have near zero theory to support your claims).
On September 27 2011 18:07 fant0m wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 11:05 FabledIntegral wrote:
First, a 0.50 raise on a $5/hr job is a 10% increase which is fucking huge, so I'm not sure how you can say it's small. It's still pretty big on a $10/hr wage, which is 50% more than minimum, at a 5% increase. How you can trivialize companies paying out 5-10% out more per year per worker is beyond me. It really surprises me as well you can fathom that lowering minimum wages would not have a positive net effect on the economy, nearly all economic theory points to it having a very positive effect. Sure, it can fuck a lot of people in the process, but net effect?
I also don't know where you keep going on this demand thing. Demand will only rise as prices become cheaper. Also, as more jobs move to the U.S., more money is in the hands of U.S. consumers. Like I said previously, a more accurate scenario is that a company has 10 people here, 50 in Thailand, fires 20 in Thailand and hires 20 more here, meaning 30 people are employed at lower wages compared to the 10 that were previously, meaning more money being spent, stimulating the economy, creating more jobs and thus raising the wages of existing workers.
To the last point, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, and you're willing to work for $5/hr, don't they deserve that job more than you? Also, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, why should the company even hire you at a more expensive pay? You shouldn't be able to live off either $4/hr or $5/hr imo (well, you could if you live extremely cheaply with roommates and no family). Since when have we come to the conclusion that you should be able to sustain yourself on any job out there in existence? Some jobs are meant to give supplemental income, not be your career, and if you're trying to make your career into a $5/hr job then that's your fault for being such a damn unappealing person to society. I don't know how old you are, but you obviously have no idea how a large portion of the US (and the world) lives. You can be idealistic all you want, but in reality, eliminating the minimum wage would be an extremely heartless thing to do. We aren't China in this country, and anyone actually trying to make a living in this country would rather you didn't turn us until a 2nd or 3rd world country. Please go out and support yourself on a minimum wage job instead of being coddled by your parents and then try to argue that the entire workforce should work for $3/hour because it's "their fault" they have that job (if any job at all!).
Your argument is fucking ridiculous. First, my personal story is highly irrelevant. Regardless, I'm 22, had a job since I was 15 where I worked for minimum wage at Chuck E Cheese (one of the only places in CA that will hire under 16), where I took the bus to work in a completely different city 45 minutes away (1.5 hrs round trip, not to mention time waiting for the bus). I worked full time over this summer doing monotonous tasks as an administrative assistant making $10/hr to pay for rent, keep my credit card bills paid off, and start paying off my student loans I've accrued because tuition is so ungodly expensive. I've lived with two other roommates (not housemates, same room) for the last two years where the beds themselves took up 90% of the room so I could afford to live at $375/mo rent ($250 during the summer where my "room" didn't even have a door, it was an area of a room sectioned off by a bookshelf), and I ate granola bars almost every night for dinner (although only partially to save costs, I also hate doing dishes). I take shuttles to school despite having a car to save gas money.
I'm fully capable of taking care of myself. Do I have a bit of parental support? Yes, they help with my tuition payments (or I would have gone to CC first two years), and they pay my insurance on my car. Oh, and they gave me two free movie tickets for my birthday and took me out to dinner, if you want to qualify that as "being coddled by my parents."
The more relevant question is "should I be able to raise a family with this administrative assistant job?" NO. Since when should employing a single worker mean you have to ensure an entire family can sustain off that income? That's ridiculous.
Lowering the minimum wage would help a large amount of people, despite you claiming it to be "heartless." I never said I wanted it eliminated, but at the moment it makes us far too uncompetitive. Oh, and don't post again if you're going to be a dick again and bring personal things into the conversation. I may disagree with Bibdy and Whitewing, but they aren't going for personal attacks (and are at least semi-fluent in economics).
On September 27 2011 15:15 Falling wrote:
I am personally appalled at anyone that would put scraps of paper over the rights and well-being of other human beings.
Money doesn't buy happiness, a manufactured system of exchange is far less important than your living, breathing fellow man.
Throwing everyone who isn't an affluent white christian (and straight) under the bus is disgusting to me, and Republicans have lost my vote forever with their hateful, un-American views.
I'm personally astounded anyone could be so ignorant as to assume most people would be more concerned with luxuries such as free speech when they can't feed their children because there's no work.
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