The U.S. minimum wage should be
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The U.S. minimum wage should be
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
25% of the median wage (Score:3, Interesting)
so i voted for other measure than CPI
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:25% of the median wage (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, you want high unemployment for unskilled laborers. Most people don't seem to understand that the real minimum wage is $0. That's how much you earn when the minimum wage has priced you out of the job market. Couple that with recent reports about needing a bachelor's degree to get even low-skill jobs and soaring student loan debt, and you're looking at a major catastrophe for the lower & middle classes.
Making employers pay more for employees won't mean there's less work to do, and employers hire based off of how much work there is to do, not based on how much extra money they have in their pocket. You remove transportation costs and such. The economy won't suddenly implode when people make more money -- the worst that will happen is faster inflation, which really only hurts the rich if the minimum wage is tied to a decent metric.
Re:25% of the median wage (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't you love loaded polls? (Score:3, Funny)
Which would you rather have happen?
Swift kick in your nether regions
Molars removed without sedation
Fingers broken 1 by 1 by a casino henchman
Your favorite food and beverage hand delivered by the person you're most attracted to
Takes the fun out of the polls.
evidence-based policy (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine if any government spending had to be supported by evidence: show where there's a problem, propose a solution, incorporate a followup examination (sunset-like). No one likes Big Government, and mandating evidence-based policy would provide the only rational way to argue for "as big a government as we need". (IMO only nutcases fantasizing about the wild west are truly advocating "as small as possible".)
Think about it: there is a massive tax break for capital gains. Let's abolish it unless someone can set out its purpose (encourage investment), how much it costs (any tax break is a subsidy), and whether it's working (it encourages speculation-based capital appreciation like absurd stock prices, rather than the kind of investment which is productive.) Capital gains is also normally irrelevant to all but the "pretty rich" (let's guess that no one under $100k cares about it...)
Minimum wage is usually presented as humanitarian, dignity-based policy, but that shouldn't exempt it from _working_. is $14k a living wage? I think it largely depends on what you mean by "living" - where, how many people, do they have some form of health care/insurance, any kind of savings/retirement/pension? I guess that $14k isn't enough for a single person to live on, but how do you argue for a higher and/or inflation-adjusted number? We would need to know whether the current policy is working. Obviously, there are jobs that go undone, or go grey-market - does that argue that there should not be a minimum wage at all? Can we predict how wages would change in the absence of a MW? it seems unlikely that, for instance, anyone would start tipping 25% just because MW for servers was eliminated. What if we somehow made it easier for people to relocate to find jobs - would providing support for that make it possible to reduce support for MW? MW, like tax breaks, is a subsidy of low-earning workers by those at the same company who earn more - even if you buy the "dignity" argument, that interpretation is not very appealing...
Re:evidence-based policy (Score:5, Informative)
Capital gains is also normally irrelevant to all but the "pretty rich"
Buy a house for $200K, sell it for $300K years later would be $100K in capitol gains. Many people who are not "pretty rich" do that. Then there are 401K's, Small stock portfolios, etc.
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The IRS has a capital gains exemption for ordinary people selling their main / residential home (as opposed to investors in the business of flipping houses).
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc701.html
Basically, if you've lived in your home for at least two of the five years prior to the sale, you can claim a $250,000 capital gains exemption ($500,000 if you are married and file a joint return). In your example, the $100K capital gains would be tax free.
Evidence-based human rights violations (Score:3)
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Actually, your premise is incorrect. Capital gains, if not for the tax designation, would otherwise be considered income and taxed as income. That it's taxed at a significantly lower percentage constitutes as a tax break.
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So if a company realises capital gains on its assets (since companies can own stock too) is it tax as income or profit?
If I suffer a capital loss can I have a rebate on my income tax?
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There is not a tax BREAK for capital gains; there is a tax ON capital gains.
The tax cut comes from not taxing capital gains like normal income. For people in the highest income bracket (who get most of the capital gains), it's the difference between 39.6% and 20%. (In 2013 -- last year it was 35% and 15%). Since capital gains make up most of their income, that's a pretty substantial tax cut.
Not a real fix (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone who has recently worked for cash, I can attest to the supply of workers ready and willing to work at all, even if for less than the minimum wage.
Focusing on minimum wage is a distraction from real solutions to our economic problems.
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As someone who has recently worked for cash, I can attest to the supply of workers ready and willing to work at all, even if for less than the minimum wage.
You "recently worked for cash"??? You make it sound like you're an exception. Let me tell you - we all work for cash!
Focusing on minimum wage is a distraction from real solutions to our economic problems.
Minimum wage won't solve our economic problems. But it's one of those small things that helps us preventing modern slavery.
Re:Not a real fix (Score:5, Informative)
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Duh, of course those workers exist, that's WHY we have minimum wage. Otherwise, if there was ANY unemployment, there would be a race to zero on pay for those jobs.
Minimum wage law isn't supposed to fix the entire economy. No one is focussing on it to the exclusion of all else. It's just today's topic.
Re:Not a real fix (Score:4, Insightful)
Many minimum wage workers begin getting raises within their first year 1 or so of employment because they prove to be valuable assets to their employer and therefore their employer wants to reward them for their loyalty 2, productivity, and potentially a growth in skill set. This is how people move up the ladder. 3
1) never seen that happen ... they get fired regularly)
2) employers are not loyal (oh you ment employees
3) there are thousands of jobs where there is no ladder to move on (e.g. burger cooker at Mac Donalds)
Re:Not a real fix (Score:5, Interesting)
When San Francisco raised their local minimum wage to $10.25/hr a while back the Subway restaurants in the area had to stop offering their $5 footlong deals because they were losing money on them.
Are you aware that this was a national move?
Wow, only $7.25? (Score:5, Informative)
And there's an option to LOWER it? Is anybody actually talking about doing that?
In Australia the minimum wage is almost $16/hr, or US$16.50. It increases most years, not sure if it's tied to CPI.
Yes, we don't have as big of a tipping culture, although when we do tip it's for good service, not because it's expected. It seems to me that tips are an excuse to pay your workers shit, and a lot of jobs don't get tips but still get the crappy pay.
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In Australia the minimum wage is almost $16/hr, or US$16.50.
Yes, but in Australia you need that high minimum wage . . . because all that imported software you buy is so damn expensive . . .
Maybe the software companies will use the high minimum wage as an excuse for the high prices . . . ?
In the US, as soon as the minimum wage goes up, everyone will increase prices everywhere. And blame it on the minimum wage increase, of course.
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It may be "expensive" to live in Sydney, but you can survive. nobody can survive anywhere in the US on minimum. If you do the math, you'd note you wouldn't be making less than a McDonalds worker in Oz. In addition, "student loans" are structured differently there (non-interest, 25% upfront fee), so it's unlikely you'd be paying as much.
Re:Wow, only $7.25? (Score:4, Insightful)
Please explain me your budget, because I do not believe you can live in a reasonnable way at that price. Here is a reasonnable but low budget according to expenses around where I live
rent 550 (that's 1 bedroom, I guess you could go for a studio)
car insurance 35 (don't think you can drop under that for basic coverage mandatory in many states)
car payement/repair 100 (that's quite low, about 1 low end new car in 10 years)
internet 20 (that could be cut)
home/cell phone 20 (that's the basic cell plan without internet)
gas 50 (that's about 1 tank a month, if you live close enough to work or can use public transportation that should be enough)
utilities 50 (probably depends on where you live)
health insurance 150 (nothing below exist)
clothing 50 (one reasonnable pair of shooes or a few shirts)
food/grocery 300 ($10 a day)
that's 1325 a month which is over the minimal wage budget. I guess internet and cell phone could be cut. I guess you could go for a studio and cut rent a little bit. Health insurance could be cut but then welcome to medieval health care (though, the deductible will kill you with such a budget). Clothing could be cut in half certainly but not really easily (especially if you are a women). food/grocery might be reduced a little bit, but probably not more than to $8/day.
Re:Wow, only $7.25? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Raising the minimum wage typically has negative enconomic repercussions. It tends to cause inflation."
Citation needed. Economists disagree with you. They clearly claim that they have no clue what impact it has.
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Your error is assuming a minimum wage worker gets 40 hours per week
Next time you stop in a fast food restaurant, or a chain retail shop (walmart, target, etc)... ask the people working there how many hours their getting. You won't hear any 40s, a few in the 30s, mostly in the 20s. If you assume an average of 30 hours per week, that's only 11k per year, before taxes.
Re:Wow, only $7.25? (Score:5, Insightful)
> In Australia the minimum wage is almost $16/hr, or US$16.50.
plus 9% superannuation, plus 20% casual loading (or holidays, sick leave etc.).
And if you have kids, there are very generous payments on top for low income earners.
Of course the terrible cost of high minimum wage is an unemployment level in Australia of almost 5%.
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5% is full employment; a full 5% of people in Australia are unemployable.
Whoosh (Score:3)
It's called sarcasm.
There are many areas where the unemployment level is much higher, though. That number is pushed up by mining areas where large populations are at 100% employment, because no one can live anywhere near a mining town if they don't earn miners wages. (A problem when you need to employ shophands or fill government positions, like nurses or various clerks, whose wages are fixed across the country!)
5% unemployment is only 1 in 20 currently out of work. That number could easily be persons betwe
Missing option - Enforced (Score:5, Insightful)
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Whatever the minimum wage is, it should be enforced. Enforced for everyone - farm workers, children, "undocumented" (illegal) residents, etc.
For that matter, every law that is on the books should be enforced.
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Society would collapse within a week. You need to fix "the books" first; the laws on them right now are not even designed with enforcement in mind.
Re:Missing option - Enforced (Score:5, Insightful)
Enforcing the minimum wage in this instance would mean going after *employers,* instead of just punishing the workers with deportation. Seize the assets of employers (to be paid as back wages to workers, "illegal" or not), and throw the employers in jail --- that'll stop under-the-table low wage labor much more effectively than occasionally deporting a group of workers (so the employers can move on to the next round of desperate, fearful immigrants, easy to exploit with bad wages).
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How delightfully naive.
You realize AZ got spanked for the radical offense of trying to actually enforce federal immigration laws already on the books? Yeah, they had asshats like Sherrif Joe going around violating civil rights, but the AZ law itself merely encouraged legitimate local law enforcement agencies to actually enforce the law. Tsk tsk, can't have people mak
Re:Missing option - Enforced (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to think that. Actually, no. Authorities in areas with high populations of illegal immigrants don't actually pursue them with any vigor. Partly this is because the police force is often made up of relatives of illegal immigrants (or people who are children of illegal immigrants). Areas like the central valley of California have enormous populations of illegal immigrants. They hang out in well known areas looking for work, or do a variety of other things which make it clear they are illegal, but are hardly ever threatened by authorities (unless they do something else dangerous to society, like smoking mj, or speeding).
In my opinion illegal immigrants, and people who abuse employees illegally, get away with it because those crimes require detective work to uncover. You can bring strong evidence of crimes before police and, unless those crimes are part of a very small set which police are comfortable pursuing (because they are easy to pursue) or you somehow have political clout, the police will do absolutely nothing about it.
How about "enforced", for a start? (Score:5, Interesting)
Minimum wage in the US has at least two major problems. First, the huge number of exemptions to it - Food service, agricultural, salaried employees, and so on. These need to vanish, ASAP. No more of this "tipping" BS (and I don't say that as a cheapskate, I tip damned well - I'd just rather see people get paid enough not to need it). No more "piecework" to get around minimum wage laws. Not more unpaid overtime. You work, you get paid at least 7.25 per hour for it or your employer goes to fucking jail.
Second, we also need a maximum wage to go along with it. And don't think I count as one of those "hate the rich" types - I'd accept something still pretty obscene, like 100x the minimum wage - A "mere" 1.5M per year. Can't live on that? Cry me a river and move aside for someone who will appreciate a higher standard of living than most historical kings and emperors enjoyed.
I would also add a 2.5th need - We need, perhaps more even than the first two, a maximum number of hours. We need to make it absolutely unwaveringly illegal to have an employee work more than 40 hours (and I'd actually prefer we make it less than that - I've always thought we should get Wednesdays off, nothing good happens on Wednesday), no exceptions. If you can't get all the work you have done in 40 hours, you need to hire someone else, period. We have a society of people living shorter than our grandparents, partly because of how we eat but partly because we literally work ourselves to death. This amounts to a public health crisis, not just a way to save a few bucks by deliberately understaffing and expecting people to pick up the slack.
[/minimum wage manifesto]
Oh, and I want a pony, too.
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Dude - get me that pony, and you've got my vote for president.
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If you implement a maximum wage then forgot about enterprenuers and working hard for a mere 1.5 million!
It takes alot of risk, life savings, sanity, marriage, and your whole life on the line for the chance to strike it rich. Kings or not, it takes a lot of money and earnings potential to be worth the risk or have the bank or investors want to help you along iwth your business. If the most I can make is X then why should I risk my $500,000 if I can only get a 300% return (Remember there is a 70% chance I wil
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Let's make the minimum wage a million dollars an hour! The government can just send out million dollar bills to all the employers to pay those wages. Because you can print prosperity.
Re:How about "enforced", for a start? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, the great Keynesian fallacy. Little pieces of paper are what move and economy, not goods. That is why you can just print a piece of paper with a 1 followed by 16 zeros and solve all your economy's problems.
Let's make the minimum wage a million dollars an hour! The government can just send out million dollar bills to all the employers to pay those wages. Because you can print prosperity.
Nothing is further from the truth. Keynesianism supports the idea that goods and production and consumption are what matter, not little pieces of paper. The currency is simply a tool. When you have a recession caused not by destruction of productive capacity but by lack of demand (triggered by a financial crisis, for instance), then Keynesian stimulative policy can get some traction. Keynesian policy also means that when the economy is doing really well, austerity is necessary to keep inflation low and the economy from over-heating.
(Keynesian stimulus can be either monetary stimulus--i.e. quantitative easing--or fiscal stimulus--i.e. gov't spending and tax breaks... When you're at the zero lower bound like we are now, with a period of inflation lower than at any other period since the Great Depression and interest rates are also incredibly low--two things that aren't supposed to happen at the same time under monetarism but yet are right now--then regular monetary stimulus is pretty ineffective and because of the high unemployment rate--which is a pool of unused productive capacity--your best bet is fiscal stimulus which IS effective even when monetary policy is exhausted but fiscal stimulus is apparently not politically "serious" enough.)
Just so we're clear, all the fiscal stimulus is doing is not "magical," it's just putting idle resources--unemployed workers and capital--to work.
But again, you seem to have your straw man pretty well established, sorry for disrupting it...
Re: How about "enforced", for a start? (Score:3)
I bet you would volunteer to be on the board that determined and regulated all that. Wouldn't you love to have that kind of power over people?
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We have a society of people living shorter than our grandparents
According to this graph [uoregon.edu] life expectancy in the US had gone up by 10% in the last 30 years. We are living longer not shorter.
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Your frothing at the mouth is really quite funny.
Perhaps if you had any clue what "wages" are, you wouldn't be so eager to try being be more patriotic than McCarthy.
The painfully obvious "loophole" here for a genuine entrepenuer is to actually OWN the company they are working for. This is something that separates a real capitalist from a glorified middle manager.
The idea of a maximal "wage" would only likely impact the CxO class that manages other people's assets. People like that aren't "entrepenuers".
Regionally determined (Score:3)
AFAIK, the biggest problem with U.S. minimum wage policy is that cost of living is highly variable by region, and the minimum wage is an attempt to set a reasonable standard of living by wage constraints at the federal level for the entire country. For some high-cost areas, which still need menial laborers until our robot overlords take over, that makes the minimum wage a farce, and also makes it just as important to consider issues like housing costs. Employers and regional authorities need to work together to solve that problem, and the federal law just gets in the way, despite what your stumping representative may claim, at that point. It should never have been handled at the federal level. It is like lipstick on a pig, ignoring serious problems and attempting a cosmetic fix, at the federal level.
Regions that handle this problem in earnest, and in concert with all the people involved including the employers, do much better and would have more flexibility without the officiousness of the federal bureaucracy, whose efforts don't really improve quality of life.
And what we're really talking about is the minimum acceptable quality of life in an industrialized nation, for a productive worker, not a minimum wage. What difference does it make what a worker makes as a minimum wage if he has to make a 2 hour commute from his satellite suburban hell to Shangri-la in a busted up unsafe car, because he can't afford to live nearer, and can't take nonexistent public transportation, and then gets bankrupted by medical bills when his brakes go out and he survives a cartwheeling car crash on a broken highway? We need to pay for transport, housing, and quality of life and medical care and stop trying to fix it with a numerical band-aid that makes politicians and their naive constituencies feel better.
Most of the problems are regional, and a lot of them are infrastructure, so we'd be much better off solving it with block grants federally. If a region determines it needs a minimum wage, then that makes sense. At the federal level it's just "passing the buck," without passing any of the needed bucks.
Re:Regionally determined (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think I implied a mandate of any kind, and if it seemed that way, it was not my intent. What we can do is build and maintain an infrastructure and enact policy that leads to opportunities for improvement and either sustainability or growth in a community. Those that seek a better quality of life will be able attain it, or maintain what they have earned. That's why it's important to read the rest of the sentence and get to the point of "for a productive worker." The person has to appreciate the efforts required and choose success. We can't just mandate that every jackass and his mom gets a pony. But success has to be on the table as a possibility, right? It seems to me that you saw the phrase "minimum... quality of life" and balked without finishing. I held that up as the real aim of a minimum wage, and declared it as a starting point to get at our actual goals. I then demonstrated that the wage alone is totally inadequate. A mandated quality of life would be also be a horrible mistake, IMO.
However, if we have a regional economic system where a person (or couple) can work their ass off at three to five jobs and his/her family still starves, and the kids never see their parents so they get no discipline and a lousy education, what we have is unacceptable and unsustainable, and I have seen that very situation far more often than is acceptable in the past 6 years. I've also seen people on union benefits that don't do any work, and the benefit keeps them from moving on, and the union keeps them out of the work they used to do. More and more families are working hard and not seeing the rewards of their labor, or held back from the labor markets because they are not sustained by spending, and so stay on furlough. It's like digging a pit in the sand. People who work themselves to the bone and still have no security or acceptable quality of life (subjectively speaking, to their regional standard of living) should not be ignored as foolish or unlucky. People who cannot work because we are ignoring necessary work in some crazy ideal of austerity should be given the necessary work. They both should serve as a warning that these communities are failing, for whatever reason, and triage should commence.
We ignore that fact, because it is too hard, and either give out inadequate handouts in guilt (which break the bank in aggregate), or call such people foolish or lazy. None of that helps, because it's all orchestrated to our need to get on with our lives, blindly wishing that it will not reach unto us. We are ignoring a sleeping giant. There are too many people that have fallen down, and they will get back up. The only question is will they be carrying pitchforks and torches when that happens.
Link it to the ooverty line (Score:4, Interesting)
#define poverty_line ((minimum_wage * 40 *52) - $1)
Or reverse it:
#define minimum_wage ((poverty_line + $1)/ (40 * 52))
I don't care which, so long as it causes people with full time jobs to not be considered impoverished for politically manipulative purposes.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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You guys make it look like half the country earns the minimum wage. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Check the Department of Labor website and see for yourselves how few people actually work for the minimum wage. It's just a few percent of workers, and a good portion of those are teenagers, college students working part time, and second-income earners for a family.
It's just not that big a deal.
Why don't you instead look at the largest growth jobs? Minimium wage and $10/hr are exploding and growing by leaps and bounds. Walmart jobs, dollar stores jobs, fast food is where the industry is heading. UPS used to pay back in 1991 $20/hr for part time delivery jobs and distribution for the Christmas holidays. They now pay $9/hr without even being adjusted for inflation!
Also where you looking at the average salary that includes all the top 1%? Or the average salaried position? They have been declining yea
Fixed and not detrimental to employers (Score:3)
Minimum wage is by definition not supposed to be a living wage. Minimum wage serves to protect against abusive employment practices and provides a mechanism for the young to enter the workforce at an entry level while limiting risk to the employer. We need a minimum wage to protect workers. That wage must be affordable to employers as well. We do not need to be concerned that the minimum wage is not a wage that can provide for a family, or even an individual. That is not it's purpose.
Get rid of it. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think you're worth $30 an hour, don't work for less than that! Refuse to work unless you get the wages you want, whether that is $30 an hour or $3 an hour, but no business will hire someone if they get paid more than what they are worth, they're not a charity. The minimum wage essentially removes the bottom rungs on the "corporate ladder" making it harder and harder for less skilled people to find employment. Since they can't find employment, they can't get the skills to move up so they end up unemployed.
Majority of voters are misinformed (Score:3)
The majority of voters here have indicated they believe the minimum wage should either be increased or be dynamically determined by market factors. Based on this I can only assume these individuals would then be content to work at the minimum wage - that is the absolute minimum that the government feels your time is worth. Is this how we are supposed to be living - aim low, race to zero, do the absolute minimum? I don't believe so. Even after several years in the workforce I'm still aways trying to figure out how to better my scenario - earn more, save more for retirement, and most importantly buy more beer and toys. I don't understand the interest in minimum wage. It worked for me for my first six weeks of employment ever, and at less than half of what the minimum wage is now. Six weeks later I had a job that paid a whopping five cents more per hour than minimum wage. It wasn't much, but I think it set me on a course where I was always looking for something better. Less than 10 years after that I was bringing home a living wage and earning 30% annual bonuses.
Abolish it (Score:3)
Abolish it. It has already been circumvented in ways that are destructive to the economy. Free trade agreements have taken millions of jobs to areas where the minimum wage does not apply. However, the products come back here so the only thing we've done is lose the value-add economic activity.
We have also imported somewhere between ten and twenty million illegal immigrants to work below the minimum wage. The so called "jobs that USians won't do" are just a supply and demand issue that would put upward pressure on wages. Importing illegal immigrants to do those jobs keeps the wages and prices artificially low. It makes for cheaper food, construction, baby-sitting, etc. but comes back to bite us in education, healthcare and other parts of the economy.
Create a sensible trade and immigration policy, stop the Federal government and Federal Reserve from destroying the purchasing power of the currency through renegade credit expansion, get rid of welfare for the able-bodied and abolish the minimum wage. Everyone (except bankers and government employees) would be better off.
The idea that we have millions of unemployed people and welfare recipients being supported by government borrowing at the same time businesses complain that they have jobs they can only fill with black market labor is insane.
Maximum Wage & Maximum Wealth (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Distribution_of_Wealth,_2007.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Imagine a banquet for 100 people where everyone brought their produce from a day of work in their home gardens and farms, 2000 calories worth each, and then divvied up the food like this:
40 people were given a single slice of apple and water
20 people were given a serving of ham and potatoes, so 60 had been served
20 people were given a salad topped with blue cheese and vinaigrette and then salmon on rice with a side of broccoli, so 80 had been served.
10 people were given a large meal, with nuts and breads to start, then a salad, a couple of appetizers each, a large steak with potatoes on the side, a desert and cappuccino, and multiple glasses of wine throughout, so 90 had been served
5 people were given a dinner that they simply couldn't finish.. like the last one, but with 90 oz T-bone steak, a whole plate of mashed potatoes, a spread of fruits and cheeses and 2 or 3 deserts, so 95 had been served
4 people were given a full week's set of these really surpassing, 7-course meals, all arrayed nicely in front of them in a building crescendo of delights for the next 7 days, so that 99 had been served
And the last person, was given a month of these 7-course meals and it was not clear even how to get them back home.
So everyone had been served. Now imagine what these people talk about at dinner. Perhaps something like this?
"It's not fair that 40 people just got a slice of apple! Did you see those slices?! They're puny. We should give them a bigger slice of apple!"
Sigh. At least talk about Maximum wage instead of Minimum wage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_wage [wikipedia.org]
But then, if you really want to build a nice community to live in for the long-term (remember, wage is not the only way to accumulate wealth), talk about maximum wealth; no wiki about this yet though ;)
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Re:Fixed (Score:5, Funny)
I think he suggests reintroducing slavery. He probably didn't like the latest Lincoln movie.
Re:Fixed (Score:5, Insightful)
I think he suggests reintroducing slavery. He probably didn't like the latest Lincoln movie.
Well, it IS rather hard to believe Abraham Lincoln had enough free time to go hunting down vampires.
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especially when he was a skilled zombie slayer.
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As opposed to abolishing slavery, the 13th amendment specifically re-institutes slavery within the US. The old Jim Crow and the War on Drugs, the new Jim Crow, have guaranteed that slavery in America persists to the present.
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Which is itself becoming a problem - see the Florida prisoner work programs, where the prison companies get paid for the prisoners work. Creating an incentive to increase the incarcerated population because they're now a cheap labor force leads nowhere good.
Re:Fixed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fixed (Score:5, Funny)
I think they have subtle differences.
Chicken shit seems synonymous with scared. It's usually spelled as two words.
Horse shit and bullshit are often interchangeable and mean nonsense, stupid or untrue. However bullshit is more popular as a word.
Bullshit also is the only *shit phrase I know of with a easy to use 2-letter abbreviation; bs.
You forgot to mention batshit. As in "You must be batshit crazy to think that this chicken shit outfit gives horse shit about your bullshit."
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Re:Fixed (Score:4, Informative)
Yes [americanbar.org]. And the penalties are awesomely high [jdsupra.com] when you're caught [lypelaw.com].
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The more normal way around minimum wage is called a salary. pay someone whatever the minimum wage is on the basis of a 40hr work week, and then make them work 60-80.
Another other common way around minimum wage is called commission, sure you can make over minimum wage if you're one of the top sellers, but if you aren't, too bad.
And I also know some wait staff at restaurants that are paid bellow minimum wage with the idea that their tips should make up the difference.
I know people working in all of those situ
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Re:Fixed (Score:4, Insightful)
The minimum wage only hurts the people it is intended to help, weakens the economy, and promotes welfare and government dependance.
"In a free market, demand is always a function of price: the higher the price, the lower the demand. What may surprise most politicians is that these rules apply equally to both prices and wages. When employers evaluate their labor and capital needs, cost is a primary factor. When the cost of hiring low-skilled workers moves higher, jobs are lost. Despite this, minimum wage hikes, like the one set to take effect later this month, are always seen as an act of governmental benevolence. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When confronted with a clogged drain, most of us will call several plumbers and hire the one who quotes us the lowest price. If all the quotes are too high, most of us will grab some Drano and a wrench, and have at it. Labor markets work the same way. Before bringing on another worker, an employer must be convinced that the added productivity will exceed the added cost (this includes not just wages, but all payroll taxes and other benefits.) So if an unskilled worker is capable of delivering only $6 per hour of increased productivity, such an individual is legally unemployable with a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
Low-skilled workers must compete for employers’ dollars with both skilled workers and capital. For example, if a skilled worker can do a job for $14 per hour that two unskilled workers can do for $6.50 per hour each, then it makes economic sense for the employer to go with the unskilled labor. Increase the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour and the unskilled workers are priced out of their jobs. This dynamic is precisely why labor unions are such big supporters of minimum wage laws. Even though none of their members earn the minimum wage, the law helps protect their members from having to compete with lower-skilled workers.
Employers also have the choice of whether to employ people or machines. For example, an employer can hire a receptionist or invest in an automated answering system. The next time you are screaming obscenities into the phone as you try to have a conversation with a computer, you know what to blame for your frustration.
There are numerous other examples of employers substituting capital for labor simply because the minimum wage has made low-skilled workers uncompetitive. For example, handcarts have replaced skycaps at airports. The main reason fast-food restaurants use paper plates and plastic utensils is to avoid having to hire dishwashers.
As a result, many low-skilled jobs that used to be the first rung on the employment ladder have been priced out of the market. Can you remember the last time an usher showed you to your seat in a dark movie theater? When was the last time someone other than the cashier not only bagged your groceries, but also loaded them into your car? By the way, it won’t be long before the cashiers themselves are priced out of the market, replaced by automated scanners, leaving you to bag your purchases with no help whatsoever.
The disappearance of these jobs has broader economic and societal consequences. First jobs are a means to improve skills so that low skilled workers can offer greater productivity to current or future employers. As their skills grow, so does their ability to earn higher wages. However, remove the bottom rung from the employment ladder and many never have a chance to climb it.
So the next time you are pumping your own gas in the rain, do not just think about the teenager who could have been pumping it for you, think about the auto mechanic he could have become – had the minimum wage not denied him a job. Many auto mechanics used to learn their trade while working as pump jockeys. Between fill-ups, checking tire pressure, and washing windows, they would spend a lot of time helping – and learning from – the mechanics.
Because the minimum wage prevents so many young people (including a disproportionate number of minorit
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Here's where theory and reality conflict. There's no concrete evidence that the minimum wage reduces employment. Some studies go one way, others another, and still others inconclusive. The general consensus among economists is that reduction in employment is unproven. Perhaps because minimum wages are too low to actually matter much.
Thank you! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's quite telling that well managed and successful companies pay above minimum wage. My local McDnald's pays $8/hr.
The shitholes and companies that just want to maximize their profits pay minimum wage. In other words, they pay that little not because they can't afford more but because they can. More money for the owners. Raise the minimum wage and they'll pay it: there will be just a couple of percentage points decrease in the return to the owners.
Actually, I think minimum wage should be pegged to how much medical insurance costs. Back in the 90s when Globalisation was starting to take off, economists were on TV stating that our standard of living will increase because goods will fall in price.
Yep, big screen TVs have become a lot more affordable. In the meantime, medical care, college costs, and food prices have sky rocketed. And in the meantime, our standard of living has DECREASED. I lived a HELL of a lot better in the 90s than I do now!
Want there to be no min wage? Fine. Then let's outlaw the horseshit with the pharmaceutical companies gouging us in the States while giving the rest of the World a price break.
Let's stop this horseshit of college costs going through the roof.
Let's stop the AMA from blocking legislation allowing nurse practioners to do some of the GP work - like prescribing some drugs (the Georigia AMA is really bad here!). Medical costs CAN be reduced WITHOUT jeopardizing patient safety or health.
But like everything, the poor have very little say and the folks with the $$$$ have most of the say.
Re:Thank you! (Score:5, Informative)
Credit isn't a subsidy. It's a fucking trap.
Re:Thank you! (Score:5, Informative)
We can be the great experiment and raise minimum wage and see if it does in fact reduce jobs. (not a good idea but if you insist we should track the result)
We have raised the minimum wage a number of times. It did not, in fact, reduce jobs.
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Of the Twenty-Fourth-and-a-Half....
CEEENTURYYYYYY!!
Sorry, saw the handle, couldn't help myself.
(Worth the potential karma hit)
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And on a more practical note, hungry, sickly, and illiterate people have less to lose and more to gain by engaging in criminal acts. Every dollar (well) spent on education, food stamps, and Medicaid is at least a few dollars less spent on
Re:Thank you! (Score:4, Interesting)
We can and should be nervous about any government program, we should be careful about spending, and we should be watching our politicians like hawks ready to pounce. But this is not robbing Peter to pay Paul - the biggest reason Peter is healthy and Paul is starving is luck, and it's utterly fair to ask the lucky to help the unlucky. Enslaving Peter is wrong. Taking everything from Peter (i.e. socialism) is wrong. Telling Paul he can die because we dare not ask Peter for anything, valuing his right to all of his wealth over Paul's right to breathe? That's ludicrous.
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If sin taxes are implemented to reduce consumption of sinful tobacco and alcohol, and if import tariffs are implemented to reduce consumption of imports, and if politicians brag about this, then what do you think a tax on unskilled labor is going to do? And why do those same politicians act as if the reverse is true?
If it's good policy to raise the minimum wage to $9.00 from $7.25, and it will actually increase employment as politicians claim, why stop there? Why not raise the minimum wage to $15.00, or $50.00?
If you claim that those big raises are silly because they are patently destructive and unaffordable and ludicrous, then show me how you derived the $9.00 figure, which you claim to have the opposite effect?
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For the same reason that if it's better to give a dehydrated man 2 glasses of water instead of 1, it is not logical to give him 50 glasses of water. It is a complete logical fallacy to claim that because a small increase of something is better, any amount of increase is better. Try again.
Re:Fixed (Score:4, Interesting)
I live in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Its a nice place overall, but rent and food are expensive generally speaking.
Someone did a survey recently that was reported in the local paper, it determined that in order to live what most people would consider an acceptable lifestyle you need to make $15/hr here. Minimum wage is $8.25 at the moment.
Most of the young, employed people that I meet are living in groups in apartments (say a 2 bedroom apartment with 6 people in it). I expect their lifestyle is below the par the article mentioned.
My wife and I have had our income drop by roughly 45% over the last 6 years, while our rent has gone from $975 to $1100 for the same apartment. Now, I make better than minimum wage (although not a lot more) but most of the young folks I see are making minimum, and are forced to work 2 jobs just to survive. Of course most employers do not work people full time so they can pay less benefits, so a lot of those people are working 2 or 3 part time jobs instead of 1 full time.
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"The general consensus, which is not science, among economists is..."
.
OK let's do this scientifically. A theory predicts that a minimum wage will create unemployment. The null hypothesis is no effect, so proponents of that theory will need to go out and a) test or b) provide epidemiological evidence, (separating out all contended factors) that the minimum wage actually does create unemployment.
Now it just so happens that among the advocates of increasing the minimum wage we have people like Alan Krueger who have actually bothered at least to look at the real world. Krueger's empirical work led him to the conclusion (see Myth and Measurement [amazon.com]) that there is simply no empirical evidence to support the idea that the minimum wage chokes employment. If anything, Krueger claims, the opposite is the case.
Of course this is an intensely political subject and it would be insanely naive simply to accept the findings of a single researcher. In the current context, however, it must be noted a) that pundits like Peter Schiff, quoted by OP, don't sully their hands with empirical work; and b) the onus of proof rests with those who seek to overturn the null hypothesis. Even dismissing Krueger as overly rosy (or, more likely, overly committed), such evidence does not seem to be not forthcoming.
Now if this were a Science, we might be scratching our heads and wondering why reality and theory don't seem to match. Why would labour be any different from any other commodity? Is the fact that the recipient of the money is at the same time a worker and a consumer possibly relevant? What meta-analysis should we perform to filter out the ideological commitment?
But of course this is, as you so correctly point out, not Science, it's Economics. So instead let's abandon a rational epistemology throw our hands in the air and agree with whatever position our particular political tribe is advocating at this particular election cycle. Feels good!
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Please pick a book with a bigger data set.
I don't think you've understood the gist of the post you are responding to. I am not advocating for either conclusion. More to the point since I am not advocating for the conclusion a minimum wage chokes employment it hardly falls to me to pick anything at all, does it?
Or perhaps you are only obeying the instructions in the penultimate sentence to the letter? Feels good, no?
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Since the economists can't give us a clear yes or no on the impacts of raising the minimum wage, people are divided on the issue, sometimes preferring to read pundit's comments instead of researching and thinking for themselves. It's annoying as hell and it comes from both sides of the aisle.
Economists can't agree on what "should" happen, but examinations of what "has" happened show that unemployment is unrelated to minimum wage changes. I'm not repeating any "pundit" comments. If I came close, please point me to a source. Aside from having to research it myself, I've found little out there that examines the history of wage changes in the US.
I can't apologize for stating the truth, just because you find reality offensive.
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You can disagree with the minimum wage and suggest alternate systems, but I don't think it's a good idea to do away with it. O
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"Surely, we'll get some crackheads that at least want a $1/hour."
This doesn't work because many people will cease to shop where crackheads are running the store... thus actually reducing profits. Hiring good labor at the right price is key to bringing in money.
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"Surely, we'll get some crackheads that at least want a $1/hour."
This doesn't work because many people will cease to shop where crackheads are running the store... thus actually reducing profits. Hiring good labor at the right price is key to bringing in money.
Apparently this guy has never been to Walmart....
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Pal, I got news for you. You're a thinking person and therefore you understand that you need good people in your business. Probably you're not a college graduate...
Some years ago, I was tasked to run three boutiques owned by five people, one of them had a Master's degree in Economics from the University of Chicago, another was an industrial engineer from Georgia Tech, you get the idea, all highly educated people.
The three stores were basically paying the rent and showing a very small profit and the situation hadn't changed for some five, six years. The first year I was in charge, I got profits up by 70% (not sales, profits); the second year, profit was up 30%.
Then they got together and looked at how much the salespeople were making and decided that my compensation plan was too expensive. Salespeople were making too much money, so they cut the commissions.
I was fired over my loud opposition to their plan. Within the year they had closed one store, and had reduced the floor space on the other two. Right now, they are looking for a buyer for their entire company...
Imagine going to the University of Chicago for a masters degree and not being able to read a P/L. What the fuck do you care how much is the salespeople commission when, after years of not making a profit, you are getting one? Such smart people, kill the golden goose so you can get all the eggs, right now!
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Why is it that all those eeeeevul companies don't already pay only the minimum wage? Could it be that companies like that actually have to compete for capable workers? The minimum wage mostly hurts first-job workers, low-skilled workers, and other marginal workers who can't compete for better jobs in the first place. Companies that rely on low-skill workers typically limit them to part-time so they don't fall into the minimum wage. Obamacare just makes that worse too.
Other solutions? How about making it les
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Other solutions? How about making it less expensive to hire low-skilled workers?
That's crazy talk. If you did that, teens would be employable, and then where would we get new Bloods and Crips to lower property values so that we can go ahead with our gentrification projects on the cheap?
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"The word "billion" once meant one million million (1,000,000,000,000), but this has become obsolete and the word has been used meaning one thousand million (1,000,000,000) unambiguously for decades in the English language."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000000000_(number) [wikipedia.org]
Welcome to the present.
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minimum wage is a good idea and should be tied to cpi. welfare what welfare. the government sells insurance and it's called social security, and while it is a pyramid scam for politicians to raid, it is still insurance not welfare. they got rid of most welfare. long ago, the problem is the government raided social security to give tax breaks to the rich in trickledown economics which is total bs. the rich don't 'trickle down' wealth they hord it, like the government does too (ever heard of fort knox). the
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This is simply a lie. From day ONE, all surplus SSI taxes collected were used to "buy" treasuries. If there is no surplus, then those treasuries are cashed in to cover the shortfall. Basically, all the taxes have gone into the general fund from DAY ONE and at no point were they used "to give tax breaks to the rich". If you have evidence to the contrary, please provid
No Virginia, there is no free market Clause (Score:4, Interesting)
"Free market capitalism," even if it existed somewhere, eventually changes to the kind of state capitalism the large governments of the world are moving to.
Undiscussed by the Randians, Freidmans, et. al. are the existence of parasites at every economic level. At the bottom is the unproductive welfare queen. At the top is the financial specialist focusing on synthetic hedge funds. Both are essentially parasites who create no productive activity, but merely live off of the productive activity of others. Once the parasites are successful enough, they move on to the most productive host of all, the world's governments, whose legislature and productive output are then more efficiently directed towards themselves.
Compared to the large scale parasites, minimum wage workers getting a small pay hike are trivial. A distraction. They are, at least, providing a productive service.
You either get rid of the parasites, or eventually they kill the hosts. Welfare queens were a minor nuisance, easily controlled. Vampires squids, however, still suck happily.
Re:No Virginia, there is no free market Clause (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole concept of welfare queens is debatable and is mired in a lot of coded racism, much of the time, but even if you accept it as fact, the difference between a welfare queen and your financier is that the welfare queen is spending money on actual goods and services like food and tvs and what not, but the financier pours most of their money back into financial products, which doesn't create a lot of benefit to anyone else.
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Employers also have the choice of whether to employ people or machines. For example, an employer can hire a receptionist or invest in an automated answering system. The next time you are screaming obscenities into the phone as you try to have a conversation with a computer, you know what to blame for your frustration.
Machines get better every year, at just about everything, which means the value of low-end jobs is heading toward 0$. When all menial jobs can be done by robots, and everyone has already bought enough robots to do them, do we just let the unskilled die in the streets?
There are numerous other examples of employers substituting capital for labor simply because the minimum wage has made low-skilled workers uncompetitive. For example, handcarts have replaced skycaps at airports. The main reason fast-food restaurants use paper plates and plastic utensils is to avoid having to hire dishwashers.
It is not possible to pay a human being so little that they will be cheaper than an hour's worth of paper plates. The minimum wage didn't do that, the existence of machines that can produce paper goods that border on free did that. Lone vendors have always used paper, or just handed bare food to customers. The modern difference is that multi-billion dollar chains are now comfortable doing that to people who are sitting down in an actual restaurant.
As a result, many low-skilled jobs that used to be the first rung on the employment ladder have been priced out of the market. Can you remember the last time an usher showed you to your seat in a dark movie theater? When was the last time someone other than the cashier not only bagged your groceries, but also loaded them into your car? By the way, it won’t be long before the cashiers themselves are priced out of the market, replaced by automated scanners, leaving you to bag your purchases with no help whatsoever.
Usher is not the first-rung to anything. My grocery store has baggers who will help you load your groceries, but it is not the first rung to anywhere. Cashiers aren't going to be priced out by the minimum wage, they're going to be priced out by RFID scanners that record everything in your cart in five seconds, and run on five dollars in power per month. It's literally impossible for a human to compete with that. Should those humans die on the street? Even as things stand, these ladder-to-nowhere jobs don't pay enough for people to go to school on. The people who have them are stuck.
The disappearance of these jobs has broader economic and societal consequences. First jobs are a means to improve skills so that low skilled workers can offer greater productivity to current or future employers. As their skills grow, so does their ability to earn higher wages. However, remove the bottom rung from the employment ladder and many never have a chance to climb it.
Grocery baggers don't need to hone their skills for their employer's benefit. No one is going to get payed more for being a grocery-bagging gunslinger, travelling from store to store, fixing grocery bagging problems at exorbitant rates. The jobs that are "rungs" now require a college degree, and as education costs rise, anyone who isn't fully funded by their parents will find a degree effectively impossible to achieve.
So the next time you are pumping your own gas in the rain, do not just think about the teenager who could have been pumping it for you, think about the auto mechanic he could have become – had the minimum wage not denied him a job. Many auto mechanics used to learn their trade while working as pump jockeys. Between fill-ups, checking tire pressure, and washing windows, they would spend a lot of time helping – and learning from – the mechanics.
In the year 2013, where we live, Ma Kettle's Super Casual Gas & Go, where the attendant chews straw and learns repair on those dull, dusty days when cars are few, is not a thing. Gas stations are franchises. They al
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Being unskilled isn't something like gender, skin color, or sexual orientation where that's the way you were born. It's a personal attribute that can most certainly be changed. So, yes, when machines handle all menial jobs, there will be no unskilled laborers, but the vast majority will have left the category by means other than death.
I know that's the PC thing to say, but reality is that no, many people need relatively uncomplicated jobs where they don't have to get a PhD in anything and solve complex mental challenges 8 hours a day. Industrialization just took most of the physical force out of the job market like tractors instead of people and horses or mechanical switches instead of operators connecting telephone wires, but left all the jobs requiring intelligence to people and we all have a fair bit of that so there were jobs everyon
Re:Fixed (Score:5, Insightful)
A well done, post, but unfortunately empirical evidence contradicts most of your points.
There is no strong evidence that modest increases to the minimum wage reduces employment for low income people. One study in Florida showed an increase in youth employment after the minimum wage was increased.
The minimum wage may delay having workers replaced by machines, but eventually if the technology exists to replace a worker it is used.
Worker productivity has increased a huge amount since the 1970's, yet adjusted for inflation wages are stagnant. The increased productivity is being used to make the 1% richer.
Yes, lots of low paying jobs are gone, and more and more of them will disappear as technology improves. Another thing killing off low paying jobs is "the race to the bottom" where consumers demand the lowest possible price without thinking what that will do to service and quality.
Without a minimum wage, and lacking strong unions, wages drop to below a level that supports even a modest living unless there is a severe labour shortage. Outside of a few hot spots, when there is no minimum wage business takes advantage of it to suppress wages.
In the long run technology will doom capitalism as there will be no work for anyone. A different system, some sort of socialism most likely, will have to replace it.
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These were all points I was going to make, but I'd like to add a postscript. In addition to all the other arguments, proponents for the abolition of minimum wage fail to address at all is how people will afford to live on 2 or 3 dollars an hour.
Here in the UK, and I don't doubt it happens in the US as well, part of the welfare system is used to top up people's wages so that they have enough to live off. Of course, this is because here the minimum wage is utterly broken (far too low) and underemployment is a
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And right out the the gate we have a false premise.
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Most localities do have their own minimum wage laws, but as I understand, the federal minimum is the lowest any of them are allowed to go.
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>As it stands collapse, revolt or invasion are the normal future of any government.
This is because corruption is the normal future of any group of people where n > ~30 and where "group" = family, cooperative, religion, village, state, corporation, nation, political party, committee, tribe, sect, or any other organization of people. n is smaller the greater the physical distance between each member or subgroups of the group.
People are hardwired to work and trust in small groups. While they are not ha
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I've always thought that politicians should be kept at minimum wage for two reasons. It will create incentive to keep the minimum wage fair and it will make sure that the people who get political positions get them because they want to do some good not because of retarded amount of money they run off with at the end of the day.
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At the very least, tying the minimum wage to the earnings of our elected representatives might make some sense. Whenever they give themselves a raise (or their future selves - I think most places only allow you to increase the wages of the next group of election winners) have the minimum wage also go up. Currently congresspeople start out at about $174,000 per year (with an annual cost of living adjustment unless Congress votes to not accept that)
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/congresspay.htm [about.com]
For
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Two different issues.
Regarding lowering the minimum wage, the idea isn't to provide you with a wage you can live on and afford "things". The idea is to create an entry point into the workforce. From there you move on to jobs that pay living wages. You aren't meant to stay earning minimum wage for extended periods of time.
My work ethic comment is aimed at the abuse of unemployment and welfare plans. Too many people remain on these services - again meant to be short term and temporary - for too long. If an in