Minimum Wage: Fight For Fifteen

[Kalbear]

16 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Don't you also need to think about inflation? What's the point of raising wages if inflation is just going to eat it all up within a short space of time and workers at the bottom end still wind up struggling just as much as they did before the wage rise. Somehow a long term strategy needs to achieve rising wages at the bottom end of the labour market up to a point where a living wage is achieved. Which mean achieving it in a non-inflationary manner.

Inflation, at least in the US, even with wage rises, hasn't been nearly the issue it used to be. This apparently has been very confusing to economists, who are baffled why things aren't going more. My suspicion is that the general way we measure inflation is flawed by artificially holding down values on certain core items (milk, for instance, hasn't gone more than $3 for something like 20 years) and has ballooned in certain areas which aren't measured (things like monthly services, housing costs, etc). 

[Kalbear]

On 7/19/2019 at 7:44 PM, Martell Spy said:

Sounds like a bunch of open-borders nut-jobs. What kind of job, the programming thing?

Oh, didn't answer that. Yes, it was a programming job, a pretty neat one honestly, and right up my alley. But with 4 kids and one requiring expensive medical care, we couldn't afford it with the salary and Auckland's land rates. 

But I had a job offer and could have taken it. 

[Martell Spy]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Inflation, at least in the US, even with wage rises, hasn't been nearly the issue it used to be. This apparently has been very confusing to economists, who are baffled why things aren't going more. My suspicion is that the general way we measure inflation is flawed by artificially holding down values on certain core items (milk, for instance, hasn't gone more than $3 for something like 20 years) and has ballooned in certain areas which aren't measured (things like monthly services, housing costs, etc). 

Yeah, healthcare, college costs, and healthcare are the big three that come to mind. It was like the country went to shit around the year 2000 and we got repeat asset bubbles.

[Martell Spy]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Oh, didn't answer that. Yes, it was a programming job, a pretty neat one honestly, and right up my alley. But with 4 kids and one requiring expensive medical care, we couldn't afford it with the salary and Auckland's land rates. 

But I had a job offer and could have taken it. 

Completely understandable. I make decisions based on healthcare all the time.

[The Anti-Targ]

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Oh, didn't answer that. Yes, it was a programming job, a pretty neat one honestly, and right up my alley. But with 4 kids and one requiring expensive medical care, we couldn't afford it with the salary and Auckland's land rates. 

But I had a job offer and could have taken it. 

Just curious as I don't know how it works for immigrants coming in with pre-existing conditions, was the public health system not available for your child's medical needs? A pity the job was Auckland based. Most other parts of the country are pretty affordable housing-wise.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Just curious as I don't know how it works for immigrants coming in with pre-existing conditions, was the public health system not available for your child's medical needs? A pity the job was Auckland based. Most other parts of the country are pretty affordable housing-wise.

It was a bit complicated, but he's 19, and while he would be free to move with me he would not have my medical insurance as part of the job and would not apparently get health insurance without a job - which he really can't get. There's this weird grey area with over-18 dependent immigrants that he neatly fell right into. So you can pay for him to have the state insurance, but when you do that there's really not enough left over. 

If he was under 18 I think we would have been fine, but because he wasn't and because he'd be coming with me, he'd be hosed.

[Martell Spy]

11 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Just curious as I don't know how it works for immigrants coming in with pre-existing conditions, was the public health system not available for your child's medical needs? A pity the job was Auckland based. Most other parts of the country are pretty affordable housing-wise.

I looked into immigration at one point. Developed nations have pretty much blocked anyone with a pre-existing condition from immigrating to their country. It might be different for a minor, but it is certainly the case for adults. 

Not sure what the U.S. is on that I should note. As I'm an American, I was looking at immigrating out.

[The Anti-Targ]

2 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

I looked into immigration at one point. Developed nations have pretty much blocked anyone with a pre-existing condition from immigrating to their country. It might be different for a minor, but it is certainly the case for adults. 

Not sure what the U.S. is on that I should note. As I'm an American, I was looking at immigrating out.

I was asking more in respect of dependent children, which is handled differently than a straight "you're not welcome". It would be a factor in the immigration decision but not an absolute roadblock. If you have a solid job offer in a profession that's in demand having a dependent child with a pre-existing condition may be accepted as a cost of bringing in needed talent.

[OldGimletEye]

31 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Inflation, at least in the US, even with wage rises, hasn't been nearly the issue it used to be. This apparently has been very confusing to economists, who are baffled why things aren't going more. My suspicion is that the general way we measure inflation is flawed by artificially holding down values on certain core items (milk, for instance, hasn't gone more than $3 for something like 20 years) and has ballooned in certain areas which aren't measured (things like monthly services, housing costs, etc). 

On one hand its pretty simple. On the other hand it's not. Imagine you've trained people for 30 years to expect about a 2% rise inflation, using the FEDs preferred inflation measure. In short people's inflation expectations are well anchored. And then there is this huge drop in aggregate demand. No problem, you'll just lower the Federal Funds rate and all will be well. Until of course you hit zero. Then you have a real problem on your hands. You could try negative interest rates, but nobody has done that before and it probably won't work unless you ban paper money. You could try price level or NGDP targeting, but those are big changes and probably would be controversial. And then there is good old fashion stimulus. But, nope you have a Republican Congress and you have knuckleheads like John Bonehead talking about crowding out. And then you have a bunch of deficit fear mongering going on because that's what some really rich people worry about, since being unemployed isn't on their radar screen. You could try to raise inflation expectations, but then you kind of defeat the whole point of anchoring inflation expectations at 2%.

That part of low inflation over the years is easy.

The hard part is that the so called natural rate of unemployment isn't looking like what it used to be. And I think that is what got a lot of econ types scratching their heads.On explanation is that there is a lot more slack in the labor market than people think. The definition of U3 employment is kind of arbitrary. On a deeper theoretical level, maybe the whole concept of the natural rate of unemployment just sucks and we need to go back to the drawing board on that one.

[felice]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Don't you also need to think about inflation? What's the point of raising wages if inflation is just going to eat it all up within a short space of time and workers at the bottom end still wind up struggling just as much as they did before the wage rise.

Inflation happens if everyone's income goes up proportionately*, but the point of a minimum wage is to reduce the gap between rich and poor, ie don't increase incomes at the top end. Ignoring money, the real world effect we want is allocating the resources we have to making less cheap crap that doesn't last, less ludicrously expensive stuff for the elite, and more decent quality goods in sufficient quantity to meet everyone's needs.

(* technically it happens if even a small percentage of people get paid more, but at a rate substantially below the rate of increased income, so the net effect is still an increase after adjusting for inflation)

[sologdin]

i suppose the allegation that the 'increased minimum wage causes inflation' argument is conceptually incoherent, if inflation is asserted to be caused by increases in the money supply; i suspect that those who like milton friedman's restrictive definition of inflation will also oppose increases in the minimum wage on the grounds that he separately articulated (i.e., that it causes unemployment).  and yet brother milt prefers the thesis that inflation is always a matter of the money supply.  these two things are not obviously related.

assuming brother milt is correct in defining inflation as increase in the money supply, we see quite a bit more inflation causes by the private production of currency through debt-based commercial banking.

[OldGimletEye]

For anyone interested in the minimium wage, probably worth reading:

https://www.amazon.com/Monopsony-Motion-Imperfect-Competition-Markets/dp/B005ZOFVCI

[OldGimletEye]

Another example many people can relate to.

Anyone, ever apply for a job, only for the job application to ask information about your income history, as if its any prospective employers fuckin' business.?

If labor markets are purely competitive markets why bother asking? Shouldn't the employer just pay the market wage, which everyone knows about?

Well of course, that's not what happens in the real world. Employers know damn well they get an informational advantage by asking such questions.

And yet they will argue that any minimum wage will cause unemployment, using the purely competitive model.

Uh, yeah, what a bunch of BS.

[The Anti-Targ]

On 7/20/2019 at 10:33 AM, HelenaExMachina said:

This was probably meant as a positive story but i’m going to be honest, while its great it worked out well for your mother’s company and the families working for her, being trapped in and reliant on a single business for a whole family is...troubling. Like i said, great that your own family was nice and respected the workers but just think how this plays out if its not your mom but one of the other assholes. Think how this scenario changes. The families likely still stay out of necessity, but its not going to be a good life for them. At all. So i dont think this is an argument against minimum wage, for me at least

Something else troubled me about that story. I think it comes down to we all know stories about whole communities / towns that were reliant on a single business back in the day, and what many of those communities / towns look like (if they even exists) today. A single point of failure is to most workers a sword of Damocles having over all of their heads they don't even know exists. Here's hoping the generations after this one who are getting to go to college also get out from under that sword.

The even sadder thing about the fates of those communities and towns is that often the businesses still exist and are profitable, it's just that the jobs no longer exist. I've lived and worked in two towns that experienced exactly that. And the extra tragedy is that those towns were populated mostly by indigenous people.

[Mexal]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Something else troubled me about that story. I think it comes down to we all know stories about whole communities / towns that were reliant on a single business back in the day, and what many of those communities / towns look like (if they even exists) today. A single point of failure is to most workers a sword of Damocles having over all of their heads they don't even know exists. Here's hoping the generations after this one who are getting to go to college also get out from under that sword.

The even sadder thing about the fates of those communities and towns is that often the businesses still exist and are profitable, it's just that the jobs no longer exist. I've lived and worked in two towns that experienced exactly that. And the extra tragedy is that those towns were populated mostly by indigenous people.

To get out from under that sword, they move to cities to get jobs that pay enough to pay off their ridiculous student loans.

[Fragile Bird]

On 7/22/2019 at 11:29 AM, Mexal said:

Think you asked me this in another thread. The answer is it depends. Since 2008, the business has been more or less operating at a loss with my father in law not taking a salary in 15 years. Employees get paid $15 an hour or more but manufacturing in NY (taxes, permits, increasing regulations, etc), with tariffs on steel/aluminum and cheap Chinese made goods, has made it pretty hard. I know the presiding thought here is to close the business and just do something else but that's 20 long term employees who will lose their job and an owner who has done nothing else for 40 years. Easy decision for some of you on this thread but reality is much different.

I would like to point out that the discussion in the US Politics thread last week, which led to this thread, was about increasing the minimum wage to $15. Since your father-in-law pays $15 and more, I have no idea why you were getting so angry and snippy. I talked about a ‘living wage’, but that’s what the $15 fight is all about, not that I was demanding higher than that at this time. There are, what, millions of workers making $12 or less - $120 a week more for 40 hours or at least $90 a week more for 30 hours would make a huge difference in their lives. Like maybe being able to buy enough food without having to go to a food bank.

[Mexal]

7 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I would like to point out that the discussion in the US Politics thread last week, which led to this thread, was about increasing the minimum wage to $15. Since your father-in-law pays $15 and more, I have no idea why you were getting so angry and snippy. I talked about a ‘living wage’, but that’s what the $15 fight is all about, not that I was demanding higher than that at this time. There are, what, millions of workers making $12 or less - $120 a week more for 40 hours or at least $90 a week more for 30 hours would make a huge difference in their lives. Like maybe being able to buy enough food without having to go to a food bank.

It would help if you actually read my posts. If you were working for $15 an hour and all of a sudden, everyone else made $15 an hour, whether they worked part time at Burger King, sold clothes at the mall or cleaned up movie theaters, do you think you or the union would be happy working for $15 an hour? The issue is there would be an automatic increase that's expected. With that increase comes an increase in benefits, increase in payroll costs, increase in insurance costs, increase in taxes and with that increase in costs comes zero increase in revenue, zero increase in productivity. I laid this out multiple times but you always ignored it.

I get it. With zero regard to local cost of living and zero regard for the businesses, it would help workers. It would also cost workers jobs, but given the good outweighs the bad, so you don't give a fuck. That's fine. I get a "greater good" attitude even if yours does come with some serious condescension. As someone who's family would be directly affected by the bad, I'm more interested in finding a solution that also helps small businesses handle the offset in unplanned costs so that small businesses (<$3M a year in revenue) and workers can both benefit. But that's too lofty it seems because it's just easier to proclaim small businesses that would be hurt as money grubbing assholes who give zero fucks about their workers, are lazy as fuck and are out to exploit the masses. And given its only ~1.5M people (workers anyway, not sure the study addressed businesses) negatively affected at first study, who cares?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

12 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Another example many people can relate to.

Anyone, ever apply for a job, only for the job application to ask information about your income history, as if its any prospective employers fuckin' business.?

If labor markets are purely competitive markets why bother asking? Shouldn't the employer just pay the market wage, which everyone knows about?

Well of course, that's not what happens in the real world. Employers know damn well they get an informational advantage by asking such questions.

And yet they will argue that any minimum wage will cause unemployment, using the purely competitive model.

Uh, yeah, what a bunch of BS.

You need to take a gander at the “Payment Fairness act of 2019” that just passed the House.

[A True Kaniggit]

2 minutes ago, Mexal said:

It would help if you actually read my posts. If you were working for $15 an hour and all of a sudden, everyone else made $15 an hour, whether they worked part time at Burger King, sold clothes at the mall or cleaned up movie theaters, do you think you or the union would be happy working for $15 an hour? The issue is there would be an automatic increase that's expected. With that increase comes an increase in benefits, increase in payroll costs, increase in insurance costs, increase in taxes and with that increase in costs comes zero increase in revenue, zero increase in productivity. I laid this out multiple times but you always ignored it.

Eh. I think you need a better argument than this.

People saying, "You need to pay me more than $15 an hour, because that's now what poor people make, and I like poor people getting paid less than me" is kinda stupid.

[Martell Spy]

7 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I would like to point out that the discussion in the US Politics thread last week, which led to this thread, was about increasing the minimum wage to $15. Since your father-in-law pays $15 and more, I have no idea why you were getting so angry and snippy. I talked about a ‘living wage’, but that’s what the $15 fight is all about, not that I was demanding higher than that at this time. There are, what, millions of workers making $12 or less - $120 a week more for 40 hours or at least $90 a week more for 30 hours would make a huge difference in their lives. Like maybe being able to buy enough food without having to go to a food bank.

It is $7.25 in Mississippi.