thrash;187711 wrote:
I'm not sure what you wanted me to address. The first part -- that having a minimum wage increases talent -- seems dubious to me. People who are already more employable will retain their jobs or people who aren't as productive/valuable will be rotated out and replaced with more producive people. This doesn't increase talent. One of the points in those links is that minimum wage increases tend to leave less money available for employers to pay for training for their employees, leading to talent stratification.

But the item you quoted stated that the jobs were replaced by more qualified people...your words, not mine.

led to an estimated 500,000 blacks losing their jobs via replacement by higher skilled and more educated white laborers.

Regarding the second part -- I don't especially like the idea of getting paid less either, but your claim that you'll start getting paid less if the minimum wage lowers is unsubstantiated. If the minium wage lowers, certain services will now become available to your company for less money. Since you're already worth more to them than the minimum wage, your own compensation may infact go up. You may no longer be asked to do things that additional, lower cost labor can now begin doing.

Doubtful...Very doubtful. My bosses boss may make more, but I'm sure I'd make less...as would everyone lower on the totem pole than myself. Management never takes paycuts, but everyone below them does in one way or another. (In my personal case)

A fiercly competitive economy requires easy transactions and maximum price flexibility. Specialization and differentiation DO make everyone wealthier (and reduce costs of real goods). If your company can offload some of the menial shit your stuck doing now to someone making $4/hr, think of all the extra value you could add at $40/hr or whatever you are making.

Again, works great in theory, but not reality. We could easily hire temps @ $7.50/hour to do my menial tasks (sending out letters more than anything) but we don't do that. We generally get stuck doing MORE menial crap for less pay. Great theory, but will never ever happen.

Wealth is not a zero sum game. If we make it easier for employers to hire more people (by dropping the minimum wage), we increase the amount of work that gets done, and we have more flexibility in how labor investment is allocated. Businesses that figure out how to manage that increased flexibility successfully will do well, and the customers of those businesses will do well, and the employees of those businesses will do well. Nobody "loses".

So basically, what you are telling me, is that everyone making $5.75/hr now would be more likely to go to work for $3/hr or even $1/ hour?

We have less than 4% unemployment in this country already (off memory, last I checked) which is about equal to zero since the reality is that 4% of the people won't go to work regardless (laid off, welfare, etc....) So apparently we are doing fairly well with the system as is.

again...my thoughts in red

tjamz;187708 wrote:
By the way, you still haven't addressed this post

I'm not sure what you wanted me to address. The first part -- that having a minimum wage increases talent -- seems dubious to me. People who are already more employable will retain their jobs or people who aren't as productive/valuable will be rotated out and replaced with more producive people. This doesn't increase talent. One of the points in those links is that minimum wage increases tend to leave less money available for employers to pay for training for their employees, leading to talent stratification.

Regarding the second part -- I don't especially like the idea of getting paid less either, but your claim that you'll start getting paid less if the minimum wage lowers is unsubstantiated. If the minium wage lowers, certain services will now become available to your company for less money. Since you're already worth more to them than the minimum wage, your own compensation may infact go up. You may no longer be asked to do things that additional, lower cost labor can now begin doing.

A fiercly competitive economy requires easy transactions and maximum price flexibility. Specialization and differentiation DO make everyone wealthier (and reduce costs of real goods). If your company can offload some of the menial shit your stuck doing now to someone making $4/hr, think of all the extra value you could add at $40/hr or whatever you are making.

Wealth is not a zero sum game. If we make it easier for employers to hire more people (by dropping the minimum wage), we increase the amount of work that gets done, and we have more flexibility in how labor investment is allocated. Businesses that figure out how to manage that increased flexibility successfully will do well, and the customers of those businesses will do well, and the employees of those businesses will do well. Nobody "loses".

thrash;187706 wrote:
I've chosen two of the statements you think are "factual" to discuss their validity.

"Fallen into poverty" is quite dramatic, don't you think? The "poverty level" definition is abject bullshit -- someone under the poverty level today in the US lives longer, has running water, has electricity, probably has a car, probably has a TV, etc -- they are in absolutely all ways better off than the richest man in the entire planet was just 100 years ago. So anything that attempts to make an emotional plea using "poverty level" is thrown right the fuck out by anyone with a brain instead of a list of "talking points".

That said, let's look at the data. The table here http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov1.html shows how the poverty definition rises every single year. The all ages, single individual "line" has grown by about 15% since GWB took office. (from ~8700 to ~10200)

Maybe the wording is off, however the number of people who are now below the poverty line is still accurate

Now, I assume that the poverty level is not in real dollars, so lets guesstimate correcting it for inflation. Assuming a year over year inflation rate of 2.5% (look here for real data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_Historical_Inflation.svg), compounding a 2.5% yearly inflation for 7 years (1.025^7) shows a 7 year inflation of 18%. If you call it 6 years (because the year ranges may not match up exactly), or call the yearly average 2% (i'm eyeballing the graph), it works out to 12%.

In any case, the poverty level increase is in line with inflation (assuming those numbers aren't already inflation corrected dollars).

It is my belief that they are inflation corrected...I may be wrong

Note that if we assume a population of 280m, saying that 4.3m people have "fallen" into poverty in 6-7 years is amazing, since that represents 1.5% of the population. If the "line" for poverty has gone up 15%, but the# of people below that line has only gone up 1.5%, doesn't that suggest that everyone, aggregately, is doing much better than they were ?

No, the number of people living in poverty has increased. Never a good thing in my book

Most savings accounts won't even pay you enough interest to keep up with inflation. Yet the poverty level has been redefined to keep up with it, and yet only a small fraction of people now fall below it.

Small fraction...still a large number...I mean only a small fraction of people (worldwide) were killed in the holocaust but the number of people affected was still staggering)

Also -- you'll note that the poverty level is defined as 10,200 -- slightly less than the 10,300 you'd make if you were making minimum wage and full time employed. So raising minimum wage will not lift someone out of poverty that's already making minimum wage. However, it will most likely eliminate jobs, so we can expect a few MORE people to go from above poverty to below it (since they're now unemployed).

The poverty level isn't JUST for single people though..a family of 3's poverty level is much higher than a single persons.

Also note that we're talkinga bout the federal minimum wage. Almost every state already has a minimum wage law on the books for that state. Why does the federal minimum wage even matter to people?

As a baseline. I am fairly certain that if there were no federal minimum wage, NONE of the states would have their own

Anyway -- on the issue of 11 million jobs:

Find me one credible study that says that raising the minimum wage is in ANY way responsible for 11 million new jobs over 4 years. This is one of the worst unsubstantiated "correlation does not equal causation" problems I've ever seen. They MAY be related, but nothing you said says that they are. I might as well say "the last time I took a shit, someone who didn't understand economics posted on a web forum", but certainly the former doesn't CAUSE the latter.

I agree, it may not have created the new jobs....but it apparently didn't prevent them either. In other words, the sky isn't falling just because minimum wage went up

Be wary of taking statistically summary data and parroting it around as "factual" like it has some relevant meaning. After all, almost 50% of people are of below average intelligence, so it may be easy for people to misunderstand or misapply the statistical relevance of things they read from motivated lobbying groups.

Finally, I statement I agree with whole heartedly

My responses are in red

4.3 million: Number of Americans who have fallen into poverty since President Bush took office

11 million: Number of jobs added to the economy in the four years after the last minimum wage hike

I've chosen two of the statements you think are "factual" to discuss their validity.

"Fallen into poverty" is quite dramatic, don't you think? The "poverty level" definition is abject bullshit -- someone under the poverty level today in the US lives longer, has running water, has electricity, probably has a car, probably has a TV, etc -- they are in absolutely all ways better off than the richest man in the entire planet was just 100 years ago. So anything that attempts to make an emotional plea using "poverty level" is thrown right the fuck out by anyone with a brain instead of a list of "talking points".

That said, let's look at the data. The table here http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov1.html shows how the poverty definition rises every single year. The all ages, single individual "line" has grown by about 15% since GWB took office. (from ~8700 to ~10200)

Now, I assume that the poverty level is not in real dollars, so lets guesstimate correcting it for inflation. Assuming a year over year inflation rate of 2.5% (look here for real data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_Historical_Inflation.svg)), compounding a 2.5% yearly inflation for 7 years (1.025^7) shows a 7 year inflation of 18%. If you call it 6 years (because the year ranges may not match up exactly), or call the yearly average 2% (i'm eyeballing the graph), it works out to 12%.

In any case, the poverty level increase is in line with inflation (assuming those numbers aren't already inflation corrected dollars).

Note that if we assume a population of 280m, saying that 4.3m people have "fallen" into poverty in 6-7 years is amazing, since that represents 1.5% of the population. If the "line" for poverty has gone up 15%, but the# of people below that line has only gone up 1.5%, doesn't that suggest that everyone, aggregately, is doing much better than they were ?

Most savings accounts won't even pay you enough interest to keep up with inflation. Yet the poverty level has been redefined to keep up with it, and yet only a small fraction of people now fall below it.

Also -- you'll note that the poverty level is defined as 10,200 -- slightly less than the 10,300 you'd make if you were making minimum wage and full time employed. So raising minimum wage will not lift someone out of poverty that's already making minimum wage. However, it will most likely eliminate jobs, so we can expect a few MORE people to go from above poverty to below it (since they're now unemployed).

Also note that we're talkinga bout the federal minimum wage. Almost every state already has a minimum wage law on the books for that state. Why does the federal minimum wage even matter to people?

Anyway -- on the issue of 11 million jobs:

Find me one credible study that says that raising the minimum wage is in ANY way responsible for 11 million new jobs over 4 years. This is one of the worst unsubstantiated "correlation does not equal causation" problems I've ever seen. They MAY be related, but nothing you said says that they are. I might as well say "the last time I took a shit, someone who didn't understand economics posted on a web forum", but certainly the former doesn't CAUSE the latter.

Be wary of taking statistically summary data and parroting it around as "factual" like it has some relevant meaning. After all, almost 50% of people are of below average intelligence, so it may be easy for people to misunderstand or misapply the statistical relevance of things they read from motivated lobbying groups.

tjamz;187593 wrote:
Here are the facts behind minimum wage in America (as of 2005, the most recent data I could find- Chuck):

4.3 million: Number of Americans who have fallen into poverty since President Bush took office

$5.15: Federal minimum wage

26%: How much the inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage has eroded since 1979

0: Number of times minimum wage has increased since 1997

7: Number of times Congress has increased its own pay since 1997

$0: How much more a year people earning minimum wage earn today compared to 1997

$28,500: How much more a year members of Congress make today compared to 1997

$10,700: Amount a person making minimum wage will earn in a year

$5,000: Amount below the poverty level working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year at minimum wage will leave a family of three

** 7,300,000: Number of workers who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage**

** 72%: Percentage of adult workers who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage**
**
1,800,000: Number of parents with kids under the age of 18 who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage**

11 million: Number of jobs added to the economy in the four years after the last minimum wage hike

$8.70: Amount minimum wage would have to be today to have the same purchasing power it had in 1968

** 2.5 years: Amount of health care for two children which could be bought by raising the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25**

** 86%: Percentage of Americans who support raising the federal minimum wage**

Ok, to be fair I **highlighted **the info that is a matter of opinion. The others are facts.

thrash;187700 wrote:
http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/50years.htm

Some good stuff here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage

I mean.. the proof is in the pudding. Look at who wants to increase minimum wage

• big businesses wanting to snuff out smaller competitors
• people that want to price-protect their current jobs
• politicians that want to buy votes from the uneducated poor (and keep them uneducated and dependant)

I don't think i've ever seen any small business support a higher minimum wage, but big businesses love it. Why do you suppose that is? Why is it that allegedly anti-business "progressives" and "leftists" are so in favor of a policy that appears to only help big business?

The "spin" on your quotes is this: Introducing a minimum wage increased the talent level of the people hired. The downside was that initially there were a number of people who lost their jobs because they were replaced by more talented individuals....those against affirmative action should have no problem with this (I'm against affirmative action btw).

But yes, I am one that wants to price-protect my current job. At present I am living at my means, not above, not below and I'd be extremely pissed if my wages were lowered significantly as it would mean that I would not be able to afford my current lifestyle....I'd have to sell my house, and car not to mention I have no idea how I'd pay for daycare.

And again, I can assure you I make WELL above minimum wage, but if minimum wage were to drop I am fairly positive that I would take a very significant cut in pay...not because my company would necessarily want to, but stockholder pressure would demand it and they would comply.....I haven't had a cost of living increase in 3 years, I've only had my quota raised and commissionable percentage reduced...and this is with minimum wage going up....next monday (new fiscal year) for example, my quota will be going up 33% over this year while my pay will remain exactly the same (actually less since I'll have to sell 33% more to earn the same wage.) All of this is due to stockholder demands to lower costs....nm our CEO got a multi-million dollar pay increase PRIOR to his 2.5 million dollar severance package.....

DaveH;187697 wrote:
I found it, it wasn't quite the Department of Labor tho. LOL

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/06/14/fast-facts-on-the-minimum-wage/

Ehh....I was incorrect in my source...I know I was on the DoL site for a bit as well to verify some of the info....my bad.

Some good stuff here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage

According to a claim by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy[36], the passage of the first Federal mandated minimum wage in the United States in 1938 led to an estimated 500,000 blacks losing their jobs via replacement by higher skilled and more educated white laborers. Milton Friedman, 1976 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, called the minimum wage one of the most "anti-negro laws" for what he saw as its adverse affects on employers.[37]

For example, during the apartheid era in South Africa, white trade unions lobbied for the introduction of minimum wage laws so as to exclude black workers from the labor market. By preventing black workers from selling their labor for less than white workers, the black workers were prevented from competing for jobs held by whites.[25]

I mean.. the proof is in the pudding. Look at who wants to increase minimum wage

• big businesses wanting to snuff out smaller competitors
• people that want to price-protect their current jobs
• politicians that want to buy votes from the uneducated poor (and keep them uneducated and dependant)

I don't think i've ever seen any small business support a higher minimum wage, but big businesses love it. Why do you suppose that is? Why is it that allegedly anti-business "progressives" and "leftists" are so in favor of a policy that appears to only help big business?

tjamz;187681 wrote:
I'll see if I can find it again....i searched google and it brought me there...

I found it, it wasn't quite the Department of Labor tho. LOL

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/06/14/fast-facts-on-the-minimum-wage/

Of course, being in the military, if you go by the 'you're on the job 24/7' rule, then I'm getting paid less than a dollar an hour, or something small like that.

I'm still waiting for someone to show some proof that removing the minimum wage has helped any economy in any country.

I gotsta get me one of those

One I especially love is
[quote
86%: Percentage of Americans who support raising the federal minimum wage[/quote]
As if they are all experts on whether or not a raise in the minimum wage would actually benefit them.

This is the same group of people who for the most part supported the war in Iraq/Afghanistan and are now saying we never should have gone there.

Also I see a nice little flaw in that statistic...

$10,700: Amount a person making minimum wage will earn in a year
This brings us back to the question of how many people actually earn minimum wage? Does the statistic of this number include 15 year olds working their first job? Does the statistic show how many of those people are single vs married?

These are like the stats that also label people with Masters/PhD's who aren't working in a field generally accepted as a Masters/PhD field as underemployed or working below their means. Oh the PhD is only earning $40,000 a year? boo hoo.

• 7,300,000: Number of workers who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage.

*Well duh, what are they talking about? If you raise the minimum wage to what? If you raise the minimum wage to $40/hr I'd bet that it would be a heckuva lot more than 7,300,000 people who would benefit from it, you think? I could prove rediculous of about 3/4 of the stats you posted because it is meaningless drivel put out by some left wing web site.

:icon_geek:

thrash;187589 wrote:
You guys keep making these claims and then not substantiating them. Abolishing the minimum wage will NOT wreck the economy. We've already established that only 2% of people are actually earning minimum wage as it is. The bottom income earners are not the engine of economic activity, and lowering existing wages will not destroy consumption.

Removing the minimum wage will allow more people to get jobs legally. It will not wreck the economy, and I don't think it will even wreck anyone's life as an individual earner.

But you haven't substantiated your claim either. Who is to say that a lot of employers that are currently paying minimum wage (or slightly higher) wouldn't lower the wages of their existing employees? There is no safeguard for the worker in that regard. I'm willing to bet that even at my level of my company that I would take a major pay cut (or no increases at least) if minimum wage was eliminated (and I make a fairly good living). How can I substantiate this? I can't....but neither can you. The snippets I've included above illustrate that MILLIONS of employees (2% seems like too small of a number) are being paid the minimum of what their employers are required to pay....imagine if they weren't required to pay anything (1920's labor comes to mind....people building dams for $1/day....substantiated from family history of my grandfather making $1/day while building a dam to create a man made lake near Balta, ND)

IF the minimum wage were to be eliminated, I think it is safe to say that rural america would completely disappear. Min wage earners would move to larger cities to earn money....the business owners would follow suit....leaving the farmers as the lone income earners out there. As the would have limited places to sell/buy products, many of them would pack it up as well and move to larger towns leaving us with a shortage of food producers (its happening already) OR more corporate farmers.

Again, I like the "idea" of marketing yourself at fair market value to your employer, I just don't think it will work. Please give me one example of any country that is having the success that this country is that has no minimum wage.