I don’t see anything wrong with wanting everyone to live. I don’t see that a mandatory wage increase has this effect. I think those are two seperate issues.
One additional thing:
A lot of people have brought up their own tales of hardship. Does anyone here really believe that there’s a magic number that we can set minimum wage to that will insure that no one is ever poor, or hungry? That everyone has a roof over their head? I assume that no one here is that irrational. The question, then, is how to minimize the number of people in society that are poor. It is my position, as well as the position of many on here, that the best way to minimize the number of poor is to rely on honest capitalism (I add the modifier “honest” to keep people from saying “What about Enron? What about WorldCom?” Those practices are not honest, and are detrimental to the economy, and as such should not be part of a healthy economic system). Trying to micromanage the system with things like minimum wage laws and excessive regulation simply hurts things.
Jeff
[slightly off topic] Biking? I don’t know about Sacramento, but in most parts of the world we have a thing we call “winter”, where a white, powdery substance that is not an illegal narcotic falls from the sky and covers the roads. And have you seen the hills here in Duluth, Minnesota? We’re like San Fransisco (but with snow, in season). Downtown is literally down. Biking may be a viable option for a small minority of people in a small minority of places, but for most people it simply won’t work.
[/slightly off topic]
OK, two things.
One: Sit down and think about the quality of your life if you had only enough money to make rent, food, and clothing. Nothing more. No money for books, no money for a computer, no money for a TV or being able to go out to a club or a movie theater for a night on the town. What kind of quality of life is that?
Two: The amount of tax people pay in the United States is far from equal across the spectrum. There is an interesting paper by Edward N. Wolff called Recent Trends in Wealth Ownership 1983-1998. Of particular interest here is Table 2, which shows the amount of income earned by each quintile of the United States population.
In 1983, the richest fifth of the United States took almost 52% of all income earned, while the bottom two-fifths took only 12.3 percent. In 1998, the respective shares of income were 56.2% and 10.5%. In short, from an income perspective, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Table 3 illustrates this quite starkly, showing that the top fifth went from a mean wealth holding of $864,000 to over $1 million, while the bottom two-fifths dropped from $4,700 to a mere $1,100.
Add on top of this all the tax breaks the top fifth have gotten over the past 30 years, and it’s quite clear that we have a situation where more money is flowing upward and staying there.
Consequently, any tax plan that is designed to redirect money downwards to the bottom two-fifths of the US population should take more from the top fifth of the population than the middle two-fifths. Anyone with an ounce of sense certainly wouldn’t make the middle two-fifths share an equal burden with the top fifth. So this “taxpayers will suffer more” argument proves upon closer inspection to be quite specious.
On a more personal note, I don’t think it’s any of your business what my wife and I do with our money. Individuals have different needs and different wants, and for you to think you have the right to suggest what I do with my money is wrong sits as well with me as I think my taking it upon myself to suggest whom you should and should not take as a partner in a relationship would sit with you.
ElJeffe: We’ve had unregulated capitalism before, and for a good look at what life under those conditions was like I highly suggest reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. It’s got a lot more in it than discussion of conditions in a meatpacking plant.
If peole want to read books, let them get a library card. If they want to use a computer, again, let them go to the library. TV, movies, and so forth are not necessary to live. If people want the pleasant little luxuries of life, they need to get better jobs. It’s not the taxpayer’s job to provide cable TV for the indigent.
Then next time, don’t bring up your home economy as an example of the difficulty of getting by in DC. Besides, your criticism is unfounded; I never told you how to spend your money; I only suggested that you might have money management problems if you are ending up in the red every month.
If your combined take-home pay is $43/hr, assuming a 20 percent tax bracket, that makes for a combined take-home of $2752 per paycheck, or $5504 per month. Sorry, but I can’t sympathize with you if you’re not saving any of that. Hey, if YOU bring it up, then you have to expect a response.
I also take a wicked delight in the revelation that our resident Marxist is really a corporate fat cat, while the villainous arch-conservative selflessly labors at a nonprofit educational foundation.
DC used to have a public hospital, but it was closed down last year and taken over by a for-profit company. What now for those whose only realistic choice was that hospital?
So, were the same people in these three quintiles for all 15 years, or did any of them move between quintiles during those 15 years? Discussions of wealth distribution are relatively (but not completely) meaningless without also discussing income mobility.
I agree–there is not a magic number. To believe so would be naive. I also think, however, that it is equally naive to believe that everyone is (or “should be”) able to survive on whatever number is currently in use. Not everyone lives under circumstances conducive to biking to work, doing without medical care, or living with roommates. Not everyone is eligible for Medicaid or other programs, or lives in an area where such programs are well-funded and accessible. In the rural areas I grew up in and worked in as an adult, social services, food banks, shelters, and other services were practically non-existent.
Suggestions? I’m interested in ideas, because I’m wondering how any solution offered doesn’t end up costing everyone in the long run. How to minimize the number of poor, without the non-poor kicking in the money on some level? Can it be done?
Or, apparently, medical care, or education, either, since you qualify those as “wants” instead of “needs”. Libraries have only limited resources, too. Are they really going to be able to meet the computer and literary needs of everybody who can’t afford to go to bookstores or buy a computer?
It was a counterexample to the argument that if you’re not superrich or super poor, then you’re doing well.
Awfully presumptuous of you, given that the only way you know me is through words on a screen.
Yeah, I’m annoyed at you because you dared to respond to me. :rolleyes:
Right, like nobody on the Boards ever had any suspicion before this very thread that I worked for the FAA and made a decent salary.
Besides, if income were the only criterion of determining who’s a corporate fatcat, even then Joy and I wouldn’t qualify. Our income (which, BTW, you overestimate) puts us more or less directly in between the incomes of the 2nd and 3rd quintiles of income population. But then what makes one a corporate fatcat covers a lot more territory than that.
Bravo for you working for a non-profit. How does that legitimize your political views?
You beat me to it, pl. Thomas Sowell’s book Basic Economics IIRC has some statistics on income mobility. It’s surprisingly high. Here’s another source
I myself have been in all all 5 income quintiles during my adult life.
Well, sure. Provided they HAVE libraries (my hometown doesn’t; the nearest library is 30-ish miles away), and provided they can FIND a better job. It’s rather dismissive to just announce that people need to get better jobs. For the most part, who wouldn’t get a better job, if he/she could?
I truly don’t think I’ve seen anyone here demanding a higher minimum wage in order to pay for the Playboy channel or a new Gamecube. I think the focus has been more on food/roof/health issues, which seems reasonable enough.
What you’ll also see if you examine the economic data from that period is that the income, in real dollars, for every quintile went up. If I’m making $100,000, and you’re making $20,000, and the next year I’m making $150,000 and you’re making $25,000 the gap between us widened. Speaking of just the two of us, the share of income shifted in my favor. However, your income still went up. How is that bad for you? Also, wealth by itself tells you nothing without looking at the spending habits of people. If my wealth goes down, but it went down because I went out and blew my savings on a big screen TV, that’s not really the fault of the economy, is it? People are ending up spending more and more, and saving less and less. This is because people are, generally speaking, lousy with finances, and know if they screw up, they have things like welfare and social security to bail them out.
First of all, I never said that completely unregulated capitalism is good (or if I did, I misstated my position, and if so I apologize). However, overregulation can be as bad as no regulation. There should exist sufficient regulations to keep everyone playing fairly. No faking accounting records, no lying to stock-holders, and so on. The SEC is a good thing, generally speaking. Requiring that companies make public certain records is a good thing, as well. But typically, creating regulations that counter the laws of supply and demand are bad things, as they lead to higher prices, lower employment, shortages, etc.
Secondly, it’s difficult comparing the economy of the early 20th century with the economy of today. Things are entirely different - higher education levels and new technologies have created a middle class, something that didn’t really come into being until the middle of this century (pardon me, the last century). Information travels faster, people travel faster… It’s much easier to start a business today than it was 100 years ago. These changes are all due to increases in technology and the evolution of industry, not to regulations that have been put into place by the government. Certainly some of the regulations have helped, but just as many have retarded economic growth. The trick is figuring out which regulations help and which ones hurt. It’s not as difficult as you might think. Hint: Minimum wage laws fall into the latter category.
Yup. See above. Basically, it amounts to getting out of the way and letting the market take care of itself. There’s an obnoxious belief that anything that helps the poor hurts the rich, and vice versa. Generally speaking, regulations either help everyone, or hurt everyone in the long-run.
Jeff
Leaving out medical care was an oversight because it definitely counts as a need; basic education is a need, but private schools are a want. And yes, libraries can meet the needs of people who can’t afford to go to bookstores–they’ve been doing that for 200 years now. Home computers are most definitely a luxury–very few people need a computer at home.
If you and Mrs. Tzero are making a combined pre-tax income of $43/hr, you are doing well, even in the (admittedly pricey) DC area.
Remember that we live in the same metropolitan area, and I know what everything here costs. For all I know you could be the soul of prudence, but again, you presented yourself as a hard luck case, and I’m not buying it. $43/hr, multiplied by 80 hours in a payperiod, times 26 payperiods in a year, gives an annual household pre-tax income of $70,864. Granted, a lot of people in DC make more, but many people also get by with much less. You may not be rich, but you definitely aren’t poor. I’m NOT telling you how to spend your money–I’m just saying you’re not as badly off as you think you are.
I never said it did; I just find the discrepancy between our views and our income a delightful little irony.
Just to clarify… does ANYONE then support the idea of a living wage as defined by the Living Wage Resource Center in which the minimum wage would be what it takes to support a family of 4 at the poverty line (apporx. $8.20 an hour)?
We’ve really gotten into a discussion here of minimum wage as opposed to living wage. I don’t mind though. Even though my OP was about the idea of a living wage, the minimum wage discussion has been fascinating.
Actually, that sounds quite reasonable.
Some posters seem to assume that a minimum wage of $X means that we all will earn at least $X. That would be true if we were talking about a minimum welfare payment. But, nothing in the minimum wage law creates employers who will actually pay each of us that amount. That’s why Zimbabwe can’t solve its economic problems by simply imposing a high minimum wage.
Good question. There’s an addendum to Table 2 in the Wolff report linked to earlier that tells us a little information.
In 1983, there were 83 million households in the United States, with an estimated population of 230 million. That gives us about 2.77 persons per household, or 3 for purposes of argument.
Of that population, there were 2.7 million households, or ~8.1 million people in families with a net worth of >$1 million dollars. That’s just under 10% of the population.
In 1998, there were 103 million households with a population of 272 million. That reduces the ratio to 2.6 people per household, for which 3 is still an acceptable rounding.
Of that population, there were 5.8 million households, or 17.4 million people living in families with a net worth of >$1 million dollars. That’s only 6% of the US population.
That doesn’t prove that nobody fell out of the top quintile during those 15 years, nor that nobody came up out of the bottom 40% into the next two quintiles. But I suspect such movement occurred at or very near the borders of the sections rather than any sort of meteoric rises or plunges from the extreme of one quintile to the opposite extreme of the neighboring quintile, though I don’t rule that possibility out either, since we see stories of lottery winners hitting it big. I rather think, however, that there are more lottery winners rising out of near or abject poverty than there are CEOs of ruined companies now living on the streets in rags carrying battered coffee cups and “Homeless God Bless” signs.
Meanwhile, I see december has come in with a contribution, so let’s take a look at the income quintiles in Table 3.
In 1997, the mean income for the top quintile was $147,000. The mean income for the bottom two quintiles combined was $13,700. So for someone like me who, in 1998, went from a $6 an hour job in a bookstore to a $15 an hour job (starting) at the FAA, it was quite easy to move into the third quintile without much effort. But the share of the national income alloted to that quintile was still only 12.8%. For the top fifth, there’d have to be some real disasters for someone’s mean income to drop from $147K/yr to $53K/yr - maybe a divorce, maybe the death of a spouse, or something along those lines. But they’re still in the top 40% of the population that’s raking in 76% of the national income. Mobility doesn’t mean a whole lot if the top 40% are still making three times as much as the bottom 60%.
gobear: Let me try to rephrase this: Making $70K/yr does not preclude you from having to live paycheck to paycheck, nor is having to do so explained by “fiscal irresponsibility”. People in the third income quintile - and, I’d wager, many in the 4th - also have to struggle to make ends meet in trying to satisfy their families’ needs and wants.
If Marxism were purely an economic philosophy based solely on the criticism of wages, I suppose you might have a point.
I presume you’re talking about Section C in Table 3? Please redirect me if I’m wrong.
Yes, income in real dollars (actually, measured in 1998 dollars without considering inflation) did go up across all quintiles. But by how much?
For the top quintile, mean income shot up 20%. For the 2nd quintile, in increased 5.4%. For the 3rd quintile, only 0.8% - and a whopping 1.4% increase for the bottom two quintiles. Hardly any sort of an egalitarian increase!
It’s a start, but is it enough to keep up with inflation?
OK, there are a couple of takers of the definition of living wage given.
Let me ask Olentzero and Gobear (and anone else supporting this idea) a few questions.
Should this living wage be absolutely standard or should it vary by state? By county? By city? By neighborhood?
What if the worker isn’t supporting a family of four, should they still receive the same pay? What if they are a college school student just working a summer job? A 16 year old looking for pocket money?
Should it only apply to government jobs, or contracts with the government? Or should it apply to all businesses?
I don’t know that was a founding principle per se. Clear limits were set on federal power, and I imagine many of the constitutional founders had pretty “libertarian” views, but might also argue that America was founded on the right to have slaves or only supports the rights of property holding males to vote.
Oh really, how much less for how long? People in desperate situations are often willing to do desperate things, many of these options are illegal (theft, prostitution, extortion,etc…), but you aren’t going to be able to sustain yourself on much below the minimum wage anyway.
msmith537
quote:
Originally posted by perspective
I’m not sure why you won’t distinguish between a human being and a product. But you can spare me the rationalization.
I can’t help but think this is a little disingenuous. Where to begin? Do I need to explain why slavery is illegal? Why target practice can be distinguished from murder? What don’t you understand?
Your right. Minimum wage laws assume the employers exist to pay it. If the minimum wage was raised to an unreasonable amount, the economy would collapse. So far I think we’ve avoided that. The wage law isn’t about legislating wealth into existence, but legislating the distribution of what already exists.
Back to the OP. I don’t think $8.20 would break this nation’s economy, if it was applied gradually giving companies some time to adjust. If however, it was too much, a gradual plan could be eased or stopped if the economy showed signs of strain.