Earning a living wage.

[Voyager]

@Shodan

Are you arguing that we should increase the MW because we are currently in a period of over-investment, or a recession?

AFAICT, you are advocating that an increase in MW in general is a good thing, but that encouraging investment as an alternative is not because of special circumstances.

Clearly there are cases where raising the MW is not good, but now, after a decade of no increase, is not one of them. Raising the wage will help those impacted directly and indirectly, and there seems to be skimpy evidence that it would hurt. The Bush tax cuts have offered plenty of incentive for investment already - I don’t think raising the wage will change that very much. My point was that pumping money into the economy had different results depending on where it is pumped.

What are the big economic issues today? They appear to be the deficit, which Republicans in general don’t seem to care much about, and the lack of progress in wage growth for all but the top 10% of wage earners, which we know they don’t care about. A highew MW is not going to hurt the savings rate for that income level, right?

Actually, it would seem to me to reduce demand for jobs that currently pay more than MW. Suppose someone is earning $5.15 per hour, and works twenty hours a week. Now he gets a mandated raise to $7.25 per hour. But $5.15 is enough to put gas in his car and buy pizzas (or feed himself while he paints for a living, or whatever). Now he needs to work 15 hours a week to make the same money. Why would he seek a higher paying job?

First of all, how many companies are going to let someone work 15 hours a week? There is overhead in keeping someone on the rolls, so that below a certain level it would not be worthwhile to keep this person employed. Second, this mythical person is a teenager living at home or a bum. Who exactly can feed, clothe and lodge themselves on 20 hours a week at a MW job? If this peson does cut down hours, they may become available for someone who is unemployed and really needs them. But I question your assumption. You seem to think that most people are lazy and unmotivated. We hear both that this guy will stop trying because he gets paid so much that he can cut back on hours, but that a CEO making 10 million won’t really be motivated unless he gets a raise to $15 million. Beats me.

Or flip it around. If I am now making $7.25 per hour doing whatever, it is usually because the job is harder in some way than a MW job. But I can seek a less stressful MW job now, earn the same, and thus reduce demand for whatever I am doing now and increase it for the MW jobs.

Here’s another example. People in this category are so lazy that they’ll get stressed out by that high tension $8.00 an hour job. They all could be making $100K if they just tried. :rolleyes:
What do we do with people without the education, intelligence or life skills to push for really good jobs? These people work and want to work. They’ve gotten a job, and I assume they stay on that job. Assuming we don’t trash the economy by doing so, don’t these powerless people deserve that their employers pay them enough to live on. Burger prices have gone up in the past 10 years, but not the salaries of the burger flippers.

I know some union contracts are tied to some multiple of the MW. Did you have a cite (or an explanation) for this phenomenon apart from that?

Regards,
Shodan

Based on the experience of my daughter’s friends, many MW places give fairly automatic, if small, raises automatically once a person has proven him or herself. It clearly makes business sense to reward the people doing a good job right away. That’s all I’m assuming. Like I said, before they might have given, say, 40 cents an hour and now give 20 cents - that’s the compression I referred to. But it would still be an improvement. I wasn’t aware of the union contracts, but that makes sense. also - but I doubt that this is a major factor these days.

[Sam_Stone]

@Voyager

Here is the cite for the weakness of the current recovery. If you are measuring the recovery by corporate profits, I acknowledge that this has been a good one. Any other measure (except household worth, high due to the housing bubble) it hasn’t been so hot. In fact they note that many recoveries have run into recessions by this point, but the current one is worse than even recoveries including recessions.

Here, let me fix that sentence for you: By any other measure, except unemployment, job growth, tax revenue, GDP growth, wage increases, productivity, deficit reduction, housing starts, number of homeowners, crime reduction, after-tax income, benefit increases, export growth, stock market gains and low interest rates.

Other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?

People who think today’s economy is anything other than very good have apparently never lived in a bad economy.

[Voyager]

@Sam Stone

Here, let me fix that sentence for you: By any other measure, except unemployment, job growth, tax revenue, GDP growth, wage increases, productivity, deficit reduction, housing starts, number of homeowners, crime reduction, after-tax income, benefit increases, export growth, stock market gains and low interest rates.

If you had bothered to read what I said, it was not that the economy is bad today, 6 years later, but that the recovery was slow relative to other recoveries - which is exactly what the cite said.

After all, it always rains, eventually, after the rainmaker does his thing, right?

[Shodan]

So, when you said “current”, you meant six years ago?

Clearly there are cases where raising the MW is not good, but now, after a decade of no increase, is not one of them.

But before you were arguing that MW increases were a good idea when we are over-invested. Now you seem to be saying that we should increase the MW regardless, just because we haven’t done it for a while. If you want to justify a MW increase (by your standards), you need to demonstrate that we are over-invested. Got a cite?

Regards,
Shodan