How to increase the GDP rate to 4%

Most people on minimum wage live with their parents.

I’m 100% sure at LEAST 6/10 people know someone who lives with their parents, family, or friends because they cannot afford to have their own place, and they do earn income.

The fact SO MANY people are working and still living with their fucking parents should scare republicans into wanting to increase minimum wage. It doesn’t fucking make sense, do you think you’re giving them a free ride by allowing their income from working be fair enough so they don’t have to live off their parents who are actually giving them a free ride since they literally cannot afford for them selfs

I suspect the number of people working 84 hours each week for minimum wage is vanishingly small.

Cool story, doesn’t subtract from the meaningfulness of how much many americans work yet aren’t adequately rewarded.

It’s precisely to help you understand “the meaningfulness (or meaninglessness in this case) of HOW MANY Americans” you’re taking about. You don’t seem to have a clue what the numbers are.

Right. So why do they need $15/hour? Video games? Pot? Beer?

Increase immigration and automation. We’re at full employment, and the working-age population is flat, so increase it artificially. Productivity growth has been slow, so we could invest in technology to reduce labor needs.

Pay rent to 'rents, share of utilities, own food or contribute for communal food, car insurance/gas/upkeep, share or separate phone/TV/internet, medical insurance.

Aroudn 20 million americans are within the 7-10 dollar zone, which is impossible to live a modern life off of. (may be off by a few million upwards)
"Increase in real value of the minimum wage since 1990: 21%

Increase in cost of living since 1990:67%"

As the cost of living becomes more and more unaffordable for the people making minimum wage or around minimum wage, these people will spend less, live on their friends/family who will then spend less, creating a cycle of consumer loss across america. People who are willing to work, but can’t get anywhere.

I’m under the impression OP has some interest in helping poor people. But of course the poor and those making between the current MW and $15/h are different populations. We can help poor people without increasing GDP, and we can increase GDP without helping poor people.

Not true, unless you mean working more or having roommates as another source of income.

Good, this is progress. Where did you get that information?

When I was that young, a million years ago, the only thing I paid for was gas and fast food.

How is it different, now?

Pew.

More responsibility?

What do you mean, please?

If there was an easy way for a developed nation to post 4% GDP growth rates, I’m sure at least one of them would have done so by now.

Many western nations have lower GINI coefficients and higher minimum wages, but their GDP growth rate isn’t much higher.

Australia has a Gini coefficient of 35 and a minimum wage of $15, while the US has a Gini coefficient of 46 and a minimum wage of $7. Nonetheless, Austraila only posts GDP growth rates of about 2-3% like the US (their per capita income is about the same). Western European nations have lower rates of inequality and higher minimum wages, but their GDP growth rates are not really different than the US.

Looking online, some OECD nations are posting those rates though.

Israel - 4%
Ireland - 5.2%
Iceland - 4%

Some of those numbers may not be accurate, different sources say different things.

Either way, I’m under the impression that to post truly impressive GDP growth rates you have to be a developing nation that is absorbing and utilizing a lot of developed nation technology for the first time. This vastly increases the human capital and ease of doing business in a nation.

A nation with a per capita GDP of 4k may not have good roads, health care or education. Businesses may not use any tech, but as they grow they’ll pave roads, invest in education and health, businesses will adopt best practices, etc. and GDP growth rates will be 5-10% a year because going from a society of illiterate, sick factory workers doing everything by hand to a society of educated, healthy workers using robots vastly increases productivity.

Because wealthy nations don’t have a ton of new technology they can adopt or investments they can make to increase human capital (because they already use the best tools the human race has at the moment), they can’t post those kinds of growth rates.

We can help the poor, while drastically increasing the GDP.

There needs to be an economic theory or term for my concept.
Tax the rich and redistribute back to the poor to increase consumption and production. When the poor have more money they spend it, the middle class sell more to the poor thus they can increase their production which benefits the rich.
It’s my belief that if you give the poor more money they’ll spend more, which the middle class will sell more, and then in return buy more from the rich. Maybe I’m just naive but when we let the corporations and corporatists run amuck they cause recessions and depressions.

Agreed, I think there is some confusion going on here. “Helping poor people” is not necessarily the same thing as “increasing GDP”, which is again not necessarily the same thing as “increasing aggregate consumption”.

Addressing the minimum wage issue specifically as a possible means of helping poorer people, the issue is that the wage increase has to come from somewhere. Some possibilities:

  1. The workers’ wage increase comes at the expense of the business. The business absorbs the added cost and accepts a smaller profit margin, or
  2. The worker’s wage increase is passed along to the consumer in the form of higher prices, so that the business maintains its gross profit, or
  3. The business can neither afford to absorb the added cost nor do they have the pricing power to pass along the added cost to consumers. So the business shuts down, or
  4. The business can neither afford the added cost nor do they have the pricing power to pass along the added cost to consumers. So they replace workers with cheaper alternatives (outsourcing, automation, etc…), or
  5. (other possibilities)

The goal of minimum wage increases is typically #1. The minimum wage increases, resulting in higher wages for workers but lower profit margins for businesses. The businesses then attempt to expand their business and produce and sell more to capture the additional consumption dollars available. They make a lower profit per unit sold, but make it up in volume. And the workers have more purchasing power.

#2 produces inflation. #3 and #4 produce unemployment.

The issue with raising the minimum wage is that you have to be very sure that you are in a #1-type of scenario (they are testing this out in Seattle right now to determine if Seattle + surrounding areas are in fact in this situation).

OP, I think you are envisioning some kind of business environment where every low wage employer is like Walmart or McDonald’s, where an appropriate minimum-wage based policy is perhaps an option for improving worker welfare. But minimum-wage increases is not necessarily a viable solution across the board for all low-wage businesses.

You want an economic theory, so let’s see what you’ve worked out. We’re not afraid of math here; don’t be shy.

This is a different attempt at wealth transfer, but the scenarios are the same. It is not true that just because you transfer money to the poor (and hence the poor spend more dollars), that you increase production and aggregate consumption as a result. It CAN result in such situations, just as a minimum wage increase similarly CAN result in such situations, but it is not true that business will always produce more merely because their consumers have more dollars. Other factors enter into the decision making as well.

The state of south carolina has the worst roads in all of America, just take a trip to Charleston and see for your self. What you’ve informed me of, is the severity of our State choosing NOT TO fix our roads after getting funding for it MULTIPLE TIMES, and after NONE OF THAT FUNDING going towards our roads, we can’t get anymore funding.

I used to think, yeah some jackasses up state decided to shove our road money down their pockets and we’re the ones who’ll suffer. However in actuality the entire country suffered because we literally reduced the size of our economy by having those corrupt republican bastards throw our funding away.

I never thought about it like this but It sure help me construct some questions to annoy my representative with.