Minimum wage isn’t currently $10.10 an hour. Nice bait-and-switch, though.
Regards,
Shodan
The median age for those earning $7.25/h or less has hovered around 24/25 over the past few years. http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/#cps_minimum_wage
If you look at those earning greater than $7.25/h up to $10.10 (“near minimum wage” workers), then the median bumps to 30. Still young, because damnit, I’m still young and that’s younger than I am. And because median worker age is much higher (>40).
The 35 avg / 30 median number comes from an EPI report (PDF), which includes all workers making under $10.10/hour, but it keeps getting misquoted. Obama fucked this up too back in an April weekly address, so I wouldn’t feel bad.
And those numbers are important because they tell us about those directly affected by an increase to $10.10/hour. An increase that I don’t think would be economic Chicxulub, and I’m on the record as supporting pinning it to CPI. I just don’t think it will do much to help the majority of people who are in need of the most help.
Boss would love to give you those hours and you’d love to work them, but sorry, the feds have decided that if you hit 30 hours (at one job) you have to receive healthcare. And if you hit 40 (at one job), you have to receive time-and-a-half. Don’t worry; they’re helping.
Nah. But depending on your skillset and the market, the choice can often be “work minimum wage or become homeless”. Not exactly a gun to your head, but pretty substantial as is.
Upgrade your skillset.
Where do I download that app from, again? What a stupidly simplistic response to a very real problem. :smack:
No. It’s not a simplistic response, it’s a realistic one. Go to school and get trained for a better job. Millions of people do it all the time.
He’s at it again, this fucking cocksucker. No offense to cock suckers.
And then he bemoans the terrible burden it is being a CEO these days.
See? Things are getting worse for CEOs because more of their perks and privileges are being reported as taxable income, even though their dollar amounts and values of those dollars are both going up.
BOO HOO.
And finally some truth, in the lies.
So, most of that was horse shit, but he at least admits the 1% and the 0.1% are doing very, very well for themselves.
But they’re not actually any better off. It’s just that they can hide less of their wealth, so that means their wealth… doesn’t count?
What’s his fucking point? Read it in context. I linked it for you.
Tim Worstall.
Yeah, THAT’S what we’re complaining about, you disgusting freak of nature.
That’s his entire slam-dunk argument here. No, seriously, go read it himself. His defense of the rise in inequality is that it’s our fault for making it more transparent.
That’s his WHOLE argument.
Suck my balls, Tim Worstall. Suck them hard.
See, for the ultra-wealthy, getting more money obviously means you actually *have *more money, because the things you spend money on (such as the price of labor) stay stagnant. So the rich are often protected from inflationary effects.
While, for the poor, the prices of the things they buy continue to rise while wages stay the same.
Can’t edit above post, but *yourself *should be in place of himself. Too many quotes seems to fuck up the board.
What planet do you live on? If Job A isn’t willing to negotiate, you go down the road to Job B that is willing.
The inflation rate last year was a whopping 0.1%.
My goodness you’re stupid.
With the up front that I’m a, admittedly not very partisan, Republican. I disagree with them a touch less at the Federal level than I do Democrats.
For the current wage debate I mostly shake my head at the nonsense from both sides that ignores what seems to be the best findings of economics. $9 seems to be just a touch above the point where we start into counterproductive territory. $10.10 isn’t too counterproductive. The conversation for the strongest proponents of big minimum wage increases has moved to bigger numbers much deeper into counterproductive territory.
Using wage is pretty weak sauce for helping the working poor. It’s hard to justify the benefits as being worth being too far into counter-productive territory IMO. The proposals CBO looked at boosted average family income for those at or below the poverty level at the time by 1% and 3%. That’s it. That’s for increases in the wage floor of 24.1% and 39.3% (with COLA). A small benefit for most with a number of big losers among the working poor. How many of us would bet a 3% raise against even a small chance of losing our job completely? Those big losers then get pushed to the social safety net systems for the non-working poor increasing federal spending. To produce more than small effects through wages we really need to go deep into counterproductive territory.
l
There’s other options than just what both sides are focusing on now. You hint at that by looking at a mix of currently typical GOP proposals. Seriously look at the response to Sen Alexander’s question in the Senate hearing information. EITC has much less total cost to the economy that raising wages to produce the same level of help for the poor.
A small minimum wage increase from current levels to close to $9 would be awesome IMO. I’d support it just by itself. Help the poor without any major macro economic negatives…what’s not to like? Even better we could mix that with EITC and CTC (Child Tax Credit) changes (like plugging the current hole where the mix of EITC/CTC leaves a gap - working poor without kids aren’t helped much currently) and we can get the best of what both tools offer. Use a small wage hike for what it does best and EITC for what it does best - right tools for the right parts of the job instead of a minimum wage hammer for everything.
EITC, incidentally, used to be a program Republicans were generally supportive of. They still tend to make noises about it being their preferred method of helping. My side of the aisle has mostly back pedaled and opposed Obama’s EITC proposals. I do give them credit for this year’s budget, after all the shutdown nonsense was over, which renewed provisions of the EITC that were set to expire. Seriously, Republicans with a chance to gut EITC, fuck the poor, and cut EITC spending by simply doing nothing, actually did something to help. They didn’t just extend the expiring provisions. They made them permanent. That offers at least a little window of window some bipartisan action in the middle of our tribal, dick measuring contest approach to politics.
There’s one problem though. Minimum wage changesdo increase the federal budget by small amounts in the long term by the CBO report; people losing work jobs collect more in benefits and aren’t getting taxed. The probelm is ALL of the cost of EITC is on the federal government. To be revenue neutral (Hey I am a Republican 
even if they mostly call me a RINO) that means either cuts or revenue increase. ([pitmode] FUCK YOU GROVER NORQUIST and your simplistic stupid-ass pledge that impedes effective policy. Were you dropped on your head at birth?!?[pitmodeoff]) That part of an agreement has “some issues.”
It still strikes me as more politically possible to come up with a funding agreement than a high minimum wage. From the CBO analysis about 22 billion is the increased income for households up to three times the poverty level in the 10.10 plan. For the $9 plan the increase was about 6 billion. In a mixed plan of a $9 wage and EITC increase we’re looking at coming up with around 13 billion to have the same average effects on low wage workers without the problem of job losses. It’s not exactly budget dust but in terms of a 2016 budget of 3.54 trillion it’s only about a .36% increase. We might even be able to save some of that on spending on other safety net programs as we make people better off in other ways. That’s not much help to those affected but we can scale the amount of help to political will to find funding.
Obama’s budget for next year… includes expanding EITC and fixing the issue for the childless. Nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to that though. As far as I could tell neither of the last major Democratic candidates took an official position during the primaries on EITC. When the party we tend to associate with caring about poverty doesn’t give a fuck … sigh
“Value” isn’t the same as “price”. I see clothing shops with fancy dresses at expensive prices - no one buys them, they go out of business. The price was always the same though. It is a simplistic economic fallacy to say that the price of something is always what the market is willing to pay. And it’s just one of the reasons why economics isn’t any more of a science than art is.
OK price, rather than value.
How is the price of labor any different than the price of fruit?
Your post has so much wrong in it that I can’t respond with a phone. Read what basic income is. And, by the way, basic income is not a wage. Study and then come back.
In this hypothetical, there is no Job B. Due to a multitude of circumstances, there simply is no Job B. Now, how much negotiation is there likely to be between the employer and the prospective employee? :dubious:
There’s always a Job B. Unless maybe get dropped on Mars and are trying to negotiate with Matt Damon. Hell, even then you could negotiate. After all, it’s always better to have a worker that is happy about his job.
“The inflation rate” :smack: Yeah, it’s exactly that simple.
This depends on how you calculate the value of the dollar. Versus commodities in the stock exchange and other indexes, or versus the price of goods and services that poor people are essentially required to purchase, and which represent a significant portion of their income.
2002 $1.31 actual price of gasoline **$1.72 **inflation-adjusted price of gasoline
2011 $3.48 actual price of gasoline $3.65 inflation-adjusted price of gasoline
That’s not an increase of 0.1%, and I’m sure you’re aware of that.
Here’s the latest low, it actually went back down to:
2015 $2.36 actual price of gasoline $2.36 inflation-adjusted.
The difference between $1.72 to $2.36 (let’s ignore all the years in between where people had to buy gasoline and the price was even higher, adjusted for inflation or not) is **not **equal to the difference between the minimum wage in those years.
I didn’t get a wage increase of 1/3rd, nor did I get a wage increase of 100% of my wages, to offset the value of my income versus the things I needed to spend money on.
So between 2002 and the present, the value of my income compared to gasoline got cut between half and a third. That’s compared to gasoline.
How about Education, that thing that allows minimum wage earners to get ahead? It’s not like everyone who works at McDonalds becomes the CEO. It’s a pyramid, most people stay at the bottom.
Here, straight from Forbes. I’m not even going to bother finding liberal sources. I’m going to get all my data from the same source whenever possible, to show you I’m not cherry-picking.
7%
7 percent is not the same as 0.1% is it? Or are those two values equal to you, D’Anconia?
Health care.
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/chrisconover/files/2012/12/healthprices.jpg
The price of health care has gone up 400% even adjusted for inflation, while wages have been stagnant.
And this is calculating for an “average hourly wage” of about** $19/hr. **
How are they calculating that average? But let’s assume for the sake of discussion their numbers are real, even though they’re a total fantasy for anyone who’s been in minimum-wage dominated industries for the past 20 years.
I’m not even going to bother quibbling with how they’re calculating wage averages.
I’m not even going to bother finding more neutral sources, or liberal cherry-picked sources.
It’s like when “Papa John” Schnatter complained how healthcare would cause the price of pizza to rise by 25 cents a pie.
I’m not even going to argue his numbers were biased. I’m going to argue from a standpoint of believing the numbers straight away, and pointing out how bullshit it is that they’d argue these numbers support their viewpoint, and how they undermine the arguments being made by the wealthy elites, without using a different set of data or pointing out problems with their methodology.
Using a term like “average” can mean median, mean, or range, in addition to other methods, and they can defend that idea because by mathematical definition, an average can be any of those things.
And who collects and reports the data? And how much of that data do we see, and what data do we not see?
If I’m a member of the wealthy elite and I’m going to frame an argument for the poor to buy, I’m going to cherry pick all my numbers and make certain the best possible argument is presented, and all the facts that don’t support my viewpoint, I’m going to ignore or not report, or distort.
But no, I’m not going to bother with any of this.
Let’s use their numbers. Let’s use the numbers which MOST favor the viewpoint of the wealthy elite, Forbes’ *own *audience, their readership, their contributors, their owners. THEIR NUMBERS.
Well, the young people, they don’t need to pay healthcare costs. So minimum wage workers are young people, right?
Not from Forbes, but the same source of information that Tim Worstall cited in the article I just linked in my previous posts, EPI says:
88 Percent of Workers Who Would Benefit From a Higher Minimum Wage Are Older Than 20, One Third Are Over 40
I think healthcare costs and frequency of needing healthcare services is higher for the older worker. But that’s not always the case either.
When someone plowed into the back of my car while I was at a stop light, while I was on the clock making deliveries working for Pizza Hut, and the accident was 100% not my fault because my car was not in motion and I was at a legal red light, I suffered a head injury which made me go to the hospital.
There, all I needed was to be checked to see if I had any internal bleeding in my brain, to make sure I didn’t fucking die.
You wanna take a **wild guess **how much that hospital stay cost me?
You wanna take a wild guess how much of that a minimum wage worker can afford to cover by buying personal health insurance on minimum wage or less than minimum wage? You wanna take a wild guess how much of my actual healthcare costs were offered to be paid by the insurance company of the at fault driver? You wanna take a wild guess how much of that was covered by my own employer? You wanna take a wild guess what happened when I looked for a lawyer to sue these people?
Here’s the bottom line. My employer covered zero percent of it. My wages don’t allow for personal health insurance. I don’t have the $200 a month to spend on that. That’s going towards auto insurance which I pay out of pocket despite working for a company that requires that I drive for them to be employed. The opposing party’s insurance company offered an amount less than what I was owed. Morgan & Morgan refused to even take my case, because there was no money in it for them, because it wasn’t a traumatic long-term injury. It was a single hospital bill, which they’d end up keeping half the value of even if they won, and it wasn’t enough for rich lawyer to be interested in, but it made a difference to me, because it was seven thousand dollars, representing over half of my income that year.
Now there are several issues at play here, but I’m going to focus on the dollar amount for an instance of healthcare that I needed as a healthy young adult, and compare it to my wages.
A minimum wage worker cannot afford 200 dollars a month for personal health care insurance. Period. They could buy a sketchy barely-covers-you policy which has a massive deductible, which guarantees you’re paying a thousand dollars a year and then several thousand if you’re ever injured or sick and need a hospital stay.
http://www.epi.org/files/2013/EPI-low-wage-workers-reality-8-28-2013-2-54-01.png.948
So look at the rising cost of healthcare over time. And let’s say you’re fit as a fiddle and lucky enough to never be injured on the job. What if you have a family to support? A child? An elderly, disabled relative? What if your shitty income has to help cover their medical costs, and you don’t have a choice in the matter?
A living wage is a wage that allows a person to reasonably live, even if they’re not spending thousands of dollars a year on frivolous things. It allows them to afford healthcare insurance and gasoline and allows them to save for an education or allows them to make payments on a student loan. A wage allows them to pay rent and food, your basic expenses.
Looked for Forbes source, couldn’t find one, used the very first source after googling “rising rent averages over time US”
This is the Wall Street Journal, and forgive me, but they’re in the same boat as fucking Forbes.
This is the wealthy elite using their OWN NUMBERS.
4.6% PER YEAR.
That’s not the same as 0.1%, now is it, D’Anconia?
Do you want me to continue? I’ve got lots more.
Let me know.
Argue with me about how much shit actually costs and how little wage earners actually get fucking paid, like I don’t fucking know, like I haven’t actually experienced it.
Jesus fucking Christ.