Actually it is $10.30 in San Jose.
Look at table 1 in your first cite (the second one does not work for me.) While the number of 16 - 24 year olds at minimum wage is above those over 25, there are more over 25 below minimum wage. Though it is unclear from the document who these are, since tips are excluded I’d expect they are food service workers.
16 - 19 years olds are about 1/3 of those 25 or older. Those are the people for whom the minimum wage is just spending money - maybe.
I’m fairly dubious about raising it to $15 everywhere. Where I live it makes sense, but not in Alabama.
Hmm that EPI link does appear broken. Try this http://www.epi.org/files/2014/EPI-1010-minimum-wage.pdf
Better for me or better for the country? A higher minimum wage in the United States, particularly one that is required to rise with the cost of living, is better for me and my country for when I move back there. Not only does it help the wage earner, but it also stimulates the economy since those wage earners spend almost every dime they have in their local economy. Whether I earn the minimum or not, it most certainly would help.
Plus, I derive enjoyment and satisfaction out of putting fools like you in your place.
Could someone help me understand how the daily/yearly swings of the FOREX markets effect a person’s daily/yearly personal ability to exchange their money for goods in their own country (their Purchasing Power Parity)? Or how does arbitrage in general improve/destabilize local economies? Specifically in relation to this Bloomberg article on Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation and deflation, and how those events affected Zimbabwe’s people and economy in a daily/yearly fashion.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-02/from-hyperinflation-to-deflation-no-end-to-zimbabwe-s-decline
During Zimbabwe’s years of hyperinflation, the nation printed more and more money until, (just for the sake of my argument, and to make the math smoother) as we see as a picture in the article, Zimbabwean wages were around Z24,300 (729,000/30 googled: Zimbabwe wages 2008 ) a day. Needless to say, raising wages by so much, and at such speed, ruined everyone. With inflation being an astounding 500 billion percent per year in 2008; Zimbabwe chose to scrap its currency in 2009 and allow the US dollar and South African Rand as legal tender. With this, Zimbabwe has no way to print dollars for itself. Thus, the deflationary spiral began in earnest.
Bloomberg states that greater than 70% of the people in Zimbabwe live on less than a converted value of $2 a day. Lets just say they now live on $2 a day. It also states that a local Lager company had to reduce its prices from 1 to .90 cents. But How does Purchasing Power Parity explain this? If I at minimum wage have (7.25x8=58x.2=11.6-58=) $46.40 at the end of the day and I buy a beer from the Zimbabwe company (a bottle would be 3.72 dollars for me) that would be (3.72/46.4=) .0802 or ~12% of my paycheck. Now to buy the same local beer as a Zimbabwean I would have to give up almost half of my daily pay? What happened to the Purchasing Power Parity indexes like the Big Mac index, or this beer index, to cause it to fail at such predictions that should be stable across countries? Why is Zimbabwe’s beer not equivalent to 25 cents?
Furthermore, in 2008 (googled: Zimbabwe beer 2008) a beer was Z5 million. A Zimbabwean would have had to wait over 205 days to afford 1 beer!
So what I am confused by (besides the article’s assertion that this deflationary period makes Zimbabwean workers too expensive and non-competitive, and unable to deal with cheap foreign imports) is that I imagine that what it took -and takes- to live in Zimbabwe could not have changed much throughout the years. I would like to be shown otherwise, but I feel that just as we can normalize our American wages to our past and future selves and find them relatively stable and stagnating, Purchasing Power wise; we should not be seeing basic amenities and other things necessary for life but otherwise available, in such violent fluctuation if Purchasing Power Parity (and the use wage normalization in general) is to be seen as legitimate.
Also, I see from the article that the real recession happened when Mugabe was voted back in to being dictator of Zimbabwe. The nation grew quite nicely at 9.2% a year while pegged to outside dollars, while Mugabe was not in power. So really, no international companies want to deal with Mugabe’s craziness.
Ah, substance. Not particularly intelligent substance, but at least this isn’t your usual drive-by Shodan remark, where you type one citeless and very incorrect sentence, regards.
Here, it’s multiple citeless and very incorrect sentences.
Well, that’s just not true, speaking from personal experience, and the experiences of my co-workers at not just Pizza Hut, but at places like Wal-Mart, Applebee’s, and so forth. So since anecdotal evidence is commonly used in these arguments, I’ll put them up on the board.
The clear majority of persons that I worked with in several states, and in several companies, all of whom offer minimum wage or near minimum wage compensation (There’s no real difference between 8.05 and 8.15) have been persons 30 or older, many with kids, often single mothers. Young women have it the worst, but older women and middle-aged men also make up a large portion of this work force.
So let’s say anecdotal evidence is bullshit, even though each person living in the country mainly has their own experiences to inform their positions. Let’s look at the actual numbers.
Using cited and neutral data, your claim has already been refuted in this thread. Unless people who are 25, 30, and 35 are all teenagers who can rely on their parent’s roof for shelter or they are all lottery winners, some of them might have to earn a wage. Who’da thunk? Not you, obviously.
This is your favorite debate tactic. You repeatedly refute actual data with “nuh uh” and then go back under your bridge, and never address the fact that you got owned with the real numbers.
Might wanna work on that if you want anyone to take you seriously. No one does.
Yeah, a nickel or a dime over the minimum is part of this discussion, and that’s why it’s easy to skew the statistics and argue no one earns the minimum wage or it has no impact on the economy. Which is disingenuous and *if *you are an intelligent person then you’re aware of that.
Unions convince employers that their wages should be higher, because the alternative which is to fire everyone doesn’t work so well. It gives workers a stronger position at the negotiating table.
Given that a company has the advantage of being in the position to close up shop, they are entering into such agreements voluntarily as well. Except the workers have the kind of leverage necessary to suddenly, via magic, cause the “value” of their work to increase. Funny how that works. And there’s nothing anti-capitalist about it. In fact, that behavior is what’s missing from our model and why other capitalist countries do well and have a well-paid workforce, whose lowest-level income represents a much higher standard of living.
That’s what the “market” says their wages are worth when the wage earner has a stronger negotiating position. The alternative is to stop being a McDonald’s and to stop being a Pizza Hut, and to stop being in business, or to fire all their workers and try to start anew. When these options are not more profitable than simply paying the workers what they’re asking for, wages magically increase.
Because the invisible hand is now jacking *them *off as well. If you’re going to fuck over the workers, a reach-around is the least that can be offered.
And the word “should” is necessary in any debate, because that’s how debates work.
Or is this your first time? I’ll go easier on you if it would help you keep up.
You keep using the word “should”, which is a mistake. But let’s assume it has some validity, and go on from there.
At a chain like the one I managed, all wage increases must go up the chain for approval. The manager in charge of the store can make hiring or firing decisions, and set hours, but they can only request and recommend wage increases. Their boss’s boss’s approves it. And if the manager on his own recommends everyone gets a wage increase, their boss’s boss does not approve it, and instead replaces that manager.
Because what happens when the workers get paid what they’re worth at one store, but not the store 4 miles down the road? Then, the workers at that other store get pissed off and demand what they’re rightfully owed as well. And then the company has a real problem on their hands. It’s easier to remove one manager.
And strikes do not work on a single restaurant scale. With the cited example of what Wal-Mart did when unionized Wal-Mart employees went on strike for higher wages, rather than give it to them, the company elected to shut down several locations for several months, citing bullshit reasons.
Google “Wal-Mart shuts down over union”.
Here’s one example:
- Though this isn’t the first time any mega-corporation in the US has pulled this crap. Several Wal-Marts shut down over “plumbing problems” :rolleyes: to get around any legal obligations to the workers. It just so happens that workers at the stores were asking for higher wages.
So, the company can pull that trick. They can’t do it if the union is nation-wide. They’re can do it if the profits they lose from five stores being out of business for a little while spares them from having to raise wages in all stores. That is simple math for them.
So, unions on a single-store scale or even multi-store scales don’t work. That is why I did not advocate for the people at my own store to go on a camikaze strike that would cost them jobs and end up doing nothing.
Instead, the solution is a higher federal minimum wage, and a higher state minimum wage in states where the COL is higher. That would be effective, in lieu of bigger unions. The problem here is that unions pull the trigger too quickly or without sufficient numbers, they don’t have the political strength to tackle Wal-Mart or Pizza Hut or McDonald’s with only a couple hundred workers.
They can go the route of national-sized or at the very least state-sized unions, and they’d get somewhere. But these companies have ways of ruining you if you advocate for unions. Legal or illegal, they’ll use those means because the occasional lawsuit settlement is not compelling enough. The dollar amount of raising wages nation-wide in all these chains is much higher than any lawsuits, so they stop workers from unionizing using both legal or illegal means.
That’s when they’re not stealing their wages outright, which,
In this article
Particularly in this image:
Source: FBI, EPF
Demonstrates the amount of economic potential lost to low wage workers across America. Low wage workers or indeed, any wage earning group, should not be subjected to more illegal losses than all burglary, larceny, auto theft, or robberies in the nation combined.
Workers need to unionize because there is no crime more difficult to police than the over 19 billion dollars worth of theft that happens to low income workers. Not only do they need advocates fighting for higher general wages, but they need to be organized and informed and capable of fighting wage theft on a company-wide scale. These resources would be available if the workers weren’t treating the problem as an every-man-for-himself problem. Unions could pay for lawyers to bring the legally acquired wages that they’re already supposed to be getting, and bring the type of large scale class action lawsuits needed to bring the problem under control.
So yeah, I’m gonna use the word “Should” in this debate.
So these are citations. You can handwave them and go “wikipedia, derp” except the source is the FBI. So good luck with that. I’m also bringing more data points into this discussion than you are.
Rather than simply say “almost no one earns the minimum wage, and those who do, don’t even need jobs” like a moron, repeatedly, even after it’s been debunked, I’ve got cites for my claims.
Try that sometime.
Like here:
Numbers you pull out of your ass won’t take you very far, because I can smell shit.
And what’s even more laughable is that even if I were to take you at your word, that no one earns the minimum wage, and those who do aren’t a significant part of our economy, that defeats your position.
What you’re saying is that it’s no big deal. In that case, you needn’t oppose it, since there will be no disastrous effects, since no one earns the wage, and those who do don’t need to earn a wage at all since they’re all teenagers.
When you get around to actually arguing the point, it’s more counterproductive than your trollish posts suggesting minimum wage workers are all serfs who live in the households of middle class masters, thus, don’t need a wage that allows them to live on their own merits. While simultaneously arguing that the word “should” is not a reasonable term.
So, instead of should, you’re appealing to the status quo, which is a different kind of should. You’re saying things should stay as they are.
You don’t get to have a different rulebook for this discussion than me.
I know it helps prop up your terrible positions, but I’m afraid that jedi mind tricks don’t work on me, boy.
Bullshit. Cite- 90% of the workers I’ve ever worked with. And what the national data suggests. I’d go track down the link for you, but you didn’t bother to click it the last couple times it was cited.
So I mean we can sit here and play “nuh uh” back and forth if you like, but I’m not playing for a stalemate here. So I decline the three time repetition of position that is your strategy. Try something different.
Bullshit. Repeatedly pointed out to you.
And, again, that means that if they lose their jobs somehow, because of a minimum wage increase, that only helps those “rare” exceptions who need the minimum wage to be higher to survive.
So, even in a fantasy world where you were spouting facts, they’d destroy your own argument.
Or, here, I’ll even use Forbes. Look at how many liberal sources I’m cherry-picking my data from. I’m such a stinker that way.
Their rebuttals are telling;
[QUOTE=Wal-Mart spokesman in the above article]
“More than 99 percent of our associates earn above minimum wage,” he said. “In fact, the average hourly wage for our associates, both full and part-time, is an average of $11.83 per hour.
[/QUOTE]
See how they say more than 99% are above minimum wage? Now, I agree some of the workers do late shift and earn a dollar more. And some workers do get more than the minimum. But the game is to take someone who earns pennies above the minimum wage, which is a fair share of their workforce, and claim they don’t earn the minimum wage.
That’s technically true. It’s also irrelevant. In this discussion, I’m including wages that are above the level of the current minimum wage, but under the proposed minimum wage increase. So if the wage is 8.05 in Florida and you pay 8.15, but the proposed new minimum is 9 or 10, then we need to count the 8.15 worker in order to have a debate that isn’t wholly disingenuous.
Also how they skew their data: “Associates”. And they use the word “average”.
Remember, one isn’t necessarily lying, but definitely misleading, if they use the word “average” and they mean “median”, because by a dictionary definition, the “median” is a type of average.
And “Associates” doesn’t necessarily mean cashiers, or anyone that wage advocates are talking about when we’re trying to discuss this issue. Define “Associates” and what you’ll see is they’re going to include management that is not upper management. Supervisors, assistant managers, and so forth. Anyone earning a per-hour rate, rather than a salaried rate.
It’s how these businesses deliberately skew the data and make disingenuous arguments.
Besides, what they have to say is entirely irrelevant anyway. I’m concerned with this:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303843104579168011245171266
Again, Wall Street Journal. Not Huffington Post. Not from inside one’s asshole, like your numbers.
I’m not a subscriber, but I can still see the number 48 million for number of people on food assistance programs. Gosh, that doesn’t seem like a small number of Americans to me. Are those all unemployed people? If they are, in a nation of this size, our unemployment rate is several times that of Norway. Maybe our system is broken somehow, or maybe employed people who need to earn a wage get food assistance because they don’t earn enough from their wages to feed human beings? You know, near-minimum wage earners.
That would be my thesis. And it’s backed up with the actual numbers from our government, and cited by conservative publications.
So, when I come to this debate armed with such citations, and you go “nuh uh” you’re a fool.
So we could both debate this issue like intelligent adults, but you seemingly want to bring it down to a playground level with your arguments, so let’s bring my level of debate down to yours;
“Nuh uh.”
By your standards, I’ve won the argument.
Formatting issues in above post, which didn’t exist when I typed it, and I can’t edit the post because the post vanishes when I do. To do this in wordpad will miss the edit window. I reported these issues here already, they’re still not resolved.
I didn’t put those large gaps there. Post vanishes in preview as well.
Commenting to TipTapTwo, who I can’t quote for some reason except by doing this:
Purchasing power is a far more useful measure for this discussion than a pure “inflation” index.
Inflation indexes will take into account a wide variety of indicators which aren’t useful to this discussion. The major indicators for low income earners are the necessities of life, particularly on their economic scale.
Since some idiot in this thread brought up caviar, the price of caviar isn’t necessarily useful to the purchasing power discussion for low income earners. Whereas the price of **commodities at the retail level **(not the stock exchange price) which are commonly purchased by low-income earners, the cost of fuel, utility costs such as **electricity **and water, a **phone **line (which although not strictly necessary, is often a requirement for career advancement- no phone and your boss can’t get in touch with you means you’re unreliable and won’t be considered for advancement), **transportation **by whatever means are available to get from the job to the house and to shop and to live like an adult human being responsible for him/herself, clothing, medicine, medical insurance (Often necessary or legally mandated, and would be necessary even if it weren’t) automobile insurance (often necessary because not every low-income worker lives in a city with public transportation), education, childcare, **rent **(or other housing cost) and so forth.
The purchasing power of the lowest wage earner must be compared to these indicators, otherwise we’re not having a reasonable discussion. As I did in one of my above posts, I brought up the increasing cost of several of these major expenses.
The ones that take up the largest portion of the low wage earner’s budget are things like rent (typically half of their entire income, unless they’re sharing an apartment with multiple other low-wage earners, which isn’t always possible if you have kids), education (after all, idiots here keep screaming about getting one, and that cost has skyrocketed well above the “inflation” index) and healthcare costs (Not for everyone, but anyone who has any kind of sickness or accident will suddenly see months of their income vanish, and if medical insurance is mandatory for everyone, then guess what…)
All of those indicators are far more relevant to the discussion and those prices have been rising much faster than the wage floor. That’s why you have all these wage strikes and rallies. It didn’t happen in a vacuum because people are greedy. These people ordinarily can’t give a fuck to spend a day of their lives campaigning for anything, because they’ve got too much else in their lives to be concerned with.
The only data points that are relevant here are what wages are, and what the prices are of the things that low-wage earners must spend 90% of their income on, as a non-discretionary expense. These aren’t luxuries like laptops and iPads.
The challenge for stagnant wage advocates (everything “should” remain as it is, but we can’t use the word “should” in this debate because reasons) is to demonstrate, as I asked, which of those relevant data points (prices) have been lowering by several percentage points each year.
That challenge has gone unanswered for a while now, despite their popping in and out, can’t even be arsed to argue their pathetic position.
All the data says that prices are going up. Idiot boy says it’s only 0.1 percent per year, cherry-picking one year and ignoring all the others where it was much higher. A quick calculation shows that, inflation wise, the increases of full percentage points or multiple percentage points per year in the overall inflation index causes the purchasing power of a dollar to have decreased by a quite a bit, suggesting overall prices are somewhere around 40% higher than they were in 1998, around the time I started working.
But, that doesn’t even tell the whole story, that’s the inflation indicator. That doesn’t talk about the prices that are relevant to the wage earner.
So you start at 4.75 or 5.15 or whatever the case was back then, and then you look at how your wages have gone up to 7.15 on a national level.
But you need to compare that not against the inflation index, but prices of rent, food, clothing, utilities, medication, fuel, education, and the other indicators I mentioned, which are essentially all the poor spend money on.
It’s not vacations and yachts and Ferraris. So the prices of those things, or the price of real estate in rich areas, or the way high-end electronics have been decreasing in price, are not relevant indicators for this discussion. Neither is the value of the dollar versus other currencies. Neither are stock prices or commodities on a non-retail level.
Entering those prices into the calculation is a novice move. And I don’t even think it is deliberate, I assume that idiot boy’s 0.1% was the smallest number he could find anywhere to support his argument and he didn’t research beyond that one line on his one link, and that he doesn’t even understand what inflation is. But that’s why he’s idiot boy. Feel free to crawl out from under your shame rock anytime now, idiot boy. Might want to upgrade your debate skill set, idiot boy.
I prefer talking to TipTapTwo, he brings something to this discussion. Unique and informative things.
Don’t move back here, then you won’t ever have to worry about it! 
Or you could waste your time posting 1000s of words on a message board to try to enact social change based upon the earnings of people who work in pizza places. Good luck with that!
Or you could take the time to improve your skills and abilities to get a better job when you come back to the States, and then start a company and employ people making MW or barely above MW and give them big raises. The productivity you will see will MORE than make up for the increase in prices of your product, and the service and commitment your customers see will drive them to pay more for YOUR crappy pizzas then the pizza place down the street.
Or you could, you know, just stay in Norway. With you gone, the average wage and intelligence in America have gone up.
Unfortunately, it is true, your personal experience notwithstanding.
The problem is the same as above - you are wrong, and your personal experience is contradicted by the facts.
Rhetorical question - are you high?
:shrugs: You and I agree - your anecdotal evidence is bullshit.
So losing jobs helps those who need jobs to survive?
Do you have a cite that addresses what you alleged?
Yes, I did notice that. Did you notice how it shows that I am right and you are not?
Did you see that most of those receiving food stamps are children, elderly, or disabled - not working for MW? (Cite.)
Well, I can.
Regards,
Shodan
Here’s an article about how the top and bottom quintiles spend their money in 2012 and 1984. Education has come up a few times, but college is actually more affordable now if you’re poor. And you’re not just stuck with community colleges; my alma mater and other schools have waived the expected parental contribution for even many middle-class families. The poorest quintile spends a smaller percent of their money on education now, despite increased enrollment among all quintiles over that time period.
Enrollment by year: College enrollment among low-income students still trails richer groups | Pew Research Center
Rent has nearly doubled as a share of income. Healthcare, fruits & veggies, other housing costs, gas, and entertainment spending have all increased, albeit not much for the last two. This despite gas prices peaking around 2012. Just a few years later, gas is cheaper (real) now than it was in 1984, and cars are more fuel efficient so price per mile is even lower. And spending on vehicles is a much lower percent of household spending now for the bottom quintile than it used to be, which is to be expected with cars being safer and longer-lasting today.
Gas prices: Short-Term Energy Outlook - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
Childcare isn’t mentioned in the Atlantic article, but I’m sure it’s increased. Although having children is optional.
But rent is the big one. While home size has increased dramatically, I haven’t seen data for home size by income by year. I doubt it’s risen as steeply for low-income families.
Child care is an industry in which a MW increase is likely to be particularly counter-productive. Labor costs make up more of the overheadin child care than in most industries. Raise the MW to benefit working mothers, and watch the increase slip thru their fingers as child care increases proportionately.
Regards,
Shodan
Sorry, I am kinda paranoid about malware, please don’t just link to Forbes or other sites that need adblock turned off or javascript turned on to view it. I can not read it. Here is a relevant article about Forbes serving malware through their ads
http://www.networkworld.com/article/3021113/security/forbes-malware-ad-blocker-advertisements.html
[QUOTE=Andy Patrizio]
Forbes has taken an aggressive line against ad blockers. When it detects one running on your system, it denies you access to the content until you turn off the ad blocker. […] After disabling Adblock Plus, they were immediately served with pop-under malware.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks for quoting the relevant bits of the articles you are talking about. It helps me learn your point in thread without becoming infected.
[QUOTE=Askthepizzaguy]
Wal-Mart spokesperson from Forbes article “More than 99 percent of our associates earn above minimum wage,” he said. “In fact, the average hourly wage for our associates, both full and part-time, is an average of $11.83 per hour.
[/QUOTE]
I do not even let the Straight Dope load its ads, as people have rightly pointed out in other threads their issues with viruses through SD ads in the past.
[QUOTE=Bone]
Also had another ad that when loaded redirected to a page telling my my browser was infected and had a timer countdown to click a link. I didn’t click it, and unfortunately didn’t get a screen cap.
[/QUOTE]
So sad that even as recently as July 6 2016 we still have malware ads on the SD
Also, you still can’t quote my posts? Even the one above in just plain text? If you click the quote button under my post, and click the quote button under someone you can quote, Is there a difference or missing piece of coding shown to you? Since I do not allow javascript, I do everything in Word first and copy-paste it over. Instead of a real SD quote being [QUOTE=Askthepizzaguy;19470904] [/QUOTE] without the 's I just do [QUOTE=Askthepizzaguy] [/QUOTE*]
When D’Anconia in post #256 said that the overall inflation rate was 0.1% in 2015, and Askthepizzaguy disagreed in post #291, asking for proof of such through the past 20 years. I think they are talking past each other and not really caring to look into the other’s points, but they are each correct in what they are talking about while being unaware that the other’s viewpoint brings up legitimate issues.
[QUOTE=D’Anconia]
Yes, it really is that simple. The overall inflation rate was 0.1% in 2015, which is pretty nearly negligible.
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com…flation-rates/
[…] So rent went up by 4.6%. It’s offset by lower prices on almost everything else.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Askthepizzaguy]
The above Is not a rebuttal to my points showing how prices on major items that wage floor earners must spend their income on have risen far more rapidly than 0.1 percent per year.[…] That’s a howler. Demonstrate what prices on necessities such as rent, food, clothing, education, medication, doctor’s visits, or transportation have been lowering, and not just lowering, but by 4% per year every year, or on average, for the past 10, 15, or 20 years.
[/QUOTE]
Using only D’Anconia’s above cite of the Bureau of Labor’s statistics, and digging further into its hyperlinks. I will show that the overall (average) inflation rate in 2015 was 0.1%, but only in relation to 2014‘s CPI. And that CPI should not be looked at as a standalone number, but as one point of snowballing interest. What is CPI? Consumer Price Index. What is that?
[QUOTE=]
The difference between the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and inflation is a source of confusion for many. At its easiest level, the Consumer Price Index in the United States is used to calculate inflation.[…]
The CPI can be viewed as a number used to measure change. In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics gathers the average prices paid by consumers for hundreds of different items each month. The average is then compared to a reference base period. That base period is an arbitrary date set by the federal government. Currently, the US uses the average of goods and services from 1982 to 1984 and considers that our reference base period with a factor of 100.
We can then use the monthly CPI published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to determine differences between two points in time and calculate inflation for that period. For example, let’s compare the CPI of January 2000 with that of January 2010.
The CPI of January 2000 was 168.800 with the index for January 2010 listed as 216.687.
To make the calculations, we take the more recent CPI, subtract the oldest CPI, and then divide by the oldest CPI. Using our numbers shown above, it would be 216.687, minus 168.800, divided by 168.800. This equals .2837.
Inflation is always considered as a percentage, so we take that number and multiply it by 100 to get 28.37%. Thus, the inflation rate from January 2000 to January 2010 was 28.37%.
[/QUOTE]
Ok that is great, now we can look at D’Anconia’s initial link and see that all the inflation/deflation numbers in the chart are normalized relative to 1982-84 values, but each successive yearly average (in that far right annual % change column that D’Anconia is taking the information from) is only relative to the year directly preceding it. A better view of the chart is here Consumer Price Index Data from 1913 to 2024 where we can see the monthly/yearly CPI start around 10 in 1913 and bloat to the 100‘s average that the CPI equations need in 1983 and again inflate to 200+ in 2006 and beyond. Thus we can get numbers like 18% inflation from WW1 1917-1918 or 10.5% deflation from the depression in 1920-21. If we trust those numbers, then 0.1% in 2015 is equally true.
But I am now looking at the numbers, not as lone data points, but as a momentum-based thing. An avalanche. 1917 grew 17.4% on top of 1916, 1918 grew 18% more on top of 1917. 1919-20 was 14% and 15% on top of that on top of that like continuously compounding interest. Thus when we were used to high wealth, 1921/22 came around and a 10% and a 6% deflation hurt us badly, it cut so much out of a relatively huge number and reversed our economic momentum. Our 2015 0.1% seen in isolation is small, but its addition to our compounding inflation/wealth is magnitudes larger than the 14.4% of 1947.
Now Askthepizzaguy apparently wants to know how prices for the people’s necessities have been lowering for years for minimum wage earners. A cost of living index.Ruken’s information in post #311 shows just some of the ways that the seemingly high prices in school/transport/etc have been lowering or deferred for low wage people. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics admits that CPI is limited in some ways that Askthepizzaguy wants.
[QUOTE=]
The CPI may not be applicable to all population groups. For example, the CPI-U is designed to measure inflation for the U.S. urban population and thus may not accurately reflect the experience of people living in rural areas. Also, the CPI does not produce official estimates for the rate of inflation experienced by subgroups of the population, such as the elderly or the poor. (BLS does produce and release an experimental index for the elderly population; however, because of the significant limitations of this experimental index, it should be interpreted with caution.)
As noted in the answer to question 19, the CPI cannot be used to measure differences in price levels or living costs between one place and another; it measures only time-to-time changes in each place. A higher index for one area does not necessarily mean that prices are higher there than in another area with a lower index. It merely means that prices have risen faster in the area with the higher index since the two areas’ common reference period.
The CPI cannot be used as a measure of total change in living costs because changes in these costs are affected by factors (such as social and environmental changes and changes in income taxes) that are beyond the definitional scope of the index and so are excluded.
[/QUOTE]
http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpifaq.htm
Overall, think of the CPI as how a select few thousand families hooked up to Nielson rating TV’s gave accurate measurements of TV Ratings.
[QUOTE=]
The CPI market basket is developed from detailed expenditure information provided by families and individuals on what they actually bought. For the current CPI, this information was collected from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys for 2013 and 2014. In each of those years, about 7,000 families from around the country provided information each quarter on their spending habits in the interview survey. To collect information on frequently purchased items, such as food and personal care products, another 7,000 families in each of these years kept diaries listing everything they bought during a 2-week period.
Over the 2 year period, then, expenditure information came from approximately 28,000 weekly diaries and 60,000 quarterly interviews used to determine the importance, or weight, of the more than 200 item categories in the CPI index structure.
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Thank you Shodan for that PBS cite “Undisputed Facts About Minimum Wage” I never knew that there are multiple ways to truthfully interpret the data to highlight different issues and points of view. But then from your own cite can we really talk about using wrong or right percentages of minimum wage earners and their age range anymore, when we now see that each is just a different way to look at a problem and express the same results? When people who think like Shodan state the issues of minimum wage, they are "talking about the percent of all minimum wage workers who fall into a certain age group;” while those who think like Askapizzaguy are talking about "the percent of your specified age group that is minimum wage.”
[QUOTE=Simone Pathe]
In 2013, 3.3 million Americans worked at an hourly rate at or below the federal minimum of $7.25. […] Those 3.3 million Americans represent just 4.3 percent of hourly paid employees. Employees 16 and older who are paid hourly make up nearly 60 percent of the workforce. […]
Perhaps the easiest data point to cherry pick in this debate is age. First, your percentages will depend on how you slice the population. Second, your narrative can sound very different depending on whether you’re talking about the percent of all minimum wage workers who fall into a certain age group or the percent of your specified age group that is minimum wage. […]
Let’s start with the young’uns. Eleven percent of 16-to-24 year olds earn $7.25 or less. Looking at working teenagers specifically, about 20 percent of 16-to-19-year-olds earn the minimum wage or less. For workers over 25, that percentage drops to about 3 percent. So it’s safe to say that, proportionally speaking, more young workers are earning the minimum wage or less than older workers.
But some politicians and economists prefer to cite the distribution of minimum wage workers by age. Presented this way, 16-to-24-year-olds make up slightly more than half of all minimum wage (and below) workers. (The teenage subset of that represents 24 percent.) Workers over the age of 25 represent slightly less than the other half. Looking at sheer numbers, we see that in 2013, there were almost as many at-or-below minimum wage workers over the age of 25 (1,638,000) as there were between the ages of 16 and 24 (1,663,000).
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Each viewpoint highlights some new and worthwhile facet of this larger issue. Like how people like to argue over the labor theory of value, or the capital(thats opposite right?) theory of value; each sounds compelling, yet is incomplete on its own, and only when we take into account every side do we come close to having a true theory of value. Just so with this issue.
If people who think like Askthepizzaguy can accept the validity of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI reports, can people who think like D’Anconia accept the CPI’s own stated shortcomings of its own data and look to different metrics for determining the answers to those shortcomings? Can people who think like either Askthepizzaguy or Shodan actually acknowledge that the other is making salient points worthy of being thought upon and digested by the other? Will they always be a staunch Marxist and Capitalist unwaveringly yelling past each other? Or will they fold the other’s points of view into their own to finally make something closer to the truth?
I see your point Shodan that the links provided did not answer your initial question about the number of full time Walmart workers that received subsidies. And taken at face value, when the Walmart spokesman said "“More than 99 percent of our associates earn above minimum wage,” he said. “In fact, the average hourly wage for our associates, both full and part-time, is an average of $11.83 per hour.” That further proved your own point. Thus Askthepizzaguy’s talks about them massaging their statistics to highlight their own message might have fallen on deaf ears, but your own PBS cite shows (me at least, and hopefully you all as well) that statistical/linguistic games that highlight any position (and even more importantly, seeing someone else’s legitimate point) are very useful in opening our minds towards seeing a bigger, more complete, picture that can only help us all.
Interesting; I didn’t know so much childcare was MW. Although I suspect many agitators for increased MW might also favor increased childcare subsidies. Given a choice of the two, I’d likely pick the subsidies, although I’d want to see a good CBA.
More from the guy who enjoys a healthy salary for penning anti-wage articles. Like I said from the beginning of this thread, google “Tim Worstall Forbes Minimum Wage” and the articles are pretty much endless.
Under the title of all his articles it says:
“Tim Worstall, Contributor*
I have opinions about economics, finance and public policy. *
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.”
At first glance, you might think, okay… this guy has an opinion about *lots *of things. The minimum wage is just something that falls under the scope of his expertise, he’s not simply an anti-wage article spammer. Or maybe he simply has a different set of data than you do, so he’s volunteering his time to educate folks, those silly folks who think that the problem of rising costs can at least be kept up with (and thus, rendered insignificant) by a similarly rising wage.
He’s not an economist, as I said. Doesn’t claim to be, neither do I. Not too many of these anti-wage articles that you’ll find on Forbes are written by economists. The reason for that is because, as has been pointed out many times, the minimum wage has increased repeatedly over the course of our history and the sky didn’t fall. So you’d be hard pressed to find an economist who isn’t an obvious fraud panicking over the skyrocketing cost of the (by definition) absolute cheapest fucking labor that you can legally find.
Would there be economic problems if the wage floor suddenly increased to ten times what it is now, out of the blue, pushing it way above current market prices for everything, in an attempt to create vast sums of wealth for the poor? Sure. But no one has ever suggested something like that.
What proponents of a wage floor increase continually point to is purchasing power of that wage. When prices increase, the purchasing power of the dollar decreases, especially as it relates to essentials. If the price of a pack of gum increased to something outrageous, the solution would be simple: Don’t buy gum.
But the working poor don’t get to simply choose not to live somewhere, and don’t get to choose not to have electricity (do you really want slums where there’s no power because no one can afford the utility bill? That’s dangerous. Power isn’t a luxury item), and they don’t get to choose whether or not to get sick or injured and need to see a doctor. They don’t get to choose to buy groceries. They don’t get to choose to require transportation to work (especially since stagnant wages plus rising rents prices them out of walking distance to work).
None of the items I’ve mentioned which the poor spend almost every dollar they earn on are luxuries that can simply be ignored. So when the prices on all of those things increase, there’s a mathematical certainty involved: The poor need to earn more money. So what do they do? They work hard and ask for a promotion and a raise, believing that’s the solution. Except, not everyone on the staff can be the manager.
The corporate ladder is more like a pyramid. There aren’t 10 executives for every 10 workers. The higher up the chain you go, the less positions are available. Even if everyone was an outstanding worker, there’s simply no room at the top for everyone. No one is challenging that aspect of how businesses work. Well, not from my side anyway. But repeatedly we’re told that it’s the cure-all: this is America, all you have to do is work hard and you’ll get ahead. Yeah, one out of 100 of you will. The other 99 people have to eat too, and not all 99 of those remaining people are undeserving of a standard of living which includes food and clothing and a place to stay and access to a doctor.
When the working poor do their part, which is to get a job and work as hard as they can, and they still can’t pay their bills, and they’re not spending their paycheck on frivolities, but necessities, that tells you that the wage floor isn’t keeping up with price increases. It’s a fact of life. It’s what happens when rent goes up, when fuel costs go up, when medical expenses become expensive, when education becomes more costly.
And each time that fact of life has rolled around, the solution has always been the same: give the working poor a raise so massive that the economy collapsed. Or wait, no, that’s not what happened, even though that’s the straw man we keep seeing here. What happened was the wage was adjusted to account for the new reality of the cost of living.
And so we’ve got decades upon decades of economic history demonstrating that the brave new world that the wage floor advocates are trying to create is the status quo.
So when Tim Worstall argues that** no one will buy any apples if they are mandated to be 2 dollars apiece**, you can do this: :smack:
Because that’s exactly what wage advocates want. They want an apple that costs 40 cents to cost 2 dollars, representing a *fivefold *increase. Wage advocates are looking for a minimum wage of thirty-six dollars an hour, you lying twat. They’re not looking to do something normal, like put the price of earning a living closer to the actual *cost *of living, as has been done repeatedly and always to the same effect. The working poor were therefore able to pay their bills.
If instead, Worst All said that the price of apples might go from 40 cents apiece to 45 cents apiece, then we would all rightly look at him and go “yeah? So? What’s your point, blowhard? I didn’t notice when it went from 35 cents to 40 ten years ago, why should I give a shit now?”
That’s the difference between the two arguments. Tim Worst All is being paid to scare people. When the price of apples increases fivefold, the economy will collapse! No one will buy any apples! Obviously, no one will hire anyone anywhere!
Except the number of people earning close to the wage floor continues to increase. So therefore the number of businesses looking to employ people who earn the exact fucking minimum they can possibly pay seems to not be dropping. Huh, that’s odd, businesses which have positions that they NEED to fill, will continue to pay the exact legal minimum that they can get away with, since they have a business model that makes them money either way.
Example of a business that has positions that it needs to fill: Wal-Mart.
Someone has to make sure the customers don’t simply all walk out the front door with the merchandise, and that they have to look someone in the eye and actually pay money for their goods. This is called a cashier.
The automation monster already arrived. You know those scan-the-groceries-yourself lanes? You’ve seen them everywhere. Which lanes are full, the ones with the cashiers, or the scan-it-yourself lanes? There’s hardly ever even an employee on duty to monitor those lanes, because they don’t get used to any large degree. Instead, it’s actually still faster and less of a hassle for an actual human being to zip all your items over the scanner while you bag them. Yep, there aren’t any baggers anymore. The radical technology to replace two people with one person by putting the bags on a wheel that spins around so the cashier can reasonably also bag up everything exists. So the business already found every way to cut a cost that it could. And then it tried the automated lanes where you scan it yourself. And they’re still employing cashiers.
At the end of the day, businesses still need employees. Someone needs to actually be on duty somewhere making sure the business collects money. That’s what these businesses are doing. They’ve already created the model, they’ve already built the stores, they’ve already streamlined the process and computerized and automated everything they can. And if one day the staff at McDonalds slightly downsizes due to the creation of a computer system that customers prefer over a human cashier, or a more automated kitchen, that’s going to happen whether wages increase or not. But at the end of the day, someone still needs to actually exist at the McDonald’s to handle the customer’s money and food, because this is food, not a DVD rental service. (And by the way, Blockbuster went out of business regardless of stagnant wages. Had nothing the fuck at all to do with it. When the business model changes and someone finds something that much more efficient, then it changes, and no amount of depressing wages will stop that from happening.)
But back to my point- they already automated it as much as is humanly possible. They already put in the lanes with no cashiers that get infrequent usage. Somehow, Wal-Mart still employs an army of cashiers. The business model still requires someone, somewhere, to make sure you’re paying for the stuff you bought.
And that business model is enormously profitable.
So when the cashier says hey, 8 dollars an hour doesn’t cover my bills in this fantastic economy where most people want for nothing, and merchants and land owners and hospitals and universities are able to continue raising their prices for things since people have the money and can afford to pay it, well guess what? Some of that shared prosperity belongs to us as well, or we can’t actually afford to keep this job anymore since I can’t afford my vehicle or I can’t afford rent anywhere nearby.
Well, like it or not, Wal-Mart will then go ahead and pay them the nine dollars. Wal-Mart will still make buckets and buckets of money, while the wage-earner will still get pennies from their many dollars.
Wal-Mart would prefer to keep every dollar that passes through their hands, but some of it goes to the cost of doing business. So when the wage earners all go “No, we can’t afford to live on this, give us all a minimum wage increase” Wal-Mart accepts.
It’s because they DON"T get to decide not to purchase the $2 apple, Tim Worst All. You know what happens if they decided to stop paying all their cashiers. That means Wal-Mart loses.
Because it’s insanely profitable to pay someone $9 an hour for them to process $1000 an hour worth of merchandise for you. It makes little fucking difference if you paid them $8 before. Wal-Mart isn’t going to pack up and go home.
Wal-Mart may one day in the future become like Amazon and customers will ring up all their purchases from the comfort of their home and then order takers will collect all the items and have them ready to go. And if that process is somehow more efficient and the cashier and the stock person become the *same *job, then that will happen regardless of wages. If it’s more profitable to do that than to pay 2 employees to do two different jobs, then they’d have done it already.
And the bottom line is, they’d still need the cashier/stock person. Wal-Mart still profits from paying someone pennies to collect dollars for themselves. That model still remains very, very profitable. That person still needs to earn a living wage. That’s a fucking fundamental fact that will never change. Threatening the bleak future of jobs being lost is the biggest red herring, and it is the one employed by the Tim Worst Alls of the world.
Instead of bitching and moaning all the time about Big Minimum Wage keeping down the little guys like the Waltons, and employing deceptive rhetoric and red herrings to try to convince people that they should simply accept the same paycheck as ever while their costs of living increase, how about we cut through all the bullshit and attach the cost of the minimum wage to the costs of living. Specifically, attach it to the cost of rent, commute, food, clothing, utilities, food, education, medicine, and various other minimum and normal expenses that the poor are expected to endure.
Then Wal-Mart can continue collecting thousands of dollars for every dozen it pays out here and there. And, obviously, they can also raise the cost of an apple from 40 cents to 45 cents to offset that cost, rather than quintuple the cost of that apple like a bunch of fucking morons that you apparently think *we *all are.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/economy-budget/288252-raising-the-minimum-wage-doesnt-matter
More and more garbage. From the article:
Thanks for your opinion, but we’ll do just fine with 15 rather than 7. I’d take 10 at this point, it’s better than nothing. Seriously, the guy is arguing that we should reject 15 because it’s not enough. Thanks, concern troll, for all your concern. We’ll manage.
You have a better shot at doing that with more money in your pocket than 7 dollars an hour. Somehow the working poor have made it work with only 7 up until now. The working poor are surprisingly efficient. Well, I’m sure it’s surprising to you, anyway. For the rest of us it’s just called everyday fucking life.
Yep, they’ll raise prices by the equivalent. So if labor doubles, and labor is 25% of their costs, then prices will increase by a quarter, while wages double. Even when prices everywhere increase again (which, they inevitably will, whether wages go up or not) then they’ll ask for another wage increase. In the meantime, they’re ahead of where they were, which is the same as not falling behind.
Believe it or not, being able to pay your bills for the next 10 years until a wage increase is needed again is a legitimate goal for people who can’t pay their bills now.
Here we go.
Gotcha.
Prices continue to go up even when the wage floor stays stagnant, because the economy keeps expanding. If the economy were ***shrinking ***or prices were lowering, then we could talk about lowering the minimum wage. Instead, the reality is, since the side effect of prosperity is rising prices, prices are rising independent of the wage floor, and thus, the wage floor needs to be adjusted.
As to the bottom bolded, you’d be far more persuasive with actual numbers. Since you don’t have any, let me provide my own. I kept some of my paperwork from my managerial days.
In early May of 2015, here were the actual numbers from a typical business day, as pertains to the cost of labor and the sales of the day.
Projected Sales: $5,600 for the day.
Actual Sales: $7,026 for the day.
Variance: $1,426 over forecast.
Scheduled hours (labor) 136 hours
Actual hours (labor) 154 hours
Scheduled cost of labor $719
Actual cost of labor $828
Scheduled Yield = 41
Actual Yield = 46
Weekly COL that week (crew, meaning wage floor people) 15.74%
Total Weekly COL that week (adding in managerial salaries) 23.87%
And there will be some variances. But if we’re talking about our areas of expertise, this is my area, and in my area of expertise, this is a typical day. Forecast is meaningless, we blew out forecast almost daily and routinely staffed up in anticipation thereof. I only kept the paperwork to show my boss the difference between day and night shifts’ labor usage.
What matters are percentages. If you gave everyone on staff (including the management who doesn’t earn anywhere NEAR the minimum wage) a 20% wage increase, what happens?
Actual cost of labor for the crew would go from $828 ------> $994
So on a day where we did approximately $7,000, the crew labor would cost about a grand instead of $828. So, obviously prices would have to go up by 20% right?
No, because we’re adding 20% of the total cost of labor, giving everyone a raise, and cost of labor is only 24%. So what’s 20% of 24%? 4.8
So the cost of the product, in order to maintain the exact amount of dollars the company needs to make the exact same profit as they were before the wage increase, needs to go up by let’s call it five percent.
So, a pizza that costs 10 bucks will now cost $10.50. Meanwhile, the minimum wage earner will endure a 5% increase in prices and enjoy a 20% increase in wages.
Let’s say prices increase across the board. Let’s say everything in their life increases in price by 5%, hell, make it 10 percent or 15 percent if you want. The difference between a 20% increase in wages and a 15% price increase says that you’re still coming out ahead, even after prices rise.
Ahead, so what does that mean? Minimum wage workers will be rich???
No, it just means that they can now afford the $100 price jump in rent that happened to them in the past 10 years.
Seems pretty fucking straightforward to me. But what do I know, I only see both the actual numbers from corporate and also what the budget of a wage floor worker is. I have no idea what I’m talking about. But I bet the writer of this article has some idea about numbers that are relevant to this world today, after all, he used to work in an industry that employed people earning the wage floor back in the 70s. And he’s obviously still very much in the mix of things today. He knows what the situation is on the ground of both a minimum wage oriented business and what the budgets of the working classes are.
“George A. Santino is a retired Microsoft executive and author of Get Back Up: From the Streets to Microsoft Suites. Connect with George onwww.GeorgeASantino.comand on Twitter, @georgeasantino.”
Or he’s another rich fuck spouting off about shit that doesn’t even enter his experience. But he was employed by a wage floor industry in the 70s, so he’s got the knowledge.
That’s why he’s making the *profound *argument that there’s no real difference between 7 and 15, so we’re just wasting our time.
Look, if he were an economist, he’d still be an idiot for suggesting that. And he’s not an economist. So he’s just an idiot with the same expertise that I have, except mine is far more recent and uses actual numbers that pertain to real life.
Next:
Yeah, cashiers are really going the way of the dinosaur. Also didn’t have fuck to do with the wages of the workers, it happened while wages sat there, stagnantly. Already covered this insult to our collective intelligence in the previous post.
It will happen if it’s more profitable and it’s what the customers prefer. Won’t have anything to do with the difference between $828 and $994, or the subsequent 5 percent increase in price which would render that difference fucking moot in the first place.
News flash: Minimum wage jobs continue to exist and will continue to exist forever. I know you’re an old fuck, so this is shouldn’t even be a shocker: the more things change, the more they stay the same. The soda jerk and the bagger and the greeter may go the way of the dinosaur, but it won’t have anything to do with exaggerated minimum wages costing too much- it will have everything to do with businesses finding better and more efficient systems. Meanwhile, they still need to pay someone to collect their billions for them, since they cannot personally operate every cash register.
I feel like I’m explaining basic arithmetic to a monkey.
Let me think. Let’s say you make about $1400 a month working minimum wage, full time, picking up an additional shift here and there, being a good hard worker.
Okay, now add 20% to that. It’s almost $1540 now.
Good, now I can afford that cost of rent increase of $100 per month that I talked about, AND** THE STATUS QUO IS FUCKING MAINTAINED**. No one is getting rich. But here’s the difference: the worker can now afford that rent increase. Before, he could not. And the business has increased prices by 5%.
Five versus 20, which is bigger?
Not a hard question. But we have to make that argument, because someone will make the contrary argument, that 5 is bigger than 20. Or equivalent:
Thanks, concern troll.
Right now I’m only concerned with making sure that the minimum wage worker can afford the normal price increases they endure.
But feel free to talk about how everyone can get promoted to management.
Over and over the argument is made, the only real difference that can be made is that the worker needs to stop earning “entry-level” wages. Uh huh. Oh, I totally agree. It’s just that not every worker can earn management level wages, and non-entry-level wages in these businesses are about 20 or 50 cents higher than the wage floor. That’s your raise, agreed upon by corporate management. Not my raise, I got a bigger raise than that when I got promoted. But hundreds of other people did not get promoted.
Not everyone gets to be a manager, or executive. Forgive the working poor for still caring about those among them who don’t get the promotion, or don’t want it, or have to raise a child and cannot work 60 hours a week in order to get it. They still have bills to pay and rising costs of living.
Status quo is the conservative god, and a minimum wage that follows the cost of living increases is the status quo, no more, no less. It will periodically need to be increased. Why this is even a debate is beyond me, but I still care enough to point out one side is factually challenged and spreading misinformation.
Not a chance. Not for the grand majority of workers.
They need a union to negotiate a higher wage floor, or a wage floor increase on a federal level and state level. And when they get it, the economy won’t collapse, they won’t really enjoy a *higher *standard of living, and businesses will still employ them.
It’s pretty pathetic we’ve gotten to the point where we have to even have a discussion about making sure people who need to earn a wage are guaranteed to earn enough to cover the costs of living anywhere near the location where the wage is being offered. But that’s the state of Forbes magazine and our political debate, where even the status quo is just too much to ask for the poorest people who not only contribute to society, but make it possible for rich assholes like George Santino or Tim Worstall to condescend to the rest of us.
Just a reminder, Wal-Mart wouldn’t do very well if the store manager had to run every cashier shift himself with no help. Having managed a store, I can tell you, a lot less product gets sold when we’re understaffed, and that impacts someone’s bottom line. Not mine, I still showed up so I got paid the same either way. But it pisses off customers and loses potential business that the rich asshole could have otherwise had, which is how they get rich.
The rich seem to be under the impression that they’re all John Galt and the world would grind to a halt without them, forgetting that the rich asshole class isn’t indispensable. If Wal-Mart or Microsoft were to lose one of their executives, or even all of them, you could replace them. Promote from within. The day to day management of the business will continue to be maintained by the army of workers and managers. If you were to instead get rid of the low wage workers, your business stops running. Completely. Call up the few hundred or a thousand executives and have them all run all the Wal-Marts by themselves with no help, see how well they do.
The rich seem to be under the impression that they can simply stop buying the “labor” apple if it gets too expensive, completely forgetting that their business is basically the equivalent of purchasing apples on the cheap and selling them en masse. Buying labor on the cheap and using it to sell products en masse, in a way that enables them to sit in an office and collect the rewards, rather than have to ring it all up themselves.
So when they compare the cost of labor to an overpriced apple “no one wants to buy”, you have to laugh, and ask them how well that will actually go in practice. Ask a manager of any of their stores how well things would go if none of the non-management staff showed up, not only for one day, but every day.
Those jobs *aren’t *charities. They represent a huge money-making business model. So when they threaten to get rid of all the overprices apples, make them prove it. If they could run their business without employees, they would. And they would do so regardless of the price of a wage. Zero is a lot less than whatever they’re paying.
When the president of the company is finally fed up with running a single store and mopping the floor himself, and wants to expand and become a billion-dollar business again, it is only the working class that can raise him up. He *can’t *do it himself. Even “self-made millionaires” who directly employed no one, had to work with businesses who did employ someone. Even if the item in question was invented, designed, and patented all without employees, it was probably manufactured in china, and someone else still shipped it inside the United States, and I guarantee that person wasn’t a rich asshole. And someone still worked at the warehouse. And someone still sold it in a store, or packaged it, or delivered it to the end customer. Someone still earned a wage somewhere along the line, minimum or not.
Meanwhile, if Wal-Mart refuses to increase a wage from 8 to 10, citing “the market sets the prices…” bullshit, even though it has every means of affording it, and it is a legal obligation, then presto: some other business will come along and hire up their workers and gobble up all their customers. Rich Wal-Mart executive doesn’t stand an ice cube’s chance in hell of keeping their rich executive salary under those conditions.
The solution for businesses who piss and moan about not being able to afford periodic, normal, routine, minor cost increases for labor, as it pertains to the cost of living which increases on its own as the economy expands, is to die. And when those sickly businesses die off, better managed ones who can adjust the price by 5% to cover the difference will take their place. And the world will just keep on spinning without them.
Both executive and business alike who can’t adapt to the new normal can find themselves quickly obsolete. Just like the bagger. It’s almost like capitalism works both ways, not just one way. And since unions (or a group of voters) demanding a higher wage minimum is part of capitalism, and all a direct result of prices increasing on their own (the market has spoken: labor needs to keep up with COL) this is economics 101. This is just math, just about anyone with a brain can do it, and a calculator isn’t hard to find if you can’t. But it’s like ancient hieroglyphics to the followers of the John Galt religion.
Workers… demand… higher wages? But that goes against my belief that the lowest wage earner is just a charity case that should be out on the street begging for scraps if not for the magnanimous businessman generously rescuing them out of the kindness of their dear hearts!
Bottom line: Keep religion out of economics.
[QUOTE=Previous post]
Okay, now add 20% to that. It’s almost $1540 now.
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NETA: 1680, actually.
I just became aware of this video of a clearly intoxicated Palin rambling on about minimum wage. Sorry if it’s been posted earlier.
It’s (slightly) fun to watch Sarah Palin when she’s drunk.
However, something stupider than Sarah Palin is a YouTube host like “Secular Humanist” who spends 3 minutes discussing Palin’s 30 seconds of stupidity.
(Not that I waste the 3 minutes. I’ve learned to use YouTube’s slider to skip to the next appearance of the star.)