Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour? Good or Bad?

Great Debates
61

You think that will occur in isolation and no other reaction will occur ? If so you are quite ill informed of the basic laws of economics.

First if you want more of something, you lower the price. You wish to have less of something you raise the price. A fundamental law of economics.

A minimum wage of $ 15 in most (but not all) states would be more than a 50% increase. This will not happen in isolation and the results will be measurable quickly and the result will be less minimum wage employees. Let’s take flipping burgers as an example. At 1st people will just choose to let employees go so you will have less people flipping burgers.

However other folks will start to come up with machines that will replace an entire classification of workers, like flipping burgers. There are companies right now that are building production prototypes of machines that will make a burger to order.

Perhaps the $15 amount that is advocated here will be the tipping point so burger chains start to order them in a few places. The first ones most likely will break down often, and not work quite right. However the learning curve will bring about better machines and quick. Eventually the cost curve will reach the point when it will be the choice of all burger places to buy the better burger flipper, or what ever it will be called.

So in 7 to 8 years all of a sudden there will be no human burger flippers.

I know it sounds compassionate, but the result will be the opposite of what you intend.

62

I’m not entirely sure that’s true. Many jobs are becoming more un-skilled as the decision making and other skills are automated. The high tech system isn’t there for a skilled worker to run, it’s there to do all the thinking while the worker is there to simply manipulate items like goods and money.

One easy example is the grocery. Used to be that stock boys would look up prices in a book, set the price on their guns and price every item that went on the shelves. Now, there’s no pricing to be done, they just put the stuff on the shelf. They used to be relied upon to accurately price the goods, now they are not.

63

And if you need ten antibiotic pills to save your life, we should shove ten thousand of them down your throat foie gras-style, then you’d be immortal!!!11

Sometimes, a small amount of something can be good, but a large amount can be bad, right? You can drink a quart of water to hydrate yourself. Or you can drink 2 gallons and die.

Does that make sense?

64

In my response I ignored the dollar amount in OP’s title, which seems like a red herring.

Prroposed to Congress was a gradual increase to $10, not $15, and even that modest increase was disallowed by the faction that rises above personal self-interest and promotes moral and economic values beneficial to all . I think it would be more sensical for thread participants to comment on their support for a more feasible increase to $10.

Let’s start with you, davida03801. Do you support a rise to $10 minimum? And what does your expertise on “laws of economics” tell you about the demand elasticity for low-wage labor?

ETA:

:slight_smile:

65

If an entire nation can guarantee a monthly minimum income (Sweden, I think…?) and still survive, surely we can at least consider this.

66

This is literally the least important issue facing our country today. That is why we talk about it nonstop.

If politicians cared about MW (which they don’t), they’d pick a number, tie it to inflation, and forget about it forever. But they’d rather we toss around this old, beaten football than focus on questions that are actually important, and which they might actually have to stick their neck out to answer.

67

Or cashiers. The cashier of yesteryear had to regularly make change in their heads. The cashier of today may have to demonstrate the ability to be considered for the job, but it is a skill they don’t have to use on a regular basis.

But menial labor isn’t alone in being dumbed down like this. I regularly do advanced statistical analysis for my job. All I have to do is write a few lines of code and press a button. What takes me five minutes to do used to take days of painstaking work. The personal computer has allowed numbnuts like myself to call themselves scientists. Thirty years ago, I probably would have been sweeping floors somewhere.

But this doesn’t mean I’m worth less than my “back in the day” counterparts, even though that’s what my paycheck says. I am more productive than my counterparts were because I don’t have to spend hours typing out memos on a typewriter. I am also expected to know more than my predecessors did, because the populace is more educated and expects more out of their civil servants.

68

Shodan’s point is a good one however.

I’m pretty liberal, but from my friends’ point of view I’m a evil free market capitalist (I have lots of liberal friends) and my Facebook feed is full of the point that “these jobs aren’t just being held by high schoolers.” They never were. But when you look at the numbers, statistically speaking, the majority of these jobs are not being held by the head of household/primary wage earner in a family either. The guy who was going along in his good paying corporate job, got laid off five years ago, and now is raising two teenagers in Hoboken on three part time minimum wage jobs (and his wife’s three part time minimum wage jobs) might not be a myth, but its not the mean use case either - but something like that (well, not quite that, I’m exaggerating) is what we are being sold as the rationalization. Raising minimum wage may not be the best way to help families.

69

And this is the real elephant in the room. Very soon, with our without a minimum wage increase, many jobs that are currently not automated will be automated. Drivers, longshoreman, warehouse workers, and yes, even burger flippers, are on the cusp of being replaced by cheaper automation. I give it 20 years. With this on the horizon, I don’t think raising the minimum wage is going to be all that helpful.

But what should we do? <tongue in cheek> The party of no sure doesn’t seem to have any ideas. < ongue in cheek> There was a time conservatives had some ideas (even good ones) on how to deal with these types of social problems, but if the best we can come up with on this board from conservatives is Shodan’s response, I really have to worry.

I am not a business owner, but if I was I sure as hell would not want to pay a worker more than he or she was worth to my business. But if this person cannot live on the wages I pay, they WILL supplement their income with government welfare. My cheap labor will be subsidized by the taxpayers. Should we just cut them off? Or would it be better to force me to pay them enough to avoid payments by the taxpayers?

What should we do with all the unemployed and underemployed people in this country today? Shodan, any ideas?

70

I don’t think it’s the best way – it’s just a way. I think it would help people and make our economy stronger to raise the minimum wage by a small amount.

71

Unskilled labor is fungible these days, there is very little differentiation between one unskilled worker and another especially with the very simplified, highly efficient positions we have created in our franchised service economy. Labor, especially with these types of jobs, is more and more a commodity. This drives down price, no collusion required.

72

I think that generally the minimum wage idea goes about it all wrong. Suppose it takes $10 to have a “living wage.” Bob only has marketable skills worth $8/hr. Without help, Bob is $2/hr short. So in our safety net system, who is responsible for helping Bob?

The minimum wage seems to assume that just because I am a business owner, whether I am fabulously wealthy or about to go bankrupt, I need to be the one to subsidize Bob instead of society as a whole. The second poster in this thread even noted (and others believe it as well) that society is somehow subsidizing me by helping Bob as if I have some sort of duty to pay his expenses.

Where did the idea come from that if someone hires you, that they must pay you $X even if you only offer $X-$Y in value to the business? That cannot help but eliminate a percentage of jobs.

73

IMHO all of this discussion about who would be impacted is a serious distraction. It implies that there are those “deserving” and those “less deserving”, and that “we” are in a position to decide who falls into which category. It is nonsense. A rise in minimum wage would impact - minimum wage workers - full stop (not young or old, or tall or short, or fat or skinny, etc.)

74

I think that everyone is (almost) in agreement that we don’t need an increase in minimum wage for some 16 year old kid who works 15 hours a week for spending money.

That’s another reason why social welfare programs are better designed to help the poor instead of using the minimum wage: the minimum wage benefits the family provider as well as Bill Gates’ teenage son who is working at McDonald’s to learn a life lesson. The second one doesn’t need a legal subsidy.

75

No. The minimum wage debate in the United States notes that a minimum wage hike that would still have left U.S. behind Ireland – with its much lower productivity – even without factoring in Ireland’s social spending (government-paid heath care, etc.) could not pass a Congress controlled by the faction that “rises above personal self-interest and promotes moral and economic values beneficial to all”. Do you think a European-style safety net is possible in today’s America? Is it sensical to bring it up in a debate about near-term U.S. policy?

I agree, as I stated earlier, that if U.S. politics were even moderately sane, jtgain’s position would be valid. But that ship has sailed.

76

But the thing is, this isn’t just about the minimum wage. All wages are set against the minimum wage. The janitor in my building makes minimum wage. The receptionist makes a little above that. And then upwards we go all the way to the agency director…the secretary of natural resources…the governor. The worth of one’s work is ultimately measured against the guy at the very bottom of the totem pole.

Maybe it’s fair to tell this guy, “Sorry, kid, we ain’t gonna support you well enough to have a family. Go to welfare for all that.” But what about the employee who is the team leader of this guy, who makes just a $1.50 an hour more. Should this person not get to have a family either? And why should Very Bottom Guy get to buy steaks with his EBT card, while One Rung Up Guy, who makes just a little too much to qualify for food stamps, eats only ramen? (I know raising the MW won’t make this last problem go away. But it’s still crazy messed-up.)

Whoever said it’s complicated is right on the money! I am in full support of increasing the MW, but I am concerned about what would happen if we increased it by 100%. I was making just a little bit more than $15/hour when I got my post-doc several years ago. I’m as commie-pinko as the next bedwetting liberal, but I’d be seriously pissed off if I’d gone to school for all those years just to make the same salary as a McDonald’s fry cook. What would be the freakin’ point? So if we bump up the wage for the fry cook, we’d have to do the same for bunch of other folks. I could see this potentially being a not-so-great thing…though I certainly wouldn’t say no to a bump in my paycheck.

77

This argument ignores that … costs can vary! And “values” don’t always equal “costs.”

If the price of cheese goes up, you can pass on the added cost to customers (as your competitors will also be forced to do) or try a substitute. If customers want their cheese instead of the substitute, that means it had a higher “value” the whole time.

If all labor costs are forced to rise 10% (and consumer prices rise accordingly), while non-labor producer costs remain constant, and the economy continues to function about as before, does that mean labor was underpriced 10% before? Not really, there is no necessary relationship between prices and abstract value. If this still isn’t clear,
What is the “value” of oxygen?

What is true is, that as technology (e.g. robotics) continues to improve, unemployment will rise. In the long term this represents a very major social and economic problem. What is the solution? The American faction that “rises above personal self-interest and promotes moral and economic values beneficial to all” presumably thinks (if “thinking” is a valid description for them) that starvation will serve to limit the number of the unemployed.

78

I don’t know if $0, $5, $15, or $50/h is the ideal minimum wage. Partially because I don’t know exactly what we are trying to accomplish with it, and if it’s the best way to go about that. But if you are going to have a minimum wage, and if your intent is not to decrease it, then it makes sense to me to index it to inflation.

79

I do not agree at all. Once again you are presupposing to decide who is “deserving” based on how you imagine a worker may be spending their money. That should not be a factor in the discussion, lest we slide down the slope of nitpicking purchases.

80

I don’t know about Shodan, but what I would like to see is

Tie the economy to immigration and work visa’s, once the red light goes on, no more visa’s. The individuals who come in with money, fine. But no HB-1’s and any category that is similar. No loopholes.

Two, add a tariff to imports that come from countries that don’t have wage parity with North America. We dont have a problem with German or Japanese imports, as we have parity. If it comes from Cambodia, Burma, Viet Nam, or China and the workers don’t have wage parity thats indepently audited, slap them with a tarriff.

No reason to support China’s economy anymore, they have had close to ten years, if they have’nt been able to establish a domestic market with their population, screw em.

Yes, we may have to start thinking practically about a BLS (Basic Living Stipend), effectively the easist way to do this, is to wait for a corparation to do something stupid, and then destroy them. BP would have been perfect for this. Sell everything, place profits in a dedicated annuity and wait.

Invite corp’s to invest money in same annuity, with a grandfather clause. After that, let them pillage and rape to their hearts content.

All employee’s Now ,below the age of 40 pay into that same annuity, once the annuity trips 500k, it stops. Basically the idea is to expect that a persons reasonable working age is going to stop at 30. Not that I am advocating kicking people out of jobs at that age, some folks sense of worth is tied to what they are employed at. For some, 500 k may be minimum wage to some folks who can expect millions over their lifespan.

I get at this point in time, that Congress could not organize a circle jerk, that this would make Obama care a walk in the park. But its either now or wait and get a severe political dislocation sometime down the road.

Declan