I doubt anyone here is going to be able to prove that Halliburton is charging more then another company in the market would have. In fact, I think asking that question doesn’t really make sense: When you only consider a single source for a service, there is no market.
Card and Krueger’s study, the basis for the claims of your cite, has been discredited.
[url=“http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/illusion.htm”]
Secretary Reich relied heavily on the conclusions of the Card/Kreuger study, and as such, those conclusions regarding the lack of detrimental effects of an increase in the minimum wage, were wrong.
I think the Dems need follow the Pubbie playbook and develop two programs – a well thought out, logical, effective program, much like the one I proposed, that they can post to their websites and put out position papers on, and a program strictly for TV and radio broadcasts, consisting of inane soundbites. Doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not, so long as it’s very simple and is emotionally appealing. Something along the lines of “I want to bring the economic recovery to EVERY American!” or “No American who’s willing to work hard will be left behind!”
The gucks who get all their news from radio and TV soundbites will either never hear of the written program, or if they do, they won’t understand it. Dems pick up votes on both fronts.
This is how it works, sad but true. It’s a layered approach with a stratum for each intellectual capacity.
Bush, of course, has one-size-fits-all, but he’s captured the dumbass market, and that’s enough to win.
No, not necessarily. He also has a considerable portion of the upper class vote, since his policies so much favor the prosperous. Happily, he does not garner all of that vote, there is some portion of humanity the sees beyond their own avarice and self-indulgence. What precisely that portion is, I wish I knew.
What he has a lock on, or had a lock on, can best be described as the sentimental patriot vote, people for whom emotional imagery is strongest. These people are not necessarily unintelligent, its merely that their intelligence is not the directive capacity, as it were.
After 9/11, when The Leader came into his Destiny, a great many people who were otherwise rather luke-warm towards GeeDubya formed an attachment (his numbers weren’t all that hot, if you can remember history from before The Day…) Emotions ran high, to say the least, and he garnered a massive amount of approval by doing bold, leaderlike stuff: walking around, hugging firefighters, delivering platitudes, the sort of scripted behavior that everybody expects in those situations.
(Want to be considered a Leader of Men? Wait for a truly hideous thing to happen, and do exactly what’s expected of you. Look deep, furrow your brow a lot, say a lot of determined and forceful sounding stuff. Never fails. Barney Fife could have done almost as well.)
To some degree, this has worn off, as the Emperors stark nekkidness becomes more apparent. But it takes a long time, even without professional care and nurturing, which he’s got, in spades.
But the excitement is over now, and all you can hear is the flutter of wings, as the chickens come home to roost.
Not true. From the Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper #150, “Employment and the Minimum Wage: Evidence from Recent State Labor Market Trends,” by Jeff Chapman, http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/briefingpapers_bp150:
You do. With cites and stats.
I know you’ve been told this before, and I’m a nobody and saying it again will do no good for you, who are already lost; but in case any new folks are out there reading I’d like to point out that this is totally fatuous and inane (if not actually a “lie”).
Nobody makes and keeps money (through any non-violent means) without a structured civil society, which, you guessed it, costs a lot of money to maintain. Those who have the most are obviously benefiting the most, and should therefore… wait for it… give the most to keep maintaining said civil society.
Let’s all stop paying taxes, and we’ll see how long it is before the slaves murder you and take everything you own. That “rich” person would have nothing without a very expensive social and infrastructure apparatus. Really–it’s a juvenile conceit, can we please get past it and have a real debate?
How do you do that? (I would assume you’re talking about something entirely different than minimum wage hikes and health care reform.)
See post #46.
Bunk. These two authors, along with one other economist, are the ONLY RESEARCHERS ever to reach this conclusion… and on suspect data:
Here is comment rebutting that study in detail, a peer-reviewed published study that finds the opposite conclusion - higher minimum wage increases unemployment:
And here:
The Effects of the Minimum Wage on Teenage Employment
And all over the place:
From Here
Sheesh. This one’s not even close.
Well said, well said.
To many people out there, the Dems are like a dented can at the supermarket. No matter how low you price it, no matter how little botulism you say is within, they ain’t gonna buy it. Hell, it could be truffles in spring water, but they are instead going to buy the GOPs grade C peas in the nice, new can with the RW&B label and the endorsement, “By appointment to His Majesty, Jesus H. Christ.”
To further the analogy (it’s lame, but bear with me a sec), the dent in the can is the Dems dreary, beige secularism. People don’t want that shit! They really don’t.
The GOP smiles big, waves the flag, and salutes Lord Jesus. America the Great and marriage is atween a man and a womun!
Ask children whether they’d like an two-egg omellete with truffles and a side of steamed white asparagas or a chopped-pork-ass hotdog and a frosted cupcake. No contest!
Not that the Dems are actually truffles (more like mushy hearts of palm), but Kiddie Corp America will always have the cupcake, and the GOP is having a bake sale.
Is your point that there should be no minimum wage at all?
If so, BS. I’ll argue the point with you if that’s what you really believe, however.
If you’re point is that a sufficiently high MW will do more harm than good, no one is going to argue with that. The question, then, is what that number is. Nobody can know for certain.
I can’t believe some of the libertarian droning going on this thread. Wah wah wah, heard that all before. The US is already a socialist country by the standards of the past, and it’s time that people faced up to that fact. And one other fact: every major economy in the world is now socialist by the standards of the past (say, 1930). The chief reason being that you can’t run a large, modern state (Singapore is not large!) without significant wealth redistribution and government programs, inasmuch as the “market” sufficies not as a mechanism to preserve the environment and provide people a minimally acceptable lifestyle at individual or collective low tides.
But the bar for socialism keeps moving. Whatever the US actually becomes, the righties define it as “capitalist,” concede (though not openly) that the battles heretofore fought are lost, and spend their energy beating up on the next program coming down the pike (Hillarycare, etc.), lest the US become “socialist.”
I worked in the drug industry. In 2000 a consultant gave a presentation, and one fact contained therein is that, through Medicare, Medicaid, veterans programs, and a myriad of other programs, the US fedgov already provides the health insurance of about 45% of the country. That’s socialism.
All that works in the same way that “capitalism” worked before it was even called “capitalism.” And if it doesn’t work, be done with it. A lot of it is trial and error. But the rightie market fundamentalism to be observed in this thread is just childish BS.
Bricker, the first cite you linked (“Think Tank Wars and the Minimum Wage,” by Doug Bandow, from the Liberty Haven website) is dated April 1999. The second, from the American Economic Review, is dated December 2000. Neither of them “rebuts” the study Jeff Chapman cites in his briefing paper for the Economic Policy Institute (not to be confused with the Employment Policies Institute, to which Bandow refers) – which is dated May 11, 2004. Read before you post.
OTOH, America today is anything but “socialist” by the standards of America in, say, 1965. LBJ (not a socialist by any means, until you compare him with Clinton, Kerry, etc.) must be spinning in his grave.
The Democrats used to be better for the working poor; nowadays, they’re too busy trying to be Republican Lite™ to do an effective job at it.
Yes.
No.
OK.
Yes.
No.
It is possible to determine what the “correct” wage is at any level. The correct wage at any level is whatever people are willing to work for in a free market. Any MW over that level involves costs, usually hidden or denied costs.
Economics involves decisions. All such decisions, without exception, involve both costs and benefits. There are no economic decisions that involve only benefits. Raising the minimum wage also involves costs and benefits.
Please understand that this is not a moral question. The market is completely amoral - not immoral, amoral. It is like the law of gravity. It operates whether you want it to or not. Sometimes you want it to work, and it does. Sometimes you don’t, and it still does.
The market is like that.
Regards,
Shodan
Precisely so. The “free market” is amoral. Hence, the free market system favors an amoral system, favors placing people in the thrall of an amoral “system”. The distinction you wish to make between “immoral” and “amoral” is sheer sophistry. Any system that values property above humanity is repugnant, it is slavery with lipstick.
The proper order is thus: people possess property. The reverse is anathema.
I don’t follow. Can you clarify how an amoral system necessarily places people in thrall to it? Seems to me that the system just “is” and we use it.
People posses property. I agree with that.
They may freely exchange their property for other property.
Now you come along and want to force me to part with more of my property than I wish to.
That’s the part I don’t cotton to.