The graph at the top of this article from 2014 does show that during most of the period from about 1965 through 1982, the inflation-adjusted Federal MW was higher than today’s. But not by much. And today’s MW compares well with the average of the past 75 years.
BLS defines it as 35 hours
And if they work 70 hours per week, it isn’t. Everyone understands this.
That you’re even asking this question is…telling. BLS and USCB capture data that allow this distinction. A couple making $35k with ten kids counts as poor. Now, EPI has done apiss poor job before (see their wage/productivity gap study), but I’m not going to accuse them of high school stats student levels of incompetency. If you don’t like the cite, I’d love to read a better one from you. Really.
Did you read the EPI link? It’s only like 150 words.
But for those who ARE in a poor household or who ARE supporting themselves or someone else it would be quite a boost - is there some minimum number of people living in poverty required before anything is done about it?
Your first link states that there are about 1.6 million supporting themselves (or attempting to) on minimum wage. Isn’t that a worthy number of people to help?
If you still don’t want to raise their wages what else should be done to lift these people out of poverty?
The link I quoted states that most poor people eligible to work do, in fact work. 2/3 of them. The rest of the questions I was directing towards you concerned how things like “full time” are defined.
See, it works this way - you make a claim and provide a cite. I read your cite. I am then allowed to ask questions about the site and/or methodology. I am not required to do your homework for you. If you link to a cite then you should be able to answer questions about it.
Although, the fact you declared it to be a garbage cite makes me wonder why you linked to it at all. Couldn’t you find one that isn’t garbage to support your position?
I provided the cite you asked for, which you wouldn’t have needed had you done the barest minimum of research prior to participating in the conversation. If you have a cite that counters it, I’m all ears. If you want to be educated about U.S. demographics, GQ is over there.
In other words, the cite you picked either doesn’t support your position, or does so only weakly, so it’s the reader’s fault. Got it.
Heaven forbid anyone ask questions in Great Debates. :rolleyes:
The above statement doesn’t at all contradict what I said.
And for the half-million or so who lose their jobs, it wouldn’t be much of a boost at all. And the large majority of MW earners are not in a poor household, and are not supporting themselve or others.
In most cases, we don’t need to do anything at all - most MW earners graduate into higher income jobs.
So you want to help them by throwing about a half-million of them out of work, and by giving a raise to the majority of MW earners who aren’t poor in the first place.
Regards,
Shodan
Was that another hypothetical statement that doesn’t apply to the real world?
Regards,
Shodan
Nothing would delight me more this find spring morning than for you to propose a more viable and humane option.
People have and do argue that minimum wages don’t lead to higher unemployment. If you are not one of them then that comment was not directed at you.
People who want to work but are unable to find jobs is always a bad thing. Society loses out on their production. They have to turn to welfare or crime. That is bad for society.
The larger the change the larger the displacement. The optimal displacement and the optimal unemployment rate after adjusting for search friction is zero.
What do adjustments mean? CAFE standards mean that companies have to engineer cars that have different gas mileage. That is a complicated process involving weight, safety, and power tradeoffs. Raising a wage is just a matter of changing a number on a spreadsheet. It could be done in two weeks. What adjustment actually means is changing their business models to use less cheap labor. Yet politicians deny that it means less cheap labor being used, while at the same time crafting the legislation to allow business owners time to adjust. It shows that those who claim that minimum wages do not cost jobs are arguing in bad faith.
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The aim of policy should be helping the most and hurting the least. Trade policy helps the economy as a whole through the law of comparative advantage. Minimum wage increases help some people by hurting other people and do not help the overall economy at all.
I am talking about the proposal to change the national minimum wage to $10/hr. The reasoning behind that number is not economic but entirely political.
If we can acknowledge that small changes mean small effects and big changes make big effects than we know what relatively modest gradual increases mean. They mean modest gradual effects. These effects are poor, vulnerable people being thrown out of their jobs even though people would like to hire them. These poor people are then effectively locked out of the economy. The ideal number of people who are unemployed even though people would like to hire them is zero. The more people are like that the worse it is for the economy as a whole and the worse it is for the country as a whole.
You keep throwing that half-million number around. Do you have a cite for that?
Just speculating here, but this issue just seems to be a way for politicians to claim that they are “fighting income inequality”. But what would it actually accomplish?
Mandating $10 mw would probably cause employers to eliminate the incremental merit-based pay raises that have existed ($15 surely would). Employers will expect one person to do the work of two or three, but the lack of opportunity for pay advancement will actually depress productivity, and there will be even greater competition for better jobs that pay a bit more.
Please see post #41. It is from the Congressional Budget Office, and refers to an increase in MW to $10.10.
Regards,
Shodan
There are laws that specifically undermine the ability to unionize.
Here is a chart showing the inflation adjusted MW since 1940. The peak wage was 1968. You can see that it rose steadily through the prosperous '50s and '60s. I think it would be tough to correlate it with employment. It fell during the Bush years with good employment, but rose just before the boom in the Clinton years.
Universal Basic Income.
Is there some reason you think I should have to answer for your reading comprehension problems?
Then why did you quote me as if you were responding with something relevent to what I said?
Well, not they don’t HAVE to turn to welfare or crime. The vast majority don’t AFAICT. Some lean on savings or spouses, others collect unemployment (which isn’t welfare), some just borrow or figure out how to manage. It goes without saying that people not being able to find jobs is an issue. It doesn’t stand to reason however that society is better off with more people in crappy jobs.
Do you really need this explained to you? Many businesses will manage the increased costs via legislation in many ways. For example, some will raise prices necessitating new menus and/or supplies. Some will invest or borrow to allow existing employees to become more efficient. Some will take other measures to manage the costs. Those things take time because the real world doesn’t exist on a spreadsheet.
But in reality, it actually doesn’t in many cases. See the multiple studies cited in my last link. Yes, it might mean that if the changes are so stark that one has no other choice, but, again, it doesn’t seem $10/hour is prompting those adjustments en masse.
No it doesn’t. You are arguing for one outcome (fewer jobs) of such legislation to the exclusion of the myriad results that have actually been measured when similar policies have been enacted. This is completely independent of whether a policy is crafted to begin immediately. Many, if not most sweeping policies are phased in. I gave you multiple examples of policies that seek to manage good and bad things that have been phased in. That is how these things work because some people cannot. change overnight
Again, that is your opinion and it’s not actually based by much empirical evidence. People against trade policy make the same EXACT bad argument that you are making.
They are not mutually exclusive, nor is something being political de facto evidence of it being bad policy.
But we know it’s not a smooth, linear correlation, so just acknowledging that there are two extremes is meaningless.
So why do multiple studies measuring the actual effect of the minimum wage being increased not bear this out?
I don’t have any such problems. Did you mean what you said, or was it a “hypothetical” with no particular meaning?
They do bear it out - you are merely wrong.
Cite.
Regards,
Shodan
And yet, you once again demonstrate your inability to comprehend what you read. Here is what I said, which you quoted:
Note that I did not say there are no studies which come to different conclusions. As I linked to before, here is an article citing what I said. To quote them:
And now before you respond with your typical snark and disingenuous nonsense, let me further quote the article:
Again, no one is saying minimum wage increases will never cost jobs. What is in question is the reflexive axiomatic notion that that they will always cost a significant number of jobs in the real world. That clearly is not true.