Yes, all other things being equal, raising the MW will cause some job losses.
Cite. As Ramira points out, all other things are not going to be equal. Very few workers in the US make minimum wage, and about half of those who do are not supporting a family or themselves. The effects, both positive and negative, are going to be minimal, therefore, and difficult to detect amid the general rise or fall of the economy overall.
Regards,
Shodan
This is a warning for using racial slurs. Do not do this again on this message board.
[/moderating]
Lower wages.
Is that specific enough!
And the fact that very few people make minimum wage for long sort of implies that minimum wage is only needed for a marginal few and for political reasons.
…and as I explained, this is completely meaningless if according to you the “good” can mean anything even if it’s something that isn’t measurable in an economic system.
As I pointed out, this would mean it would be more ‘rational’ for a pyromaniac who gets high off of burning money to burn $1 million dollars instead of invest it, if he achieved more satisfaction from the former than the later.
So in other words, it can just mean anything you want and there’s no way of distinguishing ‘rational’ from ‘irrational’.
Not at all, credible ideas can be explained in complex terms, but also summarized concisely, like the law of thermodynamics.
“Ideas” which can’t be explained in intelligible terms are a good sign that the idea is just hokus pokus and just relying on the use of ‘big words’ to conceal it’s rubbish, like this for example:
[quote]
The jargon of the economics, like the jargon of the biological sciences has a specific basis.
…fail. Was already explained to you anyway that social sciences like economics are not the same as natural sciences, or conform to the standards
Anyone is immediately suspect as a con man, or just an ignorant person.
I’ve read books by actual economists much smarter than you who are able to word things in ways easy to understand and elaborate, since you aren’t able to do so it’s clear that your ideas are hogwash, and that you’re intentionally making the language unintelligible just so you can fall back on “you just don’t understand” as a cop out.
Many cults such as Scientology use similar methods of peddling their snake oil.
Again that’s meaningless, because ‘rational and irrational’ aren’t automatically the same as ‘moral and immoral’.
But if ‘rational’ can mean anything you want, such as burning money being more rational than investing it if the person is a pyromaniac who enjoys burning things, then there’s no way to measure or test its validity.
Hence unlike evolution, it’s not ‘science’ because it’s totally untestable, therefore being much more similar to young earth creationism.
Wow, you’re more ignorant than I thought.
No one said “immoral” - I said that if ‘rational’ can mean anything one wants it to, then the theory is meaningless hogwash, since you can’t distinguish between ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ choices, therefore there’s no way to test whether the theory is true or not, since doing so would require some way of identifying what makes a choice rational.
So the entire theory is based on blind faith acceptance of something which by definition has no way of being proven or disproven, hence creationism.
The fact that different people value different things doesn’t mean that economics is not a science.
“Rational” in this context means “does it follow logically from the premise”. If a pyromaniac values burning money over investing it, then it is rational for him to burn rather than invest. Most people aren’t pyromaniacs, therefore they would invest or spend the money. Because they value spending or investment over pyromania.
It would be irrational for most people to burn money instead of investing it. That explains why most people don’t burn money.
But you can even measure it if it is based on something you don’t value. Peter Pyro burns $1M, but he invests if the amount is $1M +1. Therefore, we know that he values burning money at exactly $1M.
Most of the discussion around MW increases (to drag the subject back to the OP by its ears) is driven by two things.
[ol][li]People who value one good over another. I.e. better that the majority of MW workers get a raise even if it decreases MW employment by 500,000 jobs. And[/li][li]People who believe that neither good is forgone by a MW increase. That is why people claim that MW increases will have no effect on employment, or will even increase it. [/ol]Case #1 I guess we have to agree to disagree. Case #2 is trickier - economics is a social science, and it is harder to isolate the factors so that you can tease out the effects of a MW hike from the effects of a rising or falling economy. [/li]
[quote]
Not at all, credible ideas can be explained in complex terms, but also summarized concisely, like the law of thermodynamics.
Or maybe one side or the other isn’t listening.
This is just the genetic fallacy writ large.
Thomas Sowell and the authors of Freakonomics have written about economics in ways that are understandable by laymen. Check them out.
That’s what Ramira is saying - don’t confuse moral/immoral with rational/irrational. Economics deals with rational vs. irrational. Moral/immoral is philosophy and religion.
Good-bye.
Regards,
Shodan
octopus: You mischaracterize the tautological definition that you are trying to appeal to. An object’s worth is not “what someone pays for it” but “what someone is willing to pay for it.”
k9bfriender indicates a willingness to pay up to double the current rate for labor, and thus that labor’s worth is, in fact, around twice what is being paid.
However, “what someone says they are willing to pay” is not always the same as what they actually will pay for it.
There are various surveys that ask about aspects of taxpayer funded health care, and also how much people say they are willing to pay in tax increases to cover them. The amount they are willing to pay is rarely close to the actual amount.
How much they are willing to have someone else pay is a different matter.
Regards,
Shodan
You mean as you asserted in a series of statements demonstrating you do not understand the concept.
Shodan has well replied to this.
For your continuation of your unfortunate obsession with clinging to decided ignorance:
The use of the technical jargon in a discipline is not a statement that the ideas can not be explained in the ‘ordinary’ language, but develop in specialist disciplines for the precision among the specialists. Your statement continues a non-sequitur of aggressive refusal of improved understanding.
It is worth saying that this is … very boring as a complete failure to understand the actual point of the usage of specific terminology
You mean you made a string of assertions, in a response where you failed to understand that my comment made zero direct comparison between the hard sciences to the economics with the respect to the specialized language using meanings not the same as the ordinary language. This holds true for all of the specialized disciplines and is really not one thing to do with “science”.
Your ‘explanations’ were nothing more than rant like straw men that in no way responded to this core observation about the use of the languagge.
It is unfortunate.
Perhaps you have, although it is evident the effort was not a successful one since you continue to make assertions showing no grasp of the concepts and began this conversation in fundamental errors.
Since I am not an Anglophone I am sure native Anglophone economists can be clearer, but it seems clear that whatever the faults of my English, this is not the first barrier to you in understanding the economics.
It is sad to see such an aggressive assertion of the pure anti-learning but as this thread here tells me, this is a sterile engagement.
Indeed, it is such a person’s preference, they get more of the utility from such destruction than not.
and of course it is the aggregate of the majority of the non pyromaniacs that make the economy.
If the large numbers of humans were the pyromaniacs, it can be said that the economy would not work very nicely for the objectives of the wealth creation, but the economic exchange would remain.
The good example.
[QUOTE]
Most of the discussion around MW increases (to drag the subject back to the OP by its ears) is driven by two things.
[ol][li]People who value one good over another. I.e. better that the majority of MW workers get a raise even if it decreases MW employment by 500,000 jobs. And[/li][li]People who believe that neither good is forgone by a MW increase. That is why people claim that MW increases will have no effect on employment, or will even increase it. [/ol]Case #1 I guess we have to agree to disagree. Case #2 is trickier - economics is a social science, and it is harder to isolate the factors so that you can tease out the effects of a MW hike from the effects of a rising or falling economy. [/li][/QUOTE]
And it is studying a dynamic system, thus the simplifications to build the basis first of the static analysis and then some approaches to dynamic models.
The second point is perhaps more well understood from the view that there can be the valid view that there can be market mechanism breakdown in the labor market where there is potential for the market power… a very discussable situation not at all clear but needs to be acknowledged as a potential real world situation.
I am afraid he has already ranted against the second.
.
We can say that the Moral/immoral is also perhaps the realm of the politics and the policy choices.
There is also the prescriptive economics but I am the fan of the empiricism.
Nope. Willingness to pay is meaningless. Pricing is established by the act of trading. Not some unrealized hypothetical.
That would mean that many commodities have no price, no worth, and no value.
No one has ever bought or paid for Yellowstone National Park. So it has zero value.
My sister’s house has no value. (Can we persuade the tax assessor of this?)
Wrong. They have estimated values. They don’t have a known value.
These aren’t difficult concepts. If for example your sister’s house sells that what the value is at that moment. The value of commodity approaches an equilibrium but relatively unique things are negotiated for until an agreement is made and that’s the value to those people at that time.
Since time also has a subjective value in most transactions we usually accept a price if it looks reasonable enough. That’s a multi-variable judgement. If you don’t value your time that much you can find markets where you can haggle or bid. People are seeking truth and precision in a subject that doesn’t operate with intrinsic value in any alternative unit other than it’s own. I.e. a pear is only intrinsically valuable as it’s properties of being a pear. Any other ratio of units /pear, pear/, apple/pear, wives/pears must be realized by trade. And yes commodity a/commodity b does approach a set value at a given time in a given locale if the volume of trade is high enough. For heaven’s sake man if things had known and accurate intrinsic value why would anyone trade stock?
Ok, but what I was wondering was whether anyone was using this as their argument against MW. It seems not really.
But anyway, there’s plenty of data to show that no, in fact, increasing MW doesn’t increase unemployment.
For example, there’s the finding that states that raised the MW had faster job creation (cite).
And then there’s all the research cited here, which yes is an advocacy page but still it’s a pretty comprehensive set of research.
I’ve already linked to the study from the Congressional Budget Office, which is not an advocacy group.
As the cite says -
From here
And here
And
Regards,
Shodan
The cite was actually a long list of independent research suggesting no correlation (and indeed an inverse correlation) between MW and the unemployment rate. I could have cut and pasted the links here but thought I’d be open about where I found them.
Yes, I understand that. My point was that [ul][li]Very few workers in the US earn MW so the effects are going to be difficult to detect []the effects tend to be drowned out by a rising economy, making them even harder to detect []The researchers, especially amid the advocacy groups, are talking about relatively smaller increases in the MW, not a 39% bump.[/ul]The CBO is supposed to be non-partisan, and they project a loss of jobs in the half million range, for a 39% increase in MW. [/li]
Regards,
Shodan
Then k9bfriender was not wrong in estimating his employees being worth about twice what he’s paying them.
After cost of materials upkeep, taxes markting etc. a widget nets a profit of $2.00
Worker A produces 20 widgets and hour, but is very shy and doesn’t know the widget market and so meekly accepts $8.00 an hour. The Boss gladly rakes in a net profit of $32.00
Worker B produces 10 widgets an hour but hires a negotiator who convinces the boss to pay him $16.00 an hour. The boss still seeing a net profit of $4.00 accepts.
Obviously worker B is twice as valuable to the employer as worker A as indicated by the fact that he is paid twice as much.
OK, but so what?
The government raises MW to $30 an hour. Who keeps his job? If worker B is twice as valuable, he would stay. I don’t think it will work out that way.
Regards,
Shodan
Oh, I didn’t know that we were talking about a raise of MW to $30.
I would say such a thing would be foolish, and I would chastise anyone who suggested it. I am sure that someone suggested it in this thread for you to bring it up, otherwise you are just being entirely disingenuous and trying to sidetrack the debate with irrelevant non-sequiturs.
Now, can we talk about what happens if MW gets raised to $10-$12 an hour?
In Buck’s scenario, the boss loses out on 4 an hour from his better worker, but still makes a pretty good profit.