What you forget Seahawkfan is that now the people at the bottom of the economic level will have an extra dollar per hour of labor to spend and one basic economic fact always holds. Poor people (and if your making minimum wage the label fits) spend a higher percentage of their income than afluent people (as in 100%)
So Jane Schmo working at the little shop of junk at the mall makes an extra buck per hour she will then turn around and spend that extra buck at the crocery store or the mall or to a resturant.
Yes it may effect the supply curve a bit putting an upward presure on the price but as is always forgotten by you supply side weirdo's there is another half to the old supply/demand chart.
My bet is that most goods are already selling at the edge of their acceptable price point. Increasing the price more depresses the demand for the product which reduces volume sold which can actually decrease over all revenue. (its always better to sell 100 widgits at a 10 cent profit than 10 at a 20 cent profit)
Further most business's do not pay minimum wage so it the change will have minimal effects regardless.
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion<br />The Treaty of Tripoli 1797
Think about it... if you raise the price of something, people consume less of it.
Labor is a commodity, just like a gallon of gas or a movie ticket or whatever else you buy. Raise the price of something and people consume less of it.
If you raise the price of it by $1 an hour, employers will consume less of it.
True, those who have minimun wages jobs will make a dollar more an hour, but there's a good chance they will get fewer hours. And a place that uses minimum wage workers will probably hire fewer minimum wage workers, too.
So what seems like a nice gesture really hurts the very people you are trying to help.
Posts: 1807 | Location: West Michigan | Registered: 23 June 2005
Yes, prices will go up to cover the increases of those employees at the bottom, and will be absorbed by those with higher wages, however, I've seen some of the people at the bottom feeding Ramen and other non-nutrious foods, raising their kids in and out of homeless shelters, and unable to get their cars out of inpound. Barely surviving makes it hard to raise a family and help kids with their homework, and stretches the social safety net to breaking. While this superfisally is a reallocation of wealth, it ultimately makes things run more effectively.
"No one ever went broke underestimating the American people."
PT Barnum
Posts: 1148 | Location: Repentant States of America | Registered: 28 November 2003
I've seen some of the people at the bottom feeding Ramen and other non-nutrious foods, raising their kids in and out of homeless shelters, and unable to get their cars out of inpound.
Spare me the bleeding heart sob-story. If a person has not the means to support their children, "barely surviving" as you put it, then they have no business having them. Yes there are unfortunate circumstances that happen to people from time to time but that's why responsible people prepare themselves for setbacks.
If a person over 25 is still making minimum wage, unless they have some sort of handicap, it's their own fault.
It's called personal accountability and responsibility and this country could use a lot more of it.
"Although America has problems, America is not the problem"
Posts: 986 | Location: Humboldt | Registered: 09 November 2005
It's California. Most minimum wage workers are illegal aliens. Arnold is pandering to the Latino voter.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
When are they gonna start pandering to us micro-sized self-employed?
I sure would love to work less, and earn the same... or, better yet, work more, and be able to make what I'm worth--rather than be penalized for it via the 'tax code', etc.
Posts: 5740 | Location: Exile | Registered: 24 March 2003
#!*@ My good friend, nobody is going to pander to you because you're self employed. Achievement should be punished, at least according to what I read here.
quote:
I sure would love to work less, and earn the same... or, better yet, work more, and be able to make what I'm worth--rather than be penalized for it via the 'tax code', etc.
This is my best advice to you Klaus, work for the love of the work. If the work is worth doing, money will find you. Keep your options open. Look for new ideas that excite you. You will never make any money working by the hour, or looking at the work you have to do and thinking of it as hourly. Clock watchers generally lead unhappy lives. Money won't make you happy but it will eliminate lots of stuff that make you unhappy. Hang in there and enjoy yourself.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
I wouldn't be watching the clock if the folks purchasing my work didn't squeeze me into the position of needing to.
I acknowledged to myself waaaay back that money could not make me happy... but, you are correct, it certainly might help disable a lot of crap that bugs me!
What I need are better patrons...
Posts: 5740 | Location: Exile | Registered: 24 March 2003
So tell me all you "personal responcibility" folks, how was a family man supposed to budget in the $400 billion murder for profit scam in Iraq, how does one budget in the cost to Californians the damage done by Enron's embezzellment?
"No one ever went broke underestimating the American people."
PT Barnum
Posts: 1148 | Location: Repentant States of America | Registered: 28 November 2003
I don't think that a private citizen is personally responcible when the oilmen-in-cheif doubles the price of oil in a few years. So kids should be malnourished because the country's in the hands of swindlers? Maybe families that have lived in Minnesota for 130 years should be forced to freeze to death?
"No one ever went broke underestimating the American people."
PT Barnum
Posts: 1148 | Location: Repentant States of America | Registered: 28 November 2003
Even Adam Smith recognized the inequity in negotiating power between labor and capital. (go read up its all online for free)
The basic fact is that employers can easily engage in price fixing for what they will pay in wages, Goverment intervention in labor rates by setting minimum standards levels the playing field and helps to offset some of that power inequity.
So government does have a place in controlling prices. For instance price setting is a perfectly acceptable and needed practice when dealing with monopolies for necesities. It would be unreasonable for say a local power or water company to have no restrictions on the prices it can charge for services since the public has no real choice over whether they use the product or not and minimal choice over how much they consume.
Labor is the most important component of the economy. Unless people work nothing it produced. And unless those same people get compensated for that labor in a form that can sustain them and then some then no one is going to be buying the products that the capitalists want to sell.
Every time the minimum wage is increased we get doom and gloom from the "free-marketeers" and everytime it actually is increased none of these predictions come to fruition and in fact the economy does better.
Because even though there may be an increase in costs there is a cascading increase in demand.
Because, and this is a concept that the "free-marketeers" have a real problem understanding, your employees are also your customers because even if they are not buying your product directly they are buying the products from other companies who buy from others who either buy your product or their employees do.
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion<br />The Treaty of Tripoli 1797
The basic fact is that employers can easily engage in price fixing for what they will pay in wages,
Not so fast. Employers, at least where I live, are screaming for qualified, experienced people and are willing to pay for them. An experienced tradesman can shop around for the best "deal" and employers are constantly trying to entice employees to jump ship and come work for them by offering better packages.
"Although America has problems, America is not the problem"
Posts: 986 | Location: Humboldt | Registered: 09 November 2005
The basic fact is that employers can easily engage in price fixing for what they will pay in wages,
Not so fast. Employers, at least where I live, are screaming for qualified, experienced people and are willing to pay for them. An experienced tradesman can shop around for the best "deal" and employers are constantly trying to entice employees to jump ship and come work for them by offering better packages.
What trade and what are they are willing to pay?
Yes there will always be special cases in the case of highly technical work that requires a great degree of skill and experience.
But those people aren't the ones we're talking about. We're talking about the minimum wage and if that is affecting the situation your talking about I'd say that the employers are not offering enough compensation.
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion<br />The Treaty of Tripoli 1797
There shouldn't BE a minimum wage. The government should not be in the business of fixing prices. The laws of supply and demand will balance it out. With labor, we truly do have the free market at work. I am reminded of a recent story about workers in New Orleans. Burger King and many other joints in NO were offering $6000 signing bonuses to attract workers. Here is one source.
Sometimes it is a buyer's market (employers) and sometimes it is a sellers market (employees). It shifts around depending on the industry, geography and economy. Many on this board who own small businesses would agree that it is tough to find good help that will even work at "minimum wage"....their demands are greater than that.
It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of their labour. Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high price of provisions; sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work. But whether their combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the folly and extravagance of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen. The workmen, accordingly, very seldom derive any advantage from the violence of those tumultuous combinations, which, partly from the interposition of the civil magistrate, partly from the necessity superior steadiness of the masters, partly from the necessity which the greater part of the workmen are under of submitting for the sake of present subsistence, generally end in nothing, but the punishment or ruin of the ringleaders.
Adam Smith An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations 1776
So even the grandfather of modern capitalism understood the basic reality that labor is always at a disadvantage in negotiations over compensation.
This is why we have minimum wage laws it helps to level the playing feild between employers and employees. This is the same reason we have all sorts of labor laws in fact it is the final purpose of all law to enforce uniform minimum levels of behaviour.
As with most things there are no cut and dried absolutes on price controls. Sometimes they are a bad idea and sometimes they are a good idea.
I personally would like to see a max pay scale for CEO's and other executives locking them to a certain percentage above their lowest paid employees. And I'd really like to see the pay of congress critters indexed to the minimum wage.
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion<br />The Treaty of Tripoli 1797
Posted 13 February 2006 15:13 I thought you were a conservative, and therefor support each and every conservative politician in the US without question?
since when do conservatives have to agree with everything conservative politicians say or do or liberals with liberal politicians. dont you think there is middle ground.
Posts: 345 | Location: Colton | Registered: 18 February 2006
A lot of states have higher minimum wages than the federal minimum wage. State's rights used to be a conservative position. I like state's rights, and some state's initiatives, or legislative standards, are models adopted by other states because they work, and work better than federal standards.
Blaise Pascal Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Pensees
Posts: 2917 | Location: Sverige | Registered: 21 June 2005
Incorrect, Ashtaorth. The Cons & NeoCons & their sheople follower have been for decades saying that "it's all the same thing" -- like "with us or against us," eh?
It's the Repugnicans who've been saying that Conservatives are Right.
Every time a Red Sheep bleats in outrage or pain at what it voted for, I will laugh.
And when a broken crap-filled robot is begging on the sidewalk, I will gladly kick its scabby ass into the gutter, spit on it as it lies bleeding, & walk away wishing it heartily, "Enjoy the world you wished on others."
_________________________ "This will not be the last thing that you read about that makes me look ridiculous." -- Rev. Dr. James C. Dobson
Posts: 598 | Location: Santa Fe, NM | Registered: 17 February 2004
Minimum wage hike appears as always to have a nocebo effect on republicans.
quote:
California Considers Minimum Wage Hike
In the Los Angeles Times today, Tom McClintock, a Republican state Senator, says that California shouldn't raise the minimum wage. It will destroy jobs! People will be unemployed! Misery and poverty to follow! Anyone who thinks otherwise has fallen victim to the "smarmy rhetoric of leftist populism," you see:
The truth is that if your labor is worth $6.75 an hour and the minimum wage is raised to $7.75, you simply become unemployable. The first rung of the ladder is gone, and there's no place to start.
That sounds very clever, but here's some more "smarmy rhetoric" to consider. Very rarely, if ever, have modest minimum wage hikes had any sort of effect on employment in the real world. The Economic Policy Institute has written up the state level data for all to see. Employment in Florida actually rose after a dollar hike in the minimum wage last year. Call it magic. Congress boosted the federal minimum in 1990-91 and 1995-96 and no one can recall hordes of "unemployable" people wandering the streets.
quote:
Heather Boushey of CEPR has estimated that, nation-wide, the average minimum-wage worker earns 68 percent of his or her family's income—precisely the sort of person who badly needs help. And that gushing newspaper likely has things right: After the 1995-96 federal increase, 35 percent of the gains went to the poorest 20 percent of the population. Very few policies are half as progressive, and if a few middle-class teenagers get richer as a result, well, what of it? (And given how fast California's tuition fees are rising, most of those teenagers probably need those extra dollars to pay for college.)
Blaise Pascal Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Pensees
Posts: 2917 | Location: Sverige | Registered: 21 June 2005
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