Consequence of $20 minimum wage for fast food workers?

[barbos]

If forever is 2009.

So? I was talking about USSR.

 

[Bomb#20]

Where you get "Derec's personal characteristics" from is a mystery.

resent:
verb
feel bitterness or indignation at​

On what planet is whether a person feels bitterness or indignation not a personal characteristic of that person?

The use of "should" in this situation is a personal opinion based on one's personal views. Asking why one has those views is not an ad hominmen argument.

Derec didn't make a "should" claim; he said he didn't understand other people's "should" claim.

So Derec was making an ad hominen argument?

No. And where in my argument you got that from "is a mystery."

I must have missed your explanation on why asking why one has a particular view is not an ad hom argument. Would you please repeat it?

Toni didn't ask why Derec "has a particular view". She asked why he resented something. Resentment is not a "view"; it's a hostile feeling. Inferring resentment from simply not understanding what justifies a special privilege is irrational.

Derec wrote "I never understood why fast food workers should have a higher minimum wage than other industries, or why burger flipping and cashiering should get you $20/hour anyway." Clearlyt Toni's comment is directed to the italicized bold-faced part. Which means it is not an ad hominen argument.

I lost you. Are you suggesting that "Derec resents them. Therefore burger flipping and cashiering should get you $20/hour." would be a logical argument? The words "...you seem to resent people earning enough money..." are plainly referencing Derec's personal characteristics rather than the moral and/or economic merits of "burger flipping and cashiering should...". So how the heck do you infer that it's not an ad hominem argument? Show your work.

You're not dumb. My question was only why Derec resented burger flipping and cashiers getting paid $20/hr. I thought that was extremely obvious.

You're not dumb either, so why did you ask a question that presupposes facts not in evidence? Derec didn't indicate he resents burger flipping and cashiers getting paid $20/hr. Quite the reverse -- he directed no bitterness or indignation toward the workers, and he raised no objection to the ones mentioned upthread who got it in Pasadena because that's what the market can bear there, or the ones mentioned upthread who got it in Denmark because McDonald's made a deal with their union. His issue, obviously, was with the government coercion, and with the fact that those who tried to justify the coercion by claiming burger flippers and cashiers should get that level of pay hadn't shown their work. Declining to believe something without evidence is not resentment.

Your claim about the obvious meaning requires lots of reading between the lines of Derec’s posts. In fact, the plain reading of the actual text (the bold faced text) contradicts your interpretation!

How the bejesus are you getting that? I don't understand why being a legacy student should get you a 20% higher chance of getting into a good college. Yeah, I said that. So are you seriously going to tell me "the plain reading of the actual text" is that I resent legacy students? If somebody asks me why I resent legacy students he's trumping up an ad hom against me. I was a legacy student.

 

[ZiprHead]

If forever is 2009.

So? I was talking about USSR.

So was there someplace in the USSR that automated earlier?

The desperation on your part is obvious. You continue to try to portray your shithole country as a bastion of freedom and modernity yet every example you provide turns out to be bullshit.

 

[barbos]

So was there someplace in the USSR that automated earlier?

Yes, everywhere, since at least 1960s, probably earlier.
I am talking about zip code sorting.

 

[ZiprHead]

So was there someplace in the USSR that automated earlier?

Yes, everywhere. since at least 1960s, probably earlier.
I am talking about zip code sorting.

No, you are talking about bullshit.

 

[barbos]

No, you are talking about bullshit.

How so?

 

[Toni]

So was there someplace in the USSR that automated earlier?

Yes, everywhere, since at least 1960s, probably earlier.
I am talking about zip code sorting.

The US started zip codes for mail sorting in 1963.

 

[barbos]

The US started zip codes for mail sorting in 1963.

It was NOT fully automatic.

 

[Bomb#20]

...If you mean address the argument that burger flipping and cashiering should get you $20/hour, I addressed that in post #31.

Did you? You seemed to conclude with a shoulder shrug.

If that's what you call pointing out a reasoning error in the argument I was replying to, whatever. If you'd like to post a better argument than that one for why burger flipping and cashiering should get you $20/hour, I can address it too.

The problem we have is that there is no objective value to work.

If by "we" you mean people who think wages should be based on "the work's value", yes, that's a problem for y'all. For those of us who think they should be based on what people contract for, the nonexistence of objective value isn't a problem. Economists realized "value" is as useful a concept in economics as "qi" is in medicine about a hundred and fifty years ago.

There can be economic levels of viability, but history showed how much can be accomplished without paying for labor with wages at all

And how much that is is a heck of a lot less than can be accomplished with wages.

"The trouble with most of us Southerners," continued Rhett Butler, "is that we either don’t travel enough or we don’t profit enough by our travels.... I have seen many things that you all have not seen. The thousands of immigrants who'd be glad to fight for the Yankees for food and a few dollars, the factories, the foundries, the shipyards, the iron and coal mines -- all the things we haven't got. Why, all we have is cotton and slaves and arrogance."​

and industries making a fortune on slave wages / corporate housing / dreadfully unsafe working conditions. Workers didn't aspire for these positions, it was all there was. Workers only were able to change that by leveraging their labor en masse or after a major disaster that left many killed and public sentiment was against the corporations. Militias were used to stop labor organizing. All because labor has no objective value and the employers wanted to pay as little as possible.

How do you figure? Those conditions are ancient history even though labor still has no objective value and the employers still want to pay as little as possible. So whatever the reason for those conditions was, that can't be it.

(To my mind, the obvious chief reason is the Law of Diminishing Returns. Capital's power relative to labor has declined so much because now there's so much more capital around. But YMMV -- there are a variety of other reasons too.)

Once we get past the point on accepting labor has no objective value, we need to be adults and determine what makes sense.

I think one major obstacle with the discussion is is the United States is currently in the 21st Century with a services based economy and conservatives are stuck mentally in the 20th Century with an industrial based economy, who also think $15 an hour is a lot of money (I haven't made a wage like that or lower in a quarter of a century).

True that. Inflation mucks up people's intuitions.

The question conservatives or "liberals" ask is "Is burger flipping worth $20 an hour?" That isn't the question to ask.

The question to ask is "What employment options are available for all Americans at all class levels/regions? What is the ability for economic mobility within these options? How much poverty isn't too much poverty?"

Yes, those are much better questions.

If the US allows people to work for nothing, the US needs to adapt its social netting to keep people fed.

We do allow people to work for nothing; it's called "volunteering". Lots of charities depend on it to provide their part of that social netting.

If the US forces employers to pay employees 400% their current wages, that will also have consequences that the Government will need to deal with. Obviously we are somewhere between these two points. What average level of pay for labor results in people not needing nearly as much assistance? It is a terribly complicated decision which makes economists like laughing dog needing to pull out their crow spleens and newt eyeballs to perform their voodoo.

Bingo. Diminishing Returns applies to everything. When the minimum wage is low, raising it does a lot of good for many and a little harm to few. But when it's already high, raising it further does less good for fewer and more harm to more. So the optimal level is a hard question that simplistic arguments claiming how much work is worth don't help us figure out.

It just gets tiring to read about "automation" being a reason we need to allow people to work for subpar wages that people are not getting by with.

Automation per se isn't the reason we need to allow people to work for subpar wages that people are not getting by with; the reason we need to allow people to work for subpar wages that people are not getting by with is because they want to.

Why do you think striking coal miners in the 1800s were singing folk songs about how awesome it was to beat up scabs? It was because the scabs wanted to work for those subpar wages that people were not getting by with. What the self-righteous strikers wanted was for those people to have no wages at all -- they felt the scabs really ought to do the decent thing and agree to have no jobs at all, so that there'd be less labor supply -- less competition with the workers who had jobs -- so the employers would have to bid up their wages. Ordering a guy who's broke and unemployed to sit on his ass when he's willing to work, and stay broke and unemployed indefinitely, just so that people a lot better off than him can be even more better off than him than they already are, is cruel and unfair to him. A cruel unfair policy has burden-of-proof -- there needs to be a reason we should screw somebody over like that. Allowing people to do whichever jobs they want, for whoever is willing to hire them, for whatever wage is acceptable to both, is the default reasonable policy, in the absence of a bloody good reason to do otherwise.

Automation only enters into it because that's currently part of why a lot of people want to work for subpar wages that people are not getting by with. In other lines of work or at other times, people want to work for subpar wages that people are not getting by with for other reasons -- low demand for coal, or cheap imports, or too many people who want the same job, or whatever. Which it is doesn't matter; what matters is whether you have a bloody good reason to order people not to do what they want to do. There are always going to be people who want to do what you don't want them to do; and it's always going to be tiresome to read about their reasons when you don't have a bloody good reason to overrule their choices for themselves.

The trouble with complaining about burger flipping is that burger flipping isn't meant to be a full-time job. But if you can't afford to live as a burger flipper for a short period of time, how is someone supposed to work their way up?

Um, find somebody to subsidize part of your expenses, or get a roommate to share costs with? However hard that may be, how does that difficulty compare with if you've been priced out of getting a job as a burger flipper, so you have to find somebody to subsidize all of your expenses, and get a roommate who won't expect you to pay your share of costs? How is someone in that situation supposed to work his way up?

When you go to a restaurant, how many people there do you think shouldn't be making enough to be able to support themselves?

As someone wisely wrote, the question conservatives or "liberals" ask is "Is burger flipping worth $20 an hour?" That isn't the question to ask. What a person working in a restaurant makes enough to do is not a "should" question. The question to ask is "If we order people not to do what they want, what are the costs and what are the benefits?". Then we can ask a "should" question about whether the benefits are so great we should make someone pay the costs.

 

[Toni]

The US started zip codes for mail sorting in 1963.

It was NOT fully automatic.

I’m not certain what you mean by fully automatic.

Prior to adoption of current system in 1963, there had been a local zone code was used in the US from the mid 1940’s.

 

[laughing dog]

Where you get "Derec's personal characteristics" from is a mystery.

resent:
verb
feel bitterness or indignation at​

On what planet is whether a person feels bitterness or indignation not a personal characteristic of that person?

The use of "should" in this situation is a personal opinion based on one's personal views. Asking why one has those views is not an ad hominmen argument.

Derec didn't make a "should" claim; he said he didn't understand other people's "should" claim.

So Derec was making an ad hominen argument?

No. And where in my argument you got that from "is a mystery."

Not when you think about it. If Toni’s failure to understand Detec’s “ should” argument is an ad hom, why isn’t Derec’s failure to understand a “ should” an ad hom?

Toni didn't ask why Derec "has a particular view". She asked why he resented something. Resentment is not a "view"; it's a hostile feeling. Inferring resentment from simply not understanding what justifies a special privilege is irrational.

oh noes, a pedantry trumps argument!!!

 

[Bomb#20]

Where you get "Derec's personal characteristics" from is a mystery.

resent:
verb
feel bitterness or indignation at​

On what planet is whether a person feels bitterness or indignation not a personal characteristic of that person?

The use of "should" in this situation is a personal opinion based on one's personal views. Asking why one has those views is not an ad hominmen argument.

Derec didn't make a "should" claim; he said he didn't understand other people's "should" claim.

So Derec was making an ad hominen argument?

No. And where in my argument you got that from "is a mystery."

Not when you think about it. If Toni’s failure to understand Detec’s “ should” argument is an ad hom, why isn’t Derec’s failure to understand a “ should” an ad hom?

* You people who say burger flipping and cashiering should get you $20/hour seem to resent the competing workers who are offering to do it for $15/hr earning enough money at their jobs to be able to afford anything whatsoever. Can you explain that, please?

Oh, wait, no he didn't. If Derec had said that, it would have been an ad hominem. See how it works? It wasn't Toni’s failure to understand Detec’s "should" argument that was an ad hom; it was her imputation to him of hostility toward an outgroup and her have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife-yet challenge to him. This is not rocket science.

 

[laughing dog]

Where you get "Derec's personal characteristics" from is a mystery.

resent:​

verb​

feel bitterness or indignation at​

On what planet is whether a person feels bitterness or indignation not a personal characteristic of that person?

The use of "should" in this situation is a personal opinion based on one's personal views. Asking why one has those views is not an ad hominmen argument.

Derec didn't make a "should" claim; he said he didn't understand other people's "should" claim.

So Derec was making an ad hominen argument?

No. And where in my argument you got that from "is a mystery."

Not when you think about it. If Toni’s failure to understand Detec’s “ should” argument is an ad hom, why isn’t Derec’s failure to understand a “ should” an ad hom?

* You people who say burger flipping and cashiering should get you $20/hour seem to resent the competing workers who are offering to do it for $15/hr earning enough money at their jobs to be able to afford anything whatsoever. Can you explain that, please?

Oh, wait, no he didn't. If Derec had said that, it would have been an ad hominem. See how it works? It wasn't Toni’s failure to understand Detec’s "should" argument that was an ad hom; it was her imputation to him of hostility toward an outgroup and her have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife-yet challenge to him.

You can try to spin it all you like. As any reader can see, all it gets is dizzy arguments .

This is not rocket science.

No one said it was. I agree it is not difficult, but that leaves unexplained your persistence confusion.

 

[Derec]

What makes you think there is little training?

Because the job requires no prior qualifications and the training is a few days. What do you think "little training" means?

This is a McDonald's burger oven, cooking numerous differant meals at the same time.

Is that supposed to impress me? Or suggest that the job is more complex or requires more training than it does?

After the burgers are cooked, they then have to be assembled into a sandwich and packaged for sale. Doing so many different orders, all at the same time, standing on your feet all day long..

"Standing on your feet all day long" does not affect how much skill or training a job takes.
But yes, it can be a tough job physically. Does it mean they should have a higher minimum wage than other jobs? Why?

 

[Derec]

That would happen no matter the wage.

Automation costs money. In initial costs as well as ongoing costs to keep it up. And it usually provides a worse customer experience than interacting with humans. So there is a tradeoff. Labor costs being too high due to government fiat makes automation more attractive.

Has the minimum wage in Atlanta increased so you can blame the kiosk use on that?

No, in this case it was due to the market price of labor. Now imagine if the government mandates paying significantly more than the market rate. It would shift equilibrium toward more kiosks and fewer employees.

 

[Derec]

Why American workers haven't risen up and destroyed their oppressors continues to baffle me.
Any Australian workplace that tried to tell workers that they must continue working if they get a workplace injury, would be in serious legal trouble.

Zipr is exaggerating for effect. We have things like OSHA here.

 

[Derec]

I did not know the answer and so I had to google. If you ask more questions from the answer I give, I'd have to google again. Not sure why you are asking me...

Because it is the discussion forum. Do you agree with the law including the provision to pay fast food workers more than others? Why or why not?

 

[Derec]

Liability. For most purposes the robot would be the superior choice but that's not how it's done so they could be sued if someone didn't stop. While I agree that safety regulations are written in blood they shouldn't automatically ratchet when something comes along and changes the picture.

I guess that is possible. US is infamously friendly to silly lawsuits (but that is a matter for another thread).
However, if there is a liability issue with temporary traffic lights, why not with permanent ones? We don't have one of these at every intersection instead of traffic lights.

 

[Derec]

It just gets tiring to read about "automation" being a reason we need to allow people to work for subpar wages that people are not getting by with. The trouble with complaining about burger flipping is that burger flipping isn't meant to be a full-time job. But if you can't afford to live as a burger flipper for a short period of time, how is someone supposed to work their way up?

Fast food was traditionally a work a lot of high school did. That's because it doesn't require even a high school diploma. Teenagers usually live at home and are not expected to live off the fast food pay. At the same time, it teaches them about working before they start their first "real" job.

 

[Derec]

Surely a Big Mac there must cost a king’s ransom?

It turns out that some right-wingers claimed this but it was debunked.

Maybe not a "king's ransom", but according to this prices in Denmark are higher than in most of Europe.
Although Switzerland and Iceland are the highest.

Maybe they've automated all the McDonald's there with robots and AI???

I am sure they have made use of automation. I wonder how many employees they have per restaurant.