missouri passes state law forcing cities to lower their minimum wage

[KeepTalking]

It isn't ever open ended, that's why those $1,000 minimum wage arguments your side comes up with are ridiculous. Take this thread, for example, the minimum wage target is $10/hr, nothing open ended about it. The Ontario and Seattle threads set the amount at $15/hr, once again, not open ended. We sometimes talk about tying the MW to inflation, or making it a living wage, but neither of these are open ended either, they have targets of whatever the current inflationary rate, or prevailing living wage, is.

If only someone could just explain why a $1000 minimum wage is ridiculous but a $15 minimum wage causes no harm to anyone.

When did I say a $15 minimum wage causes no harm to anyone? Will you never let go of your precious strawmen?

 

[dismal]

Like, what problems? What side effects?

I have not taken the position that a "$15 minimum wage is ridiculous" nor that "a $0 minimum wage causes harm to no one".

Yes you have and it doesn't matter. Nobody argued for a 1k minimum wage but it didn't stop you from bringing it up, so answer the question.

I seriously wonder how you make it in life.

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If only someone could just explain why a $1000 minimum wage is ridiculous but a $15 minimum wage causes no harm to anyone.

When did I say a $15 minimum wage causes no harm to anyone? Will you never let go of your precious strawmen?

OK, who does it harm?

 

[KeepTalking]

If only someone could just explain why a $1000 minimum wage is ridiculous but a $15 minimum wage causes no harm to anyone.

When did I say a $15 minimum wage causes no harm to anyone? Will you never let go of your precious strawmen?

OK, who does it harm?

Fewer people than it helps.

 

[PyramidHead]

Raising the minimum wage is a net benefit when the effect of putting more money into the hands of consumers (who then spend it on goods and services as well as basic necessities to keep them alive) is not outweighed by the financial burden it places on companies who employ minimum wage workers. If the burden is too great, then employers can't reasonably absorb or recover the costs, and this may lead to fewer people being employed, and thus fewer consumers with disposable income. The sweet spot is the highest minimum wage that the majority of companies can bear before ensuing cuts to labor or price increases negate the stimulative effect. It's probably safe to say that $1000 is way past this sweet spot. $15 is not obviously past it, and the only way to know for sure is to try and see what happens.

 

[laughing dog]

Yes you have and it doesn't matter. Nobody argued for a 1k minimum wage but it didn't stop you from bringing it up, so answer the question.

I seriously wonder how you make it in life.

You do realize that reflects more about you than it does anyone else.

More importantly, until you can explain the relevance of a $1,000 per hour minimum wage or even a $15 per hour minimum wage in a thread about rescinding a $10 per hour minimum wage in the real world, why should anyone take your questions seriously?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I have not taken the position that a "$15 minimum wage is ridiculous" nor that "a $0 minimum wage causes harm to no one".

Yes you did. Earlier in this thread you stated:

What is an altruistic (or even reasonable) argument for lowering the minimum wage? Who is helped? And would you at least agree that the people working there are going to be hurt?

aa

Consenting adults who would like to offer/accept a job that the government has banned are helped.

And in the other thread you wrote:

I'm curious LordKiran, is there an amount of payment people know when that their food isn't being spit in and what is that dollar amount?

Well obviously it's higher than the current minimum wage which is why no one eats at restaurants.

So you have variously asserted that
1) A $0 minimum wage is beneficent to some
2) A raise in the minimum wage ($15 in the other thread) is helpful to no one.

So now you are being asked
1) Do you believe there is no harm at all in a $0 minimum?
2) Do you believe there is no benefit at all in raising the minimum?
3) Is there a point between $0 and $1000 that would balance the harm and benefit to meet society's needs?

 

[dismal]

So you have variously asserted that
1) A $0 minimum wage is beneficent to some

Yes.

2) A raise in the minimum wage ($15 in the other thread) is helpful to no one.

No.

1) Do you believe there is no harm at all in a $0 minimum?

Versus what?

2) Do you believe there is no benefit at all in raising the minimum?

Some win, some lose, society is generally worse off.

3) Is there a point between $0 and $1000 that would balance the harm and benefit to meet society's needs?

Yes, if you include the $0 as part of the range.

 

[SimpleDon]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...4b0da2c7324d725?2oi&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

After St. Louis leaders raised the wage floor for workers within city limits, the state GOP recently passed what’s known as a statewide “preemption” law, forbidding localities from taking such matters into their own hands. On Friday, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R) said he would let the law go into effect, thereby barring cities and counties from setting a minimum wage higher than the state level.

For low-wage earners in St. Louis itself, the new law will have a startling consequence: It will actually push the minimum wage back down, from the city-approved $10 per hour to the state-approved $7.70. The downgrade is slated to take effect on Aug. 28.

my two thoughts on this:
firstly while the liberal empathetic side of me recognizes this is pretty shitty for the people living in missouri, the cynical humanity-hating side of me thinks "well that's what you get for living in fucking missouri" and also it's interesting to me on a social experiment level to get to see moments like this where GOP ideology is put into practice and watching the entire thing implode on itself (the way kansas did, for example).

secondly, i'm waiting with bated breath for the resident regressive brigade to show up on this one, because it gives me the chuckles to watch their cognitive dissonance trying to figure out how to reconcile their need to pretend to be holier than thou about how much they hate big government intervention, with the erection it gives them to see government mandates fuck over the poor and minorities.

Just the rumor that Atlanta was considering raising the minimum wage in the city was enough to get our legislature of otherwise local control loving conservatives to pass a similar law in Georgia, with a speed and an efficiency normally reserved for laws expanding the places that people can carry concealed guns.

 

[Elixir]

Seems the proponents of an excessively inflated minimum wage place their self-interest in appearing self-righteous and morally superior over the harm of lost jobs and more difficulty for unskilled workers to enter the job market. If an employer offers a job at a certain wage and a potential employee accepts that offer - why would you interfere with that? Anyway, http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/progressive-business-owner-living-wage-law-arithmetic-doesnt-work

As opposed to a non-excessively inflated minimum wage? Do you even English, broh?

No need to be rude - just ask what a non-excessively inflated minimum wage would be.

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Yes, if you include the $0 as part of the range.

Would you like a job?

 

[dismal]

Yes, if you include the $0 as part of the range.

Would you like a job?

What's it pay?

 

[Elixir]

Would you like a job?

What's it pay?

More than a reasonable minimum wage (on your scale of course).
Actually, we offer starting pay for non-salary positions at 1½ - 2½ times current minimum, depending on skills.
Got any?

 

[dismal]

What's it pay?

More than a reasonable minimum wage (on your scale of course).

The minimum wage or lack thereof is entirely irrelevant here as I currently have a job that pays vastly more.

If you want me to consent to work for you you're going to have to throw out some big dollars.

 

[Elixir]

More than a reasonable minimum wage (on your scale of course).

The minimum wage or lack thereof is entirely irrelevant here as I currently have a job that pays vastly more.

If you want me to consent to work for you you're going to have to throw out some big dollars.

Sounds like you want a salaried position?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Tell me, why not take those pay raises and other forms of compensation away from management and using the funds to instead give a needed payraise to the companies' employees? Even a 1$ per hour pay raise across the board would be far more useful to the minimum wage employees than a six figure raise is to a group of executives and is more stimulating to the economy as a whole. So why are the already well off and prosperous given priority over those in dire need and why are you still trying to make excuses for that? If they have money to give themselves pay raises, they have money to give everyone else one too. Quit making excuses for corporate inequitability.

Once again, you show how out of touch with the world you are.

Try looking at CEO salaries spread across the company instead. You'll be nowhere near $1/hr.

A quick Google of the left's most hated company, Walmart, shows that if you spread the CEO pay over all the employees it wouldn't even amount to a penny an hour. (Although the data I found on hours worked was marginal.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So, you can think of no possible harm that can come from raising the minimum wage? Even to $1000/hr?

How did you get that from any of what I wrote? I'm saying wages should be treated like any other expense. Just because a company decides to invest in a bunch of new equipment doesn't mean there is no possible harm in spending too much money on equipment. But that fact does not mean that any increase in equipment expenses will thus be harmful. You keep trying to catch people with your reductio nonsense, but this is just another version of the Laffer curve. One side says we're already over the edge, the other says we're not. There is no deeper disagreement at play than this; some people think the minimum wage is already at the point where raising it will be bad, some people think that point is further away and some benefits can be gained by raising it from where it currently stands. I happen to think that the working poor could stand to have some more money and that it would be good for us all if they did, because I don't think we are as near to the point of harming the economy with wage increases as some do. If I thought we were nearer to it, I might be singing a different tune.

The problem is your side simply assumes that companies can absorb the costs without passing them on. It's just as much an article of faith as the GOP's defense of the Laffer curve.

He keeps proposing an extreme value to show the problem with your position, I point out that it's yet another manifestation of your hidden assumption that there is an infinite pool of profit to fund whatever you want. (If the pool weren't infinite the question of whether something was too big would be an issue. Since you refuse to even check I can only conclude you consider it infinite, or that you flunked basic mathematics.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What they want is redistribution from the wealthy to the poor.

Never mind the reality that those making above minimum wage do so because they have skills that employers will pay for, and thus will be able to demand a higher wage that eats up the gains made through raising the minimum wage.

The only lasting effect will be an inflation tax on people's monetary assets. Never mind that that only applies to those with dollar-denominated assets--mostly the middle class. (The rich mostly have their money in things or stock.)

As it stands, the distribution of wealth being transfered from the poor (inadequate incomes) and the middle class to the pockets of the very rich, unlike physics, a powerful flow upwards, but a mere trickle, more like a drip, downwards. An economic system designed by the rich and powerful to benefit the rich and powerful by exploiting cheap labour (amongst other things, tax breaks, loop holes, etc).

The force is the transfer from those who spend everything to those who save.

Those who save tend to rise on the economic scale, those who spend tend to get knocked down when bad things happen. (The savers weather the bad events much better.) The transfer from poor to rich is a consequence, not a cause.

Look at Israel--at it's founding there was little wealth. About as close to the utopia you're after as the world has ever seen. Oops--the transfer from spender to saver still happened. Now Israel has a wealth distribution similar to the rest of the western world.

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It's not ridiculous hyperbole, but rather a standard means of disproving something: Identify something that meets the stated criteria yet is obviously wrong.

What we hear again and again from the left is that the economy will be better with a higher minimum wage. This is open-ended, so we take it to an extreme that obviously doesn't work.

It isn't ever open ended, that's why those $1,000 minimum wage arguments your side comes up with are ridiculous. Take this thread, for example, the minimum wage target is $10/hr, nothing open ended about it. The Ontario and Seattle threads set the amount at $15/hr, once again, not open ended. We sometimes talk about tying the MW to inflation, or making it a living wage, but neither of these are open ended either, they have targets of whatever the current inflationary rate, or prevailing living wage, is.

You say it's not open ended but you will not acknowledge that there is a point where it turns bad, other than pretending it's far beyond the current numbers.

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If only someone could just explain why a $1000 minimum wage is ridiculous but a $15 minimum wage causes no harm to anyone.

Because a $1000 minimum wage would cause more problems than it solves. Depending on the location, $15 is just about on the threshhold of "helpful" by raising incomes to a degree that the rise in earnings just slightly outweighs the loss in work hours. In fact, giving workers more free time to reinvest in education and their families is a net gain too, so even if the reduction in labor perfectly balances with the rise in wages, it would still be a win. At $17 or $20, the side effects become more extreme and outweigh the benefits, so that would be considered excessive.

Your turn now: perhaps you could explain why a $15 minimum wage is ridiculous but a $0 minimum wage causes no harm to anyone.

Ass-like numbers detected.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Let's step back a little and see if we can get agreement on these six statements.

Some people are helped by a $0 minimum wage.
Some people are hurt by a $0 minimum wage.
Some people are helped by a $10 minimum wage.
Some people are hurt by a $10 minimum wage.
Some people are helped by a $20 minimum wage.
Some people are hurt by a $20 minimum wage.

After we get agreement on those six statements, we can discuss who is helped and who is hurt by each wage level.

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

Let's step back a little and see if we can get agreement on these six statements.

Some people are helped by a $0 minimum wage.
Some people are hurt by a $0 minimum wage.
Some people are helped by a $10 minimum wage.
Some people are hurt by a $10 minimum wage.
Some people are helped by a $20 minimum wage.
Some people are hurt by a $20 minimum wage.

After we get agreement on those six statements, we can discuss who is helped and who is hurt by each wage level.

Actually, fuck you. You were the one who implored the left to try to understand the right wing/libertarian position. Why don't you explain (finally) why those in Missouri helped by a move from $10 MW to $7.50 outweigh those hurt by it? - other than you're just being an asshole about it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[DBT]

As it stands, the distribution of wealth being transfered from the poor (inadequate incomes) and the middle class to the pockets of the very rich, unlike physics, a powerful flow upwards, but a mere trickle, more like a drip, downwards. An economic system designed by the rich and powerful to benefit the rich and powerful by exploiting cheap labour (amongst other things, tax breaks, loop holes, etc).

The force is the transfer from those who spend everything to those who save.

Nope. Its the pay rate that make the difference. It being relatively easier ( a monumental understatement) to get by on a salary package of five million per annum with bonuses, save money, buy property, invest in business, etc, than for someone who earns twenty thousand a year with no bonuses or benefits.

It's all about income. Which is not to say that there aren't bad money managers at every pay scale, but that's not the point.

 

[dismal]

The minimum wage or lack thereof is entirely irrelevant here as I currently have a job that pays vastly more.

If you want me to consent to work for you you're going to have to throw out some big dollars.

Sounds like you want a salaried position?

Make me an offer. You keep dancing around.