Minimum Rage: The remix

[Loren Pechtel]

Loren

Sorry I did not make myself clearer

Why isn't teen unemployed in the suburbs higher than what it is and equal to teen unemployment in the inner city?

I didn't say it was.

I said teen unemployment is higher than other unemployment even in the suburbs.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Loren

Sorry I did not make myself clearer

Why isn't teen unemployed in the suburbs higher than what it is and equal to teen unemployment in the inner city?

I didn't say it was.

I said teen unemployment is higher than other unemployment even in the suburbs.

Loren

I didn't say you said that. I am asking you about that. Answer please.

 

[Togo]

While local jobs are a factor that doesn't mean minimum wage is not also a factor. There are things like buses, they can take other jobs!

Not necessarily.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/11/unemployment-problem-public-transportation_n_1660344.html

 

[Togo]

This is making the implicit assumption that there are enough jobs to go around.

I really don't see how - can you explain?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This is making the implicit assumption that there are enough jobs to go around.

I really don't see how - can you explain?

The issue is what happens if you eliminate a bad job.

If it's replaced with a good job society benefits.

However, if it's replaced with no job society is harmed.

The reality is that it's often the latter.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

This is making the implicit assumption that there are enough jobs to go around.

I really don't see how - can you explain?

The issue is what happens if you eliminate a bad job.

If it's replaced with a good job society benefits.

However, if it's replaced with no job society is harmed.

The reality is that it's often the latter.

how often?

And why should anyone expect workers to keep accepting worse and worse jobs and not expect employers to provide better working conditions?

 

[maxparrish]

Since the protofascists are against raising the minimum wage, this means they are OK with the current arrangement in which billions of taxpayer dollars are spent providing government services keeping all of these underpaid workers and their families alive.

Ah, but you see, they're not okay with taxes going to these underpaid workers.

They'd like to cut that off, too.

Can't feed your family on 8 bucks an hour? Too fucking bad! In fact I think the protofascists (the new conservolibertarians?) want people at the low end of the income scale to suffer.

Perhaps a reality check will induce a slightly more informed reflection?

The traditional view of minimum wage employment has been as a training opportunity for young adults and teens as well as a supplementary source of income for a member of a family - not as a sole source for a head of family. One half of all minimum wage earners are 24 and younger and 2/3rds of MW earners are in middle income families. Only a quarter are in poor families. Moreover only 4 percent have a single adult raising one or more dependents. And 2/3rds MW wage employees earn more than minimum wage after one year of working. Hence, the traditional concern has been over young and unskilled getting job learning opportunities, especially for black youth (over 50 percent).

In recent years this concern has been muted, as if young, unskilled, and disproportionately growing high teen unemployment is normal - rather, supporters are now lobbing on behalf of older adults and the real (or imagined) families that live on minimum wage jobs. Many believe that low wage jobs should not serve as starting and training work, but long term career and head of family choices partially subsidized by employers.

Indeed, washing dishes as career seems to be the new 'dream act' or 'GI Bill". Perhaps the government can also provide Pell grants for 'dishing washing' certification at 2 year colleges?

 

[Togo]

This is making the implicit assumption that there are enough jobs to go around.

I really don't see how - can you explain?

The issue is what happens if you eliminate a bad job.

If it's replaced with a good job society benefits.

However, if it's replaced with no job society is harmed.

The reality is that it's often the latter.

Not for minimum wage jobs. For the kinds of jobs we're talking about, fast food and retail, demand isn't really that elastic.

-First you're assuming that if the wage rises, then the job will disappear. Since wages for fast food and retail aren't their biggest cost items anyway, that seems unlikely.
-Then you're assuming that, once the job disappears, no one will want to shop for groceries or buy hamburgers. That also seems unlikely. Their market share will go to their rivals.
-You're also ignoring the point that many of these large chains, particularly Wallmarts, are often accused of driving rivals out of business with their low prices. Remove a Wallmarts, and local business can return, and they're a much more labour-intensive industry.
-At the very least, you must recognise that a business that can survive when their employees are subsidised with unemployment benefit, but can not survive when their employees are not receiving unemployment benefit, must have been relying on a state subsidy to stay in business. Given that they are taking market share from rivals, how can that be a good thing?

- - - Updated - - -

The traditional view of minimum wage employment has been as a training opportunity for young adults and teens as well as a supplementary source of income for a member of a family - not as a sole source for a head of family. One half of all minimum wage earners are 24 and younger and 2/3rds of MW earners are in middle income families. Only a quarter are in poor families. Moreover only 4 percent have a single adult raising one or more dependents. And 2/3rds MW wage employees earn more than minimum wage after one year of working. Hence, the traditional concern has been over young and unskilled getting job learning opportunities, especially for black youth (over 50 percent).

Source?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

When the MW goes up, it doesn't just go up for one store. MW goes up for all employers, so any cost will be absorbed or passed on to customers. McDonald's and Burger King will both have to pay higher wages and I doubt if either place will go out of business because of it.

Most "Mom and Pop" businesses pay above MW already. most MW employees work for big chains and they make their money many different ways, not just by paying low wages.

A dime more for a two piece at KFC isn't going to send the economy into a tizzy.

 

[coloradoatheist]

When the MW goes up, it doesn't just go up for one store. MW goes up for all employers, so any cost will be absorbed or passed on to customers. McDonald's and Burger King will both have to pay higher wages and I doubt if either place will go out of business because of it.

Most "Mom and Pop" businesses pay above MW already. most MW employees work for big chains and they make their money many different ways, not just by paying low wages.

A dime more for a two piece at KFC isn't going to send the economy into a tizzy.

I said earlier corporations are usually better at absorbing these costs, but I think you miss all the jobs out there. You are also forgetting the secondary affects too with mw increases. Hours get cut, training gets cut, unpaid overtime amounts increase, and less staff is used. McDonalds was also experimenting with using a call center design for their ordering and I don't think that will be that far down the road.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

When the MW goes up, it doesn't just go up for one store. MW goes up for all employers, so any cost will be absorbed or passed on to customers. McDonald's and Burger King will both have to pay higher wages and I doubt if either place will go out of business because of it.

Most "Mom and Pop" businesses pay above MW already. most MW employees work for big chains and they make their money many different ways, not just by paying low wages.

A dime more for a two piece at KFC isn't going to send the economy into a tizzy.

I said earlier corporations are usually better at absorbing these costs, but I think you miss all the jobs out there. You are also forgetting the secondary affects too with mw increases. Hours get cut, training gets cut, unpaid overtime amounts increase, and less staff is used. McDonalds was also experimenting with using a call center design for their ordering and I don't think that will be that far down the road.

you speak as if stores are giving away hours now like Santa throwing candy canes in a Christmas parade. They don't. So provided demand stays the same or increases, which is likely with more people with more money to spend, hours won't be cut much if at all and there is a distinct possibility they will increase.

 

[coloradoatheist]

When the MW goes up, it doesn't just go up for one store. MW goes up for all employers, so any cost will be absorbed or passed on to customers. McDonald's and Burger King will both have to pay higher wages and I doubt if either place will go out of business because of it.

Most "Mom and Pop" businesses pay above MW already. most MW employees work for big chains and they make their money many different ways, not just by paying low wages.

A dime more for a two piece at KFC isn't going to send the economy into a tizzy.

I said earlier corporations are usually better at absorbing these costs, but I think you miss all the jobs out there. You are also forgetting the secondary affects too with mw increases. Hours get cut, training gets cut, unpaid overtime amounts increase, and less staff is used. McDonalds was also experimenting with using a call center design for their ordering and I don't think that will be that far down the road.

you speak as if stores are giving away hours now like Santa throwing candy canes in a Christmas parade. They don't. So provided demand stays the same or increases, which is likely with more people with more money to spend, hours won't be cut much if at all and there is a distinct possibility they will increase.

All the places do have different hours. They cut people's hours or demand different shift. Your hope is inflation occurs first prior to the increase in the expenses of the store. McDonalds won't go out and have more hamburgers sold, they have to increase prices to offset their increased costs.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/07/al...t-raising-the-minimum-wage-have-fallen-apart/

Here are the ones deployed most frequently.

“It’s a monstrous job-killer”

Big business conservatives crowed when a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that a hike to $10.10 might cost the economy 500,000 jobs – never mind that it would have raised the incomes of around 17 million Americans. But a number of economists disputed the CBO finding. One of them, John Schmitt from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, studied years of research on the question, and found that the “weight of that evidence points to little or no employment response to modest increases in the minimum wage.”

We also have real-world experience with higher minimums. In 1998, the citizens of Washington State voted to raise theirs and then link future increases to the rate of inflation. Today, at $9.32, the Evergreen State has the highest minimum wage in the country – not far from the $10.10 per hour proposed by Barack Obama. At the time it was passed, opponents promised it would kill jobs and ultimately hurt the workers it was designed to help.

But it didn’t turn out that way. This week, Bloomberg’s Victoria Stilwell, Peter Robison and William Selway reported: “In the 15 years that followed… job growth continued at an average 0.8 percent annual pace, 0.3 percentage point above the national rate. Payrolls at Washington’s restaurants and bars, portrayed as particularly vulnerable to higher wage costs, expanded by 21 percent. Poverty has trailed the U.S. level for at least seven years.”

“It will hurt mom-and-pop businesses”

Another argument is that it would disproportionately hurt small businesses – giving the Wal-Marts of the world an unfair advantage over mom and pop. But a poll of 500 small business owners from across the country released on Thursday undermines that talking point. The survey, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for Small Business Majority, found that small business owners support a hike to $10.10 per hour by a 57-43 margin. Eighty-two percent of those surveyed say they already pay their employees more than the minimum and 52 percent agreed that if the wage floor is raised, “people will have a higher percentage of their income to spend on goods and services” and small businesses “will be able to grow and hire new workers.”

“Major costs will be passed along to consumers”

Opponents also claim that higher wages would mean significantly higher prices and that those cost increases would effectively eat up whatever extra earnings low-wage workers ended up taking home. But a 2011 study conducted by Ken Jacobs and Dave Graham-Squire at the UC-Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education and Stephanie Luce at CUNY’s Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies estimated that raising the minimum wage to $12 per hour – two bucks more than what’s currently on the table – would increase the cost of an average shopping trip to Wal-Mart by just 46 cents – or around $12 per year. And another paper published last September by economists Jeannette Wicks Lim and Robert Pollin estimated that a hike to $10.50 an hour would likely result in the price of a Big Mac increasing by only a dime, from $4.50 to $4.60, on average.

If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation since its inception in 1968, it would now stand at $10.74 per hour. With the share of our nation’s output going to workers’ wages at an all-time low — and inequality on the rise — it’s easy to understand why the idea of raising it to $10.10 is so popular. And despite opponents’ dire warnings, there’s really no good reason that we shouldn’t do so.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Not for minimum wage jobs. For the kinds of jobs we're talking about, fast food and retail, demand isn't really that elastic.

Automation. And once you drive companies to replace jobs with automation they won't come back even if you back off on the policies that caused the change in the first place.

-You're also ignoring the point that many of these large chains, particularly Wallmarts, are often accused of driving rivals out of business with their low prices. Remove a Wallmarts, and local business can return, and they're a much more labour-intensive industry.

And people's costs go up.

-At the very least, you must recognise that a business that can survive when their employees are subsidised with unemployment benefit, but can not survive when their employees are not receiving unemployment benefit, must have been relying on a state subsidy to stay in business. Given that they are taking market share from rivals, how can that be a good thing?

This is still making the fundamental assumption that driving out bad jobs makes good jobs available.

The traditional view of minimum wage employment has been as a training opportunity for young adults and teens as well as a supplementary source of income for a member of a family - not as a sole source for a head of family. One half of all minimum wage earners are 24 and younger and 2/3rds of MW earners are in middle income families. Only a quarter are in poor families. Moreover only 4 percent have a single adult raising one or more dependents. And 2/3rds MW wage employees earn more than minimum wage after one year of working. Hence, the traditional concern has been over young and unskilled getting job learning opportunities, especially for black youth (over 50 percent).

Source?

He's describing the usual labor market in America. It's *NOT* accurate now but we shouldn't be making changes that will help now but hurt down the road.

 

[bilby]

Automation. And once you drive companies to replace jobs with automation they won't come back even if you back off on the policies that caused the change in the first place.

-You're also ignoring the point that many of these large chains, particularly Wallmarts, are often accused of driving rivals out of business with their low prices. Remove a Wallmarts, and local business can return, and they're a much more labour-intensive industry.

And people's costs go up.

-At the very least, you must recognise that a business that can survive when their employees are subsidised with unemployment benefit, but can not survive when their employees are not receiving unemployment benefit, must have been relying on a state subsidy to stay in business. Given that they are taking market share from rivals, how can that be a good thing?

This is still making the fundamental assumption that driving out bad jobs makes good jobs available.

The traditional view of minimum wage employment has been as a training opportunity for young adults and teens as well as a supplementary source of income for a member of a family - not as a sole source for a head of family. One half of all minimum wage earners are 24 and younger and 2/3rds of MW earners are in middle income families. Only a quarter are in poor families. Moreover only 4 percent have a single adult raising one or more dependents. And 2/3rds MW wage employees earn more than minimum wage after one year of working. Hence, the traditional concern has been over young and unskilled getting job learning opportunities, especially for black youth (over 50 percent).

Source?

He's describing the usual labor market in America. It's *NOT* accurate now but we shouldn't be making changes that will help now but hurt down the road let reality get in the way of a good argument.[/QUOTE]

FIFY.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

He's describing the usual labor market in America. It's *NOT* accurate now but we shouldn't be making changes that will help now but hurt down the road let reality get in the way of a good argument.

FIFY.

Huh?

I'm saying that we shouldn't make changes to benefit the workers who are currently in junk jobs but which will make it harder for teens to enter the workforce. I believe the latter will do more harm than the benefit of helping the people now. Realistically, a minimum wage hike is very hard to undo.

 

[KeepTalking]

Your hope is inflation occurs first prior to the increase in the expenses of the store. McDonalds won't go out and have more hamburgers sold, they have to increase prices to offset their increased costs.

Inflation has been occurring, and MW has not been keeping up, that is part of the problem. Time to get the MW in line with the inflation that has occurred, and fix it to keep up with the inflation that will occur in the future at the very least.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Your hope is inflation occurs first prior to the increase in the expenses of the store. McDonalds won't go out and have more hamburgers sold, they have to increase prices to offset their increased costs.

Inflation has been occurring, and MW has not been keeping up, that is part of the problem. Time to get the MW in line with the inflation that has occurred, and fix it to keep up with the inflation that will occur in the future at the very least.

Except the minimum wage influences the other and will be a let go, inflate, rehire, back to where they were and repeat. But I am also very curious at the minimum wage what people in the 1950/60s where buying on minimum wage that they can't buy now.

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

He's describing the usual labor market in America. It's *NOT* accurate now but we shouldn't be making changes that will help now but hurt down the road let reality get in the way of a good argument.

FIFY.

Huh?

I'm saying that we shouldn't make changes to benefit the workers who are currently in junk jobs but which will make it harder for teens to enter the workforce. I believe the latter will do more harm than the benefit of helping the people now. Realistically, a minimum wage hike is very hard to undo.

What about the fact that we're asking those teens and others entering the workforce to cover more ground than their parents had to just to escape poverty?

aa

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

All humor aside, yawn.

SUMMARY AND POLICY ADVICE
While low wages contribute to the dire economic straits of many poor and low-income
families, the argument that a higher minimum wage is an effective way to improve their
economic circumstances is not supported by the evidence.

First, a higher minimum wage discourages employers from using the very low-wage,
low-skill workers that minimum wages are intended to help. A large body of evidence
confirms that minimum wages reduce employment among low-wage, low-skill workers.
Second, minimum wages do a bad job of targeting poor and low-income families.
Minimum wage laws mandate high wages for low-wage workers rather than higher
earnings for low-income families. Low-income families need help to overcome poverty.
Research for the US generally fails to find evidence that minimum wages help the poor,
although some subgroups may be helped when minimum wages are combined with a
subsidy program, like a targeted tax credit.

The minimum wage is ineffective at achieving the goal of helping poor and low-income
families. More effective are policies that increase the incentives for members of poor
and low-income families to work.

http://wol.iza.org/articles/employment-effects-of-minimum-wages-1.pdf

I like that. The idea to help low-income families (ie families with low work incomes) to get out of their problem is to work.