Minimum Wage

[Derec]

I forgot to include business degrees into the list of useless, made for scamming degrees.

Not necessarily, but you should take it at your local state school. Much cheaper and probably worth much more than the for-profit fly-by-night schools.

 

[Bomb#20]

I'll just address the part of your post that WASN'T a load of horse<expletive deleted>:

You have written a spot-on description of yourself and your entire approach to this discussion:

"Actually, evidence suggests that individuals debating doesn't sway people's opinions the majority of the time. Opinions seem to be based more on the sum of a person's experiences and the interplay of those experiences with their cultural preferences and prejudices. It is very uncommon for people to change their voting habits and political leanings purely because of discussions or debates; quite the contrary, especially for conservatives, debates tend to push people to entrench themselves even more strongly in their preconceived beliefs and become even more skeptical -- sometimes to the point of hostility -- to counter-arguments."​

https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...st-do-you-actually-prefer&p=452376#post452376

You have no substantive reason to believe the things you've written about me and my posts. You're simply reacting to a counter-argument you don't know how to refute by becoming hostile and entrenching yourself even more strongly in preconceived beliefs that are based on your cultural preferences and prejudices.

In an actual subsidy to an employer, say, in the Dairy Export Incentive Program, the money winds up in the hands of the employer, not in the hands of somebody else.

In context, we're talking about a subsidy for an employer to offset the cost of a living wage. This hypothetical subsidy is being compared to the real subsidy to workers in the former of welfare programs.

Calling money the company doesn't get to keep a "subsidy for an employer" over and over doesn't make it one.

The Dairy Export Incentive Program is not a logically valid example in this context, since it does not specifically provide subsidies to companies on the condition that they provide a living wage for their employees.

That's why the DEIP is a subsidy to the company. What is it you think you mean by "not a logically valid example"? You mean it's not the same kind of thing as what you and KT are talking about? That's my point. A subsidy to the company is not the same kind of thing as what you're talking about, and that's because you aren't talking about a subsidy to the company. You're talking about a book-keeping fiction.

KT's point, in the context of the discussion with Loren Pechtel, is that the subsidies for poor workers is equivalent to a subsidy for the company, since the only way the company is able to sustain low wages -- and resulting higher-than-otherwise profit margins -- is because the government is helping to make up the difference for employees who otherwise couldn't sustain that level of pay for any length of time.

In the first place, that's not the argument KT made to me. Even if what you say were a correct argument, it wouldn't change the fact that the argument he made to me was unsound and I proved it was unsound.

In the second place, your argument's premise that wages lower than the so-called "living wage" are unsustainable is thoroughly refuted by history. If your premise were true, then in the centuries before welfare became available to low-pay workers, employers would have had to have been paying the inflation adjusted equivalent of $15/hr (or whatever you currently define "living wage" as) for unskilled labor. They typically weren't. They weren't even paying the equivalent of today's minimum wage -- the point of which after all was to bring wages up.

And in the third place, you haven't offered any reason we should assume "unsustainable" implies "subsidy".

In my industry, we design a chip and then we manufacture thousands of copies of it. Some of the chips come out according to plan; but inevitably, some of them come out even better than planned and some of them come out not as well as intended. Suppose a chip is designed to run at 2 GHz. Trouble is, we don't have a manufacturing process reliable or predictable enough to make ten thousand chips that all run at 2 GHz. A lot of them run at around 2 GHz, but some of them run at 2.3 GHz and some of them only run at 1.7 GHz. We get chips with a range of quality, and then we sell them. The odd thing is, for some inscrutable reason, we find that customers aren't willing to pay as much for a 1.7 GHz processor as they'll pay for a 2 GHz processor. Go figure. But on the plus side, a lot of customers will pay extra for a 2.3 GHz processor. Let's say it costs us $10 million to make ten thousand chips. If all went according to plan we'd sell ten thousand 2 GHz chips for $11 million and clear $1 million profit. But when 3,000 chips only run at 1.7 GHz and a customer will only pay $500 for one of those, we're down to $9.2 million in revenue. Fortunately, we also have 3,000 chips running at 2.3 GHz, and we can sell those for $1500 apiece, so we're up to $10.4 million, back in the black. But if we consider in isolation just the process of making 3,000 1.7 GHz chips for $3 million and selling those for $1.5 million, that process is not sustainable.

So do you figure this means the people paying $1100 for 2GHz chips, or paying $1500 for 2.3 GHz chips, are subsidizing the buyers of the $500 1.7 GHz chips? Do you think it would make sense for them to protest, and tell the manufacturer it's unfair for other buyers to pay only $500 for a chip that costs it $1000 to make, because it forces the high-end buyers to subsidize the low-end buyers? Should the high-end buyers refuse to buy chips at all until the manufacturer agrees to charge $1000 for the 1.7 GHz chips? And then when the low-end buyers predictably point out that for $1000 a chip they'd bloody well better get at least 1.95 GHZ, what do you figure the manufacturer should do with all those 1.7 GHz chips? Throw them out? Put them on a shelf and take it on faith that eventually somebody will be willing to pay $1000 for them? That is the reasoning you are applying when you jump from the premise of unsustainability to the conclusion of subsidy.

 

[barbos]

$68k is completely ridiculous for a Bachelor's. Or did she get an MBA as well?
Is Carthage one of those for-profit universities that is advertised on TV with socks?
A bit weird to name your school after a city state that was utterly destroyed. I guess crossing the Alps with elephants to take the war to the Romans is cool, but still.

Carthage Is fine and not destroyed yet.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

That makes more sense.

Is DeVry that expensive?

Around $5,000 per semester, last time I checked. Community colleges and publicly funded vocational schools are cheaper, but not by much.

Sounds affordable for middle class.

Less so for the working class, which is what *I* was talking about. For some of those families, their kids will be leaving college with debts that will take them the rest of their lives to pay off and with interest rates they'll wind up paying two to three times what they already borrowed.

Only if they go to study english literature, social studies and .... law (at some not top 10 school).

Uh... yeah... my wife came out of Carthage with $68,000 in student loan debt for a Business Degree. I still have $19,000 left for a bachelor's in computer science from UIC. It's going to take each of us a little over 25 years to pay off the rest of those debts, assuming they don't jack up our interest rates a third time.

I forgot to include business degrees into the list of useless, made for scamming degrees.

Yeah... everyone I know who makes anything like a decent middle class wage has a business degree or a marketing degree or both. I was passed over for promotion three times in favor of hilariously unqualified candidates because I didn't have a business degree and they did.

So... what the fuck are you talking about?

So it's jst coincidence that Trump was elected?

Actually the turning point for me was the big redistricting push back in 2014 and 2016. It was pretty clear that politicians in both parties thought there was way too much democracy going on and were conspiring together to redraw the maps to render their opponents' supporters irrelevant.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You have written a spot-on description of yourself and your entire approach to this discussion

Cool story, bro.

In the first place, that's not the argument KT made to me.

He didn't make any argument TO YOU. You jumped into a conversation that didn't involve you and then failed to grasp the context that gave the argument meaning. When called on your misunderstanding, you deflected and attacked the structure of the argument rather than the substance of it (which you are still doing, hence the rambling long-winded horseshit that is the rest of your post). Because it's obvious to everyone that you are not actually ABLE to argue against the substance of the argument, your responses are weak and irrelevant.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

$68k is completely ridiculous for a Bachelor's. Or did she get an MBA as well?
Is Carthage one of those for-profit universities that is advertised on TV with socks?
A bit weird to name your school after a city state that was utterly destroyed. I guess crossing the Alps with elephants to take the war to the Romans is cool, but still.

Carthage Is fine and not destroyed yet.

Wrong Carthage.

https://www.carthage.edu/

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Just to throw this out there, because it is being overlooked, and not taking an active side with this comment.

Many many years ago I worked at Wendy's. It was my very first job, I was only 16. The manager told me the pay would be $0.50 cents over minimum wage as part of how Wendy's is supposed to be a better establishment than the competitors.

Yes, about 1% of the population works minimum wage. There are above minimum wages jobs that are actively tied to minimum wage. Had minimum wage gone up, the wage at Wendy's would also have gone up. I don't know if it is still the policy at that particular establishment, but that is still the policy of many companies around the US.

 

[ZiprHead]

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/o49vXLoamXE[/YOUTUBE]

 

[barbos]

Carthage Is fine and not destroyed yet.

Wrong Carthage.

https://www.carthage.edu/

Your Carthage was named after my Carthage.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/wynne-minimum-wage-1.4473156

Early effects of Ontario's minimum wage sudden increase and other sudden labour reforms are now coming in. Here we have owners of Tim Horton's donut shops cutting benefits, breaks, etc to make up for the loss. I also saw the first automated cashiers at my local drug store. And I didn't even have the option to use a human cashier. Will be interesting to see what else develops here.

 

[ZiprHead]

Nothing in there said THs had to do those things, just that they did.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

More on the Tim's Developing Story. It started with 2 franchise owners. It has grown to a large group of them. The Head Office (and franchise grantor) refuses to increases prices, which are set as uniform across all franchises, and speaks against these "rogue owners". Of course the minimum wage hike will effect different owners in different areas differently because they have differing economies. Downtown Toronto isn't hit as hard as remote areas in the far north where both income and cost of living are less and more employees are on minimum wage.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tims-timhortons-minimumwage-wynne-liberals-ontario-1.4474836

The Great White North Franchisee Association, which says it speaks for a number of Canadian Tim Hortons franchise owners, has said it is facing a massive increase in labour costs and says it has cut costs because their parent company, RBI, has refused to raise prices.

In the statement responding today, RBI said: "While our restaurant owners, like all small business owners, have found this sudden transition challenging, we are committed to helping them work through these changes. However, Tim Hortons team members should never be used to further an agenda or be treated as just an 'expense.' This is completely unacceptable."

Tim's is obviously concerned about its PR due to the treatment of workers in some of its franchisees' coffee shops, but also resistant to raising prices, so its easy to argue that it's complicit. The Wynne Government likewise admonishes the rogue restaurant owners and calls them bullies, but it is she who failed to index the increase with inflation as promised and brought it in not slowly over the past 10 years, but very rapidly over the next 2 (in two stages, the first and sharpest starting now).

Its an interesting 3 way dance developing here. Should I get a cup at Tim's on my drive home? An irony is that Tim's coffee is a fraction of the price of places like Starbucks. Why can't Tim's raise the prices a little? Will customers stop coming?