Ontario raising minimum wage to $15

[ZiprHead]

In practice when wages go down the demand goes up.

Not necessarily. When wages go down, consumers have less money to purchase labor output. No need for more labor. Employers don't hire people just because they can get people at a good price. They have to have a need to be filled.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Otherwise you can encourage others who are running or who are already members to adopt your causes. You can apply all sorts of public pressure on them. It isn't rocket science in a democracy, or even quasi-democracy like the USA.

Did I not make this clear to you already? The MAJORITY of Americans favor a public option or universal healthcare. The majority of American DOCTORS favor this. The American Cancer Society, the CDC, some of the top experts in the entire field have all strongly and loudly endorsed universal healthcare.

Yet the number of legislators who have openly SPOKEN about universal healthcare -- let alone had the balls to introduce a bill to push for it -- stands at single-digit numbers. We do not really have a government that is responsive to political pressure in favor of social programs.

In fact, our government is responsive to exactly two things:
1) Money
2) Things that affect them personally

So the only real way to achieve universal healthcare is to bribe the U.S. congress more effectively and more often than the insurance companies do, or blackmail enough of them to get them to cough up a yes vote despite the bribes.

That is simply how our political process works. We don't like it any more than you do.

The only hope you have, for UBI, for minimum wage increase, for universal single payer health care, or for any other cause you want enacted is to push for it and apply pressure for it.

Go down to Mexico City and tell someone who just had his car towed that his only hope for getting his car back is to start a mass movement of all the people in the city to boycott city services, shut down the highways, protest in the streets and vote all the corrupt enabling politicians out of office until police corruption is a thing of the past.

Then get frustrated when he tells you "Yeah, fuck that, I'll just pay the bribe."

The U.S.A. used to be a country of can-do attitude.

For rich white people, yes. For literally EVERYONE ELSE it was the "fuck you" capital of the world. That hasn't changed THAT much in the last fifty years.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

In practice when wages go down the demand goes up.

Incorrect. In practice, the demand for labor is connected with the income of the CUSTOMERS, not the workers. Customers having more income means the demand for labor is higher; if the customers depend on wages for their income, then rising wages actually increase demand.

Hiring decisions are always based on need, not affordability. This is so, because in almost every case the expense of hiring new workers can be mitigated by adjusting compensation rates and hours worked, while the need for workers cannot be mitigated without hiring new ones.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

So, you can swallow your condescension until the results of your undefined pilot project come in.

The point isn't what country is better. There are true progressive in both countries. The point is that some of us are pushing for progress and others like you and Eddie are standing against it by supporting the milktoast "Liberals" like Hillary Clinton instead of true progressives like Bernie Sanders and brushing UBI and other such programs aside with defeatism and "no we can't".

Either join us for actual progress or get out of the way.

 

[laughing dog]

The point isn't what country is better. There are true progressive in both countries. The point is that some of us are pushing for progress and others like you and Eddie are standing against it by supporting the milktoast "Liberals" like Hillary Clinton instead of true progressives like Bernie Sanders and brushing UBI and other such programs aside with defeatism and "no we can't".

What are you babbling about? I never said "no we can't". The reality in the USA right now is that UBI is not going to happen soon - and that is with people pushing for it. As I pointed out, the USA has had more UBI pilots than Canada on this.

Either join us for actual progress or get out of the way.

You simply cannot help but ooze arrogance and condescension.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Really - you are capable of accurate interpersonal comparisons of value?

This is basic human nature.

1) Look at what happens to the people. The blue guy ends up with a bit more. The yellow guy ends up with nothing--can't even get food. Which change has a bigger impact on the person???

2) Money is a proxy for time. Look at the US minimum wage worker. $1 represents 8.2 minutes of work (not counting taxes). Now, lets consider an electrician (the highest paying trade I can find in a quick search), $25/hr (median). Said $1 is only 2.4 minutes of work to him. Isn't it obvious that the former values the $ more?

Furthermore, yellow workers tend to become blue workers in time--but if you kick the yellow workers out they have no chance of becoming blue.

Why do you assume that any reductions are in jobs versus hours worked?

Because in the long run that's how it's going to work. You're trying to wave your magic wand and pretend nobody gets appreciably hurt but that's not reality. Even if the boss starts out by cutting hours instead of layoffs at some point somebody is going to leave--and at that point is the boss going to hire a replacement when they can simply increase the hours of their current staff?

In the past the yellow workers were black and people quite rightly rose up and objected. Now, though, you want to abuse a group.

How do you come up with such straw men?

In other words, yet another point that you aren't willing to address.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In practice when wages go down the demand goes up.

Not necessarily. When wages go down, consumers have less money to purchase labor output. No need for more labor. Employers don't hire people just because they can get people at a good price. They have to have a need to be filled.

The problem here is that you are assuming a company does only one thing. No company actually does. Lets take a look at the Ngik Regrub business (Burger King backwards because they absolutely don't do it your way.) They have one product, a hamburger. Sure looks like a company that does only one thing, doesn't it? Nope:

1) Take orders. The more profit they make per burger the more they will care about not losing any sales and thus the higher the cashier to customer ratio will be. (This is easy to see in action, just compare a place like Nordstrom with something like Sears--you'll find it very easy to find a salesperson in the former.)

2) Cleanliness. Once again, they don't want to drive off potential sales by being dirty. The more those sales are worth the more often they will clean the place.

3) Answer the phone. (Where are you? What are your hours? Does your burger contain <x>?)

4) Be open. The higher the profit per item the slower business can be and yet be worth being open.

Now, in all of these cases, when labor is cheaper it makes sense to provide more of the item. Thus you get a supply & demand curve with regard for labor.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

You simply cannot help but ooze arrogance and condescension.

You are looking in a mirror sir. I truly believe I have yet to read a post by you that didn't include some sort of lame attempt at putting somebody down. I think yo have self esteem issues.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

You simply cannot help but ooze arrogance and condescension.

You are looking in a mirror sir. I truly believe I have yet to read a post by you that didn't include some sort of lame attempt at putting somebody down. I think yo have self esteem issues.

...says the guy who just claimed he's the only "true progressive" in the thread.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Because that assumes so-called 'perfect competition' where, absent MW/unions, "it's rational for employers to hire all the unskilled laborers willing to work for them." Real firms overwhelmingly stop producing/hiring before that point because they're constrained by demand for the product of labour (in turn constrained by ..wait for it.. wages). Given which, the non-union guys are not trying to join the workforce by entreating the union guys to share wages, they're trying to replace the union guys by offering wages back to the employer. That is why union miners fought blacklegs.

You're assuming the demand for labor remains constant. In practice when wages go down the demand goes up.

On the contrary, I'm assuming that it varies with income or distribution of income - basically wages in a mass-production for mass-consumption economy (cf Marx, Ford, Keynes etc)

The objection is to the "perfect competition" assumption that any firm can sell as much as it can produce at a prevailing market price ("price-taking" firms and consumers). Without that, supply and demand (curves, not quantities) are not independent variables, so there is no unique equilibrium or optimal market price. Rather, each point on each supply/demand curve has a corresponding demand/supply curve.

That's not to say that the slopes are wrong, just that all the guff about equilibrium, dead weight loss etc is just that -guff. You cannot devine what happens in the real world from a tinker-toy universe with two variables. It is, as others, have said, an empirical question.

 

[laughing dog]

You simply cannot help but ooze arrogance and condescension.

You are looking in a mirror sir. I truly believe I have yet to read a post by you that didn't include some sort of lame attempt at putting somebody down.
I think yo have self esteem issues.

If you think that does not smack of arrogance and condescension, you are wrong.

You are the one lecturing people about looking stuff up in google, not me, in order to educate oneself about the topic. And you are the one lecturing people about how Ontario was more progessive than the USA and what we should do. Yet you could not even be bothered to google to find there were UBI pilots in the USA early and more frequently than in Canada. This has nothing to do with who is better - it is about your condescension in this thread in particular.

 

[laughing dog]

This is basic human nature.

1) Look at what happens to the people. The blue guy ends up with a bit more. The yellow guy ends up with nothing--can't even get food. Which change has a bigger impact on the person???

That result is specific to your assumptions of job loss instead of hour reductions and no outside income support.

2) Money is a proxy for time. Look at the US minimum wage worker. $1 represents 8.2 minutes of work (not counting taxes). Now, lets consider an electrician (the highest paying trade I can find in a quick search), $25/hr (median). Said $1 is only 2.4 minutes of work to him. Isn't it obvious that the former values the $ more?

No. It depends on many factors.

Because in the long run that's how it's going to work.

In the long run, we are all dead.

You're trying to wave your magic wand and pretend nobody gets appreciably hurt but that's not reality. Even if the boss starts out by cutting hours instead of layoffs at some point somebody is going to leave--and at that point is the boss going to hire a replacement when they can simply increase the hours of their current staff?

When someone says the overall effect is an empirical question, they are saying one cannot simply assume an answer - the overall effect needs to measured. You are the one waving his hand to get a specific result, not me.

In other words, yet another point that you aren't willing to address.

Wrong again. Saying that the effect of a minimum wage increase is an empirical question does not logically imply the screwing over of workers. On the otherhand, you made two unsubstantiated claims of fact - that in the past, minimum wage workers were mostly blacks, and that I wanted to screw over some group.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The point is that some of us are pushing for progress and others like you and Eddie are standing against it by supporting the milktoast "Liberals" like Hillary Clinton instead of true progressives like Bernie Sanders and brushing UBI and other such programs aside with defeatism and "no we can't".

Cool story, bro...

I don't suppose YOU would like to share your brilliant master plan for how you're going to get Universal Basic Income passed as a law in the United States before the year is out? I'm sure you do, you wouldn't be sitting there smugly denouncing all of us defeatists unless you had a plan for victory.

Either join us for actual progress or get out of the way.

Happy to. What's your plan?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That result is specific to your assumptions of job loss instead of hour reductions and no outside income support.

2) Money is a proxy for time. Look at the US minimum wage worker. $1 represents 8.2 minutes of work (not counting taxes). Now, lets consider an electrician (the highest paying trade I can find in a quick search), $25/hr (median). Said $1 is only 2.4 minutes of work to him. Isn't it obvious that the former values the $ more?

No. It depends on many factors.

Because in the long run that's how it's going to work.

In the long run, we are all dead.

You're trying to wave your magic wand and pretend nobody gets appreciably hurt but that's not reality. Even if the boss starts out by cutting hours instead of layoffs at some point somebody is going to leave--and at that point is the boss going to hire a replacement when they can simply increase the hours of their current staff?

When someone says the overall effect is an empirical question, they are saying one cannot simply assume an answer - the overall effect needs to measured. You are the one waving his hand to get a specific result, not me.

In other words, yet another point that you aren't willing to address.

Wrong again. Saying that the effect of a minimum wage increase is an empirical question does not logically imply the screwing over of workers. On the otherhand, you made two unsubstantiated claims of fact - that in the past, minimum wage workers were mostly blacks, and that I wanted to screw over some group.

You're not measuring the overall effect. You are decreeing what the overall effect is--namely, lower hours rather than lost jobs. When I point out that in a lowered hour situation the employer will not replace a worker who leaves you go off on a derail because you have no answer.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You're not measuring the overall effect. You are decreeing what the overall effect is--namely, lower hours rather than lost jobs. When I point out that in a lowered hour situation the employer will not replace a worker who leaves you go off on a derail because you have no answer.

Just like YOU didn't answer me when I pointed out that the lower-hour situation is not a permanent business condition, because permanent conditions do not exist in business.

Although I kind of overlooked the fact that you have now shifted the goalposts from "employers everywhere will lay off low-skill workers" to "employees at companies that were paying some of their workers minimum wage will not be replaced as quickly as they might have otherwise been if/when they quit."

You are the kung fu master of goalpost jitsu, but this is impressive even for you.

 

[laughing dog]

That result is specific to your assumptions of job loss instead of hour reductions and no outside income support.
No. It depends on many factors.

Because in the long run that's how it's going to work.

In the long run, we are all dead.

You're trying to wave your magic wand and pretend nobody gets appreciably hurt but that's not reality. Even if the boss starts out by cutting hours instead of layoffs at some point somebody is going to leave--and at that point is the boss going to hire a replacement when they can simply increase the hours of their current staff?

When someone says the overall effect is an empirical question, they are saying one cannot simply assume an answer - the overall effect needs to measured. You are the one waving his hand to get a specific result, not me.

In other words, yet another point that you aren't willing to address.

Wrong again. Saying that the effect of a minimum wage increase is an empirical question does not logically imply the screwing over of workers. On the otherhand, you made two unsubstantiated claims of fact - that in the past, minimum wage workers were mostly blacks, and that I wanted to screw over some group.

You're not measuring the overall effect. You are decreeing what the overall effect is--namely, lower hours rather than lost jobs.

No, I am not. I am pointing out the overall effect is an empirical question not a theoretical. It is possible that an increase in the minimum wage has an overall negative effect and it is possible it has an overall positive effect and it is possible it is no overall effect at all. Which outcome occurs in a specific situation depends on many factors which makes it an EMPIRICAL question. For some reason, you feel the assumptions you pull out of the air are empirically grounded.

When I point out that in a lowered hour situation the employer will not replace a worker who leaves you go off on a derail because you have no answer.

I have no idea to what posts you are responding, but I know it is not mine. You have no evidence or rationale to support that when hours are lowered and someone leaves, that the employer will not replace that worker. And when you trot out "the long run" effect, your response is based on specific but unmentioned and unsubstantiated ideologically driven assumptions about behavior in order to obtain your ideologically driven result. You continue to ignore that this is an empirical not theoretical issue.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Happy to. What's your plan?

That depends on where you live and what you are dealing with.

The OP of this thread talks about Wynne bringing in a rapid Minimum wage increase without putting anything in place to help those workers who will be hurt by it.

So I have written my local representative (who is in Wynne's party) to ask about this and to point this out and to push for something to be put in place. I have encouraged my neighbours to do the same and have networked with them and I am aware of significant pressure being applied through this. The NDP rep (competing party) has latched onto it and is pushing his own ideas (even though he's not in power) and that is putting added pressure on our local Liberal party rep. I'm also encouraging others in other ridings to do the same and we are hoping we may be able to reach and convince Wynne to have some sort of plan to account for the problem her sudden hike in minimum wage will create.

We may succeed. We may fail. But at the end of the day, we tried, and didn't just sit there and say it is futile. And even if we fail, we are still pushing a movement forward that can have effects afterwards and is something to build upon.

They say that all politics is local, and there is truth to that. And though you may not be able to directly pull the strings on your President or Prime Minister etc, you CAN make a difference and with enough of your fellows doing the same, they will either have to listen to you all or face a real problem at the next election. We got rid of Harper this way. He didn't listen to what the populace wanted, and now he is gone. Of course, now Trudeau leans too far in the other direction on some issues, and causes additional problems Harper didn't (Trudeau is lacking in financial planning whereas Harper was excellent with balancing budgets etc), but that is the ebb and flow we've got to deal with and we, the people, shape society, including the government's actions over time.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You're not measuring the overall effect. You are decreeing what the overall effect is--namely, lower hours rather than lost jobs. When I point out that in a lowered hour situation the employer will not replace a worker who leaves you go off on a derail because you have no answer.

Just like YOU didn't answer me when I pointed out that the lower-hour situation is not a permanent business condition, because permanent conditions do not exist in business.

Although I kind of overlooked the fact that you have now shifted the goalposts from "employers everywhere will lay off low-skill workers" to "employees at companies that were paying some of their workers minimum wage will not be replaced as quickly as they might have otherwise been if/when they quit."

You are the kung fu master of goalpost jitsu, but this is impressive even for you.

I'm not moving the goalposts at all.

I have been saying the end result is fewer workers employed. Whether this is by layoffs or attrition doesn't really matter.

You are saying they'll go to lower hours--but that's an unstable state that will soon convert into fewer workers because workers that leave won't be replaced until they actually need more workers.

- - - Updated - - -

I have no idea to what posts you are responding, but I know it is not mine. You have no evidence or rationale to support that when hours are lowered and someone leaves, that the employer will not replace that worker. And when you trot out "the long run" effect, your response is based on specific but unmentioned and unsubstantiated ideologically driven assumptions about behavior in order to obtain your ideologically driven result. You continue to ignore that this is an empirical not theoretical issue.

Apparently you can't read a quote as that makes it very clear who I'm responding to.

You are asserting that the employer will do something that doesn't make sense--hire a worker when he doesn't need a worker, thus increasing his costs for no gain.

 

[laughing dog]

Apparently you can't read a quote as that makes it very clear who I'm responding to.

You are asserting that the employer will do something that doesn't make sense--hire a worker when he doesn't need a worker, thus increasing his costs for no gain.

Please produce the quote from one of my posts where you believe I made such an assertion.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Happy to. What's your plan?

That depends on where you live and what you are dealing with.

The OP of this thread talks about Wynne bringing in a rapid Minimum wage increase without putting anything in place to help those workers who will be hurt by it.

So I have written my local representative (who is in Wynne's party) to ask about this and to point this out and to push for something to be put in place. I have encouraged my neighbours to do the same and have networked with them and I am aware of significant pressure being applied through this. The NDP rep (competing party) has latched onto it and is pushing his own ideas (even though he's not in power) and that is putting added pressure on our local Liberal party rep. I'm also encouraging others in other ridings to do the same and we are hoping we may be able to reach and convince Wynne to have some sort of plan to account for the problem her sudden hike in minimum wage will create.

In other words, you're doing exactly what the rest of us are doing, except you're doing it for UBI where the rest of us are setting our sights on single payer healthcare.

What a progressive hero you are!