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What harm do minimum wages do?

economist.com

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Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#371

Post by tick_tock_tick »

dmitriid wrote: post #301
OCASM wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demanding other people take care of you even against their will and using the power of the state to achieve so. How is that not slavery?

Demanding other people live in perpetual poverty with no safety nets, how is that not slavery. BTW: Are you American, and do you by any chance identify as Christian? Because I've only seen two groups of people so hellbent on never helping their fellow man. American Christians and American libertarians.

You must have lived a horribly isolated life if those are the only groups you've ever seen this behavior from. Take a look at the EU and austerity measures if you want to see this kind of behavior on a large scale.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#372

Post by qeternity »

kennywinker wrote: post #209
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But i believe we should start doing this for US companies as well. We can "call out" whatever you want. People vote with their dollar. Target, Walmart, cheap resellers on AliExpress/Amazon are "winning" every day because the most important thing most consumers care about is rock bottom price. I don't think "calling out" will do much other than virtue signal.

Here's the trick. If choice has been eliminated, i.e. walmart has replaced your local shop, you can no longer vote with your dollar - pressuring the companies (via "calling-out") to give you options becomes the only choice available. That said, there are a ton of areas where we still have choice. In those cases, people do need to become more aware of the impact of their purchasing decisions - but in those cases I agr…

> Here's the trick. If choice has been eliminated, i.e. walmart has replaced your local shop, you can no longer vote with your dollar - pressuring the companies (via "calling-out") to give you options becomes the only choice available.

Aside from actual monopolies (utilities, etc) what is one example of having no choice? Whenever I hear this argument, it’s not that there’s no choice, it’s that there’s no cheap, convenient alternative...hence Walmart’s domination. It’s like people never stop to ask why Walmart is so successful: people would rather have abundant selection at low prices rather than support their local mom and pop shop.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#373

Post by qeternity »

mdoms wrote: post #164
grandmczeb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth is very hard to accurately measure and is impacted a lot by demographics (e.g. age distribution). Consumption is a better measure of how people actually live. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...

Yikes. Measuring wellbeing by consumption is a VERY American perspective.

And how would you measure it?

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#374

Post by mattmanser »

ccffpphh wrote: post #47
gjulianm wrote: post #4

> Textbooks state that, in the absence of a minimum wage, a worker is paid his “marginal product of labour”, which means the value of what he produces. > Just as a monopolist can set prices higher than would be the case in a competitive market, a monopsonist can set prices artificially lower. A lot of economic arguments forget these ideas. The labor market is not a free market: companies have more power in negotiatio…

The issue is that nobody is entitled to anything. You aren't de facto entitled to receiving money for any services you may or may not provide, regardless of whether you're skilled or not, just because you exist. A company exists because one or more people risked wealth in order to create a net positive system - their existence is not as riskless as one would believe.

Risk is a strong word, often there's little risk involved, it's often more about who you know, which entitlements your birth gave you and what parachute mummy and daddy can give you (especially if you're white, male and privately educated).

There's no inherent entitlement or human right to give your children your money, or to not be simply turfed off what ever land you are using when society decided there's a better use for it, for a competitor simply stealing your inventory, expecting protection from thugs taking your business etc., etc.

Because wealth begats wealth, there needs to be certain checks and balances, minimum wages are one of them, inheritance taxes and capital gains taxes are others.

For that, you get the protection of strong laws, an infrastructure you paid almost nothing towards, legal protections for your property, protection from foreign governments, access to skilled trained workers you didn't pay to educate, etc.

Your argument is circular, Fred is wealthy and can afford to speculate, therefore Fred deserves more wealth.

But Fred is only wealthy when everyone else buys into the system, otherwise Fred would soon be Dead Fred.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#375

Post by ccffpphh »

kube-system wrote: post #97
ccffpphh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that nobody is entitled to anything. You aren't de facto entitled to receiving money for any services you may or may not provide, regardless of whether you're skilled or not, just because you exist. A company exists because one or more people risked wealth in order to create a net positive system - their existence is not as riskless as one would believe.

Naturally? Maybe not, but many societies have decided to form governments in which their citizens are ascribed those entitlements.

How many of those governments are just, however? Can you reasonably claim that all citizens consent to the policies of their government? If everyone agreed to murder you, would that make it ok? What about if everyone agreed to rob you of all of your property, your livelihood? What about only half of that? Quarter? A tenth? What's the right number? Non-consent to any degree is not morally right. In the same way, it would morally wrong for me to coerce you to pay me some arbitrary amount I come up with.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#376

Post by tastyfreeze »

gjulianm wrote: post #254
tastyfreeze wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean price fixing and collusion that are already illegal? Without price fixing and collusion the employers have to compete for labor. Competition that would as a result improve the compensation for employees.

It's not price fixing nor collusion. It's just the incentives companies have to lower wages. Look at this example: a number of companies in an area are paying a livable wage at time T for low-skilled workers. Now, time goes on and inflation kicks in. Those wages, which did not grow, are not livable now. Workers, however, can't complain too much because they will be fired, and bad income is better than no income (not…

That sounds like blaming a broken money supply for lower wages. They are making the same wages. The inflation of money supply makes their dollar worth less. Two separate issues. I would prefer to examine one issue on its own.

The company has no say in the money supply. Their money is worth less as well. Do you expect a company to pay more when they are earning the same amount and employee production stays the same?

The Fed is the only entity that controls money supply and the purchasing power of a dollar. Upset that what you are earning doesn't buy the same amount of stuff? Blame for that is entirely on us for asking the government for more while demanding lower taxes. Their only alternative to raising taxes is printing more money.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#377

Post by nobody9999 »

wccrawford wrote: post #138
nobody9999 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Fight for $15 movement came from expensive cities, and it might be the right policy for those places. But it would severely distort and crush lower-cost cities and states. The right policy for San Francisco isn't necessarily right for Birmingham. Your point is a valid one. At the same time, if you look at how these numbers actually play out in reality, $15/hour (assuming 40 hours/week -- certainly not a given an…

But it's okay to have a national minimum wage and also a state, county or city minimum wage that's higher than the national. That doesn't mean we shouldn't at least start with the national one. Individual areas can fight for their own raised minimum wage in their area. Everyone can fight for the national one, which would still be a big increase over what minimum wages are everywhere.

>But it's okay to have a national minimum wage and also a state, county or city minimum wage that's higher than the national. That doesn't mean we shouldn't at least start with the national one.

You won't get any argument about that from me.

My point was that, except in the poorest places in the US, $15/hour is not a living wage. Especially since many, if not most folks earning the minimum wage don't get health care benefits (a big additional cost) and often are not afforded 40 hours/week either.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#378

Post by qeternity »

csours wrote: post #342
qeternity wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These policies are always double edged swords. The other way to frame minimum wage is that it makes it illegal to work unless you can produce $X value per hour.

Ehhh? What are you talking about? It's not illegal to do things that don't make money. That's called a cost center. I don't make money for my company, I reduce the risk of losing money, and provide tools for people who do make money.

I didn’t say making money, I said providing value. You’re creating some value for your company that exceeds what they pay you, otherwise you wouldn’t have a job.

Let’s say I’m a widget maker. I can make 10 widgets per hour for my company, and they in then earn $1 profit per widget. This company is not going to pay me $15/hr if I’m only able to generate $10/hr in value for the business. But if minimum wage is $15 then it makes it illegal for me to work for them.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#379

Post by mattmcknight »

Supermancho wrote: post #88
dannyw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monetary policy is to benefit the owners; not the workers. 100% employment will drive wage growth as demand exceeds supply. That’s not good for the stock market.

> 100% employment will drive wage growth as demand exceeds supply. I hesitate to call this a fantasy thought experiment (like all the atoms in the right place for a brick wall to allow a baseball to pass through). Not to mention the illusion of employment statistics (how it's measured), in many countries. This stable equilibrium is impractical. The world is not a singular country. Employment within a single country i…

This is the one of the two biggest flaws in most macroeconomics. They act as if the national economy is a closed system. Of course, if wages rise too high, (in addition to automation) the products the wages were producing can be produced in other economies and delivered as finished goods. Immigration is of course another violation of the closed system model, where labor flows to places with higher wages. (The other biggest flaw in macro is treating the economy as an undifferentiated GDP factory)

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#380

Post by least »

gjulianm wrote: post #4

> Textbooks state that, in the absence of a minimum wage, a worker is paid his “marginal product of labour”, which means the value of what he produces. > Just as a monopolist can set prices higher than would be the case in a competitive market, a monopsonist can set prices artificially lower. A lot of economic arguments forget these ideas. The labor market is not a free market: companies have more power in negotiatio…

Minimum wage laws aren't important. Forcing companies to classify freelancers as employees or gig workers as employees is harmful and leads to less work available.

If you want to meaningfully create leverage for laborers, you need to ensure their livelihood is not dependent on being employed. A negative income tax or some other form of UBI would serve better to accomplish this goal.

On the flipside, providing all the basic needs of living to someone can potentially lead to a large drop in labor supply and create its own problems.

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