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Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

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Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#121

Post by lelanthran »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #58
xupybd wrote: post #14

NZ just raised our min wage to $20 an hour. I work at least 50 hours a week. A teenager at MacDonalds now earns a good fraction of my income if they work the same hours. Despite my 4 year degree, near decade of experience and the responsibility's that I hold.

So, McDonalds employees should not have a good salary because... It hurts your feelings? I've seen better arguments. You are playing exactly in the game that the extremely wealthy want you to play. Being disdainful or even hateful of the teenager that flips burgers all day long, while they delegate their entire work, do nothing but lines of cocaine and jet-ski while you kill yourself working 50 hours a week (most lik…

> You are playing exactly in the game that the extremely wealthy want you to play.

The extremely wealthy probably don't care that much - they aren't reducing their income to afford an increased minimum wage, they're reducing yours.

(Assuming, of course, that you are not part of the extremely wealthy).

When a business's costs increase, they pass it on to the consumers (you). When they can't pass it on any further they reduce their costs, with the easiest cost to reduce being employee costs. Since they can't reduce the cost of minimum wage, they'll reduce the costs of the other employees.

You can't rein in the excesses of the extremely rich by mandating minimum wage. You might be able to do so by regulation (tax rules, maybe? Clamping down on tax havens would do more to even things out than any other step you may wish to take).

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#122

Post by kristopolous »

Qahlel wrote: post #85
kristopolous wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but during a crisis what's the alternative? The alternative now is to disconnect the systems from the possibility of contagion, but the nature of crisis is essentially an acknowledgment of a failure to achieve in those efforts. So what then, really?

Less government intervention: Let them fail. System can only fix itself, if we let the flaws fall.

When has such a policy actually worked? Do you have any clean historical examples at a large scale?

Panic of 1873 is the closest I know of and it didn't go very well

I'm not taking a stand. It's just that macroeconomics is hard and counterintuitive, especially when we're dealing with something large enough to have currency implications

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#123

Post by Aunche »

stretchwithme wrote: post #64

A society with no technology has hardly any wealth gap. People who can leverage multiple technologies can multiply their efforts. Mass communication, mass distribution and automation of all sorts. But Wall Street bonuses are subsidized by the fact the government socializes their biggest failures. Bailouts just encourage them to take greater risks, leveraging debt in dangerous ways that will blow up the system again.

> Bailouts just encourage them to take greater risks, leveraging debt in dangerous ways that will blow up the system again.

In practice, this hasn't happened. As a whole, financial institutions are more risk-adverse than ever. Keep in mind, that they don't want another Dodd-Frank.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#124

Post by rStar »

gretch wrote: post #110
rStar wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

billionaires are criminal by definition, and their existence proves the absence of a (econ 101 style) market in whatever industry they came from. we can only fix this problem through efficient regulation of monopolies.

Your hyperbole is going completely off the far deep end "billionaires are criminal by definition" What definitions are you using? When you talk like this, you're hardly helping your cause. Ppl just dismiss you as intellectually dishonest

criminal because otherwise competitors could actually compete, rather than be subject to illegal monopolistic forces. Criminals, all.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#125

Post by donw »

sagonar wrote: post #83
stretchwithme wrote: post #64

A society with no technology has hardly any wealth gap. People who can leverage multiple technologies can multiply their efforts. Mass communication, mass distribution and automation of all sorts. But Wall Street bonuses are subsidized by the fact the government socializes their biggest failures. Bailouts just encourage them to take greater risks, leveraging debt in dangerous ways that will blow up the system again.

My counter example is slavery, which would lead to a very big wealth gap. I think that large slavery state or system would need metal working, but will guess it has existed without.

Yes, but what does slavery have to do with technology...? I don't understand the connection to the parent post.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#126

Post by xupybd »

kristopolous wrote: post #55
xupybd wrote: post #14

NZ just raised our min wage to $20 an hour. I work at least 50 hours a week. A teenager at MacDonalds now earns a good fraction of my income if they work the same hours. Despite my 4 year degree, near decade of experience and the responsibility's that I hold.

As does an adult with a family. People who work full-time deserve to not live in poverty. You make it sound like having a society where hard working people can feed their family is unfair to you. It's not. You're wrong.

An adult with a family should not be stuck at minimum wage. If they are that's a problem with the economy.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#127

Post by rdiddly »

Guthur wrote: post #75
smnrchrds wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? The wealth gap is increasing. Its increase is so huge we need examples like this to just comprehend how bad it's gotten.

And? Gaps are not even remotely what we should be focussed on and are purely based on jealous or indirect aggression. Concentrate on living standards and opportunity that will help far more people than trying pull down a vanishingly small number of people.

It's not just that Joe is rich while Bob is poor. Joe is rich because Bob is poor. And vice versa. It can't be any other way. Grasp that and you've got the whole thing. Sure, focus on living standards and opportunity, but those are just two more metrics that illustrate the same inequality.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#128

Post by bluecalm »

rStar wrote: post #86
Guthur wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Gaps are not even remotely what we should be focussed on and are purely based on jealous or indirect aggression. Concentrate on living standards and opportunity that will help far more people than trying pull down a vanishingly small number of people.

billionaires are criminal by definition, and their existence proves the absence of a (econ 101 style) market in whatever industry they came from. we can only fix this problem through efficient regulation of monopolies.

So let's look at one random tech Billionaire: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson

-creates a product using open, well known technology in highly competitive, easy to enter video game industry

-people love the game

-he becomes a billionaire

Can you point out what kind of regulation could have stopped this criminal by definition from completing his evil plan?

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#129

Post by ZephyrBlu »

kristopolous wrote: post #55
xupybd wrote: post #14

NZ just raised our min wage to $20 an hour. I work at least 50 hours a week. A teenager at MacDonalds now earns a good fraction of my income if they work the same hours. Despite my 4 year degree, near decade of experience and the responsibility's that I hold.

As does an adult with a family. People who work full-time deserve to not live in poverty. You make it sound like having a society where hard working people can feed their family is unfair to you. It's not. You're wrong.

$20/hr in NZ is nowhere near poverty. It's 80% of what STEM grads typically earn, for bottom of the barrel work.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#130

Post by ZephyrBlu »

worker767424 wrote: post #74
xupybd wrote: post #14

NZ just raised our min wage to $20 an hour. I work at least 50 hours a week. A teenager at MacDonalds now earns a good fraction of my income if they work the same hours. Despite my 4 year degree, near decade of experience and the responsibility's that I hold.

I looked at some tech jobs in Wellington and shocked at how little they pay compared to SF. The cost of living in cheaper, but not that much cheaper.

NZ pay in general is very poor compared to other developed countries in my opinion.

When you compare SF tech salaries to NZ tech salaries it's just ridiculous though. I would say SF TC is 4x or more than NZ salaries (Stock grants are not common) for similar positions.

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