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You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour

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Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour

#31

Post by randyrand »

janandonly wrote: post #8

The reality is that if the minimum wage had stayed consistent with productivity and inflation since 1968, America’s lowest earners would be making around $24 an hour by now, an analysis by Jacobin found last year. Fifteen dollars is not asking for a lot. In fact, it’s asking for less than the bare minimum of what we should be providing our workers.

I hate this argument. It is so flawed.

When productivity increased, minimum wage earners do make more.

Overall productivity increases don't increase profits. They reduce prices! Workers make more because everything costs less.

If you increased minimum wage with productivity, it would eclipse the highest earners in a matter of decades. It makes no sense to do that.

Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour

#32

Post by virtuous_signal »

FactoryReboot wrote: post #28

Walmart employees make so little they are often eligible for food stamps. Walmart knows and teaches employees how to apply. What kind of free market is that? You shouldn’t be allowed to pay your employees so little that they are eligible for government benefits. To me this issue seems like something that both political parties would take issue with.

>> You shouldn’t be allowed to pay your employees so little that they are eligible for government benefits.

Although a common talking point, it is not inherently a bad thing that low-wage workers can qualify for welfare [1] and it's probably less distortionary to the free market than mandating a higher wage. As an analogy, pretend that the government has decided it would be a good idea that everyone be able to eat apples. It is absolutely better to target an appropriate amount of money at the poorer population so that everyone can afford them, than to dictate that the apple seller must lower their apple prices. The latter would result in less people overall having apples (due to the seller restricting their supply or just shutting down).

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/does-the-government-subsi...

Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour

#33

Post by ganoushoreilly »

FactoryReboot wrote: post #28

Walmart employees make so little they are often eligible for food stamps. Walmart knows and teaches employees how to apply. What kind of free market is that? You shouldn’t be allowed to pay your employees so little that they are eligible for government benefits. To me this issue seems like something that both political parties would take issue with.

Anecdotally, The US Military also gives these same classes to Junior Enlisted as they too often qualify for Food Stamps and they are in a Government funded job.

Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour

#34

Post by neilwilson »

virtuous_signal wrote: post #32
FactoryReboot wrote: post #28

Walmart employees make so little they are often eligible for food stamps. Walmart knows and teaches employees how to apply. What kind of free market is that? You shouldn’t be allowed to pay your employees so little that they are eligible for government benefits. To me this issue seems like something that both political parties would take issue with.

>> You shouldn’t be allowed to pay your employees so little that they are eligible for government benefits. Although a common talking point, it is not inherently a bad thing that low-wage workers can qualify for welfare [1] and it's probably less distortionary to the free market than mandating a higher wage. As an analogy, pretend that the government has decided it would be a good idea that everyone be able to eat ap…

"(due to the seller restricting their supply or just shutting down)."

The appropriate thing to do then is for the state to use the labour that they would otherwise subsidise to produce apples.

Which makes sense since the actions of the suppliers shows that there is no more productive advantage in paying a profit share. They are incapable of using the shortage of labour market signal to innovate and automate - thereby producing more with less.

Subsidy is never good for the free market. Nor is giving a monopoly over supply to capitalists. Capitalists should know that they are only permitted to exist where they drive forward productivity. Once they cease to do that in a market segment, then they are out of business.

Free markets only work when both sides can say 'no deal'.

Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour

#35

Post by neilwilson »

randyrand wrote: post #31
janandonly wrote: post #8

The reality is that if the minimum wage had stayed consistent with productivity and inflation since 1968, America’s lowest earners would be making around $24 an hour by now, an analysis by Jacobin found last year. Fifteen dollars is not asking for a lot. In fact, it’s asking for less than the bare minimum of what we should be providing our workers.

I hate this argument. It is so flawed. When productivity increased, minimum wage earners do make more. Overall productivity increases don't increase profits. They reduce prices! Workers make more because everything costs less. If you increased minimum wage with productivity, it would eclipse the highest earners in a matter of decades. It makes no sense to do that.

"Overall productivity increases don't increase profits. They reduce prices! Workers make more because everything costs less."

That only applies in an economy without credit and where sales are constrained by the spending of the wage share. In an economy with credit you can use financialisation to give people spending power their wages don't permit, which keeps prices higher than they would otherwise be and allows more to flow to the profit share.

The dynamics then drives the path of interest rates down over the years until you get a credit crunch - at which point the lack of spending from the profit share suddenly shows up in a Minsky Moment.

Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour

#36

Post by macspoofing »

nfw2 wrote: post #29
macspoofing wrote: post #19

The only argument in favour of minimum wage is that if set at a low enough level it does not seem to have a detrimental effect on core prosperity metrics like employment rate. Proponents never attempt to claim any positive effect or show evidence of it. It doesn't reduce unemployment. It doesn't reduce poverty. In many situations it hurts young people who are trying to break into an industry, low income workers and s…

The positive effect is that some workers will earn higher wages. One obviously wouldn't expect it to affect unemployment in a positive way. It also wouldn't affect poverty in a positive way if the affected workers weren't below the poverty line to begin with.

>The positive effect is that some workers will earn higher wages.

Right. And other workers are hurt by it. Leading to net negative outcome, or a wash.

Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour

#37

Post by erentz »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #18

"It's not how much you make. It's how much you keep." One of the things that tends to not enter these discussions is that the US has torn down about a million SROs[1] and largely zoned out of existence the ability to build other small scale homes currently being called Missing Middle Housing. When walkable neighborhoods were more the norm and you could get just a room or small place as market rate housing without hav…

Plug a good channel related to this called Not Just Bikes on YouTube. He does a great job tearing apart North American urban planning and housing and compares it to examples where the author currently lives in Europe. I want to be able to live in places like that but I’m stuck in the US. Here is an example where he also compares new planning to how we used to do it. These old compact suburbs that have become expensive because they’re incredibly desirable. Yet we don’t build like that now.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour

#38

Post by paulpauper »

And it's not just teenagers either. You see tons of 30-something and middle-aged people in low skilled, service sector jobs. There is an overly optimistic assumption by policy makers and economists that low skilled workers are supposed to 'graduate" to better jobs, but for all to many ppl it's the destination.

Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour

#39

Post by [deleted] »

virtuous_signal wrote: post #32
FactoryReboot wrote: post #28

Walmart employees make so little they are often eligible for food stamps. Walmart knows and teaches employees how to apply. What kind of free market is that? You shouldn’t be allowed to pay your employees so little that they are eligible for government benefits. To me this issue seems like something that both political parties would take issue with.

>> You shouldn’t be allowed to pay your employees so little that they are eligible for government benefits. Although a common talking point, it is not inherently a bad thing that low-wage workers can qualify for welfare [1] and it's probably less distortionary to the free market than mandating a higher wage. As an analogy, pretend that the government has decided it would be a good idea that everyone be able to eat ap…

[deleted]

Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour

#40

Post by krickkrack »

FactoryReboot wrote: post #28

Walmart employees make so little they are often eligible for food stamps. Walmart knows and teaches employees how to apply. What kind of free market is that? You shouldn’t be allowed to pay your employees so little that they are eligible for government benefits. To me this issue seems like something that both political parties would take issue with.

Walmart only makes less than $7k per employee. They have 2.2million employees. Regardless of the common narrative - they simply can't afford to raise all of their employees wages by any meaningful amount with their current profits.
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