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The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

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Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#131

Post by folkrav »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #30
folkrav wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the main reasons why I left the field before even graduating (elementary education, left halfway through the degree). The amount of bullshit you have to deal with on top of the terrible compensation and how little people seem to value the profession despite its importance played a big part. I'm not even 5 years out of school as a dev (and not even as a college level graduate), I already make way more t…

You can still volunteer with the kiddos, maker spaces!

Yeah, I did scouts for a couple of years. I'd like to do some dev coaching at some point, maybe. COVID put a brake to some of my plans, but I'm having a lot of fun teaching my 4yo son in the meantime haha.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#132

Post by Workaccount2 »

giantg2 wrote: post #93
Workaccount2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a term I use myself. It's pushing down on higher wages while pushing up on lower wages in effort to concentrate people into middle class. This would also mean that many people who are not even remotely close to "the billionaire class" would get pushed down, so it's not really popular with high-earning coastal liberals, and probably many people here.

But what mechanism would that use? Things like taxes would likely make a limited impact due to raising wages to offset the tax until the point that off-shore is more competitive. Legislative restrictions have been struck down in the past (the $1M CEO restriction of the 80s?).

I honestly don't know. I tend to be in favor of using gentle nudges to leverage natural market forces to institute change. Fortunately/unfortunately capitalism is designed to be self reinforcing. Catching more fish enables you to build bigger nets and protect fishing methods. But there isn't really any natural mechanism for incentivizing a reversing of that.

Someone smarter than me will have to come up with something. Right now though it's a runaway feedback loop that's going to eventually destroy itself by "doing everything right".

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#133

Post by sokoloff »

xxpor wrote: post #85
dimitrios1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is 3,531,905.403 square miles large, and the majority of us choose to live in under 100,000 of it. Maybe that too also contributes to these issues. You may fashion yourself to be virtuous enough to not charge more when you so easily can, but we shouldn't assume everyone will be.

Right, we should build enough housing that the market takes care of keeping housing cheap.

Who is the “we” in that sentence that should allocate their money to something with a weak or non-existent promise of seeing a return on that money?

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#134

Post by folkrav »

nemo44x wrote: post #68
folkrav wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the main reasons why I left the field before even graduating (elementary education, left halfway through the degree). The amount of bullshit you have to deal with on top of the terrible compensation and how little people seem to value the profession despite its importance played a big part. I'm not even 5 years out of school as a dev (and not even as a college level graduate), I already make way more t…

You should consider you've only been a dev in a massive bull market for software engineers. Teachers don't get laid off or face the types of uncertainty other types of careers do. You'll always make more money in private industry but you will probably work more and have less time off. Teachers get a lot of time off and work about 35 hours per week during the school year. And then of course the summers. It's an especi…

It's most definitely not how you're describing it in terms of time. There's tons of extracurricular work, outside of work meetings, prep work, grading, etc. The vacations are shorter than they look, a short month, maybe.

Teachers don't get laid off, they just rot for decades in a society that doesn't value their work in increasingly difficult teaching conditions (increasingly large groups, larger numbers of behavioral issues, etc) for poorer and poorer pay that doesn't follow cost of life increases.

I do know I'm in a bull market where I have the bigger end of the stick. I also have the ability to put way more money aside and be prepared if the market shifts and I have to, too. I don't have issues with W/L balance.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#135

Post by pjc50 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #59
xyzzy4747 wrote: post #10

When people get paid more, the prices of everything go up, including other people's wages. Inflation is often a self-reinforcing cycle.

This is the "common sense" view of inflation. It was disproven by Milton Friedman and others over 50 years ago. “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” In 2021, "the quantity of money" is a much harder concept to measure than it was, but the basic insight stands.

Wrong dead economist: https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/macroec...

The interest/unemployment mechanism for controlling inflation has worked really well, and is why most of the Western world can hit its 2% inflation targets.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#136

Post by dahfizz »

tyingq wrote: post #125
dahfizz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, inflation isn't solely driven by wage increases. And wage increases aren't solely driven by minimum wage legislation. But a bump in minimum wage which results in higher wages for everyone and a devaluation of the currency is inflation. I don't think that's any more simplistic than your premise of all the "tiers" of jobs getting a raise. What you described is inflation.

I'd agree if wages (especially minimum wage) had kept pace with cost of goods and services over the years. It hasn't. There was an 11 year period where it didn't change, for example.

Inflation is never the exact same across industries and across time. Electronics prices have inflated less than the economy average, and even deflated depending on how you measure it. But if changing market conditions meant that electronics prices explode over the next decade, like housing and medical costs have, that would still be inflation.

Stagnating prices in recent history does not make something immune to inflation. Labor is no different.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#137

Post by shockeychap »

sokoloff wrote: post #133
xxpor wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, we should build enough housing that the market takes care of keeping housing cheap.

Who is the “we” in that sentence that should allocate their money to something with a weak or non-existent promise of seeing a return on that money?

The "we" is everyone who wants to build dense, multi-unit housing based on their own assessments of how it will perform, but can't because of single-family zoning laws.

Expensive housing in many areas is a result of laws that keep would-be developers from increasing the supply, fueled by the toxic NIMBY mindset.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#138

Post by randomdata »

bsagdiyev wrote: post #126
randomdata wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She’s got a college degree! Is that significant? The preschool I send my child to's child care provider has a boat. Neither factor into my purchasing decision. Everyone is going to have hobbies of some sort outside of work. How much I will pay isn't going to change depending on what hobbies they have chosen.

Yeah that makes no sense. I would prefer my child is taught by someone who is at least accredited by the state. Of which a college degree is typically required. My point though was that she attended college and earns a shit wage, whereas I didn’t graduate high school but fell in to tech. Most tech jobs provide absolutely no value to the planet, mine included, compared to the value a teacher provides children.

> My point though was that she attended college

Your point is unclear. What difference does this make? She could have once travelled to the moon, but that wouldn't make her participation in the same job worth more. The buyers of services pay for the work being done, not for what you may have done in the past. They do not care about your hobbies.

Do you think people are paying less for the software you help create because you didn't graduate from high school? Of course not. They couldn't care less. They are only concerned about what the software can do for them.

> Most tech jobs provide absolutely no value to the planet, mine included, compared to the value a teacher provides children.

Problem is that childcare doesn't scale very well. A single person can only care for so many children, especially when they are young. This means that the cost can only be distributed across so many parents. If the cost to the parents is too high, the parents will stay home and provide that care themselves.

In contrast, a 99¢ app across many millions of customers provides very nice scalability and a fortune for those involved in it. Per customer, the childcare provider is paid substantially more, but is limited to how many customers they can have.

Perhaps someone with a college degree should be using their experience to solve for the scalability issues, but a hobby one had in the past is no indication that they have interest in continuing with that hobby, so it is unrealistic to place that expectation on anyone.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#139

Post by BurningFrog »

fartcannon wrote: post #110
BurningFrog wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the "common sense" view of inflation. It was disproven by Milton Friedman and others over 50 years ago. “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” In 2021, "the quantity of money" is a much harder concept to measure than it was, but the basic insight stands.

Can you actually prove things in economics? Or is it more like detailed analysis of history?

In Macroeconomics, it's often very hard, because once you've understood something, the various actors can adapt to the new knowledge, and then you have a new and different world economy.

That is, if you publish your findings. I assume there are unpublished insights people use to get rich off.

I think Friedman's analysis was mostly historical. At least that what I got from reading his book. I've certainly not read any academic papers.

In Microeconomics, people can and do prove things based on models that are quite good at approximating reality.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#140

Post by foxyv »

q1w2 wrote: post #97
pbronez wrote: post #2

“Utilizing data from approximately 7 million online job postings between February 2014 and February 2020, the researchers find that a 10 percent rise in average Amazon wages is associated with an increase of 2.3 percent in the average advertised wage at non-Amazon firms in the same labor market.”

Correlation does not equal causation.

But it does like to wink suggestively.
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