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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

#151

Post by AniseAbyss »

teekert wrote: post #12
pydry wrote: post #7

This paper is a good rebuttal to talking points like this tweet that crop up from time to time: https://i.redd.it/b57t1w5jllb61.jpg (I was trying to look up a similarly awful article referencing EMTs earning $minwage + $2 I saw a while back but googlefu is failing me)

It's shocking how little we pay the people that spend so much time with our kids.

Unfortunately those working in fields like education and healthcare have too much empathy. They don't go on strike or have a 9 to 5 mentality.

Capitalism favours the narcissistic and the psychopath.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#152

Post by gruez »

adventured wrote: post #111
ethanbond wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that people are more productive when they are working together? This higher productivity is what allows for rent to be high (the land is more productive), but that does not necessarily imply that the increased productivity should go into the hands of people who merely hold land and are not themselves producing anything on it.

It also does not imply the owners of that land - that had to take a risk in allocating their funds to acquire it - do not deserve to benefit from it (given they also very likely pay taxes on that ownership, which is true in the vast majority of the US; and property taxes are a very important government funding source in the US). "Producing something on it" is a wholly subjective standard. I can just as well proclaim…

> It also does not imply the owners of that land - that had to take a risk in allocating their funds to acquire it - do not deserve to benefit from it (given they also very likely pay taxes on that ownership, which is true in the vast majority of the US; and property taxes are a very important government funding source in the US).

the georgist's view is that the landowner does little to contribute to the area being nice/successful, but reap all the benefits.

> Take now... some hard-headed business man, who has no theories, but knows how to make money. Say to him: "Here is a little village; in ten years it will be a great city—in ten years the railroad will have taken the place of the stage coach, the electric light of the candle; it will abound with all the machinery and improvements that so enormously multiply the effective power of labor. Will in ten years, interest be any higher?" He will tell you, "No!" "Will the wages of the common labor be any higher...?" He will tell you, "No the wages of common labor will not be any higher..." "What, then, will be higher?" "Rent, the value of land. Go, get yourself a piece of ground, and hold possession."

> [...] without doing one stroke of work, without adding one iota of wealth to the community, in ten years you will be rich! In the new city you may have a luxurious mansion, but among its public buildings will be an almshouse.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#153

Post by gruez »

bsagdiyev wrote: post #17
teekert wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shocking how little we pay the people that spend so much time with our kids.

It’s a big problem. When we moved to NC my girlfriend started working at my son’s school (preschool). The $17/hr she gets is considered the top end of the pay range for her job… $17/hr! She’s got a college degree!

>The $17/hr she gets is considered the top end of the pay range for her job… $17/hr! She’s got a college degree!

is $17/hr supposed to be outrageously low? According to[1], the median wage in NC is $35,750/year, or $17.19/hr. Someone with a college degree making median wage, in a job that pays below median wage[2] doesn't seem too outrageous.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

[2] https://www.bls.gov/oes/2020/may/oes_nat.htm, comparing "Preschool Teachers, Except Special Education" $15.35 median hourly wage, against "all occupations" with $20.17 median hourly wage.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#154

Post by spoonjim »

ethanbond wrote: post #27
shockeychap wrote: post #15

I found this to be many words with little information. It largely boils down to "when Amazon increases wages, other employers follow suit, to varying extents." There was almost nothing about the myriad of other effects, including things like inflation, effects on already higher wage earners, effects on automation, and more. They touched on the increase in unemployment from competitors, but that was it.

Or the most critical consequence: rent. Rent goes up. Landlords get richer, minimum wage earners go back to poverty. Pretty obvious cycle. High paying employer moves somewhere? Rent goes up. Normal employer pays more? Rent goes up.

My solution: All rental contracts are illegal unless they include a 1% ownership transfer per year. That way if you rent for 25 years you own 25% of the property.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#155

Post by jcranberry »

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.

In my understanding Amazon is actually the poster child for how e-commerce has weakened this relationship.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#156

Post by colanderman »

ralfd wrote: post #109
vultour wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the worst arguments one could ever make. Literally the same as telling someone your salary and they go "wow, you're so overpaid, I make less than half that!". No motherfucker, you should be making more money. It's insane that instead of advocating for higher salaries people will attempt to drag each other down.

But what is the end game here? Salaries are also the prices we pay for services/products. If everyone has higher salaries than everyone has to pay more => Inflation. And we are back to square 1.

The price we pay for services and products also depends on the cost of energy, raw materials, real estate, etc., required for those services and products, the price of which is fairly independent of minimum wage and is determined by supply & demand.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#157

Post by jquery »

ethanbond wrote: post #95
mostertoaster wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t raised my tenants rent since 2018 when I bought the rental. I just had him pay what he had been paying. Maybe you should be a landlord and help break the cycle?

I am a landlord! Breaking the cycle is a farce: why do you think it’s a cycle? It’s self-reinforcing and resilient to small changes (like a few landlords here and there delaying rent increases for a few years).

I’m a landlord too and this sounds suspiciously like an excuse for bad behavior. You can make a big difference in peoples lives by not being a greedy a*hole. Delaying rent increases for a few years can have huge positive impacts on individual lives.

No it won’t change the system but a bad system shouldn’t be used to justify personal bad behavior.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#158

Post by jquery »

Pokepokalypse wrote: post #114
mostertoaster wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well have you charged less than market rate for rent? I had a place for 10 years that I was charging about 60% market rate on because the lady was old and lived off social security. I had negative cash flow on it. My other rental has a negative cash flow as well. I make good money so I can afford it. If every single person who complained about the plight of the poor actually physically went and helped the poor, their…

>the one the “caring progressives” keep voting for. And the alternative is what? Keep on hoping the oligarchs will share their wealth and it will "trickle down"?

It’s boggles the mind how one can look at the long arc of history and come to the conclusion caring progressives were the problem all along.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#159

Post by Aerroon »

pitaj wrote: post #45
ethanbond wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the most critical consequence: rent. Rent goes up. Landlords get richer, minimum wage earners go back to poverty. Pretty obvious cycle. High paying employer moves somewhere? Rent goes up. Normal employer pays more? Rent goes up.

Rent goes up because of supply and demand. If a rich person moves into an area with a housing shortage, they will displace poor renters and rent will go up. But the problem is the housing shortage, a consequence of many years of terrible housing policy.

>Rent goes up because of supply and demand.

And if people now earn more money they can pay more money to rent a house they want. This would force the people that are already renting there to also pay more, which they can afford because they now earn more money too.

It seems feasible to me that landlords could eat up most of that wage increase.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#160

Post by 908B64B197 »

mdorazio wrote: post #24
stavros wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that the company can't absorb the raises.

As an example, average restaurant profit margins are between 2% and 6%. They cannot absorb labor rate increases without raising prices or going bankrupt. Margins tend to be similarly low for many other industries as well. Tech is a massive outlier in its ability to absorb large wage increases.

Truth is they need to either renegotiate their lease or buy commercial real-estate instead and profit on the new restaurant owners coming to town.

There's a reason most new restaurant close after 1-5 year. [0]

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/20/heres-the-real-reason-why-mo...

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