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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

#101

Post by vanveenada »

ethanbond wrote: post #87
vanveenada wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is an example of "price stickiness." People selling goods tend to let the price stay at whatever level it's currently at longer than is strictly rational. Because prices tend to be sticky, wage-driven inflation tends to result in real gains for wage-earners.

(Temporarily)

Correct, because nothing lasts forever in this fallen world. That said: the amount of time spent in a state of wage-driven inflation -- setting up the situation where temporary moments of price stickiness result in increases of effective demand that in turn hot up the economy as a whole -- is the thing we want to maximize.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#102

Post by ethanbond »

malfist wrote: post #86
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.

I don't think it's as obvious or causal as you imply. If every wage increase resulted in a corresponding increase in rent to force people back into poverty it would never make sense to increase minimum wage, or even wages at all. But that's not the case is it? Wages stagnate, increase or decrease all the time without changes in rent. Rent goes up without changes in wages all the time. Sure, a local across the board i…

I’m saying we should pay them more and tax the daylights out of landowners so they don’t capture upside they had literally nothing to do with.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#103

Post by ethanbond »

StefanWestfal wrote: post #64
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.

Could you explain? I would assume that only a part of the increase in wages would go to rent. I live in Norway where the minimum salary is high. Rents are too but the average person has to spent less time working to pay for housing. Do you think the hours a person needs to work to pay for housing would stay the same if the wage increase?

Roughly yes. How are we still working 40hrs/week just to put a roof over our head and feed our families when we are equipped with technologies that have exponentially increased the productive output of each individual?

The answer is that land has gotten more expensive, so everything on it has gotten more expensive. The solution is not to avoid wage increases, as this “FUD” accusation assumes, but to raise wages and tax the daylights out of landowners (like myself) so society can recoup the benefits of its productivity!

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#104

Post by tastyfreeze »

vanveenada wrote: post #78
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.

Yes, but because prices (including rents) are sticky -- it takes a while for them to adjust upwards to soak up the additional effective demand produced by increased wages. So long as wages are what's driving inflation , working people tend to reap the benefit. Workers only fall behind when prices grow faster than inflation, as in, for example, the oil shock back in the 1970s. Even the small capitalist class benefits…

The only way the government can increase benefits is to take more from everybody else.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#105

Post by ethanbond »

vanveenada wrote: post #101
ethanbond wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Temporarily)

Correct, because nothing lasts forever in this fallen world. That said: the amount of time spent in a state of wage-driven inflation -- setting up the situation where temporary moments of price stickiness result in increases of effective demand that in turn hot up the economy as a whole -- is the thing we want to maximize.

Totally! We can also go ahead and tax away all the gains captured by landlords on the unimproved value of their land (definitionally price movement that is not due to them).

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#106

Post by mostertoaster »

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).

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 plight would be less, instead you do nothing and go vote for the politicians to do something.

You wanna talk about a farce, how about this one - the politicians care about the poor.

Talking to immigrant Uber drivers in SF, ironically they hate the government there and it reminds them of the corrupt ones in their own country, the one the “caring progressives” keep voting for.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#107

Post by mostertoaster »

matsemann wrote: post #84
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?

Becoming a landlord means more buyers for the same houses, thus pushing the housing prices instead, possibly taking them off the market for other's that want to own their own.

There will always be those who have and those who do not, the weak and the strong, the poor and the rich.

The question is, will those with power (money, connections, education) use it to gain more for themselves or to lift up the poor.

The idea that a homeless person’s problem is just, that they can’t afford rent or a mortgage is absurd, and would just prove that you’ve only ever dealt with homeless people at an abstract level.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#108

Post by OldHand2018 »

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…

> Teachers don't get laid off or face the types of uncertainty other types of careers do.

Sure they do, although I think most places call it a RIF.

Wait until you live in an area with stagnant or declining enrollment due to demographic changes (even if your city is still growing).

EDIT - please remember that >50% of US counties faced population decline in the 2020 census!

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#109

Post by ralfd »

vultour wrote: post #29
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)

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.

Re: The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

#110

Post by fartcannon »

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.

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