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What harm do minimum wages do?

economist.com

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Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#521

Post by dylz »

leetcrew wrote: post #396
dylz wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have an opinion on this in either direction, but i'm curious: how do you define a small business, and do inefficient/wasteful small businesses get selectively 'bailed out' compared to national ones? Why should small businesses not have to foot the bill while large ones do? Just because they are small, they don't have to be competitive or efficient - do not-profitable hobby businesses get propped up for no rea…

locally owned businesses are arguably better for a community because the owner is more likely to recirculate their profits back through the local economy. the profits from a walmart location are ultimately captured by the shareholders, who may be disproportionately concentrated in some far-away place. of course, this can be outweighed if the large corporation serves the community much more efficiently than the smalle…

> I would be happy to spend a few hours reading in any of the nearby independent coffee shops.

Would this not be worse for independent coffee shops since you're taking up a seat to read, while the people that work employed by Starbucks couldn't possibly care less what you were doing?

To me it seems like it would be a bit 50/50 based on industry vertical. I'm happy to support a reasonable independent restaurant over a fast food chain any time, but things like computer/parts shops, any independent one I see has markups well into the hundreds of percents at times, all seem incredibly shady, etc. Same with 'authorized retailer' phone shops that try to charge you $50-60 for a SIM.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#522

Post by svachalek »

madeofpalk wrote: post #512
bravo22 wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why instead of mispricing labour through minimum wage you can have a negative income tax which makes up the difference. The nice thing is that it will apply to everyone -- working or not, sick or not, on mat leave or not, can't work because of covid or not. You top-up people's income and that's paid for through taxes. You take the benefit of efficiency and productivity from the entire economy and return it t…

I’m not all that educated on negative tax rate - what’s to prevent companies from just setting wages to obscenely low, knowing the government will just pick up the bill and pay out the difference?

This is more or less what happens with tipping so I would assume it also happens here.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#523

Post by refurb »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #174
sushshshsh wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are already seeing Flippy the burger flipping robot taking over jobs originally meant for humans. The technology for Flippy is only getting cheaper and better, the quality of human labor is already at its most optimal point and is only getting more expensive due to laws passed. Now, you could make Flippy the robot illegal, and maybe x number of businesses would eat the cost of the more expensive workers. But somet…

Or you could make an automation tax and use it to fund UBI

How would an automation tax work? Every time a job is eliminated, add a tax? How much? What if there is further improvement in automation but no further job loses? Does the tax go up? What if it's a new industry and companies jump right to automation and skip jobs? Do they pay the tax? How much?

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#524

Post by stan_rogers »

macspoofing wrote: post #467
lsiebert wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, your contention is that paying poor people more doesn't effect poverty rates, and you are asking other people for citations, not citing something of your own? You might find this CBO report useful. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55410

>your contention is that paying poor people more doesn't effect poverty rates No. That is not my contention at all. Do you want try again without straw manning the argument?

Yes, that is your contention exactly.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#525

Post by burfog »

ianai wrote: post #51
bcrosby95 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, do textbooks actually say that? Because it seems trivially false: if a worker is actually paid that, then there's no money left for investors.

Yes. In one of my grad Econ classes an entire lecture was devoted to deriving individual pay based on marginal input and aggregate utility functions. The prof ended the derivation with a laugh then discussed all the obvious places wage does not equal marginal societal benefit. Ie school teachers vs entertainers. The takeaway is that Econ theory only explains what it’s capable of explaining. The real market clearly ha…

The rich entertainers are worth more because they provide value to very many people. It adds up. Each teacher only provides value to about 30 people.

Total pay for all teachers is far in excess of total pay for all entertainers. Measured that way, we clearly do value the teachers more.

It's just that an individual teacher is not very productive.

Some entertainers are not productive. Being a clown at small birthday parties is seldom lucrative.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#526

Post by markmark »

grandmczeb wrote: post #52
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #29

Look i get that USA has a lot of billionaires and the GDP per capita looks great for the USA but I want US citizens to please take a look at median wealth per adult and see how far you have to scroll down to find the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe... This is a great way to rule out outliers. My home country Australia has 3X the median wealth per adult of the USA. This is similar to…

Wealth is very hard to accurately measure and is impacted a lot by demographics (e.g. age distribution). Consumption is a better measure of how people actually live. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...

We would need to see median consumption, rather than per capita, to compare to the wealth figures above. The US rates very highly in wealth per capita as well.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#527

Post by OCASM »

dmitriid wrote: post #301
OCASM wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demanding other people take care of you even against their will and using the power of the state to achieve so. How is that not slavery?

Demanding other people live in perpetual poverty with no safety nets, how is that not slavery. BTW: Are you American, and do you by any chance identify as Christian? Because I've only seen two groups of people so hellbent on never helping their fellow man. American Christians and American libertarians.

Could be that I do want people to improve their lives and just happen to disagree with your methods?

No, disagreeing with your must mean I want people to stay in poverty forever...

Learn from immigrants: they earn their way to a better life by applying themselves and helping each other.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#528

Post by OCASM »

RockIslandLine wrote: post #435
OCASM wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need the handouts. They could for example live in communal spaces and share resources. What exactly is "livable" anyways? Millions of people live every day with only a couple of dollars a day.

"Millions of people live every day with only a couple of dollars a day." Not in the USA they don't. There is no possible way that an individual could pay for food, clothing, and shelter on that income.

Sure, different countries have different living standards. That's the point. "Living wage" is an undefined, ever changing concept. Populist to the core.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#529

Post by op03 »

burfog wrote: post #525
ianai wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. In one of my grad Econ classes an entire lecture was devoted to deriving individual pay based on marginal input and aggregate utility functions. The prof ended the derivation with a laugh then discussed all the obvious places wage does not equal marginal societal benefit. Ie school teachers vs entertainers. The takeaway is that Econ theory only explains what it’s capable of explaining. The real market clearly ha…

The rich entertainers are worth more because they provide value to very many people. It adds up. Each teacher only provides value to about 30 people. Total pay for all teachers is far in excess of total pay for all entertainers. Measured that way, we clearly do value the teachers more. It's just that an individual teacher is not very productive. Some entertainers are not productive. Being a clown at small birthday pa…

If we could just get entertainers to teach...

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#530

Post by madeofpalk »

svachalek wrote: post #522
madeofpalk wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not all that educated on negative tax rate - what’s to prevent companies from just setting wages to obscenely low, knowing the government will just pick up the bill and pay out the difference?

This is more or less what happens with tipping so I would assume it also happens here.

Yeah, I don’t think extending that is a positive thing.

It’s like taking the worst part of “tipping in the US” and running with just that’s.

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