The Minimum Wage Raise: Questions for Supporters
Although I understand why quite some people believe that there should be some kind of official minimum wage and why the Democrats have voted to raise the minimum wage recently I have to say that as a moderate liberal conservative (I say moderate because, among other reasons, I’m not a ‘typical’ liberal conservative: one could say that I am less conservative on quite some issues than most liberal conservatives), I have the tendency to oppose any increase in an official minimum wage. In fact, quite like classical liberals, I am not so sure whether an official minimum wage should exist. At all.
Regarding the United States I have some questions c.q. other concerns. Chief among them is this: if one believes that the government should be able to determine a minimum wage, why should it be the federal government? Why not let individual states decide about the matter? Isn’t it true that the costs of living differ throughout the United States? Wouldn’t it, then, make sense to let individual states determine the minimum wage in their territory?
If one wants to fight or even end poverty and if one believes that raising the minimum wage is a means of doing so, why not do so at a state level? Besides being more effective it seems to me, it is also, in my opinion, more democratic to do so.
Your thoughts on this?
Please debate.
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42 Responses to “The Minimum Wage Raise: Questions for Supporters”
There is a good argument to be made for letting the market determine the minimum wage. There is a good argument to be made for letting the government determine the minimum wage. I come down on the government side because the market, in and of itself, cannot be guaranteed to offer a fair wage (that is, adjusted for inflation) to all lower income workers.
As it is, a fair number of state governments do have mandated minimum wages. This is in response to the federal government, which because of a conservative Republican-controlled Congress, had not raised the minimum wage for over 10 years.
Finally, no minimum wage increase is going to end poverty, let alone make substantial inroads toward ending it. Poverty is much too complex and income is only one factor.
If the minimum wage was ever more than enough for one single state, you might have a point. The fact of the matter is that the minimum wage is enough to be poor in the cheap states, and miserably poor in the expensive ones. And why limit it to states? California is a big state, and prices vary wildly depending on where you go. If the state determined one only minimum wage it would still mean different things for different places. Truly, the minimum wage should be enough to live very modestly on, with a roof over your head, clothes on your back, food in the fridge and a doctor in case of need. Even if it were doubled, it wouldn’t come even close to that. Minimum wage is a joke, at this point, but I still think it’s better than nothing.
We could let the market decide minimum wage, since there’s no chance they’d exploit people’s need to eat or make agreements so that real competition didn’t occur, is there? It’s not like industry has ever made inside deals to squeeze as much as they can out of people, right?
Riiiiight.
While we’re at it, why not let the market determine everything? Let them self-regulate pollution, worker safety, give them the choice of medical coverage or not. Let the market decide maximum shift hours or vacation time? I seem to recall that there was a time when this was the real way things happened. I also seem to recall that life-expectancy was radically shorter back then.
States, and in some cases cities, can and do have higher minimum wages than the federal standard. California’s minimum wage is higher than federal, and San Fransciso’s is higher than California’s.
There’s strong pressure from both business and labor interests to federalize worker regulations. Labor talks about “the race to the bottom”, business threatening to relocate to less-regulated states in order to force reductions in worker rights. Business talks about inconsistency and the headaches of trying to do business in 50 different regulatory environments.
The biggest question that mimimum wage supporters should answer, IMO, is whether or not minimum wage helps the people it’s meant to help. When the wage is raised and businesses have to increase their labor costs, they will do one of two things: employ fewer people at this end of the spectrum (either absorbing their duties into salaried positions, automating, downsizing whatever) which will lead to more unemployment, or they will keep employing the same number of people but pass the extra labor cost on to consumers. Trouble is, some of those consumers are the minimum wage earners themselves who now have a bit more money in their pockets but see rising cost of living.
If we can get away from the arguments like “BUT you just think the market can handle everything and it can’t!”, we can more clearly look at the facts. Just because we don’t want to allow exploitation of workers in a pure market system doesn’t mean that we have to believe that a particular intervention will have the intended effects without causing even more negative unintended ones. Maybe there are other ways to allow businesses to employ some people at a sub-living wage (because there are people like students and spouses of primary breadwinners who would want to work for such income), while working to increase the number of jobs in the overall economy that do support a family at market rates (and to make sure that workers don’t have barriers to obtaining such jobs: assist with education and training.)
I’m not arguing that we should eliminate minimum wage laws (partly because I just don’t think that would ever happen anyway- would be political suicide for even a fiscal conservative to suggest it.) But I do wish that the debate could stay grounded in facts and real analysis of cause and effect.
Actually, folks on the left and the right here might be surprised at the number of economists supporting minimum wage increases.
The most influential study of the impact of minimum wage on employment rates in the US – Card and Krueger’s study of fast food restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania – found that increasing the minimum wage actually increased employment among low wage earners.
I know that this may seem to fly in the face of common sense – the idea that when business owners are faced in an increased in fixed costs (payroll) they will reduce their hires – however there is significant support in economic theory for this view. In theoretical terms, the low-wage labour market is a “monopsony” and traditional competitive market theory, as it is widely understood, is inapplicable in this area.
In general, economists are trying to explain empirical data from a number of regions in the US that have found that moderately increasing the minimum wage seems to stimulate economic growth and create more jobs. Some explain this by arguing that by increasing the minimum wage, consumption is increased, leading to increased demand, which encourages new business investment.
Roughly, this is a revision of Henry Ford’s famous decision in the early 20th century – which scandalized his fellow industrialists – to pay relatively high wages to his workers in the belief that they would eventually be a market for his cars.
Also, from a humanitarian perspective, I would note that most of the minimum wage workers are the working poor – usually kept at minimal hours so that employers do not have to pay benefits. A moderate increase in the minimum wage would not be a signficant redistribution of wealth that would put this group into the middle class. However, it would partly remedy exploitative practices in the labour market.
In terms of the broader economy, however, there is significant empirical and theoretical evidence that moderate increases in minimum wage stimulates economic growth and creates jobs. In fact, even those economists who argue that increases in minimum wage negatively impacts the economy in the short term concede that this negative impact is minor. Again, however, the aggregate empirical data tends support minimum wage increases stimulating economic growth.
As a moderate conservative myself, I find the combination of these arguments inescapable.
Happy New Year to folks. Have not posted for a few weeks given the family dementia of the holidays, but always follow TMV closely. Cheers.
Apologies about resorting to theoretical jargon in my previous post re: monopsony – you can Google it, the ugly sister of monopoly
– but no other way to indicate that the economic complexity of this debate is deeper than common sense might suggest.
It is surprising how business leaders are often opposed to these increases. But businessmen, like most of us, are led by common sense and few are visionaries like Ford. It has simply taken economists a long time to explain something Ford instinctively understood.
Marlowe,
Thanks-that’s the kind of fact based rationale that I can’t argue against. The point is, I’m not opposed to the minimum wage per se, but I dislike the arguments that say that we have to do this because we have to help the working poor. If it does have that effect, great; if not, then we should figure out a different strategy.
Marlowe,
Do you think though, that different businesses are affected differently? It would seem that it would differ based on whether the elasticity of demand for the product or service that the business is offering. When workers are paid more, demand for some things will increase but for other things, not so much.
As a business owner my preference would be to eliminate or reduce the mandatory minimum wage as part of a deal to make available inexpensive universal health care, easy access to affordable education and training.
Which is better paying someone $7 per hour without health care or $6 with healthcare?
Let market forces determine compensation so that new microbusinesses have a chance to survive.
Also Marlowe (or anyone else with a greater grasp of economic theory than I have), I’d like to hear opinions on a proposal that I’ve conjectured. Intuitively it seems to me that we could benefit from the creation of an indpendent (non-political) labor board that would be similar to the Fed Reserve Board for setting the minimum wage. In other words, just as the Fed controls supply of capital by adjusting interest rates, this board would adjust the supply of labor by reviewing economic indicators. And, the decisions would be grounded in the economic reality without being subject to political manipulations (not allowing politicians to frame the debate around who cares more about the working class.) Thoughts?
“As a business owner my preference would be to eliminate or reduce the mandatory minimum wage as part of a deal to make available inexpensive universal health care, easy access to affordable education and training.”
In the real world the minimum wage would be eliminated and the rest of the deal would go bye-bye. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a lot more influence than a bunch of unorganized poor workers.
“Which is better paying someone $7 per hour without health care or $6 with healthcare?”
See my first point that renders this sentence meaningless.
“Let market forces determine compensation so that new microbusinesses have a chance to survive.”
The market is a financial instrument. It has no compassion, no soul. It wouldn’t care if millions, much less thousands sunk into poverty and starved as long the people who already have money made out fine. We had a world where your beliefs ruled. Do you think Dickens made up everything? The characters he wrote about were fictional, their environment was not.
CStanley -
Interesting idea but one fraught with abuse potential (who gets on the board? How? Why wouldn’t business-owners with a vested interest and $$$ be overly represented? etc.).
Just for fun though try this – why not have your version of a “neutral” oversite board for every aspect of government authority? We could develop one for foreign policy so politicians couldn’t wave the red-flag of WMDs in our face to push their agenda. Or one for social issues so that gay-marriage couldn’t be hoisted (for or against) as a cause. Politicians would simply be elected to enact legislation (as determined by a board?) and fix our budget priorities?
Eural,
Good questions. As far as how to prevent abuse, I don’t know-how is this done with the Fed Reserve Board? It seems that it has worked well. I’m not saying the same could be done in this case (I just honestly don’t know).
Regarding oversight on other political issues, yes you have a point there too. I guess the idea is that we recognize that we need more expert opinions without the political bias, in all areas. I guess on economics I feel that there is so little understanding of the complexity of reactions to any govt intervention that the idea deserves special merit (and as I’m pointing out, there’s historical evidence of this idea working to stabilize the economy through regulation of the supply of capital.)
A few words can say a lot about a person and your comment here speaks volumes.
The federal minimum wage law has been around for decades. It has fallen to 70% in real dollars of what it was 30 years ago. This is in a country were per capita wealth has increased nearly 50% per person.
The poorer workers have reduced inflation for the rest of us.
The claim of thev right has been that this is right and proper and that the economy can not take the increased costs of increased wages. Despite the fact that a dollar per hour is less than the yearly increase in health care costs. Doctors deserve increases, others don’t.
And no it is not a market driven wage economy in many areas. Many niches are highly protected and difficult to enter. CEO pay is not decided by rational economic incentives, but by the power of an incestrous elite.
The Republican position has been anti competitive and feudal. Thus no bid contracts in Iraq and Katrina, laws to protect US industries, subsidies to the chosen. It is modeled on the soutern states such as Mississippi and Alabama. Historically these have been held up by the capitalist states. For example California gets back 75 cents on every dollar in federal taxes it pays, other mosdern economies such as New York make similar contributions. The red states usually take in far more than they pay. Naturally they use the lies of scoundrels and boast of their “self sufficiency and real work ethic” in regards to the productive states.
Being feudal in nature the Republican position is that all tithes of the state to private interests are good because they tax the productive, except tithes to the poor who are by definition undeserving. To help them would be to encourage the laziness of working 12 hours da day in contrast to that of a real estate agent in an inflated market where the state (and many red states do this) forbids commissions below 6% and most business goes to insiders with connections.
Republicans use private property interchangeably with free enterprise and to Republicans the very best money is that daddy (and nowadays with feminism that mommy) gave you or baseball parks built with givernment money on land that the government condemned at one third value against the will of it’s owners which is how the president got his millions. It may seem like hard work, but daddy’s friends did get him the job after he flubbed a whole bunch of others they got me, which is why he is so confident, despite lots of failures he nevr admiited it and eventually daddy’s friend got it right, so how could he fail as president? He had never failed before or at least he never admitted failing which is real gumption and not the sort of thing you can do if you don’t have daddt’s money keeping you afloat until daddy’s friends set you up again. This is the kind of character that someone who works a minimum wage job lacks, which is why they don’t deserve any increases.
I would also add that our esteemed vice president and now departed SecDef got their money by selling government connections to corporations which made them executives. Again the kind of shining entrepenurial spirit that the Republican party values.
have to increase their labor costs, they will do one of two things: employ fewer people at this end of the spectrum (either absorbing their duties into salaried positions, automating, downsizing whatever) which will lead to more unemployment, or they will keep employing the same number of people but pass the extra labor cost on to consumers. Trouble is, some of those consumers are the minimum wage earners themselves who now have a bit more money in their pockets but see rising cost of living.
———————————-
The increased cost of living is much greater from other sources. It’s only increases in minimum wages that evokes this concern from Republicans. The money people eat with is the only thing that we can morally control as a society.
In balance automation has been good since it increaes productivity per worker, it wasn’t good for blue collar workers because while their productivity increased their wages fell, on the other hand we had decades of increased white collar and especially upper level white collar increases while their productivty fell, only in the nineties did we see some increase and much comes frim pressure on pink collar workers, temp operations, automation etc.
It is interesting and so revealing that a Republican will reveal that many salaried workers have plenty of free time and can easily do the work of laid off hourly workers. One might think it more efficient to lay them off rather than pay them 3 times as much per hour for one third the work. But in the Republican reality you can’t do this because they are “special.”
CS Stanley said…”Do you think though, that different businesses are affected differently? It would seem that it would differ based on whether the elasticity of demand for the product or service that the business is offering.”
Yes, I think you are right. For example, the low-wage sector – the “microbusiness” as one poster refered to it – is often seen as functioning as a “monopsony” as I noted above. The common sense view of markets – that employers in this sector will respond to increased costs by cutting staff or reducing hours – has been shown repeatedly to not occur. Hence, many economists believe different forces are at work in this part of the labour market.
Your idea of a labour board is interesting, and many countries have different versions of this. I would argue against it though.
Main reason is that economists don’t really understand many aspects of the economy. For example, you may be surprised to know that there is no generally accepted explanation of “inflation”. Similarly, it took years for economists to understand the “Great Depression” until the recently deceased Milton Friedman’s now generally accepted explanation of how depressions occur.
Politicians generally keep out of the Fed’s way, as it has been managed well under Greenspan (today this is more debatable). But the temptations to continually jigger the labour market for votes might be too great.
However, there is an important role for the state in the marketplace. Adam Smith emphasizes this repeatedly in “The Wealth of Nations” noting that market forces cannot adequately deal with areas such as education, defense and transportation infrastructure upon which, ironically, the economy is often dependent.
Adam Smith thus supported a strong role for the state in the market in a number of areas….this is something that many folks on the left and the right today often ignore.
Wow thanks for actually bringing this up. In my view the entire theory of supply/demand comes down to choice. The entire concept of demand going up or down based on price assumes that people actually have the ability to walk away and go somewhere else if they feel like it’s in their best interest.
For education, health and infrastructure (both transportation and now utilities) demand is inflexible. It’s obvious that a monopoly can raise prices on these ad hoc and people will have to pay, but even massively interconnected industries like health care and education can have a similar effect because at all points in the chain there’s no possibility of anyone turning down a price increase since the consumer will “gladly” pay for it.
Like Marlowecan pointed out, it’s the same for wages. When I’ve noticed people looking for near minimum wage jobs they have absolutely no bargaining power and are just trying to get whatever they can. If all companies decided to lower the wage to $3/hr they’d still get close to the same number of applicants because there isn’t the option to go higher and the companies view everyone as interchangeable. Even in the second level ($10-$15/hr) I’ve noticed this changes a lot and those jobs are the ones where companies actually value one person strongly over another so there is some power held by the employee.
I read this randomly so I don’t have a link, but I believe less than 30% of economists surveyed supported the minimum wage in the early 90s and in the most recent is 55% in favor (that means 70% wanted it completely eliminated in the early 90s to give a similar reference point since the link says only 38% want an increase now). The reference said that to get literally twice as many people in academia to support something in a mere 15 years is nearly unheard of…and a lot of it is thanks to research done after the last minimum wage increase.
Oh incidentally Andy Stern has suggested a union resurgence is the key to addressing your concerns CS. I haven’t read that much about him, but at face value he has talked about how the union mentality is broken — workers and businesses aren’t in competition with each other, they should have symbiotic relationships. He thinks that if there is extremely high union membership and the union operates with the overall health of the business in mind then both worker and company can prosper.
For example, he seemed to be for labor agreements that flucuated with the amount of profit the company was making and also took into account plans for growth. During slow periods it would automatically scale down compensation/benefits to allow for recovery and provide a windfall for everyone during expansion periods. Workers would be guided on how to invest and save for the future when they were having massive bonuses and unions wouldn’t be so pension oriented.
In essence all the workers would become indirect share holders.
Another point. The increasing wealth gap in the US should be alarming to any student of history. A widening gap preceded and was causal in the demise of all the world’s empires.
Kevin Phillips, longtime Republican adviser whose southern strategy won Richard Nixon the White House believes ever freer markets have been leading us to plutocracy: The rule of the rich.
Poverty and the resulting perception of injustice and disempowerment contribute to terrorism, even in the US.
As one who enjoys being in that top few percent, I want my fellow affluent souls to remember that giving the little guy a chance is not some kind of communist idea, nor a philanthropic one. It’s survival for our entire nation, and especially for those of us at the top.
In addition to the excellent points made here about higher wages actually increasing employment, remember that below a certain income level, Americans qualify for welfare. If we let big business pay whatever they can get away with, it amounts to a subsidy (another of many) for the rich, helping them reduce their costs at our expense, and hence funnel more of both private and public wealth into their gilded pockets. Republicans like to talk about eliminating welfare and the safety net to further increase the wealth of the wealthy. But this is a nonstarter, as they discovered when trying to reduce the food stamp program, which supports not only the poor, but the farm states.
Look, we’re not going to let people starve, nor should we. We won’t let them die when they show up sick or injured at the hospital, and we simply can’t have them dying in their sleep on the sidewalk. We need to step back from unbridled selfishness and greed and recognize that making this country work for all of us benefits all of us. The key is to do this in as efficient way as possible and raising income is as direct as it gets. Free-marketeers (and remember that Phillips has major credentials in that world) like to imagine the “invisible hand” of the market will solve these problems. It won’t. And in an ideological effort to avoid “socialism” we want profit-driven corporations to provide health, education and welfare services, ignoring the fact that profit is a cost to us in providing the services, a cost we really can’t afford.
Readers, this is coming from a member of the investor class who has both worked for minimum wage and been on welfare. I believe I’m being smarter than most in my class. The lessons of history and the current warning signs lead me to the inescapable conclusion that spreading the wealth a bit more evenly is in my best interest and that of the corporations of whom I am a shareholder.
MvdG,
You’re not alone on this. As a libertarian-liberal, I too have questions about raising the minimum raise. For one thing, I have serious questions about whether having a federal minimum wage is even Constitutional (my inclination is to believe that it’s not). But even, constitutionality aside, I wonder whether the benefits of having a minimum wage truly outweigh the drawbacks of having a minimum wage. The government can’t simply legislate wealth out of thin air. When the government mandates that employees are to receive high wages, well, the money has to come from somewhere (and someone) else.
There are no quick fixes, no matter how much the government tries to convince us otherwise.
Nicriviera: I would welcome you to read the rest of the comments here, which point out that the facts seem to fly in the face of your assertions. We have data on what happens when the minimum wage is given a moderate increase, and it doesn’t look like what you think it would. The working poor don’t save; they don’t have the luxury. From a cold, calculating market standpoint, that means a great way to stimulate the economy is to give them a bit more money, since it will flow right back into the market. Giving the rich a crapload more money — e.g. the Bush plan — is a singularly awful way to give the market a broad boost, since they can just add to the trust fund.
The government can’t simply legislate wealth out of thin air.Of course it can. A corporation gets tax breaks and incentives to move into a community, with other communities ‘bidding’ with their own incentives to land the company, which is then excused from paying taxes and given breaks on outsourcing jobs overseas. Meanwhile, capital gains get a break wage earners don’t, devaluing the value of work vs. investing. I’m certainly not the only member of the “investor class” who sees the danger in this. Warren Buffet:
Americans have a negative savings %- raising the minimum wage to $10/hr wd cause the greatest boon in the economy ever. Even the poor blow thru $. Many people making 6 figure salaries are in debt. Give the poor a doubling of their wages and the economy would explode.
I tend to agree.
From the employers, who will then raise the prices, etc. At least, that’s an oversimplification of one economical approach.
The federal government controls commerce of all sorts. It’s Constitutional. Employers do not have to raise prices, but even if they tried, a tax structure that rewards employers that pay good wages and do not gouge consumers is not difficult to make. Difficult to pass in our greey sociry? Yes. But not difficult to craft. As usual, the Lowest Common Denom- this time greed, is why the poor suffer.
As for calling a min wage ‘mandates that employees are to receive high wages’ shows how out of touch most people against raising the min wage are.
Another point- it’s always humorous to hera people say ‘let the market decide’ when big business wants to screw workers, but when the same co’s are in dire straits when their own obscene greed damns their co’s they’re the first one looking for gov’t bailouts- fair weather Socialists, all!
Raising the minimum wage barely affects the price of a burger, about $0.0127 ([($7.50 - $5.15)*1.30 for generous benefits]*(1/240 of an hour to assemble a burger)). Get over it. It will cost you less than 2 cents more for that burger assembly technician to have enough money to maybe buy his own burger. There would be another increase for the meatpackers, except the meat is from Argentina, and other stuff, like the forklift operator has no impact because the cost per patty is insignificant.
Meanwhile, our coddling of the oil industry has tripled the cost of gasoline, and the related policies have eroded our security and our civil rights and degraded the environment. Subsidizing petroleum has kept us locked in dependency on a troubled region of the world, while alternative fuels would have beat the tar out of petroleum years ago without the false economy created by “free market” Republicans.
OK, I do blame Repubs because this is a government of, by and for oilmen. The real root cause, (I know, GD sounding like a broken record) is the corrupting influence of money on politics, which in turn is based on the unconstitutional concept of “corporate personhood”.
Raising the minimum wage barely affects the price of a burger, about $0.0127 ([($7.50 - $5.15)*1.30 for generous benefits]*(1/240 of an hour to assemble a burger)). Get over it.
But the market dosn’t “Get over it” Even a 2 cent increase in price will change the amount sold in the whole country, thus lowering profits.
While I’m sure most of the commenters here think they’re being reasonable, most are just blowing smoke based on “common sense,” an oxymoron if I ever heard one, and hazy understandings based on econ 101. How would said commenters like to take a ride on a jumbo jet built by people who never got beyond Engineering 101?
Based on all I’ve read about the minimum wage (hint: a lot), Marlowecan is easily the best informed on the subject, and I have to admire CS Stanley’s gracious responses to him. But, really, most of you need to spend a lot more time studying the issue before basing your arguments on “common sense” and Econ 101. Economics is a lot more complicated than you seem to think and , in the light of recent scientific work in sociology and biology, it’s about to get much more complicated. Adam Smith will soon have less relevancy to modern economics than Freud has to modern psychiatry.
Paul L,
You claim “But the market dosn’t “Get over itâ€? Even a 2 cent increase in price will change the amount sold in the whole country, thus lowering profits.”. Prove it. Did you even read Marlowecan’s post on this issue? I may disagree with him on some things but not this one. The best study on this proves your claim wrong and it’s been backed up by other studies. Show us the ones that prove you correct and him wrong.
Would it be safe to say that the reason for your post was tell others here how ignorant and inept they are? And then, without adding anything of substance one way or the other pack up and leave?
It seems… I don’t know… It seems like you’re just blowing smoke. (hint: maybe you could share some of your vast knowledge instead tossing around nonspecific pejoratives.)
Would it be safe to say that the reason for your post was tell others here how ignorant and inept they are? And then, without adding anything of substance one way or the other pack up and leave?Actually, if you take part of what Seanny’s saying – i.e. gain greater understanding of Economics that many simply do not have. – in an admittedly better manner of stating it. People would have a greater ability to understand what Marlowecan is saying.
A lot of people only take either the total Market view or equally ignorant – the total labor view. You can see it in such posts where people only reference say child labor, or work hours, or whatever. The actual reality is our countries periods of swinging heavily towards labor side was nothing to hold up as a total source of pride. It had it’s stellar moments that produced policy that we couldn’t imagine going backwards with, but it also had it’s highly destructive moments.
Our economy needs to let businesses do what they do best, to innovate, to serve to provide a better product to the other guy. And to run their business the best way they can given their respective competitive environment. Our economy also needs to set into place protection levels, i.e. work hours, child labor laws, etc.
A clearer understanding of both sides you realize that total protection is no good. Neither is total market driven. The pendulum swings side to side but winds up closer to the middle.
bah I messed up on the quoting, but the top paragraph is a quote, not my words.
And now we swing too much in favor of business. Read up on how upper level IRS officials are telling their people to take it easy on corporations no matter what they’ve done.
with all due respect Jim, I’ve read some of your comments – here and other posts. You’ve got a good grasp of the labor side of things, and good thought process in that regards.
However your knowledge of the business side is clearly non-existant, perhaps your not interested in learning the other side. who knows, but you really do need a two sided knowledge to fully understand and appreciate the aspects.
Economics is not neurology. An ability to add, subtract and factor in relentles human greed explains 99.8% of all economic queries. the rest is a dash of randomness. If society wanted to, we could craft a fair tax system as well as fair wages.
But, we don’t, because even poor folk dream of becoming rich and screwing others. Madison Ave. Triumphalism at its finest.
Ya Sure, telling IRS auditors to settle for a fraction of what is owed is going too far towards the influence of business. Telling them that if they find violations during their audit that weren’t the specific one they started looking for that they should be ignored is going too far. In addition there is lawsuit going on because the agency that should be making certain that royalties due the U.S. government from oil companies who have wells on public lands isn’t doing its job, in large part because of the revolving door between that agency and the oil industry. Look at the rigging of the California energy market a few years back. Yes, the pendulum right now has swung too far in favor of business.
Jim, Your unwillingness to even understand business side of things is what makes your posts quite humorous.
For example your “points” have occurred and will continue to occur in one variation or another since the dawn of business. If you cared to actually understand business than you’d realize that the pendulum swings a little more than it should to one side – corrections are made and it’ll swing a little more than it should to the other side before more corrections are made.
It will always find the middle, sometimes it takes longer than other times but it always will.
Once you realize that:
-Business owes you absolutely nothing at all. Even in a right to work state, you can get unemployed in a snap.
-Technological advancements will continue – irregardless if you loose your job or not.
-Without an eye on the profit line, there would be no business, and your job would cease to exist.
-Labor & Business are equally important.
-If you got every degree known to man – still nobody owes you a thing.
Once you understand those, than you can begin to understand the ramifications and benefits of protections. Until then, purposefully and willingly blindfolding yourself to what you do not consider reality is short changing yourself. To which, it’s your life to live blindfolded or not. But your missing out on how to really state your position.
So I’m curious, on one hand your posts just spill forth as coming from someone who feels that Business owes them no matter what. Maybe passed over for promotion or passed over for employment due to shortcomings that you didn’t realize (or refuse to realize) you had. Maybe you got laid off and saw others less educated continue on. Who knows. Which if that’s the case, than you’ll continue to be passed on by.
Now your response here will be interesting. For someone who couldn’t give a rats behind will simply respond with an attack, or make the accusation of being attacked, or spout off on some rant or another. I’m personally hoping to see you actually show an attempt at understanding business, for it will greatly increase your understanding of Labor and give you some actual valid points to use in these types of situations. For I fully believe that taking the position of labor in most situations is indeed a good position to take – but until you understand the opposite position, you won’t be able to really understand your desired position in a respected manner.
Just to put my money where my mouth was so to speak:
Minimum wage offers benefits under any scenario
Interestingly, although opponents of the minimum wage use dubious negative elasticities to argue against the minimum wage, it is not clear that such elasticities suggest the minimum wage is, in the end, a bad policy. Even assuming that the negative elasticities claimed by the opposition are correct, this would still mean that a 20% increase in the minimum wage would cut low-wage employment by 4%. In the low-wage labor market there is generally job growth and always a great deal of turnover and changing of jobs. In that environment, a negative elasticity implies a risk of longer gaps in employment, not low-wage workers facing complete and perpetual unemployment. Workers are not likely to actually get laid off as a result of the increase, but rather employers would simply adjust by not replacing workers who vacate a position. When new workers look for a job, under this worst-case scenario, there will be 4% fewer jobs available than before the minimum wage was raised. On average, then, these job seekers would have to wait 4% longer to get a new job that will pay 20% more once they get it. On an annual basis, even if the critics positing the worst-case scenario are correct, workers are 15.2% better off than they were before. In other words, putting well-founded skepticism regarding the negative elasticities aside and accepting the prognostications of those opposed to a minimum wage increase, it is unclear why low-wage workers should be concerned. The benefits far outweigh the costs even in the gloomiest scenarios.
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp178
And yeah, I am telling many how ignorant I think they are on the subject. You really need to read the entire doc at the link to even begin to start talking about the minimum wage or criticizing EPI’s take.
Also, at a minimum, Wikipedia provides an overall view of the complexity of the issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage