Minimum wage in the USA

[manolo]

Folks,

A recent Gallup poll shows 7 out of 10 Americans would vote for a raise in the minimum wage. Support is shown in a range of demographic groups, with the majority in favour in every group.

It is encouraging to see such a progressive popular will in the USA, but can it be transformed into action?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/160913/back- ... -wage.aspx



Alex.

[Mr. Perfect]

Minimum wage has always been popular but Paul Krugman or anyone who has studied economics will tell you it is destructive to the poor.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/ ... radic.html

Krugman's textbook says that minimum wages don't "work", but recently has changed his tune in political forums. This of course is something Krugman does a lot. He says one thing in his textbook and something else to the political public.

Anyone interested in becoming knowledgeable on the topic, and have an educated point of view, please watch this. There is almost no controversy on the topic among academics. However some of the academics change their tune when speaking politically. Makes you wonder.

j0c2vmFGbtk

[Simple Minded]

Folks,

A recent Gallup poll shows 7 out of 10 Americans would vote for a raise in the minimum wage. Support is shown in a range of demographic groups, with the majority in favour in every group.

It is encouraging to see such a progressive popular will in the USA, but can it be transformed into action?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/160913/back- ... -wage.aspx

Alex.

Alex,

I never find it encouraging when people believe in ideologies that are destructive to themselves or the group they claim to want to help.

Disproportionally hurts the youth and the poor. The same Einsteins who claim to want higher minimum wages than complain about chronically high youth or unskilled unemployment. The Cash for Clunkers mentality surfaces yet again.

Reminds me of my UAW brothers who would wax eloquently about how it should be illegal for Americans to buy anything that was not made in America by union labor.... just before they went to K-Mart to buy stuff made in Japan! Back when K-Mart was Walmart and Japan was China.....

6 out of 10 Merikans believe in square circles. Silly people. Letting them reap want they sow seems to only cure, sometimes takes 20 years.

[Simple Minded]

There is almost no controversy on the topic among academics. However some of the academics change their tune when speaking politically. Makes you wonder.

True enough.

Actually paying a smart person to repeat things that are not true is surprisingly common...... MMGW anyone?

[monster_gardener]

Folks,

A recent Gallup poll shows 7 out of 10 Americans would vote for a raise in the minimum wage. Support is shown in a range of demographic groups, with the majority in favour in every group.

It is encouraging to see such a progressive popular will in the USA, but can it be transformed into action?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/160913/back- ... -wage.aspx



Alex.

Thank You Very Much for your post, Alex Manolo/E-Thinker.

Minimum wage may not matter so much if you lose your job or have your hours cut because of Obamacare....

If anything it may make it harder to persuade someone to offer you another job....

Wondering how many Americans would vote for obama the Lying Creature from the Chicago Lagoon or his DemocRat Congressional henchmen/women again now that his & thus their lies are exposed.....

Any is too many but maybe enough fewer to make a difference in 2014....

Might be time for some Red State Dems to do a Lieberman on Steroids and caucus with Republicans if Harry Reid won't let them try to repair the damage....

[Enki]

Folks,

A recent Gallup poll shows 7 out of 10 Americans would vote for a raise in the minimum wage. Support is shown in a range of demographic groups, with the majority in favour in every group.

It is encouraging to see such a progressive popular will in the USA, but can it be transformed into action?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/160913/back- ... -wage.aspx

Alex.

Alex,

I never find it encouraging when people believe in ideologies that are destructive to themselves or the group they claim to want to help.

Disproportionally hurts the youth and the poor. The same Einsteins who claim to want higher minimum wages than complain about chronically high youth or unskilled unemployment. The Cash for Clunkers mentality surfaces yet again.

Reminds me of my UAW brothers who would wax eloquently about how it should be illegal for Americans to buy anything that was not made in America by union labor.... just before they went to K-Mart to buy stuff made in Japan! Back when K-Mart was Walmart and Japan was China.....

6 out of 10 Merikans believe in square circles. Silly people. Letting them reap want they sow seems to only cure, sometimes takes 20 years.

Please provide data to back up your claim that a minimum wage hurts youth and the poor.

[manolo]

MMGW anyone?

SM,

Certainly:

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/04/potenti ... te_change/

Alex.

[manolo]

Minimum wage has always been popular but Paul Krugman or anyone who has studied economics will tell you it is destructive to the poor.

Mr P,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZrgxHvNNUc

Alex.

[Demon of Undoing]

Are you sure you want to increase the minimum wage?

Gallup finds that three-fourths of Americans favor raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour, whereas 22 percent oppose such a proposal. This is similar to what the Reason-Rupe poll found earlier this year; however, support flips and 56 percent oppose if it caused employers to lay off workers. All policies come with a price and polling questions constantly phrased as benefits-only propositions will continue to overestimate support. Instead, questions should measure what Americans would be willing to give up in order to raise the federal minimum wage.

[Simple Minded]

Alex,

I never find it encouraging when people believe in ideologies that are destructive to themselves or the group they claim to want to help.

Disproportionally hurts the youth and the poor. The same Einsteins who claim to want higher minimum wages then complain about chronically high youth or unskilled unemployment. The Cash for Clunkers mentality surfaces yet again.

Reminds me of my UAW brothers who would wax eloquently about how it should be illegal for Americans to buy anything that was not made in America by union labor.... just before they went to K-Mart to buy stuff made in Japan! Back when K-Mart was Walmart and Japan was China.....

6 out of 10 Merikans believe in square circles. Silly people. Letting them reap want they sow seems the only cure, sometimes takes 20 years.

Please provide data to back up your claim that a minimum wage hurts youth and the poor.

Once again tinker, try to work on your reading comprehension skills.

The thread was not should minimum wage laws exist, but should minimum wages be increased.

If an increase in minimum wage is good, why not increase minimum wage to $20 an hour? Because it denies entry to market place to the young and unskilled.

Which was exactly what my UAW brothers intended, at least when they were wage earners. When they were consumers, suddenly, they wanted maximum bang for the buck, and were unwilling to buy union made products.

Attempting to force a wage above the level the consumer will pay often has the opposite effect than what the kind hearted intended. I have seen unions enter a plant more than once with the result being an increase in automation displacing jobs or factories moved to lower cost jurisdictions.

Blame the left or right all you want. I blame consumers.

Nothing stopping any consumer in America or the world from handing an extra buck or two to the minimum wage worker each time you interact with them. But if you price them out of the market by law, how is that being compassionate?

[Simple Minded]

Are you sure you want to increase the minimum wage?

Gallup finds that three-fourths of Americans favor raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour, whereas 22 percent oppose such a proposal. This is similar to what the Reason-Rupe poll found earlier this year; however, support flips and 56 percent oppose if it caused employers to lay off workers. All policies come with a price and polling questions constantly phrased as benefits-only propositions will continue to overestimate support. Instead, questions should measure what Americans would be willing to give up in order to raise the federal minimum wage.

Thanks demon.

Ideologues never want to think in terms of actual cost, hidden costs, unintended consequences, or perverse incentives.

But if the price of their hamburger goes up by $0.20 or milk by $0.30 a gallon... they will immediately shop at the supplier who automated workers out of the supply chain or outsourced the higher paying wages.

Artificially high price destroy demand. Price controls create shortages. "News" that is thousands of years old. The road to hell...

[Simple Minded]

MMGW anyone?

SM,

Certainly:

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/04/potenti ... te_change/

Alex.

Alex,

Anyone who believes the temperature of the Earth can be measured within +/- 0.1 C, should go measure the variation in temperature from floor to ceiling of an air conditioned building with a 20 foot ceiling.

[Mr. Perfect]

Minimum wage has always been popular but Paul Krugman or anyone who has studied economics will tell you it is destructive to the poor.

Mr P,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZrgxHvNNUc

Alex.

Poignant. As economists will tell you, minimum wage laws increase the number of Olivers. So do leftist policies overall. Under obama the only thing booming in the economy is poverty. Good reminder.

[Doc]

Minimum wage has always been popular but Paul Krugman or anyone who has studied economics will tell you it is destructive to the poor.

Mr P,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZrgxHvNNUc

Alex.

Poignant. As economists will tell you, minimum wage laws increase the number of Olivers. So do leftist policies overall. Under obama the only thing booming in the economy is poverty. Good reminder.

Especially in leftist hot spots like Greenwich Village.

http://nypost.com/2013/11/14/strand-boo ... -homeless/

[Ibrahim]

Folks,

A recent Gallup poll shows 7 out of 10 Americans would vote for a raise in the minimum wage. Support is shown in a range of demographic groups, with the majority in favour in every group.

It is encouraging to see such a progressive popular will in the USA, but can it be transformed into action?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/160913/back- ... -wage.aspx



Alex.

The number of working poor and those with part time and/or precarious employment has only increased in the US since 2008. This is a reasonable response. Its a policy with an obvious immediate benefit for workers, and the money is quickly passed back out into the consumer economy, with the only downside being possible inflation later, maybe, according to economists who loath all government intervention and work for conservative think tanks. Pretty clear move, really.

[Mr. Perfect]

Economists left right and center in their textbooks simply do not agree with you. See Khan academy video above if you want to step into the world of education as opposed to urban legends.

[Huxley]

Economists left right and center in their textbooks simply do not agree with you.

Doubtless. But what do we do when economic dogma runs contrary to common sense?

"Raising American Wages...by Raising American Wages"
A simple remedy for income stagnation
BY RON UNZ • The American Conservative • NOVEMBER 19, 2012

... So how might we possibly raise the wages of American workers who fill this huge roster of underpaid and lesser-skilled positions, holding jobs which are almost entirely concentrated in the private service sector?

***

Perhaps the most effective means of raising their wages is simply to raise their wages.

Consider the impact of a large increase in the federal minimum wage, perhaps to $10 or more likely $12 per hour.

The generally low-end jobs catalogued above are entirely in the non-tradable service sector; they could not be outsourced to even lower-paid foreigners in Bangalore or Manila. Perhaps there might be some incentive for further automation, but the nature of the jobs in question – focused on personal interactions requiring human skills – are exactly those least open to mechanical replacement. Just consider the difficulty and expense of automating the job of a home health care aide, child care worker, or bartender.

With direct replacement via outsourcing or automation unlikely, employers responding to a higher minimum wage would be faced with the choice of either increasing the wages of their lowest paid workers by perhaps a couple of dollars per hour, or eliminating their jobs. There would likely be some job loss,[vii] but given the simultaneous rise in labor costs among all competitors and the localized market for these services, the logical business response would be to raise prices by a few percent to help cover increased costs while also trimming current profit margins. Perhaps consumers would pay 3 percent more for Wal-Mart goods or an extra dime for a McDonald’s hamburger, but most of the jobs would still exist and the price changes would be small compared to typical fluctuations due to commodity and energy prices, international exchange rates, or Chinese production costs.

The resulting one-time inflationary spike would slightly raise living expenses for everyone in our society, but the immediate 20% or 30% boost in the take-home pay of many millions of America’s lowest income workers would make it easy for them to absorb these small costs, while the impact upon the middle or upper classes would be totally negligible. An increase in the hourly minimum wage from the current federal level of $7.25 to (say) $12.00 might also have secondary, smaller ripple effects, boosting wages currently above that level as well.

A minimum wage in this range is hardly absurd or extreme. In 2012 dollars, the American minimum wage was over $10 in 1968 during our peak of postwar prosperity and full employment.[viii] The average minimum wage in Canadian provinces is currently well over $10 per hour, the national figure for France is more than $12, and Australia has the remarkable combination of a minimum wage of nearly $16.50 together with 5 percent unemployment.[ix]

Even a large increase in the minimum wage would have very little impact on America’s international competitiveness since almost everyone employed in our surviving manufacturing export sector – whether in unionized Seattle or non-union South Carolina – already earns far above the current minimum wage. The same is also true for government workers, resulting in negligible increased cost to taxpayers. ...

... Ironically, it is likely that major elements of the private sector would be perfectly happy with this arrangement. For example, despite their low-wage and anti-worker reputation, Wal-Mart’s top executives lobbied Congress in 2005 for an increase in the minimum wage, concerned that their working-class customer base was growing too impoverished to shop at their stores.[xi] ...

More Unzian goodness in the linked article.

[Mr. Perfect]

Economists left right and center in their textbooks simply do not agree with you.

Doubtless. But what do we do when economic dogma runs contrary to common sense?

When I see any common sense in support of a minimum wage increase I will report back here immediately.

[manolo]

Poignant.

Mr P,

Heard this on the radio a while back. There was a black American singing group who would sing beautiful negro spirituals. Anyway, their songs about negro sufferings would bring white audiences to tears, but when the show was over they still couldn't walk on the sidewalks alongside those tearful folks. 'Poignancy' does nothing to soften hard hearts, as we all know too well.

The blacks won their rights in a different way. Same with the minimum wage. Minimum wage was not won by heartfelt pleas; it was won by trade unions and political power. That power exists at the ballot box.

http://www.msnbc.com/all/job-one-raisin ... nimum-wage

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/20 ... _wage.html

Alex.

[Mr. Perfect]

You have some good points there. If you are intent on destroying the lives of the poor then by all means go to the ballot box and support the minimum wage. There is nothing to stop you.

[Ammianus]

The same textbooks ostensibly opposing the minimum wage are almost always the same ones extolling government Keynesian policies during downturns.

[Huxley]

When I see any common sense in support of a minimum wage increase I will report back here immediately.

I see an abundance of it in the Unz article.

[Simple Minded]

The same textbooks ostensibly opposing the minimum wage are almost always the same ones extolling government Keynesian policies during downturns.

good point.

I think "fixers" often get drunk on their sense of power and never seem to know when to take themselves out of the game. Many motivated by good intentions do just a little too much and exacerbate previously bad conditions.

"Sub prime lending will lower the cost of housing for the poor......"

"Student loan subsidies will lower the cost of college education..."

"Cash for Clunkers will help low income people buy inexpensive transportation...."

"Higher wages in X town will increase spending......."

[Simple Minded]

The other fascinating aspect of discussing increasing minimum wage laws is as Demon pointed out, increasing minimum wage laws drive up costs for the consumer earning a minimum wage.

While people love to preach "Go Team 1" or Go Team 0"...... I have never seen that on resolved.

It''ll probably be resolved about 10 minutes after we define "fair" or "just."

If only people were always producers or consumers but not ever the other......

[Mr. Perfect]

The same textbooks ostensibly opposing the minimum wage are almost always the same ones extolling government Keynesian policies during downturns.

Sort of.

The reality is this. I taught an econ class 2 summers ago, out of a Krugman text. It was a difficult life experience, every time I read something I could hear his voice and see his face. It was difficult to endure.

Krugman's text, all of them now, left right and center are almost identical and they read like right wing teabagger political tracts. According to textbooks toothless knuckle draggin teabaggers are right about absolutely everything. How bot that.

Except STPN all of them right left center say that spending, interest rate cuts, and QE result in a "return to normal output" or something. Hopefully someone has that on hand, I don't feel like looking it up at the moment.

I looked into and they are wrong. STPN results in what is called "deadweight loss" (pls google) and the Keynes business is based on a couple of fundamentally flawed premises. I have an outline of it but do not have anything less than a few thousand words that would describe it, and no one would read it. Basically all STPN does is create waste and loss.

So the way to look at it is this. If the economic principles that reject minimum wage laws are wrong, then all of economic theory is wrong. All of it. OTOH if STPN Keynes ends up being wrong it wouldn't effect the rest of economic theory, at all.

So Occam's whatever. You have to make decisions in life and decisions create consequences and there are no do overs.