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Wages go up, economy improves.

DirtyRat

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Stop spreading the of-repeated lie, disproven with every minimum wage increase that hasn't hurt employment or the economy, that increasing pay kills jobs. There have been several increases in the minimum wage (but a horrifically long gap in it going up over a couple decades), and not once has this triggered an economic downturn.

https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster

Seattle recently started a significant increase in the minimum wage that will eventually hit $15/hour over a couple of years. The effect on the city's economy and jobs? Not much, actually doing a little better. https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...at-its-supposed-to-do/?utm_term=.ba702cae11d2
 
Too bad we can't get an increase in the living-wage.

Also too bad we don't have the statistical ability to see how many minimum-wage jobs get cut or how much lost fast-food etc. income from resultant price increases is compensated for internally by other corporate spending reductions to hide it from Wall Street and thus from "the economy".

I'm all for people making enough money to make their ends meet, whatever their above bare survival ends are.

I'd just like our living-wage jobs to get as much attention as our minimum-wage jobs, many of our minimum-wage jobs which go to illegal aliens with forged ids and other legal aliens of which, arguably, we have too many for our economies of scale and resource management to provide beyond minimum wage.

I guess it's a lot easier to raise a domestic rate a bit than to do everything necessary to get our off-shored, out-sourced, and in-sourced American living-wage jobs back, or under the false meme of "technology-lost jobs" to retrain everyone to some uncertain new job that their talent/skills don't qualify them for but that would, in theory, command a living-wage.

Oh well ...
 
Let's pay everybody $100 an hour and solve the poverty problem immediately. We'll all be rich!
 
Stop spreading the of-repeated lie, disproven with every minimum wage increase that hasn't hurt employment or the economy, that increasing pay kills jobs. There have been several increases in the minimum wage (but a horrifically long gap in it going up over a couple decades), and not once has this triggered an economic downturn.
While I do support minimum wages, and the latest Census report does show income for the bottom half improving slightly:

I don't think the data supports your assertion; the Census Department doesn't advance that view. I don't think we can claim that changes in minimum wages in a handful of areas are a major factor in the big jump in wages.

It's much more likely a result of unemployment rates getting back to normal, which puts pressure on employers to increase wages in order to retain them.
 
Stop spreading the of-repeated lie, disproven with every minimum wage increase that hasn't hurt employment or the economy, that increasing pay kills jobs. There have been several increases in the minimum wage (but a horrifically long gap in it going up over a couple decades), and not once has this triggered an economic downturn.

https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster

Seattle recently started a significant increase in the minimum wage that will eventually hit $15/hour over a couple of years. The effect on the city's economy and jobs? Not much, actually doing a little better. https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...at-its-supposed-to-do/?utm_term=.ba702cae11d2

We have been through this a number of times. Even the underlying study for the Washington Post, the Dept of Labor write-up and a number of meta studies were part of the discussion. At this point the most important words to consider in this study are: "This report presents the short-run effects of ...". A short term impact is senseless you see. The adjustment periods are much longer than just a year or two.

But as often as we have been through this, nobody has been able to show, why the minimum wage should not reduce the general economic welfare, why it should be better than a minimum income or negative tax or even, why the impact should be positive on total wages paid or hours worked, which theory does not really allow cp.

So, if you want to discuss this topic, find a long term study that shows these things and how they develop over time. That would be interesting.
 
Stop spreading the of-repeated lie, disproven with every minimum wage increase that hasn't hurt employment or the economy, that increasing pay kills jobs. There have been several increases in the minimum wage (but a horrifically long gap in it going up over a couple decades), and not once has this triggered an economic downturn.

https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster

Seattle recently started a significant increase in the minimum wage that will eventually hit $15/hour over a couple of years. The effect on the city's economy and jobs? Not much, actually doing a little better. https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...at-its-supposed-to-do/?utm_term=.ba702cae11d2

So why don't we just make minimum wage $100 an hour?


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So why don't we just make minimum wage $100 an hour?


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The answer is that we will, when inflation makes $100 an hour a minimum to live on. Minimum wages keep corporations from sponging on the Govt. to maintain their employees. Do you think Govt. should make up the difference between wages and what is needed to live?
 
Stop spreading the of-repeated lie, disproven with every minimum wage increase that hasn't hurt employment or the economy, that increasing pay kills jobs. There have been several increases in the minimum wage (but a horrifically long gap in it going up over a couple decades), and not once has this triggered an economic downturn.

https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster

Seattle recently started a significant increase in the minimum wage that will eventually hit $15/hour over a couple of years. The effect on the city's economy and jobs? Not much, actually doing a little better. https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...at-its-supposed-to-do/?utm_term=.ba702cae11d2

Do you have a link to a poorer community that benefited immediately following a MW increase? Seattle is not representative of all the communities in the country, so it really disproves nothing.
 
Let's pay everybody $100 an hour and solve the poverty problem immediately. We'll all be rich!

So why don't we just make minimum wage $100 an hour?

Like so many times before, conservatives just throw their hands up in the air and make outrageous suggestions to blow crap way the heck out of proportion.

It's all a matter of paying neither too much nor too little. If you make minimum wage too high, it does hurt businesses - no one disputes that. BUT if you make minimum wage too low, where people working full-time still have to depend on public (i.e. taxpayer-funded) assistance in order to feed, shelter, and clothe their families, then that's every bit as bad as making minimum wage too high...because not only does it increase the load on taxpayers, but it increases the crime rate, too.

The solution, then, is the "Goldilocks" way - neither too high nor too low. But who judges? Adam Smith - the "Father of Capitalism" - said it best:

Servants, labourers and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.

— Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, I .viii.36


THAT, then, should be the standard of minimum wage: the amount that is required for base-level full-time workers to keep themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged. That can't be done when the minimum wage is so low that full-time workers require public assistance to keep from being homeless.
 
Stop spreading the of-repeated lie, disproven with every minimum wage increase that hasn't hurt employment or the economy, that increasing pay kills jobs. There have been several increases in the minimum wage (but a horrifically long gap in it going up over a couple decades), and not once has this triggered an economic downturn.

https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster

Seattle recently started a significant increase in the minimum wage that will eventually hit $15/hour over a couple of years. The effect on the city's economy and jobs? Not much, actually doing a little better. https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...at-its-supposed-to-do/?utm_term=.ba702cae11d2

Short term results from a short term solution... Who would have thought such a thing coudl happen.

Also: Correlation does not equal causation. Show us the direct cause and effect, not just two parallel lines on a graph. For all you know, the raising of the MW caused a lot of low income jobs to go away, making the average wage go up. No improvement for anyone, but jobs lost for those who can least afford it.
 
Got an coupe of threads on this already.

Seattle's Wage Hike Not Working

Minimum wage goes up, jobs go bye-bye.

In the markets we have, it would seem to make sense that when the wage hikes is instituted, businesses react to this increase in cost of doing business. The most common sense response would be to let some people go, and cut the hours back on others, perhaps doing more themselves.

These two thread above would seem to support this conclusion.

I think TANSTAAFL applies here.
 
Got an coupe of threads on this already.

Seattle's Wage Hike Not Working

Minimum wage goes up, jobs go bye-bye.

In the markets we have, it would seem to make sense that when the wage hikes is instituted, businesses react to this increase in cost of doing business. The most common sense response would be to let some people go, and cut the hours back on others, perhaps doing more themselves.

These two thread above would seem to support this conclusion.

I think TANSTAAFL applies here.

Except they're all bunk, as economists predicted they would be. Actual research studies conducted on Seattle have disproven the notion that higher wages cause job losses. Its time for you to never use those proven false sources ever again.
 
Let's pay everybody $100 an hour and solve the poverty problem immediately. We'll all be rich!

Let's pay everybody nothing, that will create billions of jobs!
 
The answer is that we will, when inflation makes $100 an hour a minimum to live on. Minimum wages keep corporations from sponging on the Govt. to maintain their employees. Do you think Govt. should make up the difference between wages and what is needed to live?

You assume every company is in a position to absorb these added costs. That is absurd even by liberal standards. ( liberals tend to be a little ignorant when it comes to the basics of business).

The Governement IS in a position to handle these expenses and these costs are paid for mostly" rich fat cats" ( since they pay most of the ferdeal income teaxes) , which should warm the hearts of liberals.
 
You assume every company is in a position to absorb these added costs. That is absurd even by liberal standards. ( liberals tend to be a little ignorant when it comes to the basics of business).

The Governement IS in a position to handle these expenses and these costs are paid for mostly" rich fat cats" ( since they pay most of the ferdeal income teaxes) , which should warm the hearts of liberals.

So as a conservative you support corporate welfare? Or what could also be called corporate socialism where profits are privatized while costs are socialized ? That makes you a corporatist not a conservative.
 
So as a conservative you support corporate welfare? Or what could also be called corporate socialism where profits are privatized while costs are socialized ? That makes you a corporatist not a conservative.

I'm not following this line of questioning. Is this the old groaner where the Gov't subsidizes Walmart?
 
Let's pay everybody $100 an hour and solve the poverty problem immediately. We'll all be rich!

No, let's vote in and hire economic policy people that know what the hell they're doing.
 
Except they're all bunk, as economists predicted they would be. Actual research studies conducted on Seattle have disproven the notion that higher wages cause job losses. Its time for you to never use those proven false sources ever again.

Debunked? Really?

D.C. restaurants have lost 1,400 jobs in the first half of the year. This loss—the steepest drop since the 2001 recession—follows a significant minimum wage hike.
Data suggests that the D.C. restaurant industry has been unable to absorb the higher cost of labor without reducing employment opportunities. Since mandating a base wage of $10.50 in July 2015 and another increase to $11.50 in July 2016, D.C. has seen employment in the restaurant industry trend downward, for a 3 percent job loss in 2016.
“Cities and states around the country that are considering a hike in their minimum wages to $15 an hour might want to take a look at how that’s working out in the nation’s capitol,” writes Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute.

Minimum Wage Increase Puts 1,400 D.C. Restaurant Employees Out of Work

Although the ordinance appears to have boosted wages for the city’s lowest-paid workers, the benefits of the increase may have been partly offset by fewer hours worked per person and slightly less overall employment, the Seattle Minimum Wage Study research team found. Estimated income gains for the average worker were modest – on the order of a few dollars a week – and sensitive to methodological choices.
The City of Seattle passed its $15 minimum wage ordinance in June of 2014, and that December commissioned the UW team to conduct a five-year study of the law’s impacts. The ongoing research is led by professors Jacob Vigdor and Mark Long with Jennifer Romich, associate professor in the UW School of Social Work, and other co-authors from the Evans School, the School of Public Health and the Washington Employment Security Department.
The team presented its findings in an update to the council this morning (July 25).
The ordinance took effect April 1, 2015, raising the minimum hourly wage from $9.47 to $11. Under the law, businesses with fewer than 500 employees are scheduled to reach the $15 an hour wage in 2021. Employers with 500 or more employees, either in Seattle or nationally, will reach that level in three years, or 2017.

Minimum Wage Study: Effects of Seattle wage hike modest, may be overshadowed by strong economy

Raising the minimum wage is one of those wonderful-sounding ideas that, whenever tried, unfortunately never quite works the way it was promised. To its credit, the Washington Post has noticed.
The Post recently highlighted a new study from a group of economists who were commissioned by the city of Seattle to look at that city's minimum wage hike from $9.96 an hour to $11.14 an hour. What they found was enlightening.
To begin with, the economists said, some of the workers weren't helped at all, since their pay would have likely gone up anyway with experience and tenure on the job.
But the city didn't bargain for what happened to other workers it had sought to help: "Although workers were earning more, fewer of them had a job than would have without an increase," the Post said. "Those who did work had fewer hours than they would have without the wage hike."
Indeed, depending how it's calculated, the economists found that the minimum wage hike that sounded so generous when passed resulted in somewhere between a $5.54 a week raise and a $5.22 a week reduction in pay.

The Bitter Lesson From Seattle's Minimum Wage Hike

These articles seem awfully fact based to me.

The studies conducted by UW support their conclusions, as would common sense.
 
Stop spreading the of-repeated lie, disproven with every minimum wage increase that hasn't hurt employment or the economy, that increasing pay kills jobs. There have been several increases in the minimum wage (but a horrifically long gap in it going up over a couple decades), and not once has this triggered an economic downturn.

https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster

Seattle recently started a significant increase in the minimum wage that will eventually hit $15/hour over a couple of years. The effect on the city's economy and jobs? Not much, actually doing a little better. https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...at-its-supposed-to-do/?utm_term=.ba702cae11d2

Jeez people...how many times does this have to be explained to you? Obviously a TON more.

It is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to increase wages with no increase in production and not have a reduction in productivity.

And a reduction in productivity means an increase in production costs which means an increase in product cost and an increase in product price which means a reduction in sales which means (eventually) lay offs (barring anything else).

This is not some anti-Keynesian theory. This is a cold, hard fact that any responsible business owner fully understands.

profit-formula.png


This 'massive increase in minimum wage solving many problems' nonsense is typical Krugmanite silliness. They come up with a theory that sounds wonderful and then they reverse engineer it with all kinds of theoretical gobbledegook and/or use obscure data from unrelated activities/history to justify it.
Sort of like; 'Wow, what a neato theory...now let's try and find data that makes it sound like it could work - whether it actually does or not. And if we all believe in it REALLY hard, get enough people to agree with us and try and shame any disbelievers enough - we can make this fly'.


Anyone who thinks that a reduction in productivity is not bad for an economy has NO IDEA what they are talking about.

Even the CBO 'gets' this.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/44995
 
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Let's pay everybody $100 an hour and solve the poverty problem immediately. We'll all be rich!

Maybe we can plant one of those democratic money trees in our backyards , then we can quit our jobs !:lamo
 
Let's pay everybody $100 an hour and solve the poverty problem immediately. We'll all be rich!

I feel really bad for the people who struggled their whole lives to get to $15 an hour. With one stroke of the pen, they are back to earning minimum wage. Of course, a "socialist" would have no idea how devastating that is for people who actually work for a living.
 
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