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What should the minimum wage be, or should we not have one at all?

Checkerboard Strangler said:
Not in the long term.
And we're facing a long term problem.
China is investing hundreds of billions in long term technical training.
India is cranking out over ONE MILLION highly trained advanced robotic and artificial intelligence personnel every single year.

We crank out NOTHING, because we do not (apparently) consider investing in a highly skilled and trained workforce to be essential.
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Yes, in the long term any long run equilibrium shows higher paid labor pay more in taxes and create more in demand.
 
danielpalos said:
Yet, corporate welfare is alive and well and even bails out the Richest who are too rich to fail even under our form of Capitalism. Equal protection of the law is all the Poor really need under our form of Capitalism.
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Can you give an example of this "corporate welfare" of which you speak?
 
Tlrmln said:
Because there hasn't been a dramatic increase in demand for the kind of labor that "the poorest" do. If anything, there's only been a decrease because of automation.
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Are we investing in a highly trained and skilled workforce that can handle automation?
Nope, but we have a glut of dental hygienists, burger flippers and Walmart greeters!
 
Tlrmln said:
Can you give an example of this "corporate welfare" of which you speak?
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Here is something simple to not distract from the actual argument:

Corporate welfare is often used to describe a government's bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, or other special favorable treatment for corporations. It highlights how wealthy corporations are less in need of such treatment than the poor.[1]--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_welfare
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danielpalos said:
The point is, with equal protection of the law for unemployment compensation for simply being naturally unemployed on an at-will basis in our at-will employment States the Poor could stay out of poverty much easier and our homeless problem would be a lot less severe.
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This is a much more cogent argument. Thank you.
 
danielpalos said:
Income tends to Be wealth for the Poorest.
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And wealth substitutes and provides income for the wealthy that even the middle class can't access.
 
NWRatCon said:
And wealth substitutes and provides income for the wealthy that even the middle class can't access.
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Capitalism's natural rate of unemployment promotes the general malfare not the general welfare through the poverty inducing effect of a Natural and institutional rate of unemployment that creates that downward pressure on wages for Labor as the least wealthy under Capitalism.
 
Tlrmln said:
That's nonsensical. The point is that a person can have a relatively high income and no wealth if he decides to have 8 children, or spends it all on hookers and blow, so to speak.

So if you want to have a meaningful conversation about financial inequality in the context of whether there should be a minimum wage, it should be about income inequality, not wealth inequality.
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Now THAT is nonsensical. Discussing income inequality without acknowledging wealth disparity is like discussing race relations while ignoring slavery and Jim Crow. Oh wait... now I understand. There is no point. Either you know what the correlation is between wealth and income and are lying about it, or you are ignorant about economics and talking out your... ahem, blowing smoke.
 
KLATTU said:
Good. Open a business #YOURSELF# and do all that and stop virtue signaling. Put up or ... you know.
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I have no idea what that means or has to do with anything I said.

Oh, and define "virtue signaling" for us.
 
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Checkerboard Strangler said:
Au contraire...that is precisely why the middle class is shrinking.

That's precisely why homeless rates are exploding, because ON TOP OF the chronically homeless, you know, the actual bums, criminals, addicts and mentally ill, we now have economically displaced homeless, individuals and even entire families, some of whom even still work, who are living in cars, tents, on the street, in encampments, in shelters and in crumbling broken down RV's.

Many of these economically displaced homeless are from what used to be considered middle class. Some were evicted from rentals, some were foreclosed upon and many were laid off or otherwise rendered jobless, and had to scramble to survive.

So yes, many parts of the FORMER middle class ARE "on the street", and they are straining municipalities all across the country to the breaking point because they were already barely able to deal with their chronically homeless population to begin with.
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....the Middle Class is shrinking because it is getting wealthier.


middleclass1.jpg
 
cpwill said:
....the Middle Class is shrinking because it is getting wealthier.


middleclass1.jpg
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And "FISH" can be spelled "GH-O-TI"

GH as in "laugh"
O as in "women"
And TI as in "nation"

If individuals and families in the six digit realm are getting wealthier, that doesn't mean that upward mobility is more accessible for the lower rungs, because if it was, we would not be seeing the stagnation and associated effects therein all throughout the lower class.
In order to believe that's not so, you have to believe that forty percent of working Americans just decided to become lazy bums for the fun of it.

Forty percent of working Americans can't cover a four hundred dollar emergency and a growing number of Americans have to take second and third jobs just to make ends meet. We understand that folks in the $100K annual income range are doing better.

That doesn't change the fact that upward mobility is stalled.

A 2013 study by Drexel University Sociologist Robert J. Brulle noted that AEI received $86.7 million dollars between 2003 and 2010, with the single largest source being Donors Trust, which has Charles Koch and David Koch as its largest contributors.
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Sorry but you're going to have a tough time convincing me that Charles and David Koch have their fingers on the pulse of poor working families in America, just as they also don't have their finger on the pulse of disabled veterans, with their astroturf "Concerned Veterans of America" group either.

If there was enough upward mobility, the underclass would be in a state of constant churn, HEALTHY churn, not stagnation and exponential growth, as it is right now.

The upper middle class is getting wealthier? Great, good for them and I don't begrudge them their good fortune.
But I DO take issue that this nation is apparently unwilling to invest in our future generation the way other countries are.

China and India are cranking out MILLIONS of highly skilled, educated and trained high tech personnel every year.
We are cranking out Walmart greeters, dental hygienists, fast food burger flippers, Uber drivers and Amazon employees.
We're IMPORTING foreign high tech people because there aren't enough availabe domestically, because too many of our own CANNOT AFFORD to get the training they need to move up the ladder.

And when they drop off, outfits like AEI simply don't count them anymore.
The Census does, though, but not as unemployed. Census counts them as homeless and destitute.

If we WANT to have (and it's really not a question of want, but rather - - NEED) a robust workforce and a robust economy that is accessible by the largest number of people, we're going to have to invest in the education that they need.

Otherwise, the economy will continue in its peristaltic movement toward "Idiocracy" in real life.

But go ahead and ignore the fulminating infection in our underclass. Maybe it will just "go away all by itself".
(said no one EVER)

Did people in 1929 not try to find decent jobs? Were all of them "just lazy bums, too?"
It's ninety years since Black Friday 1929. And in 2019 plenty of upper middle class have money to burn.
Plenty of people in 1929 had money to burn, too...until suddenly...they didn't.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
And "FISH" can be spelled "GH-O-TI"

GH as in "laugh"
O as in "women"
And TI as in "nation"

If individuals and families in the six digit realm are getting wealthier, that doesn't mean that upward mobility is more accessible for the lower rungs, because if it was, we would not be seeing the stagnation and associated effects therein all throughout the lower class.
In order to believe that's not so, you have to believe that forty percent of working Americans just decided to become lazy bums for the fun of it.

Forty percent of working Americans can't cover a four hundred dollar emergency and a growing number of Americans have to take second and third jobs just to make ends meet. We understand that folks in the $100K annual income range are doing better.

That doesn't change the fact that upward mobility is stalled.



Sorry but you're going to have a tough time convincing me that Charles and David Koch have their fingers on the pulse of poor working families in America, just as they also don't have their finger on the pulse of disabled veterans, with their astroturf "Concerned Veterans of America" group either.

If there was enough upward mobility, the underclass would be in a state of constant churn, HEALTHY churn, not stagnation and exponential growth, as it is right now.

The upper middle class is getting wealthier? Great, good for them and I don't begrudge them their good fortune.
But I DO take issue that this nation is apparently unwilling to invest in our future generation the way other countries are.

China and India are cranking out MILLIONS of highly skilled, educated and trained high tech personnel every year.
We are cranking out Walmart greeters, dental hygienists, fast food burger flippers, Uber drivers and Amazon employees.
We're IMPORTING foreign high tech people because there aren't enough availabe domestically, because too many of our own CANNOT AFFORD to get the training they need to move up the ladder.

And when they drop off, outfits like AEI simply don't count them anymore.
The Census does, though, but not as unemployed. Census counts them as homeless and destitute.

If we WANT to have (and it's really not a question of want, but rather - - NEED) a robust workforce and a robust economy that is accessible by the largest number of people, we're going to have to invest in the education that they need.

Otherwise, the economy will continue in its peristaltic movement toward "Idiocracy" in real life.

But go ahead and ignore the fulminating infection in our underclass. Maybe it will just "go away all by itself".
(said no one EVER)

Did people in 1929 not try to find decent jobs? Were all of them "just lazy bums, too?"
It's ninety years since Black Friday 1929. And in 2019 plenty of upper middle class have money to burn.
Plenty of people in 1929 had money to burn, too...until suddenly...they didn't.
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So, to be clear, you actually have no response whatsoever to the data point that the reason the "middle class" is shrinking is because more people are becoming wealthy, other than a pretty entertainingly desperate attempt to pivot to ad homineming the Koch's?

Sent from my Moto G (5S) Plus using Tapatalk
 
cpwill said:
So, to be clear, you actually have no response whatsoever to the data point that the reason the "middle class" is shrinking is because more people are becoming wealthy, other than a pretty entertainingly desperate attempt to pivot to ad homineming the Koch's?

Sent from my Moto G (5S) Plus using Tapatalk
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What kind of response were you expecting? That I trust the Kochs and AEI?
Or that the Census Bureau counts homeless in their employment and income figures?

That data point is like that far out spelling of the word "FISH".
But you don't hear me saying that you have no response to the fact that 40% of working families don't have enough on hand for a four hundred dollar emergency. Those figures are from the Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2017.

25 percent also have no retirement savings or pension at all, says the same report.
Would you care to wager that those figures haven't suddenly/magically gone from 40 percent to five percent?
It's realistic to guesstimate that perhaps they went down to 38% or 35%, or up to 45%, and in another few months, we'll get the 2018 figures, also from the Fed.

But you won't hear me talking about how "you have no response to that data point".
What you will hear is me telling you not to take my word for it but to check it out for yourself.

If the middle class was getting SO much wealthier and the lower class was shrinking as much as AEI claims, we would be seeing a corresponding drop in homeless, because today's homeless are the chronically homeless (bums, addicts, petty crooks, mentally ill, etc) PLUS the economically displaced homeless, the ones who USED to HAVE homes, and jobs that paid enough to rent or pay mortgage.

That's why the homeless rate exploded. We already had too many mentally ill, addicts and what not and then suddenly we got hit with the fallout from the 2008 meltdown on top of that. Jobs went away that are never coming back.
The jobs that replaced them are mostly minimum wage, not enough to live on.

And you expect me to believe AEI is being honest about those jobs and the homeless?
My response was clear, or so I thought:

"The Koch Brothers LIE, and I do not believe their propaganda"
Of course, now I expect you will say that you don't believe the Fed.

Stalemate.
 
NWRatCon said:
Now THAT is nonsensical. Discussing income inequality without acknowledging wealth disparity is like discussing race relations while ignoring slavery and Jim Crow. Oh wait... now I understand. There is no point. Either you know what the correlation is between wealth and income and are lying about it, or you are ignorant about economics and talking out your... ahem, blowing smoke.
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There's no need to cite wealth data, and then rely on a supposed correlation between income and wealth. You can just directly cite data on income. But of course, that's not as dramatic.

There are plenty of ways in which the correlation between income and wealth breaks down, so why rely on it when actual income data is available?
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Are we investing in a highly trained and skilled workforce that can handle automation?
Nope, but we have a glut of dental hygienists, burger flippers and Walmart greeters!
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Sure we are. Last I checked, practically ever state in the US worth a damn has a public university that teaches engineering and science, and the availability of publicly subsidized financial aid.
 
Tlrmln said:
Sure we are. Last I checked, practically ever state in the US worth a damn has a public university that teaches engineering and science, and the availability of publicly subsidized financial aid.
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So, are you saying that we actually have a glut of these trained techies, and we never needed to import personnel?
Where is this glut of highly skilled American personnel you speak of?

Show me.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
So, are you saying that we actually have a glut of these trained techies, and we never needed to import personnel?
Where is this glut of highly skilled American personnel you speak of?

Show me.
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That's not what I said at all. Perhaps you should read it again.

What we do have is millions of young people graduating with practically useless liberal arts degrees, a bunch of debt, and no job offers, from universities that have perfectly good science and engineering programs and don't charge any more tuition for them than they charge for majoring in philosophy.
 
JMaximus said:
No minimum wage. Instead, minimum income determined by family size, etc. Something like a beefed up EIC.

This has two benefits: (1) people will be able to support a family on the minimum (tackling a common complaint that low minimum wages are impossible to live on), and (2) there won't be the side effect that goes along with a minimum wage of paying teenagers adult salaries for their afterschool 'hang out with friends' entry-level jobs.
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Bull****, if you can't afford a family, you shouldn't have one. The rest of us are tired of paying for other people's families. It's not my ****ing job to pay for YOUR family. Got it?
 
American said:
Bull****, if you can't afford a family, you shouldn't have one. The rest of us are tired of paying for other people's families. It's not my ****ing job to pay for YOUR family. Got it?
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Your proposal would do nothing but make any country which adopted it poorer, stupider, less productive, and overall less free.
 
JMaximus said:
Your proposal would do nothing but make any country which adopted it poorer, stupider, less productive, and overall less free.
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Not hardly, and totally unsubstantiated. You want to have a family, figure out how to pay for that on your own. You don't get to chose to burden me with your expenses.
 
Tlrmln said:
That's not what I said at all. Perhaps you should read it again.

What we do have is millions of young people graduating with practically useless liberal arts degrees, a bunch of debt, and no job offers, from universities that have perfectly good science and engineering programs and don't charge any more tuition for them than they charge for majoring in philosophy.
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Except the number of STEM degrees is increasing, and the number of humanities degrees is and has been shrinking.

https://www.economicmodeling.com/20...very-state-just-humanities-degrees-declining/
 
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