$9 an hour is not enough
Soon, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and I will introduce legislation that would gradually increase the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, and raise the minimum wage for tipped workers for the first time in more than 20 years. Our proposal, like President Obama’s, would also provide for automatic increases linked to changes in the cost of living.
Raising the minimum wage is one of the simplest and most effective ways to help working families succeed. It also helps our economy by putting additional money in the hands of consumers who will spend it right away in their local communities.
Contrary to publicized myths, research proves that increasing the minimum wage will not cost us jobs; in fact, our proposal would create at least 100,000 jobs through increased consumer spending.
Blowback
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Maybe we should base our ideas on economics on things that work rather than Royal Proclamations….?
You familiar with the idea of base purchasing power or hours per baseline necessity?
I’ll give you a hint the minimum wage has sweet f*** all to do with standard of living without price controls….and once you cross that dual rubicon you are living in a different Republic….
USSR buddy.
If one abolished the minimum wage prices would go down on a long timeline, end of story.
harlekwin15 on February 26, 2013 at 12:38 AM
Well now you have a right to ObamaFo!
Frankly the twin punches of the EPA and MLRB coupled with our ridiculously high wages are why we have U6 at historic highs….
none of this is rocket surgery
harlekwin15 on February 26, 2013 at 12:40 AM
You people just don’t understand inflation, do you?
No one is “raising” the minimum wage.
As it stands right now, our dollar is worth less and less every day. That’s called inflation. It’s why a dollar in 1950 was worth a lot more than a dollar today. It’s why coke used to cost 5 cents.
When people talk about increasing the minimum wage, they’re really talking about getting it back in line with its normal value to account for inflation.
In 1968 minimum wage was effectively, with 1996 dollars, at 7.21.
Today, with the same inflation adjusted values, MW stands at 4.97.
triple on February 26, 2013 at 12:50 AM
Not satisfied with driving up the base price of the economy a little at a time, they have now decided to institute a positive feedback mechanism (not a good thing by the way, when you place a microphone close to its loudspeaker, that high-pitched scream you hear is positive feedback) to induce a runaway economy. Here’s what happens:
1) Minimum wage raised to $10.10 per hour, future changes tied it CPI
2) minimum wage change ripples through the economy, some workers are laid off because employers can’t afford as many employees, entry level workers are shut out as employers can’t afford to train them at that price.
3) economy stabilizes with new minimum wage, prices from businesses using minimum wage employees necessarily rise. Prices across the economy go up as a result, non minimum wage employees need higher wages to keep up
4) CPI rises.as a result
5) minimum wage rises due to CPI indexing in minimum wage law
6) go to step 2
Endless loop until the economy crashes
AZfederalist on February 26, 2013 at 12:54 AM
Sure I do. Every time you raise the wage of the guy who makes my french fries, the price goes up.
Ronnie on February 26, 2013 at 12:54 AM
There will be no change linked to an increase in mw.
Think about it – the real “cost” of paying that wage goes down continually thanks to inflation that happens whether we have a minimum wage or not.
Which means people making that wage (and any wage, for that matter) are making less as time goes on.
So when you tie MW to inflation, all you’re doing is keeping that cost to employers at a constant rate.
triple on February 26, 2013 at 12:56 AM
The price is going to go up anyway. You’re not paying 5 cents for coke anymore, either.
But would that be such a horrible thing? I’d pay an extra dollar for a value meal if it meant people on the low end of the income scale could afford food.
triple on February 26, 2013 at 12:58 AM
Triple has demonstrated himself to be an economic illiterate but he is ignorant of history. Not worth debating until those conditions are remedied.
AZfederalist on February 26, 2013 at 12:59 AM
As if by magic, huh. Wouldn’t have anything to do with unsustainable labor costs or anything.
Ronnie on February 26, 2013 at 1:01 AM
Maybe they should buy value meals too.
Ronnie on February 26, 2013 at 1:03 AM
triple on February 26, 2013 at 1:04 AM
I don’t even care if it has no negative effect on employment (which isn’t the case). People don’t deserve to get paid more than they’re worth.
Ronnie on February 26, 2013 at 1:07 AM
Every single response I’ve gotten so far has followed my expectations exactly: no one actually tried the calculation. No one appears to have ever had to make a choice between gassing the car to get to work and eating, or the choice between sleeping and working consecutive double shifts so they can eat and get to work. With this jaded misunderstanding of the world, they’ve looked for things on my list they figure they could do without in their idealized Robinson Caruso fantasy of how they would prevail if they were ever poor.
Yes they do. Perhaps if everyone had a womb and had the wherewithall to maintain a rolling inventory of three minor dependents, then, yes: you could say the poor do not pay taxes.
At the point in my life when I was illegally driving without insurance, subsisting on my one free meal a day from work and nonetheless coming up $90.00 short per month for rent and utilties, I was turned down for public energy assistance because, at $8.64/hr, I made too much money to qualify.
I did not drink. I did not gamble. I did not have cable or internet. I mention this only to forestall whatever nonsense objection you may have with that anecdote. I don’t want you to be able to avoid the fact that I’m conveying to you: poor people pay taxes.
What a sustainable economic model you have struck upon. So much less like welfare dependency than, say, paying people a living wage.
I’m proudly not your son, “ain’t” isn’t a word and you clearly didn’t even read what I wrote because I specifically left things such as TV and internet out of the calculation.
As for car and phone…
You should try it then.
In all seriousness, I know you can “live” without a phone or a car. For instance when you step out of the airport limo and into the beach resort on vacation; I bet the first thing you do is turn off the phone slip into some flipflops and prepare for a car-free, call free week of strollin’ through the sand.
In the world where people make their lives however, transportation and a telephone are essential items. How do suppose someone might go about even getting a job without a phone? I know you already typed “next!”, thus indicating that the matter is closed, but do me a solid and give me an idea of how a potential employer is supposed to contact someone who doesn’t have a phone.
eh on February 26, 2013 at 1:11 AM
Umm… Use a friend’s phone? Share the bills with a roommate? Live with your parents? I’ve done all of these things at one time or another. What, you’re too f***ing good for that?
Ronnie on February 26, 2013 at 1:16 AM
Donk policies have driven up the cost of living while also killing jobs. Try working on that you fools.
Blake on February 26, 2013 at 1:26 AM
A phone is a necessity for employment, but, not a cell phone. If you do get a cell phone, it certainly doesn’t need to be a fancy one or a big plan if you limit yourself to job-related calls only.
Not sure I can agree on the car in all situations though. I spent the last 5 years living without a car. It was a city with decent public transportation (though, after the first year of being car-less I got a bike and started building up my mileage as I hate riding buses).
I’m not claiming my anecdotal story is proof that cars are definitely not necessary; however, I do think they are less necessary in many places than people think.
JadeNYU on February 26, 2013 at 1:30 AM
Actually, I was just trying to figure out why getting an education wasn’t on your list of things people absolutely need when they’re stuck at minimum wage.
Ronnie on February 26, 2013 at 1:32 AM
eh, if you sent him to skool he wood just eat the books.
Plus he likes Robinson’s older brother Enrico.
arnold ziffel on February 26, 2013 at 1:41 AM
Clearly you are too young to recognize colloquialism, and, what are the rabbit ears for?
OldEnglish on February 26, 2013 at 2:14 AM
Because when they’re making $250/wk (that’s fulltime after taxes) you definitely think, man, you know what I need? More debt.
This is the problem and the essential disconnect between conservatives and the less fortunate. They don’t get it.
“You’re having trouble? It’s your own damn fault. I worked minimum wage for $2.50 back in my day, and I turned out fine, of course $2.50 in todays dollars is like $14/hr.. oh wait nevermind..”
triple on February 26, 2013 at 2:18 AM
How much does it cost to finish high school?
I think I could probably point to some horrible life choices made by almost anyone who makes minimum wage after age 18.
Ronnie on February 26, 2013 at 2:26 AM
I actually think the entire issue is pretty well laid out in this thread. We can branch out from triple’s Swiftian suggestion:
Nazo, arguing the negative position, objects:
But is it? Further upthread, nazo applied a version of Milton Friedman:
Of course, the correlary to this is to ask how little is satisfactory; $8.50? $4.25? $0.42? Why not negative amounts and have people pay the Hidden Hand for the oportunity to labor?
As we slide down the slippery slope (far more plausible an effect than sliding upwards) why not roll a fat one and imagine we’re a tiny island country the size of Jacksonvile, Florida, but in the center of the Pacific trade route, and then we can do away with a minimum wage altogether while maintaining <5% unemployment. If the wall is a door then …the colors, maaan. The colors!
Stepping out of nazo’s mind however, the reality is a bit greyer and Von Mises’ vision of society is no more real than Marx’s. At last we can see the mentality which drives the negative position, as offered by Ronnie, without irony or even a sarc tag to guide us to understanding:
As someone who has paid his dues in line at day-labor agencies and shown up at 5:00am to break bricks with homeless crackheads just to keep his car running to get to his crappy restaurant job, I feel entitled to this: Go f*ck yourself, Ronnie.
eh on February 26, 2013 at 2:27 AM
Oh yes, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. We really must pay more money to people who can only manage to keep up with homeless crackheads. I’m sold.
/
Ronnie on February 26, 2013 at 2:32 AM
Since you’re inviting that sort of speculation, I’m eager to give it a shot.
My read on you is that you’ve never had to suffer the consequences of a choice. I’m guessing you got married right out of college, perhaps before completing your bachelors, and if you work at all, it’s a “keep’s me busy and out of the house” kind of job.
I’m getting this in part from the way triple’s comment about education debt whiffed past your head and you responded with some ignorant nonsense which presumed that a high school diploma qualifies you for anything but minimum wage work.
eh on February 26, 2013 at 2:39 AM
A lot of sheep on this thread – well, a lot of bleating, anyway.
OldEnglish on February 26, 2013 at 2:45 AM
I’m self employed. My minimum wage is currently $0. I came from pretty much nothing. I never expected more than I was worth, and I never took a dime from the government. I work about 100 hours a week.
Ronnie on February 26, 2013 at 2:47 AM
It’s not only democrat policies. Our society is sick from one end to the other and the Tea Party/Occupy fringe are the hot center of the infection, not the cure. Wherever you have GOP shills engaged with Dem shills in an anachronistic argument in the spirit of whether the Soviet Union has the model which will capture the nonaligned world, you have the face of failure staring back at you. Capitalism won. The choice of whether to expand the school lunch program is no longer a proxy for the choice of whether to nationalize the textile industry. Here at the foot of the 21st century, arguing for the validity of markets, as if anyone of consequence is meaningfully arguing against such, is silly.
eh on February 26, 2013 at 2:57 AM
Frankly, I don’t believe any part of that.
eh on February 26, 2013 at 3:00 AM
That’s too bad. I believed you when you said you worked with homeless crackheads.
Ronnie on February 26, 2013 at 3:03 AM
You may as well not.
I mean, being as I am glad to do real work for real money, I’m as proud to have worked alongside homeless crackheads as I am to have worked alongside seven-figure estate attorneys. All work has dignity.
But if I were to exaggerate along those lines, it would only serve to strengthen the position from which I’m arguing. Similarly, it’s been known to happen that a person might claim to have a military background only to protect a line of argument which is slanderous of the military. It’s just as likely that a person might paint themselves into a corner arguing against reasonable benefits to bottom-level wage-earners out of spite and from a position insulated from economic realities. That person might try to brazen through it by falsely presenting themselves as a manifestation of the came-from-nothing, hard-workin’, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps creature of country-club myth.
I don’t know. I just don’t believe you. You’re saying you started a business with no capital. So you, what? Sell used toilet paper or something?
eh on February 26, 2013 at 3:48 AM
I didn’t start my business with nothing. I started my life on my own with nothing. Tell me you’re just being obtuse.
Ronnie on February 26, 2013 at 3:52 AM
Pffft. Thank you for showing your economic ignorance.
xblade on February 26, 2013 at 3:54 AM
Maybe you should have laid off the crack yourself.
xblade on February 26, 2013 at 3:55 AM
So that’s why this thread blew up.
triple & eh have not presented any compelling arguments.
22044 on February 26, 2013 at 3:57 AM
These are the issues on which the GOP has built sustained losses. They don’t have the first clue about it. But it’s more perverted than you might suppose, because it’s not all Korean war vets who have been disengaged from the economy for twenty years. It’s a lot of people who have put on ideological blinders; who, if they took them off, would recognize how little this fourth-wave trickle-down ideology corresponds to their reality.
Not nazo. I understand the radicals. I don’t respect radicalism and no model of anarchism survives even a cursory interrogation, but as long as nazo can code security patches in assembly language or whatever he does, he can live in his garden with his free market convictions and impoverished standard of living in perfect harmony.
But this one, for instance:
Now, we know for a fact, from the information given, that she is not self-sustaining. Either she is a net drain on the public or she is supported primarily by persons other than herself who have the means to do so. Yet she’s “perfectly fine” with her $8.25/hr wage.
Good enough for me! Don’t know what these poor people are complaining about.
It’s dissociative. You may as well be talking to a Raelian.
eh on February 26, 2013 at 4:27 AM
Phew!
Thank god someone with authority and gravitas issued a ruling on that. The ambiguity was getting frightening.
eh on February 26, 2013 at 4:32 AM
I’m just trying to understand how a real-life Howard Roark emerges from the muck of common poverty.
What was it like before; before you started your life on your own? What was that like?
eh on February 26, 2013 at 4:36 AM
I think it’s fairly obvious at this point that Ronnie’s business is selling meth.
triple on February 26, 2013 at 4:38 AM
I have no doubt you do.
The issue here is you’re seeing the situation not only through your own personal prism (shaped by your own worldview) but also doing so from a perspective of mathematics. Sure, we can sit here and theorize what the minimum amount of money is necessary to have all the things we cannot “live without” but we would miss one very important point. You don’t have a right to a minimum lifestyle. You might disagree, but the fact of the matter is you only have a right to equal opportunity. You don’t have a right to guaranteed success.
So where does this raise come from? The money doesn’t just fall out of the sky. The liberal argument is that those evil corporations will have to shave some of their evil profits to pay their people more. The problem is that money doesn’t fall out of the sky. It must be re-appropriated from other sources. My family had a small restaurant business for a while and when minimum wages went up they had to choose between paying their employees more or letting some of them go to keep the books balanced. In the end, they fired some of their staff. Why? Because unlike the federal government which can print its own money, businesses must maintain a profit or their doors close.
This is what the minimum wage does. It makes jobs harder to acquire for the very people who would benefit from it. Instead of two people making $5 an hour, you would have one person making $8. Worse yet, if I now have to pay someone $8 an hour, I might decide to hire someone with more skill and experience which means those who really need a foot in the door get denied.
THAT is the math of the situation. That is the reality. Now, let’s talk about the underlying principle.
My question to EB is what gives you (or anyone for that matter) the right to demand a larger piece of the pie?
Where were you when the owner of that construction company was starting his business? Where were you when the owner was taking huge risks buying equipment, going weeks without pay so he could make payroll or otherwise risking his own savings and net worth to keep the business viable? You might have been scraping to get buy, but you could walk away at any time. You’d be there demanding wage increases when times are good and leaving the company when times were bad. That is the beauty of working for someone else.
The problem we have today is we have a public who want their cake and to eat it as well. They want all the benefits of working for someone else but the profit taking of having their own business. The world doesn’t work that way. Liberals talk about “fairness” without taking into consideration the perspective of those who create the very jobs they depend on. Yesterday, $7 an hour was “fair” while today we hear $9 an hour is “fair”. The capitalism system is as fair as it gets. There is nothing more fair than you deciding how much you’re worth and whether or not the company in question agrees. You always have a choice whether or not you will accept a wage. You may feel you don’t have a choice, but you really do.
Speaking of choices, it really does come down to responsibility. We all have our sob stories about being down on our luck. I’m no exception. I’ve searched the couch cushions for loose change to buy gas to get to work. I’ve paid my bills months behind because I choose to keep a roof over my head and the power online. I’ve been laid off, fired, and quit plenty of jobs and even had to move 2,000 miles to Arizona to find opportunity. I realized at some point that 80% of the barriers in my life I put up myself. Like you, I am 100% responsible for my position in life. One way or another, it was my decisions that put me in good or bad situations.
The moment we stop blaming other people for our problems and start accepting responsibility is the day you free yourself from the burdens around you. Blaming other people keeps you from having to take action because action implies you have a choice over your situation. We prefer to see ourselves as helpless so we can let other people fight our battles (like politicians who seek only to buy your vote).
People need to stop blaming the evil greedy corporations for their problems and start accepting responsibility. Stop placing barriers in front of yourself and start seizing opportunity.
The principle of the matter is everyone has a right to their private property, including money. No one has the right to demand anyone pay them any wage of any kind. Just cause it is law doesn’t make it legal or right. Don’t think so? Find me where in the Constitution that it says you have a right to a guaranteed lifestyle and I’ll gladly retract my statement.
I apologize for the novel. Unlike emotional liberal responses, reality and rational responses take time.
Flashwing on February 26, 2013 at 4:54 AM
Get out of my head!
eh on February 26, 2013 at 4:55 AM
Yours wasn’t a rational response. It was a constellation of buzzwords, canned arguments, question begging, assumed converses and issues which were answered upthread.
eh on February 26, 2013 at 5:04 AM
That is because our governments idea of stimulating the economy is by printing money out of thin air via the Federal Reserve in the form of quantitative easing. Those are big words for creating money, giving it to huge banks at almost no interest in the hope that people and companies will borrow more – of course the banks get a nice little profit by seeing your money go to hell. Those of us that actually save their hard earned dollars as opposed to wasting on being a worthless consumer (sheep/cattle) get almost no interest, thus the banks don’t have to pay it to the actual savers.
Minimum wage laws are useless, and actually help create inflation. It’s really no different then if Obama started fixing prices on products.
MoreLiberty on February 26, 2013 at 5:38 AM
No, the liberal argument is that the minimum wage should follow inflation, just like every other wage follows inflation.
In 68 our minimum wage was $1.60. You think anyone could survive on 60 bucks a week for 40 hours of work nowadays?
These aren’t people trying to game the system, or get handouts. These are people showing up for work, every day, working their ass off. I worked minimum back in the day, and I’ll tell you I worked way harder serving tables than I do right now sitting in front of a 27″ imac listening to pandora. They deserve more than extreme poverty.
triple on February 26, 2013 at 5:40 AM
Fair enough.
So tell me, what makes you feel entitled to have your compensation increased simply because the federal government demands it?
Flashwing on February 26, 2013 at 5:44 AM
Or, amazingly, Mr. eh could get some useful skills and make more than minimum wage! That might actually take effort, though.
They don’t live in “extreme poverty.” Almost nobody in the US does. Our poor class doesn’t know a damn thing about the actual downtrodden squalor that most of the world has to deal with on a daily basis.
Well, just because you’re a slacker doesn’t mean we should turn the idea of compensation on its head. Hauling surplus merchandise around a warehouse certainly looks a lot harder than being a CFO. Which skill is in more demand, do you think?
Good Solid B-Plus on February 26, 2013 at 5:48 AM
Aww, how sad. Let’s change the minimum wage because of eh’s pathetic straight-out-of-a-sappy-Springsteen-song early life.
Never got that big record deal, eh?
Good Solid B-Plus on February 26, 2013 at 5:53 AM
What’s a “basic need”?
Does that include a broadband internet connection? Cell phone plan? Satellite/Digital Cable TV? Tablet PC with a Kindle app so I can catch up on my reading?
How about a PS4? I mean, I’m not really happy without my video games. Isn’t it the government’s job to keep me happy?
$16.50 an hour for flipping burgers sounds about right. Maybe more if I don’t spit in them.
Good Solid B-Plus on February 26, 2013 at 6:02 AM
If you increased the minimum wage by 10-20% and as a result that increases cost of goods sold by a similar amount, what just happened to the employee who just got a ‘raise’?
Answer: Nothing. Purchasing power remained the exact same it was at the higher rate of pay than it was at the lower rate.
Purchasing power is increased by either lowering cost relative to money or increasing money relative to cost.
If raising the minimum wage to 9 dollars makes sense, why not raise it to 25 dollars an hour and just get rid of poverty entirely and replace poor people with a vast new ‘middle class’ of people all making 50 grand a year?
Because, duh, either cost of goods sold would rise in kind, making the ‘raise’ an illusion… or companies would go from 5 minimum wage workers to 1-2 minimum wage workers.
PoliticsinHD on February 26, 2013 at 6:18 AM
So do it. TIP the cashier.
Sheesh….that wasn’t hard, now was it?
You know Liberals…always HAVE TO BE FORCED to give money to someone or pay their taxes. Can’t just man up and do it because they feel it is the right thing to do. Liberals have to try to have everyone forced to do it just because they can’t do it themselves voluntarily. (See Buffet.)
Liberals…not manning up for decades….
ProfShadow on February 26, 2013 at 6:22 AM
Quick addendum: The people exercised in favor of an increase in the minimum should be by definition opponents of Obamacare, which provides incentives for companies to reduce the hours worked of employees to <30 and/or total employees to <50 in order to avoid huge tax liabilities per low-comp employee.
What the minimum wage actually is turns out to be almost meaningless when the hours worked is being force-cut by 10-25+ a week and/or the total work population of those at minimum wage is force-capped at 49 per business.
Whoopsies.
PoliticsinHD on February 26, 2013 at 6:23 AM
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