Let's discuss the minimum wage

Thomas wrote:

DrewDad wrote:
Roxxxanne wrote:
We really need an ignore function on this site. I get tired of being tempted to read insane drivel.

I couldn't agree more.

If you guys use Firefox, you can download a script implementing just this ignore function. I've been using it for about a year and it's been working very well for me. When I find the thread where Old Europe presented it, I'll post a link.

See, for example, I only see Roxannes posts when someone quotes them. It's called greasemonkey.

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Yeah, but what are their profit margins, return on investment, business growth?

Cisco's trying to create five billion-dollar businesses every year. Innovation much?

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Thomas wrote:

DrewDad wrote:
Roxxxanne wrote:
We really need an ignore function on this site. I get tired of being tempted to read insane drivel.

I couldn't agree more.

If you guys use Firefox, you can download a script implementing just this ignore function. I've been using it for about a year and it's been working very well for me. When I find the thread where Old Europe presented it, I'll post a link.

Here's where Old Europe describes the installation. A small correction of McGentrix: Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that makes Firefox scriptable. The script itself has no name that I know of.

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DrewDad wrote:

okie wrote:
Drewdad, your thread really took off. I came back and read all the pages, perhaps not real carefully, but it seems there are many ideas about limiting this, or doing that, to artificially help a segment of the population.

Really what is at issue here is whether people really have confidence in the Free Market, and let it determine the prices, which includes price for labor. If one studies economics, you find out the free market makes the best decisions from the bottom up. When decisions about supply and demand, and prices, which would also include labor, are made from the top down, which would include an artificially set minimum wage, what results is unintended consequences.

Unrestrained capitalism has its dangers, too. Don't forget the era of the Robber Barons. I seem to recall some real horror stories about the meat packing plants, too....

You might want to read about the myth of the Robber Barons, drewdad. This country became an industrial giant, not recently, but over a long period of time, and big business had alot to do with that, going back into the 1800's. Big Railroads, big this, big that, built a fantastic infrastructure of industrial development in the way of transportation, modernization of agriculture, and on and on.

Quote:

As for artificially helping segments of the population, I'd just as soon not have people starving in the streets. I just happen to think that there's probably a more effective method than the minimum wage, if we were only to look.

There is no reason for anyone to starve in the streets. There are numerous safety net programs. And the point of this discussion is not an argument over punishing anyone, it is a debate over what policies help everyone in the long run, both rich and poor.

The basic misunderstanding of many people, people like Roxxi, is that such debates are always framed as a class envy problem, us vs them. She is of course clueless, but the debate involves what policy is best for the country in the long run, which benefits everyone. When the ocean rises, all boats rise, if you are an oceanlinere or even if you are a little canoe in a tiny inlet.

The us vs. them mentality has gotten many people into power, people like Stalin, Castro, and now Hugo Chavez. Those types always run their countries and economies into the ground. What we are talking about here should not even be debatable.

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Anybody else notice Roxi never has any information of substance to offer to subjects like this, much less any cogent, reasoned argument to back up her liberal agenda.

One other note about safety nets, the IRS now grants huge rebates to low earned income wage earners, and this increases with children in the family. A family of four can receive thousands back, over and above what they pay into the IRS in income tax. This is because of "the hated George Bush that does not care about poor people."

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okie wrote:

DrewDad wrote:
okie wrote:
Drewdad, your thread really took off. I came back and read all the pages, perhaps not real carefully, but it seems there are many ideas about limiting this, or doing that, to artificially help a segment of the population.

Really what is at issue here is whether people really have confidence in the Free Market, and let it determine the prices, which includes price for labor. If one studies economics, you find out the free market makes the best decisions from the bottom up. When decisions about supply and demand, and prices, which would also include labor, are made from the top down, which would include an artificially set minimum wage, what results is unintended consequences.

Unrestrained capitalism has its dangers, too. Don't forget the era of the Robber Barons. I seem to recall some real horror stories about the meat packing plants, too....

You might want to read about the myth of the Robber Barons, drewdad. This country became an industrial giant, not recently, but over a long period of time, and big business had alot to do with that, going back into the 1800's. Big Railroads, big this, big that, built a fantastic infrastructure of industrial development in the way of transportation, modernization of agriculture, and on and on.

Let's not forget strike breaking, Pinkertons, company towns....

I have nothing against big business; I have problems with unregulated big business.

And the huge prosperity of the US also had quite a lot to do with the untapped resources on this (relatively) "new" continent.

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Everybody is regulated. And when you say big business, most big business is not owned by one person, but thousands of shareholders. I would venture to guess most A2Kers own part of big business, and perhaps you do. I do, through a retirement fund. I used to work for big business, and some of the nicest and best people I have known in my life, worked there.

I would agree on one point, I think, which has not been discussed in depth here, is the robbery of companies by executives in the way of stock and benefits, golden parachutes, etc. The boards of corporations are not doing their job in controlling this practice of executives helping to run companies into the ground. I think we could do something about this via tax policy or some other type of reform with how corporations are regulated, but it needs to be done without government usurping the powers of how business works.

I still come back to the point though that if companies are run into the ground, another competitor emerges, so that is just competition continually sifting the competition and causing the cream to rise to the top. But executives should be held accountable for corrupt practices.

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okie wrote:

Everybody is regulated....

Mostly true now, but not so through most of history.

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Thomas wrote:

DrewDad wrote:
Roxxxanne wrote:
We really need an ignore function on this site. I get tired of being tempted to read insane drivel.

I couldn't agree more.

If you guys use Firefox, you can download a script implementing just this ignore function. I've been using it for about a year and it's been working very well for me. When I find the thread where Old Europe presented it, I'll post a link.

Firefox is great, I have it and I noticed a spell check in the latest version. I know there are lot of other useful featuresas well, I will check it out.

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My view is this.
Let us not allow the people to exploit the resources.
Let there be a limit to show the barbaric behavior.
Easy-chair intellectuals can uphold injustice that we face when we come out of our cage( home)

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What resources?
What barbaric behavior?
Who are the arm-chair intellectuals? Are you in a cage now, or who is in a cage? Just a few questions that come to mind. One more: what have you been smoking?

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DUNHILL
I smoke Dunhill.
The community chat is there to share one's personal views which may or manot be the views of others.
Need based minimum wage is a dire necessity to have a civilzed socies. That is my views.

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Re: Let's discuss the minimum wage

DrewDad wrote:

I like the intent of the minimum wage, which as I see it is to prevent the exploitation of labor. It embraces ideals of the fundamental worth of human beings.

The actual effects of the minimum wage, however, seem to be the opposite.

I agree. As one can read up in econ 101 texbooks, liberal economists (like Krugman) and conservative ones (like Mankiw) agree about the serious side effects of the minimum wage. They include:

Missed opportunities. Any minimum wage that has an effect will make some jobs disappear --even though they would benefit both the workers working on them and the employers offering them.
Misallocations. When the market wage limits job opportunities, jobs go to the workers who want a job most. By contrast, when an above-market minimum wage limits job opportunities, you have a surplus of potential workers over potential work. Employers, then, have to use other means to screen out workers. In practice, they do so by abusing applicants with spurious drug tests, rude negotiations, and other bullying that workers are helpless against. To get an impression how job searches look like in the minimum wage range, I recommend Barbara Ehrenreich's personal testimony: Nickled and Dimed (Ehrenreich's politics are far to the left of mine, so unsurprisingly she supports the minimum wage. But her experiences as a burger-flipper, retail worker, cleaning lady etc. seem thoroughly researched and honestly reported. It's a great book, warts 'n all.)
Incentives to break the law. As you said in your initial post, every cent by which the minimum wage exceeds the market wage is an incentive to break the law -- with predictable consequences for the rule of law.

If you want public policy to support the working poor, there are better ways to implement it: Carve out a low-income tax bracket and "charge" a negative tax rate from the people in it. Or in other words, give them a wage subsidy. You can pay for it by raising taxes in the top bracket. This solution isn't perfect either, because it causes some missed opportunities in upper income employment. But you'll get much less waste, misallocation, and law-breaking this way.

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Re: Let's discuss the minimum wage

Thomas wrote:

If you want public policy to support the working poor, there are better ways to implement it: Carve out a low-income tax bracket and "charge" a negative tax rate from the people in it. Or in other words, give them a wage subsidy. You can pay for it by raising taxes in the top bracket. This solution isn't perfect either, because it causes some missed opportunities in upper income employment. But you'll get much less waste, misallocation, and law-breaking this way.

Thats already being done here, Thomas. The earned income credit and child credits for wage earners. As I have posted numerous times, I personally know people that receive thousands more back than they paid in, in regard to income tax. For a family of 4, I would need to check again, but I recollect it is in the neighborhood of 3 or 4 thousand, which is significant for somebody earning around $20,000. This is part of Bush's tax policy, the same Bush that doesn't care about poor people. I have also pointed out that as I have verified with the Census Bureau, these significant rebates are not included in poverty statistics, so that if more rebates are offered now than in years past, which is a fact, then poverty statistics are reflecting apples and oranges. There is no doubt in my mind that if the poverty statistics were computed from after tax income, there would be a portion of the poverty level people kicked above the level, more now than in past years, which would greatly affect the statistics in terms of subtle trends.

Thomas, by the way, I heartily agree with your post.

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Re: Let's discuss the minimum wage

okie wrote:

Thats already being done here, Thomas.

I know. But unlike the minimum wage, it hasn't been raised since the early nineties (maybe the mid nineties -- not quite sure). Moreover, in the 2006 debate about raising the minimum wage, I didn't hear any politician -- Republican or Democratic -- argue for expanding it. This leads me to think that most Americans don't consider it a viable option. If so, they are mistaken.

okie wrote:

There is no doubt in my mind that if the poverty statistics were computed from after tax income, there would be a portion of the poverty level people kicked above the level, more now than in past years, which would greatly affect the statistics in terms of subtle trends.

I agree. I'm puzzled by the Census Bureau using before-tax income for benchmarking against poverty levels.

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Thomas, thanks. I can't tell you how nice it is not to be castigated for what I view as reasonable opinion concerning an issue.

I have mixed emotions about increasing rebates using the tax system, because the tax system was designed to collect taxes, not to incorporate welfare payments, although I admit the graduated tax system inherently incorporates elements of income redistribution. I like the idea of working people catching a break, by way of the earned income credits, because the people must earn the money by working, and work is rewarded. But another aspect that I don't think is a good trend is that if a high proportion of the population pays no income tax, then that portion of the people do not have the same interest in controlling government spending because they are not paying for it. I realize they pay other kinds of taxes however.

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This is part of what Krugman said some years ago. He hardly opposes the minimum wage.

"So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment. This theoretical prediction has, however, been hard to confirm with actual data. Indeed, much-cited studies by two well-regarded labor economists, David Card and Alan Krueger, find that where there have been more or less controlled experiments, for example when New Jersey raised minimum wages but Pennsylvania did not, the effects of the increase on employment have been negligible or even positive. Exactly what to make of this result is a source of great dispute. Card and Krueger offered some complex theoretical rationales, but most of their colleagues are unconvinced; the centrist view is probably that minimum wages "do," in fact, reduce employment, but that the effects are small and swamped by other forces."

Also, he was against Bush's perverse bargain to tie further deficit tax cuts to raising the minimum wage. This is hardly a Krugman attack on the minimum wage.

Mankiw is an economist-prostitute who supported Bush's terrible supply-side tax cuts. Need I say more?

It is interesting how the right-wingers hate any benefit to the poor, but have no problem giving massive tax and other benefits to the super-rich.

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Advocate wrote:

It is interesting how the right-wingers hate any benefit to the poor, but have no problem giving massive tax and other benefits to the super-rich.

Right wingers realize what is good for the economy is good for everybody. Leftwingers continually want to pit the interests of the poor against the rich. It gets tiresome. They never learn.

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okie wrote:

Advocate wrote:

It is interesting how the right-wingers hate any benefit to the poor, but have no problem giving massive tax and other benefits to the super-rich.

Right wingers realize what is good for the economy is good for everybody. Leftwingers continually want to pit the interests of the poor against the rich. It gets tiresome. They never learn.

Right-wingers are wrong; what is 'good for the economy' isn't necessarily 'good for everybody.' The economy can make tons of money for the highest members without helping the lowest in the slightest.

Cycloptichron

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Let's discuss the minimum wage

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