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 minimum wage increase |
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z The problem with setting a number like that (or any number)is that even if it does not result in higher unemployment, it will be out of date tomorrow. Wages as well as costs of goods/services and the resulting retail price of things should be determined by supply and demand. As you know, given that there is a demand for something, the more of something there is the less valuable it becomes. The less of something there is, the more valuable it becomes. Supply and demand are not instantaneously applied however. There is a lag time for prices to catch up with value. |
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whoops washington state has the highest minimum wage in the country, not highest unemployment rate. |
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The Minimum Wage |
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mr i i posted two examples, one shows that a high minimum wage does not necessarily mean higher unemployment. the other shows that a higher minimum wage can be correlated with a higher unemployment. nor did i show support or lack of support for a higher minimum wage. while a higher minimum wage may discourage hiring, a low minimum wage means that millions of full time workers live in poverty and are not contributing to building the economy. there are pros and cons on both sides and it is a complicated issue worthy of more than a glib answer. |
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received this today as a pm Fwiw, the national MW in Australia is $15.96 per hour. Our currencies are at about parity at the moment so say about $16US. Our national unemloyment rate is 5.4....it ranges from 3.8 to 7.3 between the States. I've always throught the link between the two is overstated. |
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Minimum wage increase, another political gimmick for Obama & Democrats! |
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Furthermore, as per above, since you really harm the out of work worker with a raise in minimum wage, especially in a bad economy, it's actually probably best in general for the worker to allow for a negotiation of his wage, because this allows him to be more competitive relative to pears if he is willing to work for less. Of course there is worry then, especially in a bad economy with a scarcity of jobs that business would prey on the unemployed and hire for slave wages - though this could really only go on for so long and could only low-ball to a certain point, because at some hourly rate people simply wouldn't work for that employer anymore either because they thought he was a jerk for not paying for their work, or they couldn't pay their bill with what they were making, so what was the point of working there and the person will take a new job, go unemployed rather than work, or turn to crime - again taking us back to practical human action - all of which do not help the employer who needs labor that knows how to do its job. So the notion that employers would just lowball to infinity is not based on any reality which it's looked at under the microscope of human action. Mandating a minimum wage is just one more unnatural imbalance placed upon a market that would correct with time if allowed, but cannot due to governmental interference, even if intended for good, this will ultimately lead to harm as the market distorts, making any final correction that much worse, especially in a bad economy. (I think much of this distortion is done intentionally because it allows the billionaires to continue to be billionaires, while the rest of us get poorer in the process - it's the process of neo-feudalism) The one middle of the road kind of solution I see here, which I think both progressives and conservatives could possibly agree on would be an government infrastructure make work program. Where the government itself would provide the wage they think people should have, for short term jobs that improve the country in the aggregate - bridges, roads, damns. And when the private sector economy is allowed to correct, and begins to be positive again, these make work programs would phase out as the practical things these people would be doing would finish and they would take these new skills back into the private sector. |
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prog, you have it all SDRAWKCAB The American market economy is a consumption economy. Let's say that again: it is an economy based on consumption. Consumption by Americans, and most Americans with "disposable income" are working Americans. The purpose therefore of paying workers is so they will have the means of exchange for consuming what the economy as a whole produces -- produces for consumption. From that need, you work it out, you work out the input-output analysis, the Leontiev-style inputs and outputs to arrive at the mean wage, and then the minimum wage, necessary to make the economic engine purr. |
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shamash is a funny guy . . . You can only flog a consumer economy for so long, just the same way you can only "stimulate" for so long. Eventually all the discretionary money (including credit) in a consumer based economy gets used up, because you cannot spend all your money on nonsense, you need food, water, fuel, shelter, and clothing. When this occurs, which is where we find ourselves today, and have been for the last few years, you may attempt to expand the money supply, so that people keep spending money, and they will for awhile, but this will eventually peter out as the expanded money supply leads to inflation of prices in things people have to buy, food, energy, clothing, etc. It's a really a mirage of economic growth, because it's not sustainable and produces nothing of real or lasting value and leads to inflation of the prices of real things, when only people with already outrageous amounts of money can afford. To simply increase a minimum wage does nothing to help the problem and everything to exacerbate it. You cannot stimulate and inflate wages ad infinitum without having "something" of real value to show for it. Buying sammiches and going to movies does not an economy make. The people of this country are going to be very sad when they realize the dishonest bill of good that was sold to them. The consumer economy did make the BANKS (through credit) and multinational corporations (via buying trinkets, made in OTHER countries) very wealthy, but the rest of us have become much poorer (though still not as poor as most of the world) in the process and ironically at the expense of sending all the productive jobs out of the country. We don't make anything anymore, and we're barely staying on top of the technological and science game. |
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shamash If the government mandates any arbitrary minimum higher wage, the minimum wage employee WILL be temporarily benefited with a short term relatively higher income. However, without a corresponding increase in the demand, the employer will need to raise the retail cost of their goods or services. This simply results in a new round of inflation where everybody will demand higher salaries, higher retail rates etc. NOBODY will allow their positions to be degraded relative to their current status within the economy. To maintain equilibrium, all prices will go up correspondingly. Like I said before, it will not occur instantaneously, but will adjust back to equilibrium over time. The result of the mandated rise in minimum wages will be temporary for the low wages worker and another round of inflation for the economy. |
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Jeff, you dismissed this but Mr I had a point. You can't pick out two examples and declare that there is no correlation. There are other factors, when you pick out two variables they may very well be related even if certain data points don't fit. That surely doesn't need pointing out to a Maths teacher does it? |
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