Do you believe in a living wage?

Regulations stand as testament to the need to save capitalism by occasional modifications.

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No, it was the New Deal that did it.

 

We don't have a pure version of most of the things we like.

We're not purely democratic, capitalistic, free market, fully equal as individuals, etc., etc. - even though we like those ideas.

So, yes, we have various kinds of regulation, as we aren't stupid.

 

Theres a lot wrong with your post. But dont really have time right now.

 

There is an end point to spending.

Why is this? Because there are just so many federal roads and bridges to be built. If you hire all construction workers available, they will finish all this in several years. Then what? You have laid off construction workers.

The new deal did a lot that was worthless. I mean, lining paths with rocks and putting up a sign it is a trail accomplishes what? Then the trails are done and all rocks placed.

Then what?

Sustaining jobs is best.

I grew up at the end of the Great Depression. The utter packs of humanity I saw as a lad is difficult for others to understand.

I can't recall seeing any people getting rich. The war did force employment high. I lived where plenty of war effort was happening. I don't recall new cars in WW2. And the reason is the car companies made military vehicles.

Sadly when the war ended, our own government dumped so much that they needed into the ocean. Today the ecowhack jobs would go crazy at what got dumped into the oceans.

 

I can tell you've put a lot of thought into this. And I'll give the link a more detailed read later on. But im afraid that you are missing a number of things. Single parent homes for one. Songle mom with no useful skills three kids. No father in sight other than maybe child support. Is she going to earn that 40 to 50k with no skills.

Again I ask. Where is the incentive to remain in the private sector?

 

Did you mind me helping you?

 

Why did WW2 help end the Great Depression? They just made things and these got destroyed or blown up.

If I break my window, yes I will need to replace it and the window-maker gets work. But I have not created more wealth nor prosperity. In fact I have been wasting resources.

 

Milton Friedman nailed the causes of the Great Depression and then Amity Shlaes took his work further.

If you look at the economy as a river as I do, regulations are a dam. As you dam up the economy, you get a lot of back up in one spot and a vastly changed series of events downstream.

Take me and Dodd Frank to make a point.

Prior to Dodd Frank, my part of the economy was very regulated.

Did we need Dodd Frank? We did not.

We got it anyway.

Then what? We were forced into one more layer of government. And at rather serious costs to all of us.

Did it help the economy? Well of course not. Did it help consumers? We know it did not. It was more control. More building dams on the economy. More nonsense.

California licenses me for periods lasting 4 years. Dodd Frank adds a new license (covered many years previously by California) adding fees annually and more costs for more schooling. I have done this for 45 years. California now grandfathers my education since all my vast number of education hours grants me that privilege. But not the Feds, they packed it on and forced me into far more expenses each and every year. It is a shame.

At my age, why must I work extra hard to stay in the same place?

Democrats did this to this country.

[video=youtube;p5-5a6Q54BM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5-5a6Q54BM&t=77s[/video]

 

Wealth is separate from the economy as I understand this.

Creating wealth is the ultimate solution of course and the economy does measure the creation of wealth.

I recall as a child that when FDR was busy "fixing the depression" he also was busy adding rules and regulations.

I want you to imagine you are in the middle of a game of chess and suddenly you are told there are new rules to follow.

Chaos erupts.

So what was my life in the latter part of the Great Depression plus the entire WW2 like?

As a young boy, my parents had ration books. Each permitted them some purchase of some need. Today you can shop for new tires at many stores. During WW2, those were used for war so it was difficult to get tires. Tires of those days had stiff sidewalls. Today they are a different design. Those old tires needed tubes. But getting tires was difficult. Food was rationed. We were in short being permitted to purchase. FDR poured his heart into WW2. I believe that war need not have spread. But never mind that part, the Government created war did cure some of the depression problem, but not nearly as many as today people suppose. Today you can boost the economy with a new car purchase. Then there were no new cars sold to the public.

 

That is like saying to speed up traffic, you install red lights at each corner. Regulations impede growth and vastly slow down the economy in many areas.

But for Dodd Frank, Growth would have crept past 4 percent or 5 even. Obama did not comprehend economics nor did Chris Dodd or Barney Franks.

What happens is the clash of the lawyer class and the economic expert class.

We on the economic side tried to inform the lawyers, but they refused to listen. their business is crafting laws. Ours is the economy.

 

LOL...So you were making 4 times the minimum wage ( which would be equivalent to about $30 per hour) in 1977, and that same job 40 years later is now paying minimum wage at the exact same unadjusted for inflation pay rate? Its your story, so I'm in no position to call you a liar, but if you are holding that up as the norm, you are grossly mistaken. Everyone would agree that wages have been stagnant for the lowest earning levels during that time period, but nobody ( except you seemingly) is trying to claim that wages overall have been quartered. Everyone would agree that the higher paying blue collar manufacturing jobs have either left, or are paying less in gross adjusted terms, but previously high paying manufacturing jobs overall have NOT turned into minimum wage jobs, which seems to be what you are implying.

BTW, I find it really humorous that you keep repeating that I do not understand math, when I have calculated nothing, nor put forth the notion of math in any manner, shape, or form ( not yet anyway).

The concept of a "livable minimum wage" where the minimum wage was doubled has ever happened before either, but this entire thread is about the speculation as to what would happen if it did. In that sense, this entire thread is an "imaginary scenario". As evidenced by your eager participation in this thread, you don't have a problem with contemplating imaginary scenarios, you only have a problem with acknowledging scenarios that expose the GLARING weakness in your belief system.

So the issue of inflation is no longer relevant because the 1% possess most of the money ?....LOL huh ? I'm sorry but this entire stanza can accurately be titled nonsensical gibberish.

I must have missed that answer, because all I have seen is you avoiding answering my question. Perhaps you can simply go back and cut and paste your answer.

What would happen if we moved the minimum wage to $100 per hour ? Would everyone be living on Easy Street ? Why not ?

Hint, this is an economics theory question. Its not math. Whatever has happened to wages over the last 40 years has NO BEARING whatsoever on this question. We aren't discussing what has happened in the last 40 years, we are theorizing what happens with a large precipitous rise in the minimum wage.

 

I agree. Saving for a rainy day, etc.
But there is a big disincentive to save these days. Saving according to some is a drain on the economy. Money sitting idle doing virtually nothing.

 

Look, I've yet to hear of a single "living wage" proposal that didn't entail forcing an employer to pay more than market value. Can you name any such "work" towards a minimum wage that doesn't?

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Well the U.S. government for a long time has done all that it could to keep inflation about 0%, which is why saving hasn't really been worth it.

 

He was busy prolonging the GD just as Obama prolonged the recent recovery. If not for WW2 we may never have gotten out of it

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He was busy prolonging the GD just as Obama prolonged the recent recovery. If not for WW2 we may never have gotten out of it

 

Indeed

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-10-03/bernanke-may-owe-milton-and-anna-another-apology

 

Sorry, I was agreeing with you but reasserting my original point, because MW detractors like to think that inflation instantly eradicates any benefits of a MW, when we know that inflation is not uniformly distributed throughout the economy.

Obviously, "luxury" or "high-earning" is a semantic gradient, but if we wanted to specify, I'd go with 10%, the tax bracket above which this paper identified tax adjustments as having a negligible effect on economic productivity. http://www.iga.ucdavis.edu/Research/All-UC/conferences/huntington-2013/zidar-paper
More generally, I'd consider any wage or product that does not have enough market liquidity/competition pushing its price down.

Of course, nobody wants a catastrophic overnight increase. Most plans phase in wage increases steadily over years. Personally, I'd have it pegged to a CPI standard and chase it by x% every year, so the rate of increase or decrease slows or adjust depending on economic changes.

Well, that's the whole point of why we bring the conversation up: the 7.25/hour MW doesn't work in certain areas.

In any case, don't get me wrong, I firmly believe in the general power of market forces for pricing.
However, a perfect Laissez-Faire system depends on some very key things: Rational decision-making and Market Elasticity, neither of which are guaranteed.

The argument from anti-MW is that market forces should always enable someone to receive market-value compensation in exchange for a livable set of market-value goods, and that everybody would be fine if this were the case. What nobody accounts for, though, is that market inelasticities take time to resolve. Prices are sticky. Otherwise productive, tax-paying citizens could become insolvent by the time their regional market adapts to new prices, and that is the whole point of interventionism; managing the boom/bust cycle to maintain stability. That is why automation is coming at us like a robot-driven freight train; sure, we will find new ways to employ people, but how long will it take, and how much suffering will there have to be before then?

 

Even if it phases in over a few years, it won't change the outcome.

And its really all about politics and power, and no matter what the min wage is raised to or how its phased in, it won't be big enough or fast enough.

 

Yes. I believe in a living wage. But that isn't going to happen until we do away with sending jobs overseas and mexicans here illegally.

 

I think you need to remember that the cost of labor is set by competition for labor - NOT by the value of that labor. The value of that labor is only a limit on what an employer would be willing to pay to get the work done.

For a long time now, we've seen compensation being a shrinking percent of the value of that labor, with the difference going to share holders and owners.

What we've seen during the recent recession is that there are enough workers that the labor market (the competition for jobs) has allowed employers to pay so little that some employees can't even live.

And, that is a problem - a problem that has not been limited to the recession.

Having those jobs subsidized by tax dollars going to those workers is only one solution - a solution that has several down sides.

Raising minimum wage may cause some employers to be unable to pay to have certain kinds of work done - that is, the value of the labor is less than the minimum wage. But, it also forces employers to price their products in a way that more accurately reflects their value and to pay wages that more accurately represent the value of the work being done.

Keeping the price of products low by giving tax dollars to workers who are paid too little to live isn't some sort of success story.

 

I don't agree with graduated increases being ineffective.

Employers can deal with predictably rising wages more easily than one time events.

And, the same goes for their customers.


As for the long haul, the plan in Seattle and some other cities is to move to an indexed minimum wage after having reached the current minimum wage goal.

 

That's a non-sequitur.

The World is changing, so either adapt or be rendered irrelevant economically-speaking. Minimalism will help you adapt.

Remember that you are not entitled to any given Standard of Living or Life-Style. Again, if people cannot afford housing or food, they'll just have to adjust their Standard of Living and share housing accommodations, so that they can afford those things that they want..

 

So you want to increase taxes on anyone making more than 77k a year? Yes if you make more than 77k a year you are in the top ten percent. And if you make more than 525k a year you are in the top 1% of earners in the U.S.

"In 2005 the economic survey revealed the following income distribution for households and individuals:

The top 5% of individuals had six figure incomes (exceeding $100,000); the top 10% of individuals had incomes exceeding $75,000;
The top 5% of households, three quarters of whom had two income earners, had incomes of $166,200 (about 10 times the 2009 US minimum wage, for one income earner, and about 5 times the 2009 US minimum wage for two income earners) or higher, with the top 10% having incomes well in excess of $100,000.

The top 0.12% had incomes exceeding $1,600,000 annually."

 

Two working adults only merits a two-bedroom apartment. If they cannot afford that, then they need to move in with family or friends.

Then they need to get their hyper-extended families involved in child care.

If all else fails, they can move to an area with a lower Cost-of-Living. Even Homo Habilis was smart enough to know when to migrate.

There's always a solution, and that solution does not require taking money from tax-payers' pockets.