Has anyone thought of this in regards to minimum wage?

I agree for the most part, but honestly, I think that says more about our culture than it does about the minimum wage.

In countries with NHS's and waitstaff that don't have to depend on tips, restaurants generally manage labor differently. In general, eating out does cost more in much of Europe, but the food quality seems to be better overall in a lot of cases. The same goes for the quality of labor.

In America, everything seems to be done on the cheap. There are still nice restaurants here, but they seem to be greatly outnumbered by the fast food joints that are affordable but not very healthy. At the same time, many of the employees are dependent on public benefits because their pay is so bad.

In Western Europe, everyone gets a decent wage, so dependence on public benefits is tied more to unemployment than actually working a job that pays poorly. Granted, it is true that some of these countries have quite an issue with unemployment.

 

Well, there is a solution, but it involves regulating finance better.

If we held speculators and investment bankers more accountable for the risks they take with other people's money, then inflation would be less of an issue.

However, since bankers run the government, accountability in finance is few and far between.

 

There is no evidence that inflation of the money supply causes sustainable economic growth or even has any significant impact on real variables like real GDP or employment. Milton Friedman earned his Noble Prize in economics by synthesizing the evidence and studying the phenomena of monetary neutrality and advocated for having a zero percent inflation rate as a fixed monetary policy rule. Apparently, you know something that Friedman doesn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_of_money

 

Why else would you need to index increases in the minimum wage to inflation?

Milton Friedman advocated for creating a monetary policy rule that fixes the inflation target at zero percent. This does not mean the money supply will stay the same size. It means that the money supply will either contract or expand in response to the real economy's growth.

 

Well, that "fantastic future " always imagined that the enormous additional profits would be spread around society by higher wages and more utilities for the public.

Since the direction we have ACTUALLY gone is to bone-crushing low pay and no benefits, higher usage fees for workers and lower taxes for the wealthy who amass huge sums and send them out of the country, and more and more marginally or permanently unemployed lower classes, the "benefits" of labor saving devices will only benefit a few percent of society.

BTW, there was a day when we paid EXTRA for "mind-numbing and bone-crushing manual labor" that was dangerous, uncomfortable and extremely unpleasant, but the wealthy's successful class warfare that substituted a slave class of illegal and desperate labor to work for pennies has resulted in the idea that sitting in a warm office warming a chair should pay better than standing on a slaughterhouse killing floor smashing in the skulls of cattle, or placing the same part in the same place 1000 times a day with NO errors, something that is very valuable in reality.

Now we have moved to desperation as a motivator, instead of giving the chance to a reliable and serious worker to have a reasonable middle class life with a good car, reasonable if basic house, and a week or two vacation each year with health insurance that incidentally built the MOST POWERFUL ECONOMY in the WORLD as its "side effect"!

Republicans always fight hard to eliminate what worked so WELL for the USA for their OWN short-term quickie cash advantage.

.

 

The dirty little secret is they know full well the consequences of raising the minimum wage.

They're hoping that you're too stupid to understand those consequences and that by them raising your minimum wage it will buy your vote. That is the ENTIRE purpose.

 

So can Obama. Or Soros. Or either Clinton. What point are you trying to make?

 

Seems to me we're getting there anyway. Wages have been steadily decreasing due to inflation, and that's just one indication of what's happening to this country. The banking system is destroying it. We let greedy manipulators run off with our wealth when the Fed was born, and slowly but surely reality is catching up with us for it.

 

Has anyone thought of this?:

By executive order, Obama should make it law that if one is a "subsidized" person and qualified for Obamacare at taxpayer expense, then that person cannot be fired or have its hours cut. In other words, minimum-wagers would be a newly proclaimed minority and be entitled to all special privileges and affirmative-action benefits thereto.

Problem solved

Happy Kwanzaa

 

Who actually takes you seriously?

 

"The economists call it stagflation."

Taxcutter says:
Stagflation was the malaise of Jimmy Carter's day.



"Let the state and local governments adjust minimum wage for their regional cost of living rates."


Taxcutter says:
That is the wisdom of the Framers. Let the states experiment. Have no federal minimum and let each state work it out for themselves.




"That is fair to employers, employees, and the taxpayers."

Taxcutter says:
But it sticks it to the consumer.

 

It can be solved by unionizing and solidarity among American workers. It's worked in the past and it can work in the future.

 

"They want money and to maximize their profits."

Taxcutter says:
That's what they are there for. To do anything is to violate their fiduciary duty.





"The time of automation replacing every mindless task labor positions is right around the corner."


Taxcutter says:
Auto assembly plants used to have hundreds of workers a shift operating spot-welders. Now the spot-welders are wielded by robots.
One job that has never been automated is sewing baseballs. Very labor intensive. A guy did develop a robot to sew baseballs, but it never caught on. Why? Baseballs have always been made in Haiti. Haitians work so cheap even the robot cannot compete.

High-wage auto workers: On the bricks.
Low-pay Haitian baseball seamstresses: Busy, busy, busy.

 

"There are contracts in force in some of our elitist labor groups which require they get a raise of the same % as minimum wage raises."

Taxcutter says:
SEIU contracts are always pegged to the minimum wage. This is the real drive behind the minimum wage thing. It won't help teenaged burger-flippers. They'll be laid off. An increase in minimum wage is Hussein Obama paying off his cronies in the SEIU.




"... eating out does cost more in much of Europe, but the food quality seems to be better overall in a lot of cases."

Taxcutter says:
Not in Britain. Hell is said to be a place with French politicians, German police, and British cooks.





"The same goes for the quality of labor."

Taxcutter says:
Like French waiters and store clerks?







"...bankers run the government..."

Taxcutter says:
Good reason to reduce the size and scope of government.

 

"Romney can buy everything he wants at Neiman Marcus by phoning it in. ... So can Obama. Or Soros. Or either Clinton."

Taxcutter says:
So can Warren Buffet. So can John Kerry. So can Jay Rockefeller. So can Jeff Immelt.


"...unionizing and solidarity among American workers..."

Taxcutter says:
That only works when there is little competition.



Y'know, wage and price controls were a feature of the USSR. Didn't work out, did it?

 

Given my 79 PAGES of likes I'd say quite a few people do.

 

The state and local governments CAN adjust their minimum wage to local conditions. Several work categories (like farm labor) have their own exemptions too!

What the NATIONAL minimum wage is simply sets the minimum amount of wages across the country. The localities can raise it as high as the waish.

What this prevents is the various localities that would replicate the third world conditions by cutting minimum pay to nothing, and instead of abusing third world worers in China or Mexicao, we will have have the abused workers here in the USA, just as Walmart is doing!

Why should our taxpayers need to subsidize Walmart's profits and massive executive and stockholder profits?

 

The current minimum wage is sufficient for a decent living wage in a lot of areas. If there even should be a federal minimum, isn't it currently high enough considering many areas of the US has a cost of living low enough to be easily supported by the minimum wage?

 

So now we will force employers to mandatory hours for some employees???

 

More hours at the current wage could spur growth. This growth is no longer worth pursuing once the cost has exceeded potential benefit less risk factor. It also makes investment in automation easier to rationalize with higher cost avoidance.

Higher labor rates will result in lower labor quantity. There is no other way around it.

 

OK, first you made this post:

Requiring that an employer maintain at least 50% full time employees is ridiculous to say the least. Credibility when talkling about business = 0.

After spewing some craziness, you are going to somehow question the validity of someone's comments. You are funny.

My guess is, there are a few confused people still holding onto the false premise that somehow centralized control can add efficiency. I would think that your likes while they may be many, are probably without much complexity as far as their sources.

 

Actually my likes vary. I probably have an equal number of likes from liberals as I do conservatives and I would say that about a third of them are from people who disagree with my opinion on the given subject but appreciate my use of facts and evidence to support my opinion rather than being a dullard who toes the party line no matter what.

I am absolutely convinced that most of the people posting against a min wage infrease would change their tune 100% if obama suddenly announced he opposee a hike.