Would you republicans vote for a $12 minimum wage?

Federal government: Your labor is worth 10 dollars an hour and we're going to pay you 2 to make up the difference.
Business: My labor is worth 5 dollars and you should pay me 7 to make up the difference.

Who wins?

 

MW is NOT the cause of inflation. It IS, however, one of the many RESPONSES to inflation.

Again, if I haven't already done this, I'll repeat from a previous post, for your edification:

http://www.politicalforum.com/index...12-minimum-wage.585770/page-2#post-1072490876

Minimum wages are in response to inflation, they do not and cannot cause it.
Inflation is caused by the federal reserve, in cahoots with banks, controlled by the discount rate ( I mean the rate the fed charges banks for money ) as the 'gas pedal' resulting in a swelling money supply which accrues faster than productivity, resulting in too much money chasing too few goods.

Any other causes of rising prices at natural supply and demand forces, of one kind or another, is not inflation.

imagine you are in a pool, and there are ripples, waves, up and down portions of the water by natural forces, people jumping in and out of the pool, causing ripples and waves, but the pool's aggregate level wont rise until you pump more water in the pool.

In that analogy, pumping water and swelling the money supply faster than production are the same thing, and the natural supply and demand forces push it up and down, but without pumping money into the pool faster than production can match it, THAT is what inflation is. Without that, prices can rise, but they will average out and the trend will be flat. Inflation is the ever increasing trend, not the temporal ups and downs, and that happens via too much money chasing too few goods and services.

So, Fed can also raise or lower the federal discount rate, which makes it cheaper or more expensive to borrow money from the Fed itself. This is an attempt to increase demand and raise prices or lower demand and lower prices, depending on what the fed wants to do.

Other tools that the Fed uses to manage inflation are:

Reserve requirements (the amount banks hold in reserves)
Open market operations (buying or selling U.S. securities from member banks)
Reserve interest (paying interest on excess reserves)

The minimum wage is one of the many catch-up responses to inflation, but it NOT the cause of it.

 

Or you could answer the question.

You claim to want to respond to inflation, correct?

What happens when the value of labor produced is less than the value of food desired?

 

The minimum wage Monty Python sketch:

Financial wizard: Who would cross the bridge of death must answer these questions three!

Minimum wage guy: Ask me the questions bridge keeper. I am not afraid.

Financial Wizard: Is inflation a drop in the value of currency?

Minimum wage guy: Yes.

Financial Wizard: Has the price of wage inflated at the same rate as the price of goods and services?

Minimum wage guy: No.

Financial Wizard: Does inflating the price of wage to match the inflation apparent in the price of goods and services cause a drop in the value of currency?

Minimum wage guy: Yes. I mean NO, I mean ....AAAaraarrgh!

(Minimum wage guy plummets into the pit of death)

<<scene>>

 

The question has an assumed premise, which is that a livable wage isn't possible because of some vague 'value of labor' notions.

The premise is false. The reason it is false because the solution doesn't require a 'value of labor' assessment.

All that is required is for all corporations to pay a livable wage for unskilled labor based on minimum cost of living assessments, a solution which, may, or may not, require those at the top to sacrifice somewhat, perhaps ( or perhaps not ) so that those at the bottom can afford to live without government assistance or handouts from the community.

See, if the labor of unskilled is not paid a livable wage, and society, via charity and social programs, take up the slack, it winds up costing society, as a whole, more than it would if the corporation had paid a livable wage in the first place. This demonstrates the fallacy of your premise.

 

I haven't been vague. I've been perfectly precise. Price is a function of value, not the other way around. You cannot directly change the value of something by changing its price. It is in fact an inverse relationship. If you raise the price of something without changing anything else about that thing that reduces its value.

If you are 55 inches tall I've measured you with an inch of a certain value. If I change the value of the inch and say you're now 70 inches tall did you actually get taller? The number you assign to the value (labor) does not change the actual value of the labor you assigned the number to.

Take money completely out of the equation. Money is just a placeholder for value, so we don't even need to discuss it to sort out this exploitation problem. Is it exploitation for someone to produce an amount of labor that has less value than the amount of value you think they should purchase with that labor?

 

IMO, everyone will win when the unskilled are brought back into the productive workforce and out of welfare dependency.

 

And the only way that will happen is if the unskilled are able to produce a competitive amount of value.

 

Imagine you're on a track team and your weakest member has legs that are a full foot shorter than everyone else. He obviously struggles to keep up. The minimum wage is a proposition to change the second at which the clock starts for everyone. Instead of starting at 0 seconds, now we're going to start at 12 seconds, or 15 seconds, or 50 seconds. Does that change the outcome of the race?

 

Minimum wage is not based on mercantile transactional negotiation, it's a public policy designed to compell corporations to pay a wage necessary for life's essentials in order to substandard wages and thus to prevent exploitation.

That makes your point, on MW, moot.

 

You're trying to influence transactional negotiation without regard for the forces that control it.

It's like saying gravity isn't fair therefore everyone now weighs at least 100 pounds.

 

Prove it.

 

No its not.

 

If we were talking about a MW of $50, you'd have a point. But since my proposal is a minimum wage of $10 - $11, which has proven viable in the past, you don't.

 

Dude... C'mon, seriously??

 

Time for a lesson in remedial math.

Though I will grant him the point that when I was working a salaried job and a minimum wage job at the same time I was above average in sum of the two.

 

You're assuming all factors of value have stayed the same over 60 years. This is not true. They fluctuate daily, hourly.

Does a minimum wage labor from 60 years ago have the same value today? Obviously not if you're a gas station attendant, elevator operator, telephone operator.. etc

 

Ever seen one of those secretarial pools filled with minimum wage women clacking away at typewriters?

How much do they get paid today?

 

At work the unskilled would provide significant value to the nation as a whole.
They are worth almost nothing to individuals and local small businesses who might hire them as menial laborers. That is why every level of government, not small businesses and individuals, should subsidize their wages instead of subsidizing the idling of millions of able bodied Americans.

 

Minimum wage laws are designed to idle much of the working class and create a permanent dependent class.
MW laws provide some rather illusory advantages to skilled workers in wage negotiations.
Most skilled workers would thrive without MW laws.

 

My references are adjusted for inflation. $1.30 in 1968 is about $10 - $11 today, which is why I used those numbers. the values are mostly the same, but in the bigger cities, in 1968, say Los Angeles, for example, unskilled jobs paid $2 just about anywhere in the city, which is $15 today but I wouldn't recommend what is being paid as minimum in L.A, for say, Pinesville Louisiana. In Los Angeles, rents have gone ahead of wages, in comparison, but that is about it. in most regions, the numbers have held steady, on must products and services, adjusting for inflation, on most products and services.

 

False.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon...n–Ehrlich wager was,decade leading up to 1990.

 

https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1968-Sears-Christmas-Book/0594

Kenmore Washer $184.88 in 1968 dollars. $1,397.30 adjusted to 2021.

https://www.sears.com/kenmore-22352...h0WVrvok-GMe7p4ri1hoCDd8QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Kenmore Washer $584.99 in 2021 dollars, $77.00 adjusted to 1968.

That's just one example, but I can give you hundreds across the entire cost of living spectrum.

 

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/gasoline-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/

Price of energy..trending down over time.
Price of electronics...trending down over time.
Price of commodities..trending down over time..

 

Seriously, PROVE IT.