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  • Current Events & Politics Moderators: deficiT | tryptakid | Foreigner

Should minimum wage be increased?

Escher's Waterfall said:
So as a hypothetical CEO wanting to earn $25 million a year, but not willing to pay the mail clerk $2.5 million/year, what is to prevent me from contracting out my mail room services for much, much less than $2.5 million/year?

I could do that with all the low-paying jobs on the staff (janitorial, transportation, etc), then keep my fat paycheck.

In fact, since I am no longer paying low wage workers, the workers on my payroll are making pretty good money and probably have some decent benefits (relatively speaking). I think it may be time for our PR department to brag about how we pay a livable wage to all our employees.
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No loopholes. Lowest wage is the lowest wage regardless if an actual employee, contractor, etc.

And yes, what an interesting message this would send across the professional ranks if everyone had a chance to make good wages and afford more. It could easily expand the middle class and possibly eliminate poverty.

Didnt think of you as a greedy capitalist pig EW but I appreciate the discussion. ;)
 
Captain.Heroin said:
If you take away the profit motive, the world stops turning.
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I think this a good counter-point, but I have a problem with its absolutist nature. I believe we need marginal proportions of incentive, but overall a government with enough checks and balances should really be able to provide healthcare and decent jobs for the people, without a profit motive.

Yes I think a higher minimum wage would provide incentive for more people to work, but the problem now isn't so much people not wanting to work as the lack of jobs.

Personally I would like a higher wage for myself (which is close to minimum), so I am slightly bias. Needless to say the minimum wage growth has not paralleled the rise in prices nearly so significantly.
 
Know its probably been said already but.. a minimum wage increase may not even be necessary if the cost of living wasn't so expensive. Gas, accommodation, utilities, TAX (!).. everything has gone up/taking a bigger chunk out of people's wages but the wages themselves have not risen accordingly.
 
The problem with the minimum wage is that it doesn't actually give you that wage. Just because you raise the minimum wage doesn't mean you increase people's incomes. You have to actually get a minimum wage job to get that wage. The higher the minimum wage, the harder it is to get a minimum wage job. Your wage is determined by your skills, the capital of the employer, and simple supply and demand. If the minimum wage is $1/hr, pretty much anyone can find a minimum wage job. If the minimum wage is $100/hr, few people will find employment. If the minimum wage is $10/hr but your skillset only allows you to have a productivity level of $8/hr, you simply don't get hired. You work isn't worth enough for a company to employ you. Perhaps it may be worth it for the company to employ you at $8/hr, and they would benefit by doing so. Unfortunately, that would be illegal. They can't afford to pay $10/hr to someone who isn't worth that, so you are simply out of a job. The minimum wage doesn't direct more money to the unskilled laborers, it puts them in unemployment. The people that the government is trying to help(young people, poor people, minorities, disabled people) get hurt the most.

The thing is, most people don't work at minimum wage jobs for very long. People get better at what they do. They gain new skills that make them more productive and attractive to potential employers. With any sort of work ethic, they quickly become worth more than minimum wage. Most people make more than minimum wage. If you have been in the workforce for a long time and you still make minimum wage, something is wrong.
 
Alexander Shulgin said:
The thing is, most people don't work at minimum wage jobs for very long. People get better at what they do. They gain new skills that make them more productive and attractive to potential employers. With any sort of work ethic, they quickly become worth more than minimum wage. Most people make more than minimum wage. If you have been in the workforce for a long time and you still make minimum wage, something is wrong.
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Even with that belief, there's a group of people who tend to make so little that society effectively subsidizes their employer's wage. We call those people Walmart employees. (Other companies are also guilty of such behavior, but Walmart is one of the worst offenders, due to its size.)

Now, with or without a social safety net, the effect is mostly the same: When jobs are scarce, there's more supply of available laborers than the demand for laborers. That pushes wages down. People tend to still accept such jobs, even if they don't meet all income needs, because paying some of the bills is better than paying none of the bills. As long as the supply of employees are there, the company doesn't care either - since it can replace any employee whose financial situation causes them to be unable to work (such as their means of transportation breaks down and they cannot afford the repair, or they have some treatable medical problem that they cannot afford to fix).

In addition, as long as the supply of employees is higher than the demand, then with all other things being equal, these low-paying employers can reduce their costs - which allows them to offer lower prices than their competitors with decent wages. All other things being equal, bad wages drives out good wages.

We end up racing to the bottom.
 
we operate in a power law with a long tail

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the vast majority of humans will earn along that long tail.

we will get just enough to maintain the system.

"should we" get more than that long tail? Based on our ethics (that interestingly we allow to have a strong restrictive influence on us, even if they don't reflect reality...) based on our ethics - yes. We deserve more. We have empathy for each other and don't like the idea of the vast majority of the population mired in a low socioeconomic status.
However the ethics and the empathy and the nice thoughts do not match the law of reality.
 
Wouldn't that depend on your living situation and the amount of the subsidy versus the amount of the wage increase?
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Not necessarily. Ideally, instead of a standard income tax rebate that most people of low income received (? I assume unless there is a hold), the government would take that money and spread it out monthly over a year + a government top off. Its a similar idea in socialist countries where housing is basically given out.

I'm not saying it would work or anything, its just an out of the box idea. I like the idea of hypothetically my rent cut in half vs. a higher wage which the government just takes anyways in sales and income tax (and anything else that gets paid into). Even if you were living in shared accomodations or with your parents or something, a certain housing expense should be factored in.
It would increase disposable income...now if you lived in a box, or in your car, or packed 3 families into a one bedroom apartment, etc. etc. I'd say it would fail...I think overall minimum wage should be basically monitored welfare anyways, unless housing is super cheap.

That or some kind of food credit really...its pretty bad when the people who work at Walmart can't afford to shop there. That's veiled consumerist slavery. Even slaves were probably fed decently (as opposed to Kraft dinner or canned goods) to increase output...

" a chance to move up in the ranks." wow, thanks Walmart. :P

Aubretia Edick, a Massachusetts woman who earns $11.70 an hour and receives public assistance, food stamps, Section 8 housing, and state-funded health care, said her reliance on the safety net is one reason she plans to join the strikes. “Walmart doesn't pay my salary,” she said. “You pay my salary.”
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I mean, really, we do this anyways. So its sort of a bunk idea.

I don't really understand the argument for eliminating minimum wage. It would completely destroy productivity. If I made $4/hour I would work at half my output. If the employer doesn't like it he/she can terminate my employment and I can find another $4/hour job. Because everyone would low ball crap work. And if you worked $10/hour I can see companies being like "your productivity should be X, and should be maintained at X." It would basically herald the return of unions. And thats a crap idea all around.
 
For me, the question is, how can we most effectively redistribute a greater proportion of the product of labor as wages rather than profit, ideally in a way that focuses on accumulated capital not put to productive use? I think that minimums wages should be coupled with opulent transfer payments and social services, as economic dynamics can reduce wage increases' efficacy in the medium term.

Heh...just pretending to be liberal for a sec....
 
jpgrdnr said:
I don't really understand the argument for eliminating minimum wage. It would completely destroy productivity. If I made $4/hour I would work at half my output. If the employer doesn't like it he/she can terminate my employment and I can find another $4/hour job. Because everyone would low ball crap work. And if you worked $10/hour I can see companies being like "your productivity should be X, and should be maintained at X." It would basically herald the return of unions. And thats a crap idea all around.
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For like 3 days. Employers would get tired of people offering to work for a lower wage and be worse at the job. Employers would look for a quality person and pay them enough to keep them happy. Which is exactly what happens now except it would happen without an arbitrary number to influence the psyche.


If legislation was enacted to eliminate the minimum wage, I guarantee every single corporation would make a bullshit move to raise the minimum to about 9 an hour and then tell everyone that they will not hire for less than that. they will band together to stop this cruel injustice, for the people. they just want you to have an arbitrary number by which to begin wage negotiations. one that's low enough to guarantee they can employ someone to do the job at a comparably way higher but still low enough wage.
 
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jpgrdnr said:
I can see companies being like "your productivity should be X, and should be maintained at X."
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This already happens. Speaking of Wal Mart, I know someone who does shipping/ receiving at one of their warehouses and they definitely use productivity quotas there.
 
jpgrdnr said:
I'm not saying it would work or anything, its just an out of the box idea. I like the idea of hypothetically my rent cut in half vs. a higher wage which the government just takes anyways in sales and income tax (and anything else that gets paid into). Even if you were living in shared accomodations or with your parents or something, a certain housing expense should be factored in.
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So what would be my incentive then to save money by renting a room instead of an apartment?
 
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