Talk politics.

Teens don't need a living wage, that's not why they're working in general.

The point of a minimum wage is to prevent downward pressure on wages to create a floor so that wages don't fall through it. Just because some people don't make minimum wage doesn't mean they're competing to go downward. I also don't buy the argument that teens don't need a living wage. A lot of teens need a living wage to support their families. I don't buy the argument that certain people deserve living wages while other people do. We don't base CEO pay based on whether or not they deserve a living wage. This sounds like an argument by someone in a privileged position that hasn't or does not know anyone that had to support their families growing up. This just sounds like a bunch of privilege talking.

You don't think the minimum wage impacts wages all the way up the chain?

It's like the same people that are like 'oh hey look at economic mobility! all the people in the 1st quintile end up in the 2nd!' Minimum wage is the bottom, and it makes sense that people's experience and persistence at their jobs causes them to go beyond the minimum wage. It's not like they just jump to 40 dollars an hour. They don't just become wealthy, and it's not an indicator that they eventually become wealthy. But it absolutely keeps wages afloat.

There is really no reason why minimum wage so not be set at a living wage for a human being. The whole purpose here was finding arguments in favor of eliminating a minimum wage because it's harmful. What harm has it done? I thought this would be a win/win for people who want less people on welfare or government assistance. It helps people become self-sufficient and bootstrap themselves to success.

A minimum wage being low guarantees that company subsidizes their labor because they know their employees will have government assistance so the government ends up picking up the tab. How is this conducive to reducing the amount of people on government assistance?

I know libertarians believe that wage is a stick you can beat people with to make them improve and learn but that's not how people function. Libertarianism is a denial of nature and humanity and how humans actually operate. Eliminate the minimum wage and give someone $3/hr for something and they can't get any job that pays better, that doesn't teach them anything, it's just depressing and they have to spend their entire time working instead of improving themselves.

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it's just depressing and they have to spend their entire time working instead of improving themselves.

Take a security guard. How are they going to improve their situation? No matter how hard you bust your ass you're not gonna get more money. What motivation does anyone have to bust their ass if they're making next to nothing with no guarantee that things will get better as people compete to the bottom? Want a raise? Well we'll hire someone for less, someone more desperate than you. Libertarians like to believe this country is a meritocracy, but it isn't. It isn't how this country works.

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malakh-abaddon.livejournal.com

Take a security guard. How are they going to improve their situation? No matter how hard you bust your ass you're not gonna get more money. What motivation does anyone have to bust their ass if they're making next to nothing with no guarantee that things will get better as people compete to the bottom? Want a raise? Well we'll hire someone for less, someone more desperate than you.

That pretty much sums up my boss and my job. Kinda creepy. You don't know me in person do you?

>.

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When you have more people available to do a job than there are jobs, that's what happens, and what should happen. The wage for the job goes down, until the balance is reached. Preventing the wage from going down causes market problems, namely, higher unemployment.

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enders-shadow.livejournal.com

Preventing wages from dropping below a subsistence level is a bigger problem.

People working 40 hours a week at min wage frequently need govt assistance.

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malakh-abaddon.livejournal.com

Yet rarely qualify for it.

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Citation needed.

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malakh-abaddon.livejournal.com

Oh I'm sorry. Yeah I was making that comment based on personal experience. You see, I recently needed an attorney because my landlord was jerking me around with a house with faulty wiring, plumbing, and a small infestation of snakes, and spiders. When I complained he started eviction proceedings. Went to all the local attorneys, couldn't afford one, so I called legal aid, the attorneys who represent all the poor bums like me who have dead end jobs that pay squat, only to find out that my little 18 grand a year was too much to qualify for assistance in this state.

Yeah, I get back to you on that cite, after I find another slum to rent.

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That wasn't what I asking to be cited.

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enders-shadow.livejournal.com

OK.

a) http://raiseillinois.com/my-life-on-minimum-wage/

many people's personal stories involve using food stamps or just barely not needing them

b) http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1771

c) http://www.dsausa.org/lowwage/walmart/2004/walmart%20study.html

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(a) is not a citation when it's just some anecdotes. (b) doesn't say how many people are in the situation they're setting up. (c) is at least a real cite, assuming the full study gives numbers of people. Don't know if it fully supports your assertion though.

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The point of a minimum wage is to prevent downward pressure on wages to create a floor so that wages don't fall through it.

That floor already exists, it's called the market. So it's not about that, it's about something else, most often an arbitrary concept of "fair."

I also don't buy the argument that teens don't need a living wage. A lot of teens need a living wage to support their families.

Thus the need to see those statistics and see how we know that it's really not actually the case.

I don't buy the argument that certain people deserve living wages while other people do. We don't base CEO pay based on whether or not they deserve a living wage.

No, we base CEO pay on market values for their work. We don't do that for minimum wage, as it isn't based on market values, but arbitrary political and social desires.

This sounds like an argument by someone in a privileged position that hasn't or does not know anyone that had to support their families growing up. This just sounds like a bunch of privilege talking.

The argument of the desperate.

They don't just become wealthy, and it's not an indicator that they eventually become wealthy. But it absolutely keeps wages afloat.

And the evidence for this?

What harm has it done?

Reduced employment, increased prices, distorted wages and prices along the way.

I know libertarians believe that wage is a stick you can beat people with to make them improve and learn but that's not how people function

Your words, not anyone else's.

Eliminate the minimum wage and give someone $3/hr for something and they can't get any job that pays better, that doesn't teach them anything, it's just depressing and they have to spend their entire time working instead of improving themselves.

If that's what the job is actually worth, why should they be paid more than that?

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That floor already exists, it's called the market.

ahahahahahahahaha

The argument of the desperate.

Not that you would know anything about desperate. Apparently every teen is just getting a summer job because their parents forced them to get out of the mansion and do something instead of watching movies all day in their home theater.

And the evidence for this?

Went over this a while ago. Very few made out of the lower quintile loop. The allaged economic mobility? 90% of it consisted of it going up and down in the first 3 quintiles.

Reduced employment, increased prices, distorted wages and prices along the way.

Give me a shred of evidence for this.

If that's what the job is actually worth, why should they be paid more than that?

Because I don't believe in a system that only pays people according to how much someone else thinks it's worth. I don't agree that pay should be matched by what someone brings in. I'm not a free market fundamentalist. The companies paying minimum wage are obviously making profits so your idea of people being paid according to their 'value' is completely specious. They are being paid the absolute minimum they can get away with, despite the actual 'market value' of the work done. The profits go up, the wages go down. The wages and profits do not go up hand in hand in this free market system.

IT NEVER HAS!!!

You're just SAYING it will. No serious economist even adheres to ANYTHING you mises.org people say. Not a single time in history have your insane theories been implemented, and yet you're drawing conclusions on all these scenarios and hypotheticals.

Then again that's what Austrians are all about. The first step is to reject all facts and data.

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Went over this a while ago. Very few made out of the lower quintile loop. The allaged economic mobility? 90% of it consisted of it going up and down in the first 3 quintiles.

So it's more of a cover your eyes thing?

Give me a shred of evidence for this.

You mean other than math? You budget for X, and Y increases for arbitrary political reasons. You cannot surpass X.

Because I don't believe in a system that only pays people according to how much someone else thinks it's worth. I don't agree that pay should be matched by what someone brings in. I'm not a free market fundamentalist.

Fairy dust is not a way to figure out the value of labor.

You're just SAYING it will. No serious economist even adheres to ANYTHING you mises.org people say. Not a single time in history have your insane theories been implemented, and yet you're drawing conclusions on all these scenarios and hypotheticals.

I challenge you one time to find me referencing mises.org on anything. You seem to have this bizarre block on considering anything that even sounds libertarian, whether it is or not. You're not even arguing a point, you're just blindly, angrily arguing against an idea you barely understand.

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So it's more of a cover your eyes thing?

Non-sequiter.

You mean other than math? You budget for X, and Y increases for arbitrary political reasons. You cannot surpass X.

Minimum wage isn't just increased on a whim. People know well ahead of time when a minimum change occurs. The last one took a year before it went into effect, and even then it increases gradually. If minimum wage is a big factor in your budgeting then you're obviously not doing any high-value projects. If they fire people they can no longer provide the same level of goods and service, so they'll make less money. Once again, you're parroting the myth of a link between minimum wage and unemployment. If minimum wage puts them over the edge then they weren't making any money out of the business anyway. I thought the market wasn't a big fan of propping up inefficient business models?

Fairy dust is not a way to figure out the value of labor.

People are already making above minimum wage, so obviously the 'fairy dust' has figured out that 94% of the labor force should make more than minimum wage anyway.

I challenge you one time to find me referencing mises.org on anything. You seem to have this bizarre block on considering anything that even sounds libertarian, whether it is or not. You're not even arguing a point, you're just blindly, angrily arguing against an idea you barely understand.

What else do I assume when you beat the same drum that they do? They replace fact with myth, ignore evidence and history. Neither you nor they have shown any evidence that gives your argument any merit. "Hey, it's only 6% so let's get rid of it!" That's not an argument. In fact, it's an argument against getting rid of it, because so few people make it that we might as well let those people make SOMETHING. Not all of them are spoiled teens who were forced by their parents to work or looking to get some pot money, some of them need the money, in fact a lot of them do. Hell not all of them are teenagers.

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Minimum wage isn't just increased on a whim

It's not raised based on anything concrete, that's for sure.

People know well ahead of time when a minimum change occurs.

That, uh, doesn't mean it's not increased on a whim.

People are already making above minimum wage, so obviously the 'fairy dust' has figured out that 94% of the labor force should make more than minimum wage anyway.

But somehow the other 6% of workers don't need to be concerned with the market for their labor, right?

What else do I assume when you beat the same drum that they do? They replace fact with myth, ignore evidence and history.

So you say.

Neither you nor they have shown any evidence that gives your argument any merit. "Hey, it's only 6% so let's get rid of it!" That's not an argument

I agree, that's why I didn't make that argument.

The basic reason for not having a minimum wage is that it's not necessary. It does not solve any perceived problems, nor does it create any real positive outcomes. The negative impacts are many and far-reaching. Then there's the aspect that it's the government getting in the middle of private contracts, which is a problem all on its own.

There's no good objective argument for the minimum wage. It's all emotional and arbitrary.

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It's not raised based on anything concrete, that's for sure.

Yes, they're just rubbing their hands together and cackling, "We'll get those small business owners! Mwa hah hah!"

It's just like anything you said has been based in anything concrete.

I guess lifting families out of poverty doesn't count as anything 'concrete'. Then again the minimum wage doesn't actually bring people above the poverty level, and they traditionally get denied the full 40-hour work week so they can be denied paying benefits as well... you're right, actually. We shouldn't bother because it's likely those people will just die anyway.

That, uh, doesn't mean it's not increased on a whim.

I was SPECIFICALLY replying to your stupid X and Y example, and how people fucking plan for minimum wage hikes just like they do for any OTHER increase in labor costs. I specifically followed it up with how these laws are traditionally passed, and you completely fucking ignored it! Are you even trying?

There's no good objective argument for the minimum wage. It's all emotional and arbitrary.

By definition, for you it IS arbitrary, because you don't care for the well-being of the people being affected by this. You don't care about the suffering of people who can't make ends meet. You don't think it's the economy's job to provide for people to live a happy life. You think the economy exists purely to make a profit, that it exists independent from society therefore and to make a profit in it, it trickles down to society.

I believe the economy should provide for a society, that our well-being is intimately connected with what we expect out of an economy. The economy should exist to serve the well-being of the people. It governs how people get goods and services, which make us happy and drives our quality of life.

Look at China. They primarily export from all their manufacturing, but very little of it filters back into society. Most of it just goes to the people at the top. In the US the money stays local, generates more business, people earn money from the goods they produce which causes people to earn more money. Our goods mostly stay in our economy and enrich our society. More and more we're globalizing and exporting our goods to China, and the effect? Higher rates of poverty, lower wages, we've gone through a credit crisis and we're heading toward the death of the middle class in this country.

We'll never agree because we have different fundamental goals for the economy. Luckily for me, both history and nearly every economist agree with my interpretation for what an economy means to a society. Fortunately, nobody with any sense advocates what you advocate.

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