(no subject)

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Even the NY Post, that height of reporting and honesty, now seems to be recognizing the NY needs a higher minimum wage.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/majority_of_nyers_support_raising_DJqRSByAhIyu0IMHbtJ5KP

The bottom line:

New Yorkers by 78-20 percent backing an unspecified increase from the $7.25 per hour rate, found even Republicans favoring a hike by 53-43 percent. Independent voters were supportive by 76-21 percent and Democrats by 91-7.

And if you're unaware, the NY Post is a fucking trash paper; it's owned by Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp and iirc, is written at an 8th grade reading level. The NYT and other reputable NY new sources have been trumpeting this for awhile--but, I'm sure we all know that the NYT is just a part of the vast left-wing media conspiracy. So if even the NY Post is putting this out there, it seems like it has support across political lines.

So here's my question for all you free-market types:
If the people want this (as polls indicate) which do you put first--the will of the people, or your sacred cow of free-market principles? Let's say, hypothetically, you were the Gov of NY. If the assembly and senate passed a bill, would you veto it? Or would you respond to the will of the people?

Democracy or libertarian economic policy?

If you're not a free market believer, I trust you agree NY needs a min wage increase. If not, love to hear why.

Comments

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Libertarians aren't democrats. They're sort of absolutist when it comes to governance. By implementing the most proper system of governance, we could theoretically hand it over to robots and computers once everything is figured out, and we could just program the most perfect set of laws and Constitutions to get rid of the problem of democracy in the first place. Once you have the most moral and best form of governance as espoused by the principles of proto-fascism, you no longer need people to make the decisions. You simply need to apply the most machine-type literalism to everything, which could be computed in a matter of millisecond. Badlydrawnjeff is the first prototype.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

It will be interested to see how BDJ weighs in here. I'm guessing he'll dodge the question of democracy and spin it to be about state power.

But, clearly, a majority of NYers want the state to have and use that power. So should be interesting.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

I want to subscribe to your newsletter.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

On what rational basis will you decide what the minimum wage will be?

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

That is not our job. That is the job of economists and legislators.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

CPI

[404.livejournal.com]

it's [New York Post] owned by Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp and iirc, is written at an 8th grade reading level.

Is that a bad thing?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Yes. Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp is a terrible person.

The 8th grade reading level is just a sign of how it pander to the lowest common denominator, not even aiming to educate the public.

Woe be the day that the reader of a newspaper must *GASP* look up a word!

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Yes, it excludes them completely from the OWS audience.

WWAS?

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

THE MAJORITY IS TYRANNY!Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

The most depraved type of human being is the man without a purpose.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

We must all fear evil men, but there is another evil--the indifference of good men.

When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one
But the union makes us strong....

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Illogical. Premises denied. Please input premises. Please input premises.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

What should come first is the will of the people who actually have to pay the wage, that is to say, the employers and business people who are affected by this proposal. Anyway, if employers are not able to hire and retain the workers they need at minimum wage, they will raise it themselves.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

You mean the customers?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

McDonalds factors turnover rate into their cost of business.
McDonalds could decrease it's turnover rate if they didn't pay minimum wage.
McDonalds can, but does not want to, do that.

So the will of the people who are stuck EARNING minimum wage is less important than those PAYING minimum wage?

Are you for real?

Do you think a business that pays poverty wages should be permitted to keep doing business?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Oh, and how soon before we start return to restricting the vote to land-owners? Cause that's the road you're on with that line of reasoning.

[allisnow.livejournal.com]

If the people are so gung-ho for it, put it on the ballot and let them vote.

But make sure they know it might impact their access to cheap crap sandwiches (http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/No-Subway-5-Footlongs-In-SF-Cost-of-Doing-Business-Too-High-144709445.html).

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

NY State has terrible laws when it comes to getting a referendum on the ballot. Very, very difficult.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to pay slightly higher prices so that every single worker can afford rent, healthcare, food and a little left over for savings or personal enjoyment.

And shit, as a NYC resident, FUCK subways. Every corner deli is better.

[politikitty.livejournal.com]

Adam Smith famously said "There's a lot of ruin in a nation", which is to say that a country can make a lot of mistakes without becoming a failed state. So if the median voter wants a higher minimum wage, we should give the people a minimum wage. After all, impeding the mechanisms that allow for change makes it harder to implement good policy once the people know what that is.

That doesn't mean I think it's good policy. It warps the labor market at the expense of the sort of people who genuinely need a safety net, and acts as a great boon to middle/upper class teenagers. It appears to warp the educational market by providing young children access to subsistence living without high school/higher education. For all the help it does at one point in a persons life, it also stagnates their wages and depresses income mobility.

It takes a real problem and puts a useless band-aid over it. Not only does that waste real resources, but it also makes people less likely to look for real solutions. A liberal for a higher minimum wage is pretty much the poster child for wanting to feel like they're doing good at the expense of actually doing good.

[rowsdowerisms.livejournal.com]

To be fair, the federal minimum wage has been pretty much below the reservation wage for almost all workers for the last 40 years. Furthermore, the minimum wage isn't a subsistence level income to begin with.


It takes a real problem and puts a useless band-aid over it

Earned income tax credit plus funding for local community colleges ftw!

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Oh and as far as the question at the end I can sum it up this way.

Which way did you fall Democracy or Slavery?


If something is wrong the fact that 50% + 1 of the populace wants it anyway does not make it ok.

Obviously Slavery is far more wrong that minimum wage laws but they are still wrong, not because they are anti business either, but because they are counterprocuctive and can never achieve the goal they seek to accomplish. If you make the minimum wage a "living wage" you will either cut employment or cause inflation (or some combination of the two) sufficient to at a minimum cancel out the net benefit of the wage increase.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Slavery was defended using libertarian arguments by people like Wigfall, Rhett, Toombs, Davis, and Stephens. To say nothing of Franklin, Stephen, Roger, and James. Why are you opposed to people having property and doing what they would with it? Who are you to arbitrarily decide what morality is or is not?

[oportet.livejournal.com]

If the people determine whether I have a job or not, I would do what makes them happy. That's the best worst best worst purple thing about politics.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Let's say, hypothetically, you were the Gov of NY. If the assembly and senate passed a bill, would you veto it? Or would you respond to the will of the people?

I would likely veto it because the people elected me to represent them, not to blindly follow whatever poll comes about. And if that means that I suffer electorally for it later, so be it.

Democracy or libertarian economic policy?

These are not incompatible thoughts.

If you're not a free market believer, I trust you agree NY needs a min wage increase. If not, love to hear why.

As a minimum wage is incompatible with a free market for labor, no, no one should agree with such a premise.

New York City may need higher wages on a whole. A minimum wage hike is not going to accomplish this, and will hurt the rest of the state that is not in the city itself. Oneonta does not need a wage hike in the same way the city might. The problems in NYC are endemic of the result of terrible policymaking on the local level that has resulted in a lot of problems that are somehow being hung on the businesses of the city, which makes little sense.

The problems in New York state are mostly centered around New York City, and it could be argued that NYC might be better off actually being its own independent state catering to its own needs because of its unique place in the hierarchy of things. Then it can go ahead and have all the rent control and wage control and salt control and trans fat control it wants, and fail all the while.

[usekh.livejournal.com]

Minimum wages don't seem to have hurt Australia at all.

[ameliorate.livejournal.com]

I'm not an economist and even they aren't /that/ great at guessing the outcomes of policies. I've always been torn between whether or not minimum wage was actually a beneficial policy. It certainly sounds nice; however, if it does cause employers to let go of employees because of the increase... does it actually help any? What if the increase is passed on to the customers and they decide that they can not or will not pay the new price? What happens to the business and all of the employees? What if a small business could barely pay the current minimum and a new minimum could put them out of business, leaving only the super-chains that /seem/ to have already mastered fucking over their employees. I mean the whole, "if you employ people full time you have to offer healthcare" sounded nice, but I feel for all the employees I talk to who say they can't get work full time. I don't know if it's directly related, but a lot of people believe that it is, and I could see how it might be.

I don't like the unknowns. It'd be easier if more people where interested in the well being of others and didn't have to be forced to pay the bare minimum so people can actually... you know... live. Then again, in an ideal world, only teenagers would have jobs that paid less than they needed to live on and those who thought it wasn't enough to live on wouldn't work there, we don't live in that world though, so frankly I don't know. Employers pretty much have their pick of unskilled laborers, if someone doesn't like the pay, there's /always/ someone else.I don't know if an increase in minimum wage actually fix this terrible cycle.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The Party, be it Communist or be it Libertarian, must save the foolish masses from themselves. For y'see the people are too stupid to rule themselves and so they need a Vanguard to blaze and forge new paths of inherent righteousness and violence.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

The foolish masses do not understand the True Definition of Freedom you see, so they must be educated.