opebo was right about a $15/hour minimum wage

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

http://www.upworthy.com/just-watch-this-man-draw-for-2-minutes-and-30-seconds-i-dare-you-to-tell-me-hes-wrong?c=hpstream

[Oakvale]

RIP Economics board.

[Maxwell]

Get this shinks out of here

[bore]

In fairness, this thread is more symptomatic of rather than a cause of the economics boards general crappiness.

[Oakvale]

In fairness, this thread is more symptomatic of rather than a cause of the economics boards general crappiness.

Yes. The state of the board is generally tragic. About a fifty-fifty split between awful think pieces and things like WHAT IF WE ABOLISHED JOBS.

[DC Al Fine]

*Sigh* An Upworthy headline? Really?

Ok let's take a look at this...

Oh look he hand waves away the single best argument against a high minimum wage. No convinced.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

*Sigh* An Upworthy headline? Really?

Ok let's take a look at this...

Oh look he hand waves away the single best argument against a high minimum wage. No convinced.

It's an argument that deserves to be hand waved away, as with most of the history of complaining from corporate fat cats.  And what of the small businesses that I love so much?  I'll let the DOL official website answer that little inquiry.

http://www.dol.gov/minwage/mythbuster.htm

Myth: Small business owners can't afford to pay their workers more, and therefore don't support an increase in the minimum wage.

Not true: A June 2014 survey found that more than 3 out of 5 small business owners support increasing the minimum wage to $10.10. Small business owners believe that a higher minimum wage would benefit business in important ways: 58% say raising the minimum wage would increase consumer purchasing power. 56% say raising the minimum wage would help the economy. In addition, 53% agree that with a higher minimum wage, businesses would benefit from lower employee turnover, increased productivity and customer satisfaction.

"Increased consumer purchasing power" is the key here.  The only thing that threatens small businesses from benefiting due to a higher minimum wage, for example, is the inability to match the advertising budget of a big box store.  Luckily, most small businesses are not competing with Wal-Mart. 

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

*Sigh* An Upworthy headline? Really?

Ok let's take a look at this...

Oh look he hand waves away the single best argument against a high minimum wage. No convinced.

You prefer the handwaving that is put forth against a higher minimum wage?  Obviously, the minimum wage can be set too high, but the current evidence indicates we're not near that point.  I do think more than doubling the minimum wage in a mere three years is too far rapid, but certainly the current democratic proposal is very reasonable and I think an increase to say $12/hour over a five year period would also be very reasonable.

[AggregateDemand]

This is what governs min wage economics. Pretending otherwise is a waste of time.

Under-24 employment rates plummeting for decades. Senior citizen employment rates rising. What's the difference? One demographic is taxed/regulated out of the economy, and the other group is subsidized into the economy.

Robert Reich is irrelevant. He resigned as labor secretary right before full employment raised household income. If you want higher wages, you want full employment, not price floors

[Person Man]

There are of course issues of the social value of the businesses that would be priced out of labor and the jobs that would be created by not only immediate increased demand but also the increase in demand caused by the increased demand in replacing workers that are too expensive.

[GaussLaw]

This is what governs min wage economics. Pretending otherwise is a waste of time.

Under-24 employment rates plummeting for decades. Senior citizen employment rates rising. What's the difference? One demographic is taxed/regulated out of the economy, and the other group is subsidized into the economy.

Robert Reich is irrelevant. He resigned as labor secretary right before full employment raised household income. If you want higher wages, you want full employment, not price floors

Ah, I remember that graph in high school econ.  Good times.

I agree with you this time, AD, though I think a reasonable minimum wage around the equilibrium for low-skilled workers is good.  $10.10 is a tad high but probably feasible; $15 is just ridiculous for the whole nation.   Maybe in Seattle it will work, but I don't see that happening in Mississippi or other low-wage areas.

[King]

you want full employment

Sir, you want to start reading Update and realize the folly of your ways.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

8. The Australian minimum wage is $15 in US currency.

[DC Al Fine]

*Sigh* An Upworthy headline? Really?

Ok let's take a look at this...

Oh look he hand waves away the single best argument against a high minimum wage. No convinced.

You prefer the handwaving that is put forth against a higher minimum wage?  Obviously, the minimum wage can be set too high, but the current evidence indicates we're not near that point.  I do think more than doubling the minimum wage in a mere three years is too far rapid, but certainly the current democratic proposal is very reasonable and I think an increase to say $12/hour over a five year period would also be very reasonable.

The issue isn't one of what a fair wage is. It's what a fair income is. I think its perfectly reasonable to make sure every American has a minimum standard of living, but the minimum wage isn't the best way to do that.

In his first argument, the presenter charts out how a $15 minimum wage is appropriate given increases in productivity and inflation. Fair enough. It's a reasonable argument and he provided evidence to support it. When the talk turns to outsourcing/automation he says something like "increased demand from higher wages will outweigh the loss in jobs" with nothing to back it up. There's something of a Laffer curve in this, with increases from a low minimum wage doing lots of good for little cost and increases to a very high minimum wage creating lots of pain for little gain.

At some point the minimum wage will create more job loss/more strain on the welfare state than it will create jobs/demand. That point is crucial, and needs to be considered, especially when the minimum wage being argued for is much higher than the current $10-$12/hr proposals. The video waved off this issue entirely, and became standard Upworthy fare because of it.

[KCDem]

Any job that pays less than $500 per 40-hour work week is effectively slave labor. #fact

[AggregateDemand]

Sir, you want to start reading Update and realize the folly of your ways.

You need to realize that dumping social responsibility onto businesses is a fool's errand. Businesses are specialized organizations designed to earn profit or maximize salary (non-profit). The government is tasked with matters of socioeconomics, and we went to the trouble of outlining the government's responsibility in our founding documents.

Using min wage as a tool of social justice is doubly ridiculous, since the proposed models for consumer demand rarely overcome the economics of binding price floors.

You're trying to weld together the wood frame of a house, and you wonder why clear-thinking individuals accuse you of trying to burn everything down. It's a national embarrassment brought to us by the Democrats (and occasional Republicans) who are too lazy and fatalistic to do their jobs. Some of them are only interested in undermining the competitive labor advantage of certain states and economic areas who've contained the cost of living.

[TTS1996]

http://www.upworthy.com/just-watch-this-man-draw-for-2-minutes-and-30-seconds-i-dare-you-to-tell-me-hes-wrong?c=hpstream

Oh well there's a socialist academic type with a whiteboard. That's all economic theory and economic reality thrown overboard right now. We may all as well adapt to a $20 ph minimum wage (after all, why stop at $15?) and a $50,000 pa maximum allowed wage asap. Three cheers for communism!

Yeah, I dare to tell you he's wrong, in as sarcastic a way as possible. Not necessarily because I disagree 100%, but because I'm fed up of know-it-alls on the internet who think that at 15 years old they've solved, in 3 easy steps, a 2 minute YouTube vid and a clever graph, the whole game of life not only for themselves but for everyone else too. Tough sh**t, you haven't.

[memphis]

This thread is such a clueless Ivory Tower clusterInks. There is no unemployment, in the way the mmiddle class people think of unemployment, problem for minimum wage jobs. To the contrary, because the turnover at retail, food service, and child/eldercare facilities is so enormous, these places are always hiring. Always. And they will hire just about anybody. It's not that people cannot find jobs at all. It's that people decide, correctly or not, that minumum wage jobs are not worth the time and hassle. Raising the wage would almost certainly change that to say nthing of the increase in demand that higher wages inevitably bring. Get off your college campus and visit the Real World sometime, Atlas Forum.

[memphis]

This thread is such a clueless Ivory Tower clusterInks. There is no unemployment, in the way the mmiddle class people think of unemployment, problem for minimum wage jobs. To the contrary, because the turnover at retail, food service, and child/eldercare facilities is so enormous, these places are always hiring. Always. And they will hire just about anybody. It's not that people cannot find jobs at all. It's that people decide, correctly or not, that minumum wage jobs are not worth the time and hassle. Raising the wage would almost certainly change that to say nthing of the increase in demand that higher wages inevitably bring. Get off your college campus and visit the Real World sometime, Atlas Forum.

If there's a shortage of workers for these positions, why aren't employers voluntarily raising their wages?

There is no shortage, but the jobs require very little skill or training, so it's cheaper for the employer to deal with the churn than to pay people more and have less turnover. My point, however, is that the turnover is so profound that everybody can catch a fish fairly quickly and easily even if there are technically more fishermen than fish. It's not that hard to understand, is hugely important to the low wage job market, and gets completely overlooked by AD's oversimplistic Econ 101 graph. The world is a lot more complicated than college makes it seem.

[Ban my account ffs!]

This thread is such a clueless Ivory Tower clusterInks. There is no unemployment, in the way the mmiddle class people think of unemployment, problem for minimum wage jobs. To the contrary, because the turnover at retail, food service, and child/eldercare facilities is so enormous, these places are always hiring. Always. And they will hire just about anybody. It's not that people cannot find jobs at all. It's that people decide, correctly or not, that minumum wage jobs are not worth the time and hassle. Raising the wage would almost certainly change that to say nthing of the increase in demand that higher wages inevitably bring. Get off your college campus and visit the Real World sometime, Atlas Forum.

If there's a shortage of workers for these positions, why aren't employers voluntarily raising their wages?

There is no shortage, but the jobs require very little skill or training, so it's cheaper for the employer to deal with the churn than to pay people more and have less turnover. My point, however, is that the turnover is so profound that everybody can catch a fish fairly quickly and easily even if there are technically more fishermen than fish. It's not that hard to understand, is hugely important to the low wage job market, and gets completely overlooked by AD's oversimplistic Econ 101 graph. The world is a lot more complicated than college makes it seem.

I don't think I understand your metaphor. How would you expect an increase the minimum wage to affect low-wage employment?

It would reduce the velocity of turnover.  People would remain at the job longer.  This would increase skills and drive wages higher.

[memphis]

This thread is such a clueless Ivory Tower clusterInks. There is no unemployment, in the way the mmiddle class people think of unemployment, problem for minimum wage jobs. To the contrary, because the turnover at retail, food service, and child/eldercare facilities is so enormous, these places are always hiring. Always. And they will hire just about anybody. It's not that people cannot find jobs at all. It's that people decide, correctly or not, that minumum wage jobs are not worth the time and hassle. Raising the wage would almost certainly change that to say nthing of the increase in demand that higher wages inevitably bring. Get off your college campus and visit the Real World sometime, Atlas Forum.

If there's a shortage of workers for these positions, why aren't employers voluntarily raising their wages?

There is no shortage, but the jobs require very little skill or training, so it's cheaper for the employer to deal with the churn than to pay people more and have less turnover. My point, however, is that the turnover is so profound that everybody can catch a fish fairly quickly and easily even if there are technically more fishermen than fish. It's not that hard to understand, is hugely important to the low wage job market, and gets completely overlooked by AD's oversimplistic Econ 101 graph. The world is a lot more complicated than college makes it seem.

I don't think I understand your metaphor. How would you expect an increase the minimum wage to affect low-wage employment?

What do you not understand? When one drone says Take This Job and Shove It, another drone can have it. When this happens one million times, anybody who sincerely wants a job can get one even if there is a nominal labor surplus. We also see the reverse of this situation with "good" jobs. Baby Boomers refuse to retire hecause they have inadequate savings. There is not enough churn, so the market for those jobs is awful for potential employees.

[AggregateDemand]

There is no shortage, but the jobs require very little skill or training, so it's cheaper for the employer to deal with the churn than to pay people more and have less turnover. My point, however, is that the turnover is so profound that everybody can catch a fish fairly quickly and easily even if there are technically more fishermen than fish. It's not that hard to understand, is hugely important to the low wage job market, and gets completely overlooked by AD's oversimplistic Econ 101 graph. The world is a lot more complicated than college makes it seem.

If labor markets are complex, why do you support simplistic min wage laws?

[obvious]The over-simplicity of price floor economics is caused the the installation of the simplistic price floor[/obvious]

If you don't like price-floor economics, don't install a price floor. Join the modern world by looking for new policy measures, rather than longing for the inferiority of the past.

[memphis]

I was refuting AD's preposterous claim and accompanying graph that the current minimum wage has led to unemployment. Raising the wage to a reasonable extent would almost certainly decrease churn, but also stimulate demand to a sufficient degree that unemployment would remain negligible for the lowest paying jobs. It's important to remember that low wage earners are also customers at supermarkets and fast food shacks. McDonalds would see an enormous rise in demand if poors could afford to eat there more often.

[Gustaf]

This thread is giving me cancer.

[politicus]

This thread is giving me cancer.

Thx for your  input.