My disdain for the poor...

[Bern80]

Your math allowed 1000 / month for rent, utilities and phone. That seems really high. I mean, REALLY high. I'd have said about 500. Obviously, a minimum wage worker needs to cut some corners and reduce electricity and phone use to the minimum. The person would have to live a truly minimum lifestyle. But that's what we're talking about, right? "Minimum".

Unfortunately it isn't. I didn't much extensive digging but off a quick search I found this. It is avg rent by U.S. cities. Notice the low end is above 500 a month. And again that's rent only.

http://realestate.msn.com/Rentals/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=262175

I know we disagree on this point. You think I need to wrap my head around the fact that minimum wage cannot by conceived of as the minimum needed to live. I think it should be conceived of that way. But while we're still with the numbers, the poverty line for a two person family is currently set at 13,200 dollars a year, a little less than the 13,572 that you predicted a 40 hour / week minimum wage earner would take home in a year. Coincidence? I don't think so.

The over encompassing reason in my mind why that should not be the purpose of the minimum wage is because of the major can of worms it opens. Primarily, whether you like it or not, a number can't be pulled out of the air. Someone first has to decide when enough is enough. When someone decides that for someone else that is called socialism. Then someone has to decide what amount of money will pay for that. There are just far too many factors to take into account. It isn't just rent and utilities. It's for transportation (i.e. our formula only works if you live x miles from work, it's for food, etc. Then is it for one person, two, three? Maybe for one person your numbers above might work, but we both know of the people trying to live on the minimum wage that isn't very realistic, it is more likely to be people similar to the one in the article and the propposed amount won't cut it for her.

Setting a minimum for your purpose would need to be set an amount that would provide for the most amount of people, not the fewest. My gut guess is the majority of people attempting to live on the min wage are single mothers. To attain survivability for them would take almost a two-fold increase in the min wage.

I'm sure you are rightly proud of your father, but I'm also sure your father does not need to see the unskilled and averagely-motivated workers of the world living in absolute squalor in order to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Okay, my turn. What's your point? Are you saying because he worked hard and is now successful he should be going out of his way to remind himself of the people that didn't?

Look, I don't want to punish your Dad, I don't want to raise taxes, I don't want to put any specific group of people anywhere near the accomplishments of you father. The only thing that would make your father even remotely relevant to this conversation is if he had a business that depended largely on the services of minimum wage workers. Minimum wages are not dependent on taxes. Most states already mandate a minimum that is higher than the federal government anyway.

And again it is extremely relevant, because he isn't an isolated incident. He is one of literally 10s of millions of successful people. The minimum wage earners don't exist in a vacuum either. Most of them work right next to people that make more money than they do.

We have also been haveing this discussion about the purpose of business. I have maintained that it is to make money. That isn't a matter of opinion. That is what they should do. Yes, there are plenty of corporations out there that hire people on the minimum wage. But if you change the purpose of the minumum wage to making sure it is enought to survive, then you have inherently changed the purpose of business as well. Now it really isn't the government makeing sure people have enough. All they did was mandate it. it really falls to the business to make sure people have enough and that won't work. There purpose is to make money by providing a good or service. If they are good at what they do they will be able to expand and provide more jobs.

You are splitting hairs. For the employee, the purpose of the business is to provide him or her with an income.

That is many employees perception, but it isn't reality. Go out and practically try that. Go to your place of work in the morning with the idea that this place is here to provide me income. Now go to your boss and tell him that. What type of response do you think you're gonna get? That is not semantics. That is fundamental misunderstanding of the realtionship between business and employee.

Businesses try to increase profit margins. That means they dump toxic waste in rivers, pressure salaried employees to “voluntarily” work 50-80 hours a week, never let wage earners work 40 hours a week. Whatever corner can be cut gets cut. They do this because they want to make as much money as possible and also because if they don’t, their competitors will have a competitive advantage. However, businesses also are perfectly capable of recognizing when and where competition is not to anyone’s benefit. This results in things like price fixing, wherein various “competitors” agree to set prices which are beneficial for all. The same can happen in competing for resources like workers. Of course, where skilled labor is concerned, it’s all to the highest bidder. But for unskilled labor, where the demand is rarely higher than the supply, the companies could simply set the wages at basement levels and no one would ever be the wiser.

You will find that most businesses that operate as above are not that successful. They are taking easy ways out and being uninnovative and I believe our country is moving away from that because useing the same old tactics will only get you to a certain point.

Capitalism without oversight and controls is nothing but survival of the biggest. Innovation, efficiency, adaptability, everything that we love Capitalism for goes to shit in the face of an unrestricted big corporate disposed to use “unfair” business practices. And Capitalism is incapable of making decisions in favor of human interest (unless such decision is deemed profit enhancing…). That means slavery in and of itself is perfectly acceptable, along with any number of possible abuses to human rights that can be seen as potentially increasing the company profits. It is, in short, a theoretical model which in practice requires a significant amount of vigilance and governance in order to function well.

You have your definitions confused. What you are talking about is a monoplistic sysem. Capitalism is nothing more than two parties agreeing on terms of service. If you don't like the way the business is treating you, you quit or don't start working for them. I don't believe our system would revert to this without checks in place, primarily because busninesses have found they are more successful with content employees. If what you are saying is true than businesses would only do the bare minimum, but that isn't the case. They provide above and behind what is governementally required.

 

[Bry]

Bern, let's simplify a bit, shall we?

The minimum wage, is an hourly minimum compensation for work set by the government. It is loosely correlated to average minimum costs for providing shelter and food (i.e. the minimum) to the worker. It is a system which has been in place for a rather long time without causing any economic crises.

The current minimum is being increased to reflect the decreasing value of currency. All costs are adjusted for inflation in economics. Minimum wage should not be an exception. I agree with this increase, and it is the core point of our conversation.

It is loosely correlated to the idea of minimums necessary for a person to survive. A person refers to an individual in otherwise normal circumstances. That doesn't include: families of fifteen, people who live 500 miles from their workplace, people with blossoming heroine addictions.

The only people negatively directly affected by a minimum wage are those business owners who depend largely on the services of minimum wage workers. Not your father, not you, not the majority of managers and business owners who are at this second complaining about the lazy poor people.

None of this has anything to do with how many "successful" people there are in the world, or how much money your father makes, or competing definitions of "business", or definitions of Capitalism, or whether all systems fall not so neatly into a spectrum between theoretical (i.e. NON-EXISTENT) extremes of Capitalism and Socialism.

Now, please be clear on your point of disagreement. Do you believe there should be no minimum wage? Or do you believe that the current minimum wage should not be increased to offset the effects of inflation?

 

[Bern80]

It is loosely correlated to the idea of minimums necessary for a person to survive. A person refers to an individual in otherwise normal circumstances. That doesn't include: families of fifteen, people who live 500 miles from their workplace, people with blossoming heroine addictions.

Fine, but let's do a little more analysis of this. Let's take 100% of the people dependant on the minumum wage. What percent would you guess fit into the above defintion? If I had to guess I would say 20-30. The rest are people under circumstances in the second part of your paragraph. So, what sense does it make to have a minimum wage law that only realistically benefits 20-30% of the people you're trying to help?

The only people negatively directly affected by a minimum wage are those business owners who depend largely on the services of minimum wage workers. Not your father, not you, not the majority of managers and business owners who are at this second complaining about the lazy poor people.

Partially true, There is another group of people as well that has been shown to be impacted negatively when the minimum wage rises. Guess who? People on the minimum wage. Everytime the minimum wage goes up there is an increase in unemployment because demand for labor goes down because the price of labor has increased. Layoffs of min wage employees also occur at this time. That's basic economics.

Now, please be clear on your point of disagreement. Do you believe there should be no minimum wage? Or do you believe that the current minimum wage should not be increased to offset the effects of inflation?

No, I don't think there ship be a minimum wage because the transaction of paying for labor is really no different than the transaction in buying any other item. You see a computer on the shelf with a price tag on it that the company wants to sell it for. It has bells and whistles that you may or may not want. Then you decide whether you want to buy it or not. The same is true when you look for a job. The company says this how much we'll pay you along with the benefits we're offering. Based on that you decide whether you want to render your servives to them or not. It is a transaction like any other. If you don't feel the transaction is fair, then you try to come up with one that is, or don't participate.

That is the idealistic answer. The realistic part of it is this: We do have a minimum wage in place. So, if we're gonna have one anyway, yes it should be adjusted for inflation, otherwise what's the point? Basically I think if you're going to have one it should serve a purpose and accomplish that. Right now ours really doesn't. That one group of people that we are trying to have the min wage serve realistically is so small compared to the many circumstance of people trying to survive on it that it is basically pointless. If you're going to have a minimun wage in place it should serve the largest amount of people possible, otherwise, again, what's the point in haveing one at all? To accomplish that however would take an increase more than our economy could compensate for.

 

[Bry]

See? except for a bit of shading, we completely agree.

I am interested in your ideas about pure laissez-faire Capitalism, but that might be more appropriate in a different thread.

Cheers!

 

[gabosaurus]

The more disdain you show for the poor, the more likely it is that one of them will show up at your house at some time. Unannounced. When you aren't home.
"Peoples gotta eat ya know"

 

[Bern80]

See? except for a bit of shading, we completely agree.

I am interested in your ideas about pure laissez-faire Capitalism, but that might be more appropriate in a different thread.

Cheers!

See new thread

 

[Bern80]

The more disdain you show for the poor, the more likely it is that one of them will show up at your house at some time. Unannounced. When you aren't home.
"Peoples gotta eat ya know"

Haven't had one yet.