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If the entire population is college educated, there would still be a need for people who serve food and stock supermarket shelves. Since people are educated, they would demand more money for those jobs.
Yes, that's true. But it would be more of a win/win type scenario. Employers would be more willing to pay higher wages and would be less resentful about being forced to do so by government fiat. Employees would be paid better. And they'd probably automate some of them away if wages got high.
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Originally Posted by davidt1
Be glad that there are uneducated people who work for minimum wages. But that doesn't mean they should be paid slave wages forever. Blame taxes for high cost of living, not minimum wage earners. My state recently passed a slew of tax increases: gas tax, DMV tax, sales tax. Property tax increases are a given.
While these statements are true to a point, I don't think you can look at any single factor in isolation. The people earning minimum wage are often getting subsidized by the taxpayers in one way or another (food stamps, subsidized medical care, subsidized housing etc). So you can't just point to taxes in isolation. Taxes could be lower if we didn't have to subsidize as many people.
As I've said, the biggest issue in high cost areas is lack of housing supply. Housing is people's biggest cost. The best way to make the cost of living reasonable for everyone is to not have onerous zoning rules and regulations that make housing expensive or difficult to build. That doesn't mean we should do away with all regulations by any means, but at least some of the regulations need to be relaxed, especially in high cost areas.
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Originally Posted by davidt1
I can absorb these tax increases. But for people who make minimum wages, the tax increases take away a significant portion of their meager paycheck.
As I said, a lot of people earning minimum wage are actually getting subsidized by the taxpayers. Certainly not everyone, though. And for those who aren't, pretty much any additional expense is going to hurt on a low income. But minimum wage workers really aren't paying much in taxes because their incomes are low. Once again, the biggest expense for pretty much everyone is housing. But no one ever seems to question the zoning rules and building codes that drive up the cost of housing.
The next biggest cost is health care. America has the world's most corrupt, bloated, and inefficient health care system, and the developed world's most unhealthy lifestyle. Both of those have driven up health care costs to insane levels. Pretty much everyone agrees health care costs are insane, but thinks someone else is responsible for the insanity, but never them.
I think instead of raising the min wage a better idea is to cut or completely eliminate income tax for people earning lower wages that or give them an Earned Income Tax.
40% of babies born in the US are to unwed mothers, that's a bigger problem than the MW.
True.
But it's almost like a certain segment of society want to make single parenthood heroic, perhaps even promote it through entitlement programs that they can administer and create dependency that would last for generations...
"Minimum Wage 101 Thread" gets an F. When all of the armchair economists predicted higher unemployment and doom and gloom when California starting raising its minimum wage, the opposite happened. As California raised the minimum wage, hiring went up and unemployment went down.
Raising the minimum wage puts more money into the pockets of workers, who can spend it at local businesses. Businesses see increasing demand and sales, who then have to hire up to meet that demand. California's experience has blown the whole "raising the minimum wage destroys jobs" theory out of the water.
I think instead of raising the min wage a better idea is to cut or completely eliminate income tax for people earning lower wages that or give them an Earned Income Tax.
Possibly. As things currently stand, single people without children end up paying income tax if working full-time at minimum wage, or slightly above. The Earned Income Tax Credit really only helps those with children. Things get even worse if you're a low-wage worker, but have investment-income. Then the investment income obliterates the various credits or other subsidies for which one might otherwise have qualified.
Or to rephrase, for a person who has been investing for a long time, who then "retires" and takes a low-wage part-time job, the marginal tax rate is quite high.
Unless you know your talents are EXTREMELY competitive on a national level (top 1%, which would be likely top 10-20% around Silicon Valley) do NOT move to an area like that, or continue to stay unless you somehow luck into an extremely secure AND lucrative job (city job or union job that pays double time for overtime and gives you 60 hrs + a week. Or you will never be able to afford your own place.
Move somewhere you can graduate from college and put 20% down on a SFH within 5 years. That's my advice for people struggling with wages. If your chosen career path or passion is to do something that will only provide for you in certain geographic areas, it helps to know where those areas are.
Opportunity is not the same in all areas of the country. And definitely doesn't take the same form. Some areas have matured. Getting in on the ground floor is over, and now the best pickings are for experienced hires. Learn the job market nationwide.
There are areas where upward mobility is impaired with many more obstacles, like the basic cost for shelter 5x what it is in other places. Salaries only increase so much. When home values continue to pull away from household incomes, it's because people are buying with equity... inheritances... or they're investors with cash. It's not their first rodeo.
If it's your first, you'll never compete with that kind of money starting with nothing. You'll be outbid every time. Each "new frontier" that was once packaged and sold to us as opportunity and abundance has turned into scarcity once the initial takings were snapped up and we're fighting over finite resources in an established area. This is when prices get bid up like crazy. We're chasing opportunity too late. When it's too expensive, and we never see a return. The student debt, the big mortgage we couldn't afford if we took the 15 year vs. 30.
Get in a nice mid-sized city, and get a good value for your dollar. This goes for education AND housing. This is why investors now want to put their money internationally, in countries that are just entering their own "industrial revolution". It's like going back in time and getting a second chance to put your money in early enough to see those big returns.
"Minimum Wage 101 Thread" gets an F. When all of the armchair economists predicted higher unemployment and doom and gloom when California starting raising its minimum wage, the opposite happened. As California raised the minimum wage, hiring went up and unemployment went down.
That "may" be true, but the graph you posted does nothing to support your point since unemployment across the country has been on a gradual decline ever since Trump took office even in states who have not increased their minimum wage.
You should probably try a "little harder" to make your point if you're going to insult a guy who probably has employed hundreds of people, started dozens of successful businesses, and probably has 100x your net worth.
Those minimum wage earners don't get a break, do they? They don't have expensive lobby groups fighting for them in Congress. Every time there is a mention of raising the minimum wage, they are blamed for raising the cost of living for everyone. They shouldn't be blamed. The minimum wage is a lagging indicator. High cost of living is the reason the minimum wage needs to raised so the poorest and weakest among us can live decently.
High cost of living comes before minimum wage increase, not the other way around.
What you don't get is a series of policy choices over the past 40 years is what has driven the high cost of living. Instead of adding yet another bad policy of jacking up the minimum wage (which, ironically, drives up the cost of living even more), fix the poor policy choices that have driven up the cost of living in the first place.
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