Let's Raise The Minimum Wage to $115,000 per Year And Reduce Week To 20 Hours (employment, interview)

[FairnessIsGlorious]

Originally Posted by swagger

Bingo.

I didn't think that was all original, but my cursory search didn't find it.

OWS, eh? LOL Now it makes sense.

/thread

So it never occurred to you that maybe I am the author of both posts? lol

[hnsq]

Originally Posted by FairnessIsGlorious

All we are doing is re-allocating EXISTING income. We are not increasing the total amount of income that is getting paid out. So it does not cause inflation.

If all we did was increase the minimum wage to $115k, and kept everyone else's income the same, that would cause inflation. But that is not what we are doing. We are also lowering the top pay from hundreds of millions and billions of dollars to just $460k. The amount we are reducing the top pay is exactly equal to the amount we are increasing the minimum pay. The net result is no increase in price on average. This is math 101.

If you have a $14.5 trillion economy and you only pay out $14.5 trillion in income, it is mathematically impossible to have inflation. How is the economy going to inflate beyond the $14.5 trillion if only $14.5 trillion is being spent? It can't. It is impossible.

You can see the calculation in paying out those incomes here:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/25524742-post28.html

P.S. I made one post to this website, it was this post but it included links to my citations. That is what got me banned. That is why I made this post without the links. If you are not allowed to cite your sources with links and citing sources requires a permanent ban, I am guilty as charged.

It isn't the initial act of raising the minimum wage that causes inflation. It is the resulting market realignment to an equilibrium point. You raise the minimum wage so that everyone makes between $115k and $460k per year. Great! Now what?

To make things simple, let's realign your numbers to today's prices. The maximum salary is effectively four times the minimum wage. This is the same as a janitor making $7.25/hr while a surgeon makes $29/hr. This gives the janitor a present-day yearly salary of $14,500 and a surgeon a present-day yearly salary of $58,000. Let's suppose we enact that legislation. Every surgeon now has effectively had their salary cut dramatically. Now, you are asking a surgeon to go to school for four years of college, four years of medical school, and up to seven years of a residency, studying 80 hours/week along the way to make an effective salary of $58,000. After realizing that instead of doing that work, the surgeon to be will realize that he/she can avoid fifteen years of schooling by becoming a janitor for not too much less money.

Now the question becomes, what do we do when we are lacking surgeons and have an influx of janitors? Well, we need to incentivize people to be willing to sacrifice fifteen years of their lives for a profession. How do we do that, why, we suddenly start offering that surgeon more than $58,000 per year for that work. After years of market balancing (during which time economies are crumbling and people are dying as people refuse to perform high paying, high stress jobs such as surgeons), the effective wages realign to their present day state, however at higher wages.

That is the DEFINITION of inflation.

Good god. I am ashamed to be human reading this s**t.

[FairnessIsGlorious]

Originally Posted by Toyman at Jewel Lake

Thanks for posting the source. Once again...the solution should be pretty simple. The OWS whiners should simiply start their own businesses and pay their employees what they propose. I mean, how hard can that be? Must be easier than living in your own filth, sleeping in tents and demonstrating your ingnorance, right?

Isn't it more accurate to say that the ignorant one is the person who thinks you can start your own company and then have that company operate according to its own economic rules and not the rules of the economic system it is operating within?

[Mac_Muz]

Sure and I want mine in solid gold ... let me know when you need my name and address ok?

[wildbill80]

[Blaidrug]

Originally Posted by shiftymh

I would imagine this idea is very popular within the union of latte foam artists.

There's a reason they're called "Coffee Nazis"


This thread is all entirely too funny. Please, continue. I'll just sit back and watch, with a bag of popcorn in my hand.

[roysoldboy]

Originally Posted by shiftymh

Why would someone make 1 million when they can make much, much more somewhere else or if someone chooses to stay in the US, where is the motivation to produce a single dime after they make a million dollars that year?

Motivation surely isn't important in this suggested system. Why would we think about motivating once every person has been guaranteed a job?

I still wonder who funds this system.

[roysoldboy]

Originally Posted by FairnessIsGlorious

You are guaranteed a job that pays $115k. If you would rather spend your day building someone else's business idea, you can work for someone else. If you want to spend your day building your own idea and if your idea is feasible, you can get paid $115k building your own company with the potential of making up to $460k if you are successful at it.

That is likely a much better deal than what you are getting now. There is a 97% chance you are getting exploited today.

I keep wondering who it is that pays that $115,000 to every worker. Can you explain that to me?

[Blaidrug]

Originally Posted by roysoldboy

I keep wondering who it is that pays that $115,000 to every worker. Can you explain that to me?

The toothfairy?

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by skeeter31

I wanna know where the OP jacked that huge post from. I doubt the OP wrote it all themselves.

You pegged that one. It comes from here....

Forum Post: SOLUTION: Raise the minimum wage to $115,000 per year | OccupyWallSt.org

Somehow I just knew OWS would show up somewhere.

Impressed...

Mircea

Originally Posted by Mathguy

You've done a lot of writing for someone that doesn't know basic economics.

Yeah, never thought I'd see the day when I'd seen everything. Now I've seen everything.

Exaggerating...

Mircea

Originally Posted by FairnessIsGlorious

I know as much about economics as anyone. Do you have any facts to back up your claim?

You don't know as much as me, and yes he can back up his claim. For starters, he just has to say two words: Wage Inflation.

I guess you over-looked that animal.

Originally Posted by FairnessIsGlorious

We Should Raise The Minimum Wage to $115,000 per Year And Reduce The Workweek to Just 20 Hours

Before you jump into your explanation of why the economics of labor markets make this impossible, or that it will just cause inflation, I am not saying this can happen by merely enacting a minimum wage law that pays people that much.

In this post, I will make the case for doing far more than that. I will make the case for a revolution, for overthrowing (peacefully and democratically) our current tyrannical market economic system and replacing it with a fair market system.

If we made our market economy fair, it would enable us to:

* Raise the minimum wage to $115,000 per year (1)
* Raise the minimum wage to $230,000 per year for people who work mentally or physically difficult jobs (science, construction, mining, farming) (1)
* Cut the work week to 20 hours (2)
* Guarantee everyone a job
* Eliminate interest which would cut your mortgage in half (3)
* Guarantee 100% financing to everyone who wants to own a home without the need for a down payment (3)
* Pay students an income to go to school
* Guarantee everyone a pension at retirement
* Make everyone wealthy
* And when you make everyone wealthy, you eliminate nearly every social problem we have

It is magnificent, but it is not Economics.

Originally Posted by FairnessIsGlorious

Our Current Market System Does Not Work

With 50% of all Americans living in or near poverty(5) and 97% of all workers earning a below average income(6) and the govt releasing data on wage earners for the first time ever which shockingly shows 50% are making less than $26k(7), it is clear that the economy does not work at all for the overwhelming majority of workers.

No, that's proof the system is working.

Physics is not about equality or fairness, and neither is Economics. Physics is about achieving equilibrium or balance, and Economics does the same thing, but don't equate "balance" with "fairness."

"Fairness" is highly subjective, and neither quantifiable nor can it be qualified, but balance is objective and can be qualified or quantified.

Originally Posted by FairnessIsGlorious

All of our production comes from labor and you cannot manage our available labor any more inefficiently than how our tyrannical market system has. 18% of all available workers(11) cannot find a full-time job. And 55% of the people who do work are being wasted(2) by having them do pointless jobs that machines can already do. That means our economy is wasting just under 70% of our potential labor/productivity.

Our economic system simply does not work.

You drew the wrong conclusion. Your economic system does work. It is getting rid of inefficiency. The fact that 18% cannot find a full time job and that 55% are "being wasted" is proof of the inefficiency in your system.

There is no law that says people must work, or that a certain percentage of people must work or even that X% of GDP equals N Number of jobs.

It is Economics that dictates how many should be employed, not you, and not I, and not some magical formula.

If Economics says that only 52% of your Civilian Labor Force shall have jobs, then that's just the way it is, and you must accept that. You cannot fight the Laws of Economics any more than you can fight the gravity well of a Black-Hole. The only thing that happens is you waste a lot of time, money and resources, and in the end, you lose, because Economics is going to have its way, whether you like it or not.

Originally Posted by FairnessIsGlorious

Ending The Unearned Income Welfare Program

We don't need to pay investors interest on their savings in order to make investment money available any more than we need to pay people to print their own money in order to make enough money available.

A much more effective system is to just provide banks with enough public funds, taken from whatever the natural savings rate is, to meet whatever their demand for investment funds is.

And if there's no "natural savings rate," then what?

There were 3 guys and a gal, all of them past middle age and unemployed, tinkering around in their garage. The $6 Million or so to start a business. What bank in the right mind would loan $6 Million to 4 unemployed people based on a science-fiction idea?

Well, none did, but venture capitalists put up the money....and you know them today as Qualcomm.

The difference between banks and venture capitalists, is that venture capitalists are knowledge savvy, and more importantly, willing to take risks that a bank or government would never take.

You come up with a longer lasting light-bulb, and banks might actually listen to you, but when you have pages of electronic diagrams, and the bank loan officer doesn't even know how to program the clock on his DVR, and what, he's going to approve a loan for that? Hell, he doesn't know the difference between an ohm and an erg.

Venture capitalists have an intuitive sense of what works and what doesn't, much more so than any bank loan officer could ever have. And that's not to say that venture capitalists don't fail, because they do fail, but they win more often than not.

If you want proof of failure, look at Britain.

There was a time when the British government owned controlling interest (51%) or 100% out-right of all industries in the United Kingdom.

Here's Triumph, flailing, going under, but with a good idea. They need Capital to re-tool their manufacturing plants. Does the British government approve the expenditure of Capital? Yes, finally....but way to late to make a difference. By the time government bureaucrats got through shuffling papers and wringing their hands, and ordering a variety of "studies" and holding committee meetings, Triumph was bouncing off the bottom, and even though the TR7 sold well, especially in the US & Canada, it was too little too late, and Triumph had to merge with another automaker to stay alive.

Originally Posted by FairnessIsGlorious

The top 3% are getting paid 50 to 50,000 times more than others and this is undeserved because:

1) They don't work 50 to 150,000 times harder than everyone else.

That's your unqualified belief that is not rooted in facts. They obviously have knowledge, skills and experience that you do not possess, otherwise you would be part of the 3%.

Originally Posted by FairnessIsGlorious

Fair Markets Makes Society Genuinely Democratic

Democracy is a Greek word. But it is not a Greek word for "voting" or "mob rule" or "majority wins". It is Greek for "people power". It means power rests with everyone equally(14). And the modern, liberal version of democracy means a society based on equal political power and equal freedom.

I for one, do not want democracy.

Neither did Plato, who said democracy was a failure. Plato was a republican. And the Founding Fathers, they designed the Constitutional US exactly has Plato designed his Republic.

Perhaps you should read Plato's Republic and Timaeus & Critias so you can be on the same sheet of music as the Founding Fathers.

Originally Posted by FairnessIsGlorious

As I explained to the other commenter, all we are doing is re-allocating EXISTING income. We are not increasing the total amount of income that is getting paid out. So it does not cause inflation.

Originally Posted by FairnessIsGlorious

If all we did was increase the minimum wage to $115k, and kept everyone else's income the same, that would cause inflation. But that is not what we are doing. We are also lowering the top pay from hundreds of millions and billions of dollars to just $460k. The amount we are reducing the top pay is exactly equal to the amount we are increasing the minimum pay. The net result is no increase in price on average. This is math 101.

If you have a $14.5 trillion economy and you only pay out $14.5 trillion in income, it is mathematically impossible to have inflation. How is the economy going to inflate beyond the $14.5 trillion if only $14.5 trillion is being spent? It can't. It is impossible.

Flawed reasoning. It will cause inflation. You claimed to know something about Economics, but apparently you know nothing of Wage Inflation. You can start with Adam Smith's observations in the Wealth of Nations, and then study FDR's approach to fighting Wage Inflation during the Great Depression --- which was a Wage & Price Freeze, and then Nixon's approach in the early 1970s -- which was also a Wage & Price Freeze.

Yes, it does cause inflation...it causes Real Inflation. It might also cause Cost Inflation on top of the Real Inflation, since everyone would be able to consume more, putting extreme pressures on Supply, by increasing Demand.

There are many other reasons why inflation can occur. If you intend on maintaining artificially low interest rates for mortgages and student loans, then you get to experience yet another traumatic housing bubble, and rising tuition rates and also rising car prices since those are based on interest also.

"I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States." -- Richard M Nixon -- August 15, 1971

The Cost of Living Council took up the job of running the controls. After the initial ninety days, the controls were gradually relaxed and the system seemed to be working. But unemployment was not declining, and the administration launched a more expansionary policy. Nixon won reelection in 1972. In the months that followed, inflation began to pick up again in response to a variety of forces -- domestic wage-and-price pressures, a synchronized international economic boom, crop failures in the Soviet Union, and increases in the price of oil, even prior to the Arab oil embargo.

Commanding Heights : Nixon Tries Price Controls | on PBS


The Wage & Price Freeze was lifted...


....in April, 1974 a little over 2 1/2 years later.


I guess they don't cover that in school.

Originally Posted by FairnessIsGlorious

It is a drug called knowledge. You can pick it up at any library or computer with an internet connection. You should try it, it is addicting.

It must be a generic drug. Maybe you should get the real thing.

Weeping for the Future....

Mircea