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I think people who are arguing that minimum wage should be $15 an hour are shooting too low. Who can live on that? I think it should be more like $20. What do you think?
You have got to be joking!
Best laugh I've had all day, it's only 2:45 am, so.............
An overwhelming number of people making minimum wage are not in poverty. It is really a liberal myth
Majority of the people in poverty dont work so the minimum wage has no relevance to them.
Purchasing power:
Wages do not determine purchasing power. Think about it this way...the value of a dollar does not change based on how much you make. This is why liberals hide behind inflation when suggesting that wages should keep up with it. You ask the to defend that and that's when purchasing power comes up and their cherry picked date history to make nice graph with not really questions why they picked 1968 (it was the peak, or in other words, they think wages should be maintained at the highest purchasing power has ever been but they cant say why it needs to be there. Its an arbitrary number and idea based on sentiment, hey lets make everyone have the strongest possible purchasing power, except for, purchasing power is not id'd by wages )
This is an assumption and I've learned not to address pure conjecture.
Wages do determine purchasing power. Because inflation and deflation are non issues in the US, income is the major predictor of purchasing power. Food stamps/SNAP is important precisely because grocery stores get a boost as SNAP beneficiaries have a higher purchasing power.
The majority of poor people don't make the minimum wage, but they make slightly above it. A person making $11.50 an hour is in poverty(although they make well above the federal minimum wage), and would benefit if they made $15 an hour instead
It is not an assumption. US cities that have raised the minimum wage to $10.00 have not seen significant increases in prices or unemployment.
Sigh. Liberals love this one too. Liberals ignore other factors or variables that could of off-set the increase in the minimum wage. To illustrate this with an extreme analogy. Say you raised minimum wage right before hurricane Katrina and once the the storm hit you had massive unemployment. I do not think you could argue that the minimum wage is the cause of massive unemployment.
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Someone (some organization) already calculated the cost of increasing fast food worker pay to $15.00 and the price increase was $0.69 cents. That is not a significant price increase.
Do the math and tell me if that makes sense. I've see this before and its liberal bull****. Say you have 5 people making 10.00/hr selling 10 burgers an hour at $5 each. That's $50 or breaking even. Now add in an extra $50/hr in labor cost. Sell those burgers at 5.69 and do you think it will add up to the extra labor cost? It barely covers 10% of the total cost of new labor. It's bull****. Can you liberals please stop repeating this stupid **** you read? At least come up with an original argument.
Wages do determine purchasing power. Because inflation and deflation are non issues in the US, income is the major predictor of purchasing power. Food stamps/SNAP is important precisely because grocery stores get a boost as SNAP beneficiaries have a higher purchasing power.
You are wrong.
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DEFINITION of 'Purchasing Power' The value of a currency expressed in terms of the amount of goods or services that one unit of money can buy. Purchasing power is important because, all else being equal, inflation decreases the amount of goods or services you'd be able to purchase.
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Originally Posted by moionfire
The majority of poor people don't make the minimum wage, but they make slightly above it.
The definition of "poor people" is arbitrary.
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A person making $11.50 an hour is in poverty(although they make well above the federal minimum wage), and would benefit if they made $15 an hour instead
I would not doubt a person in NYC making 11.50 would be close to poverty but to argue that someone making 11.5/hr in most markets is in poverty really shows how subjective and arbitrary "poverty" is. In Vegas, NC, Oklahoma and several other places where I've lived, You can live okay if you do it right but I digress, getting roommate while sharing expenses and maybe taking public transpo is too much to ask.
Care to support this absurd assumption. Seems you are back to playing liberal tool with stupidity such as this.
I would ask if you cared to support this but we'd get to the same part where you refuse to discuss the significant flaws when basing wages on purchasing power.
Ask your right wing friends how much a fry cook should be paid. And have you never paid attention to any time the minimum wage was increased in the past? Look at states in particular and you will see that they raise their minimum wage in small stages. This is just common knowledge. ...or at least I thought it was.
This article summarizes why the idea that higher minimum wage means inflation is a myth.
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The Minimum Wage and Inflation
By Arthur MacEwan | July/August 2014
Dear Dr. Dollar:
Would an increase of the minimum wage be inflationary? Would more inflation than we have now be a good or bad thing?
—Alex Searles, Boston, Mass.
The short answers to these two questions are: Not very much and it all depends. The “not very much” is evident from a simple example. The “it all depends” means that it all depends on who we’re are talking about when we ask the “good” or “bad” question. Like much else, who gains and who loses is a matter of power.
To begin with, let’s clear up what we mean by “inflation.” Inflation is a general rise in prices. This doesn’t mean that all prices go up, just that they go up on average. Some may go up a lot, some a little, and some may actually fall.
So what happens when the minimum wage is increased? Consider the situation in restaurants that have a middle-income clientele. Restaurant owners, facing a higher wage bill, would like to pass the costs on to their customers. But their customers are people whose incomes have not been affected much, if at all, by the higher minimum wage. So if prices at the restaurants go up, these people will buy less and the restaurants will now lose some profits. They may raise prices a bit, but not much. Whatever they do, the restaurant owners will have to, if you’ll pardon the term, eat some of the increased costs.
The point is that, with the increase of the minimum wage, firms that face higher costs cannot maintain profits simply by raising prices regardless of demand for their products. While the increase of the minimum wage will increase demand for those products purchased by low-income people, it will not yield an equal increase in demand for all products.
If low-income people tend to buy goods produced with low-wage labor—e.g., at McDonald’s—part of the increased wages will be eroded by increased prices. However, there is no reason to think that this erosion will wipe out much of the wage increase. On the other end of the income distribution—consider the purchases and prices of luxury cars. Certainly the rise of the minimum wage will not raise demand; it may even lower demand if profits are negatively affected. The price of luxury cars could even fall (but not by much!).
The upshot of all this: first, any inflation generated by an increase of the minimum wage is likely to be small; second, inflation affects different goods and thus different people very differently.
Especially important is how inflation affects debtors and creditors and how inflation affects wages (that is “real” wages, adjusted for inflation). Suppose a person takes out a loan for $1,000 this year, to be paid back next year with 10% interest, and suppose her salary is $1,000 per week. Then suppose prices in general—including her salary, which is, of course, a price—double. Now, instead of having to pay back more than a week’s salary, the person pays back with slightly more than half a week’s salary (55%). For this person, then, the inflation is pretty good. For her creditor, perhaps a bank, the inflation is pretty bad. (It is also pretty bad for people who are living on a fixed income—e.g., retirees who have a pension or annuity that pays a fixed amount each year.)
This example depends on what happens to wages relative to the general price increase. In some periods, when unemployment has been low and workers relatively powerful, wage increases have been greater than the rate of inflation—e.g., from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s. In subsequent years, with the conditions of labor very different, wages in general have barely kept pace with inflation. When working people do not have the power to defend themselves, they will most often be harmed by inflation. This is especially true when there are sudden upward spikes in the prices that form a large share of what people buy—as was the case with food and fuel prices a few years ago.
There is one more point—namely, that a little inflation is probably good for economic growth. If people with assets expect prices to rise, they will want to hold assets that rise along with the price increases. That is, they will want to make real investments (instead of holding cash). One of the factors retarding economic growth currently is that firms are sitting on larger amounts of cash. A bit of inflation could induce them to invest, which might yield more rapid economic growth. If the gains from growth, as in recent years, continue to be captured by the very wealthy, this is not so good. But at least growth opens some possibilities.
ARTHUR MACEWAN is professor emeritus of economics at UMass-Boston and a Dollars & Sense Associate.
There's no such thing as wage slavery. No one is forced to not develop skills that make them more marketable. People may make choices that leave them no other options but THEY made that choice.
If only 4% of people are minimum wage earners, than any increase won't cause inflation or any major nationwide economic changes.
What about the new minimum wage workers that will be created by raising minimum wage. It's not the percentage at minimum wage you need to look at but the percentage under $15/hour (or whatever the new minimum wage is) because they all become minimum wage workers when the minimum wage goes up. People making $9/hr at Walmart will raise to $15/hr. Dd who makes $10/hr will raise to $15/hr. A raise in minimum wage impacts more than just todays minimum wage workers because it creates new minimum wage workers as their wage is overtaken by minimum wage.
However, if paying a higher minimum wage made sense it would have happened on its own. Walmart just raised their minimum wage because they are having trouble retaining people. It's a supply and demand thing. If you want to see wages move up, all that needs to happen is for people to stop taking minimum wage jobs.
Ask your right wing friends how much a fry cook should be paid.
Its comical you think it really matters what any of us thinks about what someone "should be paid".
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Originally Posted by urbanlife78
And have you never paid attention to any time the minimum wage was increased in the past? Look at states in particular and you will see that they raise their minimum wage in small stages. This is just common knowledge. ...or at least I thought it was.
What? You are unwilling to support anything you say so I do not engage with you when you make absurd and frankly irrelevant comments when considering the context. You fail to understand that my questions always center on the "why" not the "what".
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