Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Come on, people. While the desire to oversimplify everything can sometimes be overwhelming, the busboys and burger-flippers where I am and where you are do not compete with anyone in China, India, Thailand, or Vietnam.
You cannot base a successful economy around flipping burgers, trading houses, or other unsound foundations. There has never been a successful service based economy in the past, and I doubt America will find a way to buck the trend. You must create wealth, as this is where wealth primarily originates. You can remove it from the ground, collect it from the land, or add value to a commodity, but there is very little value added by grilling a burger or frying sticks of potatoes in grease.
So, burger flippers have very little to do with a discussion concerning global competition.
You cannot base a successful economy around flipping burgers, trading houses, or other unsound foundations. There has never been a successful service based economy in the past, and I doubt America will find a way to buck the trend. You must create wealth, as this is where wealth primarily originates. You can remove it from the ground, collect it from the land, or add value to a commodity, but there is very little value added by grilling a burger or frying sticks of potatoes in grease.
Such occluded thinking. I suppose teaching or accounting might not be seen by some as being quite so manly as all that going outside and playing in the dirt, but every economy in history has included a significant service sector. The one you live in sees four out of every five of its workers enagaged in the service sector, yet it is easily the largest, most powerful, most influential, and hence most successful economy in the world and has been for quite some time. How did you miss this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by andywire
So, burger flippers have very little to do with a discussion concerning global competition.
Tell that to those daft enough to believe that all wage rates are defined internationally these days. They don't seem to understand the implications of physical points-of-delivery.
You don;t understand "median". If you reduced the income of the lowest 49% of the workers to one dollar, and left the top 51% unchanged, the median would stay the same. Since all minimum wage workers are in that lower 49%, reducing their minimum wage to one dollar would have no effect on the median income.
Furthermore, the median wage, as such, says nothing about the aggregate economy. It is only a measure of the distribution of the national wealth, which would not necessarily be influenced by any of the factors described in the OP..
median: the middle value in a frequency distribution, below and above which lie values with equal total frequencies
For example, 5 is the median of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 100. The average is 23, but the median is 5. The median is still 5, if you change the numbers to 1, 1, 1, 1, 5, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, even though the average becomes 1235..
Jtur88, I understand “median” you’re assuming that due to sufficient reduction of the minimum wage’s purchasing power all factors including the median wage remains in similar positions relative to each other.
The additional people employed if the minimum wage’s purchasing power is sufficiently reduced will not be reflected by reduced rates of unemployment. The additionally less qualified labor enabled to be employed due to the to sufficiently reduced purchasing power of the minim wage will significantly exceed the numbers of additional jobs created; the nation’s rate of unemployment will not be reduced and it would likely be increased.
The reduction of the median wage’s purchasing power also increases the proportion of poverty among the nation’s aggregate employees. Currently few of the working poor without dependents receive public assistance. If the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage is sufficiently reduced, the nations’ increased proportion of USA employees will all require public assistance.
The minimum wage is of significant benefit to the lowest quarter of our aggregate employees but to the extent that it reduces incidences of poverty, it is net benefit to our nation’s economy and society. Poverty is a drag upon a nation’s economy.
You don;t understand "median". If you reduced the income of the lowest 49% of the workers to one dollar, and left the top 51% unchanged, the median would stay the same. Since all minimum wage workers are in that lower 49%, reducing their minimum wage to one dollar would have no effect on the median income.
Furthermore, the median wage, as such, says nothing about the aggregate economy. It is only a measure of the distribution of the national wealth, which would not necessarily be influenced by any of the factors described in the OP..
Jtur88, I understand “median” you’re assuming that due to sufficient reduction of the minimum wage’s purchasing power all factors including the median wage remains in similar positions relative to each other.
The additional people employed if the minimum wage’s purchasing power is sufficiently reduced will not be reflected by reduced rates of unemployment. The additionally less qualified labor enabled to be employed due to the to sufficiently reduced purchasing power of the minim wage will significantly exceed the numbers of additional jobs created; the nation’s rate of unemployment will not be reduced and it would likely be increased.
The reduction of the median wage’s purchasing power also increases the proportion of poverty among the nation’s aggregate employees. Currently few of the working poor without dependents receive public assistance. If the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage is sufficiently reduced, the nations’ increased proportion of USA employees will all require public assistance.
The minimum wage is of significant benefit to the lowest quarter of our aggregate employees but to the extent that it reduces incidences of poverty, it is net benefit to our nation’s economy and society. Poverty is a drag upon a nation’s economy.
This is pure speculation based on faulty logic. Fact is that very few jobs pay minimum wage and are for the most part not full time. Minimum wage is a non-issue for the vast majority of workers and is in no way linked to median wages. Median wages are the true indicator of the supply demand ratio and what employers must pay for competent workers.
The real culprit of lower wages in the US is Federal trade policy which allows corporations to simultaneously exploit third world labor and our domestic market place.
By diverting attention away from the real cause of low wages and unemployment you are helping the wealthy exploit the workers and helping their agenda to Europeanize the US and lower the living standard.
The wealthy are only able to get away with what they are doing because people are too lazy to educate themselves as to how and why our economy went from what it was pre 1990's to what it is today.
Idiotic theories about raising the minimum wage creating a utopian socialistic situation simply play into the hands of those who want to use their financial power over government to control and make peasants of what were once free people.
JimHCom, your post’s faulty logic is based upon incorrect information or assumptions.
The federal minimum wage rate is the floor that most greatly affects each USA labor market’s typical rate for the market’s least challenging tasks and least qualified workers. That is among the primary justifications for the legally mandated minimum wage.
Your mention of supply and demand seems to imply that employers of labor negotiate with the working poor in the same manner and on as equitable manner as they compete with competing enterprises. I doubt if you’re so naïve as to believe that’s the case.
(I also doubt that you believe small businesses are not at some disadvantage to large competitive corporations. But the disadvantages and their consequences of the working poor drastically exceed that of small enterprises).
The minimum wage more or less affects all wage rates’ purchasing powers inversely and proportional to inversely to the jobs’ rates.
Of course the minimum rate’s greatest effects are upon the lowest paying jobs; its effect proportionate to jobs’ rates taper down as job rates approach the median rate.
Minumum wage should be based on what a person produces for the company. On a minumum an employee needs to produce 3X what they are paid in order to be considered an asset to the organization. For many that are paid the current minumum wage, those people are not producing and are costing the company money. For new workers the standard should be no pay untill they prove themselves in the market. Employers do not owe employees jobs you know. Employers are offering a service so that an employee can provide for themselves. For those individuals that show promise to an organization pay would be warranted. Individuals that produce additional capital for the company in the way of making the company money the employer may want to offer additional pay to keep those employees.
Soon2BSuprise,
[There’s a theoretical indefinite market determined minimum wage rate for every labor market.
[Where there’s no enforced definite effectively enforced minimum wage rate that is greater than the indefinite rate, the indefinite rate emerges as the labor market’s effective minimum wage rate.
The market's effective minimum wage rate is applicable to even the wages of the least qualified workers and/or the least challenging job tasks; i.e. within each labor market’s jurisdiction the minimum rate is absolutely the minimum wage rate regardless of any jobs’ tasks.
Employers’ of labor are generally at greater and the working poor are at lesser advantage when negotiating wages or other factors of employment. The indefinite minimum rate is a "race to the bottom" and is thus drastically of less purchasing power than any historic federal minimum wage rate.
Other than the indefinite rate’s drastically lesser purchasing power, the characters and behaviors of the indefinite’s and FMW’s rates are exactly the same].
There are employees performing much less challenging tasks that justify paying the federal minimum wage, (FMW) rate is justified only because non performance of those tasks would be net detrimental to the employing enterprise; i.e. the labor’s price in these cases are not justified by the performed task but rather by the penalties to the enterprises if those tasks weren’t performed.
A definite FMW rate (that’s additionally annually updated to the keep abreast with the cost-price index) is justified to reduce our nation’s incidences of individual and families poverty, government expenditures for public assistance, and general detriments to our economic and social environments.
If we were experiencing the drastically lesser purchasing powers of indefinite markets’ determined minimums, we’d suffer the net detrimental consequences. It might be common for employees to pay employment agencies, work for free until the employers were satisfied that the applicants have “proven themselves”, sold themselves or their spouses or their children into bondage, or otherwise accept practices that are common within the very poorest nations on earth.
Let's just hope that the reduction in earnings pretty much across the boards in middle class America will also result in a lowering of the cost of living. We'll never be a three-cars-and-a-boat America again, but let's at least hope we can pay the heating bill.
Yep minimum wage was pretty good in older times and has wages go up so do cost to support them. the question really is will the retail buyer buy your service at higher price. We see what is done in many areas where repair is now throw in many manufactured goods. Anyone that cam lower cost in a global economy is like to also take your business Tariffs just lower you buying power which means less real compensation.
Tex Dav, refer to the post “Reduce the trade deficit; increase GDP & median wage”,
ttp://www.city-data.com/forum/economics/1713697-reduce-trade-deficit-increase-gdp-median-post26559766.html?highlight=trade+deficit#post2655 9766
Increasing the minimum waqe increases cost and thus prices of goods; plain and simple.
And conversely, not raising wages increases the price as anyone over fifty can attest to. This is the thing left unspoken by those who prefer to see business as a victim rather than a perpetrator of greed. My experience over the forty plus years of work I participated in was that prices were rising whether I was getting any more money or not. Of course the business cheerleaders were stating that this price rise was the result of all the union labor demands for better wages, even in those sectors that weren't union the prices always went up, and in some cases prices went up when wages actually went down.
So there you have it plain and simple. Failing to take an issue seriously enough to do some investigation usually renders the questioner to a state of conjecture, all the blather on this board about wages and prices usually fail to take into account the fact of human nature, that's to say that humans don't always understand the entire length or depth of any particular issue, instead choosing to take "their" side. BOTH business and labor have contributed to a certain amount of inflation of prices. What can we do about it? Leave labor to make up their own level of financial well being with regard to what constitutes a fair compensation? Or maybe we should just scrap the constitution and allow business to create a better one, complete with their own labor laws and safety laws. I think the answer lies in working together.
We came a long way in this nation utilizing the partnership of organized labor and business to serve each others interest, since the thirties we have seen the rise of a financially strong middle class of organized labor, AND we've seen the demise of that class as wages have fallen behind the workers ability to contribute to the overall economic health of America, yes it's plainly evident that the reasons are in fact simple.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
