If the Minimum wage goes up to $10 an hour, what happens to people now making $10.01 to $11.00 an hour? (employment, dollars)

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by pch1013

Well, what happened the last time the minimum wage was raised (in 2009)? And the time before that? Did it result in an inflationary spiral, as you seem to be suggesting?

You didn't take the next step.

Longer term employees would have to receive a raise to keep the parity between themselves and new hires. That will lead to one of two things:

Higher prices (your inflationary spiral) or,
greater efficiencies which lead to prices staying more or less the same. With greater efficiencies usually comes reduced hiring or, in some cases, even staff reductions.

Once again, take the next step.

[swagger]

Originally Posted by pch1013

Which doesn't explain why the big-box conglomerates are fighting it so fiercely.

Would you not fight a 40% increase in the largest expense in your budget?

Originally Posted by pch1013

And what about the customers of those locally-owned small businesses? Some of them would be getting raises, making them better able to keep their money local instead of sending it to Bentonville.

It works both ways.

You're nuts if you think that there would be enough "new" money being spent in these small shops to compensate for the increases in their labor costs. Nuts.

[lifeexplorer]

Originally Posted by pch1013

Well, what happened the last time the minimum wage was raised (in 2009)? And the time before that? Did it result in an inflationary spiral, as you seem to be suggesting?

Last time and the the time before and the the time before and the time before... we raised the minimum wage, it made the fundamental improvement for the people making the minimum wage and they have been able to make livable wage happily ever after... oh wait.




Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

[pch1013]

Originally Posted by North Beach Person

You didn't take the next step.

Longer term employees would have to receive a raise to keep the parity between themselves and new hires. That will lead to one of two things:

Higher prices (your inflationary spiral) or,
greater efficiencies which lead to prices staying more or less the same. With greater efficiencies usually comes reduced hiring or, in some cases, even staff reductions.

Once again, take the next step.

Once again, please point to evidence that either of those things happened the last several times the minimum wage was increased.

[ChestRockwell]

Originally Posted by Rggr

Over time their pay would go up too and $10 would just become the new unlivable wage.

yep...just move along the sliding scale

[pch1013]

Originally Posted by swagger

You're nuts if you think that there would be enough "new" money being spent in these small shops to compensate for the increases in their labor costs. Nuts.

OK, so why are big-box retailers driving mom-and-pop stores out of business? Because they can offer lower prices, and people can't afford to shop anywhere else.

Why can't people afford to shop anywhere else? Because they don't earn enough money.

Do you really think that reducing the minimum wage (which, to use the same logic as those who are insisting that raising it would have an inflationary effect on local prevailing wages, would depress local wages) would somehow drive more customers to those mom-and-pop stores?

[lifeexplorer]

Originally Posted by urbanlife78

I have yet to see an economy collapse due to a minimum wage increase.

You aren't going to see the economy collapse but you can see jobs are moving overseas en mass and they are being replaced by robots.

[TriMT7]

Originally Posted by pch1013

Once again, please point to evidence that either of those things happened the last several times the minimum wage was increased.

It's actually a rather valid concern. I'm not so sure it has an easy answer.

The previous increases in minimum wage were very incremental to the point of absurdity.


Sadly, wages have not increased with inflation for most people. So, wage compression is an issue that should be considered. I would expect -- demand -- an increase if I were, say, a night shift supervisor at a fast food restaurant making $10.00/hour, and suddenly all employees with less responsibility and less skill made the same money as me.


Frankly, I think it's unjust to have unskilled burger flippers making the same money as semi-skilled workers.

There must also be incentive to get people to want to move OUT of minimum wage jobs and INTO the more skilled jobs that previously were paying $3/hour more.

[swagger]

Originally Posted by pch1013

Once again, please point to evidence that either of those things happened the last several times the minimum wage was increased.

Rather than question what might happen, let's look at what has happened.

What was the purpose of previous increases in the minimum wage? What was the desired effect? Did the increases result in that desired effect?

[marcopolo]

Originally Posted by pch1013

Once again, please point to evidence that either of those things happened the last several times the minimum wage was increased.

As per usual with the minimum wage threads, everybody keeps getting lost in the weeds.

If gasoline goes from $3.50 to $5.00 per gallon overnight, less gasoline would be sold next week. If the price of butter doubled, less would be sold. If the price of tin went up 30%, less tin would be used. The point is, when you raise the price of any good or service (including unskilled labor), less of it will be used in the marketplace. Period. Law of nature. You can argue it with anecdote, you can present your philosophy, you can even quote studies on the issue. An increase in the minimum wage would hurt the very people it is supposed to help.

The only way to sustainably increase real compensation is to increase the value of one's labor. The stuff cannot be consistently sold for more than it is worth, no matter how much some people wish it could be.