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Minimum wage laws basically made it where there is very little reprecussions for hiring a white worker over a black one. The fact of the matter is, you can't deny that minimum wage gave black workers less bidding power when it came to employment. That was their key advantage over white workers.
Inflation causes the price of goods to rise with time, and min wage laws are needed to keep wages in line with inflation.
Regardless of min wage effects on past black Americans or current min wage effects on business, min wage needs to be sometimes raised to keep up with inflation.
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If Americans want jobs, they should be willing to compete with them,
I see your point and in a truly unbiased conversation about improving America's workforce those philosophies would be included.
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I do not believe in protecting the American worker.
I believe in protecting the American worker more than business.
What is more important a American worker or a pile of papers stating something is a business?
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Regulated capitalism creates cronyism, which is the biggest problem the USA economy is facing.
Capitalism/business is solely about making profits.
American worker wage- $8.50
Asian/Indian worker wage- $2.00
Unregulated capitalism dictates that all American jobs capable of being moved get moved to Asia/India, because those foreign workers work for lower wages and increase their businesses profits.
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Regulations do nothing more than allow certain companies a competitive advantage without having to appease the market. This is wrong, and it's the government overextending itself where it's not useful or needed.
Regulations dictate how much workers get paid, what tax percentage businesses pay, what tariffs are paid, and what products are legal to sell.
Regulations can be used to regulate capitalism so workers can afford to live and American jobs don't get moved to Asia.
America had a free market or mostly free until about the 1920s. And people complained about classism, wealth inequality and RACISM. Now we have open borders to all the world and mass immigration and outsourcing and offshoring and you think the market is going to create a better outcome then America's gilded age 1870-1910?? Liberals and non-whites would burn the country down if you tried to have classical liberalism again.
America had a free market or mostly free until about the 1920s. And people complained about classism, wealth inequality and RACISM. Now we have open borders to all the world and mass immigration and outsourcing and offshoring and you think the market is going to create a better outcome then America's gilded age 1870-1910?? Liberals and non-whites would burn the country down if you tried to have classical liberalism again.
It was horrid conditions for many working people. Companies ruled over people, including using force on its employees, there were few labor and safety laws, the "The Jungle".
What changed it? the communist revolts is what changed everything. It is no coincidence that the US started enacting labor laws when communism started to spread around the world. It was a case of do something now, or they will do it for you. Communism never took root in the US, even during the Depression, in my opinion due to the US gov taking proactive action on the labor front. However, the US gov did enact elements of communism, in which we still have today in some form or another.
The source provides no evidence to its position. It is also a graph without explanation. So Mr. Wizard, care to explain it to us? Or are pretty pictures your defense?
Speak up, explain, stop being a puppet!
Saying that you don't have enough information about the methodology the Federal Reserve used when creating the graph is not the same thing as saying the graph itself is ambiguous. It's quite easy to understand the graph. Whether you believe the information presented by the graph is accurate is another question entirely, but you said that graph itself isn't clear. That's not true.
Location: Born in L.A. - NYC is Second Home - Rustbelt is Home Base
1,607 posts, read 1,084,554 times
Reputation: 1372
Well, what happens to all the kids that don't have parents to pay for school? No Social Security either? Just turn them all out to die off? OP's idea may be fine if a society was based on it, but it is hard to change mid-stream without a lot of pain or death.
Location: Born in L.A. - NYC is Second Home - Rustbelt is Home Base
1,607 posts, read 1,084,554 times
Reputation: 1372
Quote:
Originally Posted by chad3
Inflation causes the price of goods to rise with time, and min wage laws are needed to keep wages in line with inflation.
Regardless of min wage effects on past black Americans or current min wage effects on business, min wage needs to be sometimes raised to keep up with inflation.
I see your point and in a truly unbiased conversation about improving America's workforce those philosophies would be included.
I believe in protecting the American worker more than business.
What is more important a American worker or a pile of papers stating something is a business?
Capitalism/business is solely about making profits.
American worker wage- $8.50
Asian/Indian worker wage- $2.00
Unregulated capitalism dictates that all American jobs capable of being moved get moved to Asia/India, because those foreign workers work for lower wages and increase their businesses profits.
Regulations dictate how much workers get paid, what tax percentage businesses pay, what tariffs are paid, and what products are legal to sell.
Regulations can be used to regulate capitalism so workers can afford to live and American jobs don't get moved to Asia.
Competition is fine unless there are too many people competing and not enough jobs.
It was horrid conditions for many working people. Companies ruled over people, including using force on its employees, there were few labor and safety laws, the "The Jungle".
What changed it? the communist revolts is what changed everything. It is no coincidence that the US started enacting labor laws when communism started to spread around the world. It was a case of do something now, or they will do it for you. Communism never took root in the US, even during the Depression, in my opinion due to the US gov taking proactive action on the labor front. However, the US gov did enact elements of communism, in which we still have today in some form or another.
I don't really dispute that idea. But more specifically communism and cultural Marxism probably got rooted in America from the 1880-1920 Eastern European immigration surge, plus post WWII refugees. You could call unions "socialism/communism" but I would view them as a private sector solution to workplace abuses. We didn't need the government regulating everything.
In the 1940s, many white workers lobbied for their to be a minimum wage because they couldn't compete with black workers who were working for less. That was the creation of minimum wage. It probably wasn't the first laws that was put in place to "protect" a certain group of workers and it wouldn't be the last. However what minimum wage did was destroy the bargining power of black workers, and this lead to biased hiring. Because most employers would have preferred white workers over black workers anyway, the only chance black people had to get hired was to largely underbid white workers. A business owner who is going to think about maximizing profit really couldn't refuse this offer, and it lead to the employment of many black workers, who had skills and could actually go out and start their own business.
Why do I mention this? Because this is the power of the market. The power of the free market, where competition has a strange habit of trumping bias. A good business will always maximize profit, even if this means that they have to do so at the cost of their personal prejudices.
However what we have in America now days has nothing to do with the power of the market. We have a system where the government controls the economy, and they pick winners and losers. Sometimes it's a black winner and sometimes it's a white loser. Who they pick doesn't really matter. The key point to be made is that they're in a position to decide someone's value, and that goes against the very nature of economics.
TLDR; Only the market should decide winners and losers. The government has no concept of value or any concept of the market. Look at all of the attempts from politicians to "fix" the economy.
We need to return to a pure free market, where the market decides everything. This means no more public schools, no more public housing, no more public police force, or public firemen, and no more public military. It should all be privatized and it should all be decided by the market.
While I agree that smaller government and the free market needs to be the focus I disagree that we need pure free market. Remember there are people who are truly disabled (vets, elderly) and we need to help them but we have to find a better way of doing it because government is failing them while letting others abuse the system. I see why you feel this way though, our kindness has been abused.
In the 1940s, many white workers lobbied for their to be a minimum wage because they couldn't compete with black workers who were working for less. That was the creation of minimum wage. It probably wasn't the first laws that was put in place to "protect" a certain group of workers and it wouldn't be the last. However what minimum wage did was destroy the bargining power of black workers, and this lead to biased hiring. Because most employers would have preferred white workers over black workers anyway, the only chance black people had to get hired was to largely underbid white workers. A business owner who is going to think about maximizing profit really couldn't refuse this offer, and it lead to the employment of many black workers, who had skills and could actually go out and start their own business.
Why do I mention this? Because this is the power of the market. The power of the free market, where competition has a strange habit of trumping bias. A good business will always maximize profit, even if this means that they have to do so at the cost of their personal prejudices.
However what we have in America now days has nothing to do with the power of the market. We have a system where the government controls the economy, and they pick winners and losers. Sometimes it's a black winner and sometimes it's a white loser. Who they pick doesn't really matter. The key point to be made is that they're in a position to decide someone's value, and that goes against the very nature of economics.
TLDR; Only the market should decide winners and losers. The government has no concept of value or any concept of the market. Look at all of the attempts from politicians to "fix" the economy.
We need to return to a pure free market, where the market decides everything. This means no more public schools, no more public housing, no more public police force, or public firemen, and no more public military. It should all be privatized and it should all be decided by the market.
Americans are subject to human nature just as much as anyone else. Human nature entails animus toward the poor - toward those poorer than ourselves. Therefore, Americans will never allow a truly free market, especially in their own neighborhoods.
Gated communities, exclusionary zoning, and NIMBY policies are how Americans keep the poor out of "our" neighborhoods.
Poor Americans cannot own homes because the non-poor majority doesn't allow the "substandard" and/or tiny housing which the poor might be able to afford to own.
Well, what happens to all the kids that don't have parents to pay for school? No Social Security either? Just turn them all out to die off? OP's idea may be fine if a society was based on it, but it is hard to change mid-stream without a lot of pain or death.
In my world, every working American would be able to afford to own a tiny house, which in turn would be a crucial hedge against rent inflation, and would enable low earners to enjoy a modest retirement standard of living - something low earners cannot do today when rent consumes half their income for a lifetime.
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