Minimum wage, a character issue. (insurance, government, federal, income)

[aileesic]

Originally Posted by Supposn

Minimum wage, a character issue. That's the essence of personal and political opposition to the FMW rate.
The federal minimum wage, (FMW) rate is of net social and economic benefit to our nation. It has never been among the major causes of the U.S. dollar’s inflation; on the contrary, it’s certainly among inflation's victims.

No employees are poorer and no enterprises suffer any competitive disadvantage to any USA enterprises due to the FMW rate.

[there’s no doubt that USA’s higher wage rates are among the causes of our products’ price disadvantages in comparison to products from lower-wage nations; but although the elimination of our minimum wage laws would be greatly detrimental to our nation’s net social and economic well-being, eliminating it would accomplish extremely little to remedy our products’ global price disadvantages.]

I suppose most USA’s population, (significantly more than a 10% plurality) to some extent approve of federal minimum rate’s existence. There are much fewer among wealthy or competent people that are opposed to the federal minimum rate.

A great proportion of minimum rate opponents lack self-esteem. They need whatever affirmation of their own worth that they can derive by being able to look down upon people experiencing lesser financial conditions. They cannot acknowledge even to themselves their fears of improving the financial conditions of others would consequentially reduce their own social status. That’s the essence of personal and political opposition to the FMW rate.

Some people want to become highly skilled, highly educated, high society this and that, and some people would like to stay unskilled, do not want to be part of the liberal or conservative system, do not want to be part of politics, mainstream, and don't care about self-esteem one way or the other. Just leave all those people alone. Forget about them as if they all live off on another island somewhere.

[workingclasshero]

Originally Posted by Supposn

Minimum wage, a character issue. That's the essence of personal and political opposition to the FMW rate.
The federal minimum wage, (FMW) rate is of net social and economic benefit to our nation. It has never been among the major causes of the U.S. dollar’s inflation; on the contrary, it’s certainly among inflation's victims.

No employees are poorer and no enterprises suffer any competitive disadvantage to any USA enterprises due to the FMW rate.

[there’s no doubt that USA’s higher wage rates are among the causes of our products’ price disadvantages in comparison to products from lower-wage nations; but although the elimination of our minimum wage laws would be greatly detrimental to our nation’s net social and economic well-being, eliminating it would accomplish extremely little to remedy our products’ global price disadvantages.]

I suppose most USA’s population, (significantly more than a 10% plurality) to some extent approve of federal minimum rate’s existence. There are much fewer among wealthy or competent people that are opposed to the federal minimum rate.

A great proportion of minimum rate opponents lack self-esteem. They need whatever affirmation of their own worth that they can derive by being able to look down upon people experiencing lesser financial conditions. They cannot acknowledge even to themselves their fears of improving the financial conditions of others would consequentially reduce their own social status. That’s the essence of personal and political opposition to the FMW rate.

with over 1200 economies in the USA, and over 1500 cost of living areas... there should not be a FEDERAL min wage...the min wage should be set at state or local levels

[Supposn]

Originally Posted by workingclasshero

with over 1200 economies in the USA, and over 1500 cost of living areas... there should not be a FEDERAL min wage...the min wage should be set at state or local levels

Workingclasshero, states, their counties and cities can, and many of them do increase the legal minimum wage within their own jurisdictions. The federal minimum wage rate reduces the extent that individual state governments can undermine other states’ economies by tolerating a lesser minimum within their jurisdictions.

It's been a decade since our United States Congress passed, our president signed, and the federal government enacted the current $7.25 per hour.

I’m an old man. I’m confident that within my lifetime, (If I do not die unexpectedly), congress will pass, and the president will enact an annually increasing federal minimum rate until it achieves purchasing power substantially greater than its February-1968 peak value, and thereafter that rate will be annually monitored and adjusted to retain that value of purchasing power.

Respectfully, Supposn

[Supposn]

Originally Posted by bu2

Another arrogant post by someone without the moral empathy for the unemployed or the mental capacity to understand how raises in the minimum wage eliminate jobs (seen any McDonald's lately with their self-ordering machines?).

bU2, transcribed from the “Automation and the minimum wage rate” thread within the “Economics” forum:

Originally Posted by Supposn

… The wage rates of the poorest national economies have the least purchasing powers. Automation is not justified when human labor is available, can accomplish the tasks just as well, and at costs that do not exceed automation’s costs. Unsurprisingly, the poorest nations are the slowest to adopt advances in automation.

Automation is justified when it can produce consistently better products and/or products at lesser costs. Automation has always been to our nation’s net benefit.
To argue against higher wages because they encourage automation, is to argue in favor of poverty.
Respectfully, Supposn

[Volobjectitarian]

Employment in the United States is 100% purely voluntary. Nobody is required by law to give anyone a job, nor is anyone required by law to do any job.

Thus, the minimum wage is the lowest wage for which a person would perform a service for someone else and an employer is willing to pay.

Taking the OP's absurd emotional projection and fantasy out the picture, the wage issue boils down to a few basic economic principles that are morally and sociologically neutral:

• A job is the property of the owner of the business/property. It isn't a human right, it doesn't belong to the worker, and it isn't some benefit of society. It is a task owned by someone who is willing to compensate someone else to perform. That's it, that's all.
• The wage for a job is based on the supply of individuals both willing and able to perform the task, the demand for that task to be done, and the market forces of the geography and industry.

That's it, that's all. Doesn't have anything to do with me, the OP and his invented, projected guilt, or anyone else. Just economic forces and the employer-employee association that is 100% voluntary in both directions.

According to those forces, the minimum wage then, is whatever an employer and employee agree to in their purely voluntary association. We know these forces work because according to actual BLS facts, ~1.2% of the US workforce makes at or below the minimum wage, and of those that are, the highest percentage are in food & hospitality, and are tipped workers who supplement that wage with tips. Given that, the percentage of people taking home at or below the federal MW is estimated at ~0.6% of the entire workforce.

Now given that, we go back to my claim that we know market forces work. Why? Because even though federal law mandates a worker cannot make below some invented, arbitrary wage floor...greater than 99% of all jobs pay more? Now why would employers simply volunteer to pay more than this magical MW number if they are not forced to by law? They don't have to pay more than MW, but 99% still do? What gives? Why on Earth would they do that?

Oh that's right...MARKET FORCES AND BASIC ECONOMICS.

The laws of economics are as immutable as gravity. Nothing to do with arrogance, ignorance, or anything else. Supply & demand rule economics whether the OP likes how it makes him feel or not. Economics does not care how anyone feels, same as gravity. Natural laws are unfeeling, uncaring rules that govern existence. Just no getting around them.

[StillwaterTownie]

Originally Posted by Rachel976

Yes, that is the idealistic view of liberals.

The reality is that some jobs simply aren't worth that money to an employer, and people would lose jobs. Have you been to a Walmart or Target recently? There are aisles and aisles of self-serve lines with maybe two or three with a cashier. Raise the minimum up to $15, and those remaining cashiers will be canned as well. Then you'll have even more people on full welfare assistance, completely dependent on the government. You think that's preferable?

The answer is to get some post high school job training, anything from a 6-month certificate in HVAC repair to a two-year A.A. degree in accounting support. If you're low income, the tuition is fully paid by other people.

And keep the lowest pay, lowest skill jobs for illegal immigrants?

[StillwaterTownie]

Originally Posted by whogo

The ignorance of liberals on economics is amazing. The best way to raise real wages of unskilled workers is to greatly reduce legal and illegal immigrant unskilled workers. Of course the party liberals tend to vote for won’t favor that.

But they are the anointed ones.

Not many citizens want to work in slaughterhouses and chicken processing plants even if the pay was $10 an hour..

Republicans don't believe in enforcing anti-illegal immigrant workers very often.

[StillwaterTownie]

Originally Posted by Joey2k

So lefties, if I am desperately in need of money, and am willing to work for less than minimum wage, you are of the opinion that I should not be allowed to do so, that it is morally superior for me to remain unemployed and broke?



No, they don't. They do not deserve any amount of someone else's money except what the two of them have mutually agreed upon. If the wages offered are too low for the employee's liking, they can turn down the job. If the employee's wage requirements are too high for the employer's liking, they may decline to offer them a job.

The only thing ANYONE deserves is the air the breathe and the physical space they occupy.

Then what the hell do you do with people who aren't worthy of being on earth, because they are deadbeats or whatever with no marketable labor skills?

[StillwaterTownie]

Originally Posted by GuyNTexas

Bravo Comrade, spoken like a true communist! Karl would be proud. “From each according to his ability (employer) to each according to his needs(worker). This is precisely what you are saying, even if you don’t realize it.

While always promising utopia to the common man, the results of communism is stagnation, degradation, and massive death measured in the tens of millions! And there is simply no bloody excuse for being so totally oblivious to that factual history, given its many examples and mirror image failures.

Read a damned book, or take the easy way, and watch a documentary on Stalin’s little utopia, and the unimaginable level of suffering and death caused by his Marxist policies, particularly enlightening in his war against the Russian farmers, and how that all turned out. You might want to review Mao, and his little utopia in China, while you’re at it.

Tell me something. Who knows how many millions of people have no marketable labor skills at current wage rates? So once again, what do you do with people who have no marketable labor skills? Do you cut the minimum wage to 50 cents an hour to see if they got worthy labor skills at that level?

[StillwaterTownie]

Originally Posted by No_Recess

I'm against a mandated wage because I don't believe in slavery.

Not sure what that does for my self-esteem but it's gangbusters for my principles which are non-aggression and property rights.

So reducing the minimum wage to 50 cents an hour would still be mandated slavery?