70% of Food Stamps/Medicaid recipients work full time, new study GAO And more results

[Antiganon]

This only issue I have with raising the minimum wage is that there are generally no provisions for raising wages of those who were already above minimum wage.

I saw this all the time when I worked retail. You start at minimum wage, work your ass off for two years to get a 50 cent raise, then the minimum wage goes up and new hires are making the same rate as you. It's demoralizing and makes you not want to out in any effort beyond the bare minimum in those jobs.

I'd much prefer if pay structures were defined as "minimum plus", where instead of being hired at $20/hour, you are hired at $5/hour over minimum wage (which is $15 in this example).

Of course this only actually matters to very low paid hourly workers in retail/food service/etc, and the corporations that control their lives will always find new and exciting ways to extract money from their employees

[Elegiac]

This only issue I have with raising the minimum wage is that there are generally no provisions for raising wages of those who were already above minimum wage.

Which has never been a problem in the history of the minimum wage and why people doctors continue to make well above minimum wage despite inflation having been a thing in the same period without any such provisions.

[Antiganon]

Which has never been a problem in the history of the minimum wage and why people doctors continue to make well above minimum wage despite inflation having been a thing in the same period without any such provisions.

Which is why I specified in my post that I was talking about hardworking low wage workers who are just barely doing better than the minimum, only to have their rewards cut out from under them, and advocated for an alternate pay structure to alleviate the issue.

Anybody doing well enough that they get a salary rather than a wage or can reasonably expect to pull in 50k plus annually isn't who I was talking about.

[Elegiac]

Which is why I specified in my post that I was talking about hardworking low wage workers who are just barely doing better than the minimum, only to have their rewards cut out from under them, and advocated for an alternate pay structure to alleviate the issue.

So was I, "doctors" is a stand in for most professions ranging from the minimum to around the upper-middle level of income in terms of upward push from minimum wage increases without specific provisions.

Again, the "it doesn't help most workers" line is a myth that isn't supported by any historical evidence ever and has been thrown around in opposition to minimum wage increases for years despite that.

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One day I would really like to be able to talk about a given government policy without Americans insisting the wheel needs to be reinvented because they think being uniquely immersed in historical disinformation is "exceptionalism".

[Endus]

I think what is misunderstood here is people think I am talking about extremes. No easing the minimum wage wont make people homeless I just doubt it will have much as living expenses would quickly increase to match it.

Again, to repeat, the idea that prices will rise to match any increase in minimum wage, due to that minimum wage increase, is a lie.

It's literally, mathematically, impossible for that claim to be true. No possibility under any circumstances that it could ever be true.

As for selling your labor you have every right to sell it at what you value it has and a company has every right to buy from the cheapest seller.

To repeat; this is not how the labor market works. Employers set the value of labor, not potential workers. If you value your time at $100 million an hour, nobody will hire you. That doesn't mean your time is worth that. It means your time is worth $0, because no one is paying you for it.

You're confusing pricing with value. They're not the same thing. If people will pay $20 for a widget, and the only company selling widgets prices them at $50, and they therefore sell no widgets, the value of widgets is not $50. It's $20. The lack of sales is because the price is so much higher than the value; it's overpriced.

The current problem with the market is the massive amount of people who don't have any labor to offer the justifies the current minimum wage much less more. A lot of people here have this weird philosophy that just endless consumption without equivalent work is somehow sustainable and it just isn't...

Literally no one is arguing for "endless consumption".

However, your claim about "equivalent work" is absolute fucking nonsense. You need productivity to keep up with demand. It doesn't matter how much human labor goes into that productivity. In theory, if you could automate production completely with self-repairing robotics and science-fiction AIs, the economy would run just fine with no human labor.

While that's obviously hypothetical, the underlying point becomes clear; there is no direct connection between productivity and the amount of human labor. It is entirely possible to increase production without increasing labor demands; this is why automation became a thing in the first place. And all that matters, economically speaking, is that productivity keeps up with demand; not that every able-bodied adult human contribute a full-time-job's worth of labor to that national productivity. That last bit is absolute nonsense that does not derive from any economic theory, and flies directly in the face of the last couple hundred years of industrial development.

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Which is why I specified in my post that I was talking about hardworking low wage workers who are just barely doing better than the minimum, only to have their rewards cut out from under them, and advocated for an alternate pay structure to alleviate the issue.

Anybody doing well enough that they get a salary rather than a wage or can reasonably expect to pull in 50k plus annually isn't who I was talking about.

It's basically never been a problem in any prior minimum wage hike; why would it suddenly become a problem with this one? If you've got the value to your employer to demand more than minimum wage, that's gonna remain true after the minimum wage increase.

[Krastyn]

It's basically never been a problem in any prior minimum wage hike; why would it suddenly become a problem with this one? If you've got the value to your employer to demand more than minimum wage, that's gonna remain true after the minimum wage increase.

This isn't really true, on either point. It's been a long time since I've earned near minimum wage, but I can tell you the second part is definitely untrue. I worked at Subway in Alberta when minimum wage was $5/hour. After working there a while, I was making $8/hour, which was their cap. Then minimum wage went to $5.40/hour. Prices also rose. Then it went to $5.65 6 months later. Then another 6 months, to $5.90, and prices rose again. Their policy at that point was still capped at $8/hour. Any worker during that year who was above minimum wage, did not get a proportional bump when the minimum went up.

So my relative buying power went down with the minimum wage. Now minimum wage is $15/hour, an the store cap is $17. So workers are now closer to the minimum both in absolute and relative terms.

Now, I don't think this is overall a bad thing. The small amount of buying power I lost was small, and greatly offset by the benefit gained by those who were at the minimum. But I think bringing in a UBI is both easier, more effective, and more beneficial for workers than trying to decide what a minimum wage should be. People also seem to not realize that the raising of minimum wages benefits large companies more than smaller ones.

[Endus]

This isn't really true, on either point. It's been a long time since I've earned near minimum wage, but I can tell you the second part is definitely untrue. I worked at Subway in Alberta when minimum wage was $5/hour. After working there a while, I was making $8/hour, which was their cap. Then minimum wage went to $5.40/hour. Prices also rose. Then it went to $5.65 6 months later. Then another 6 months, to $5.90, and prices rose again. Their policy at that point was still capped at $8/hour. Any worker during that year who was above minimum wage, did not get a proportional bump when the minimum went up.

We're talking long-term outcomes. Not short-term responses to a recent adjustment.

If your hypothesis here were true, doctors and lawyers today would make minimum wage. They don't, because your hypothesis does not hold up.

[Krastyn]

We're talking long-term outcomes. Not short-term responses to a recent adjustment.

If your hypothesis here were true, doctors and lawyers today would make minimum wage. They don't, because your hypothesis does not hold up.

Can you quote where I said that was my hypothesis? Otherwise please leave your strawmen at home.

I did actually say in long-term outcomes, that they were worse off. It's literally a fact. If you were making more money than minimum wage, and minimum wage goes up but yours does not, you will have lower buying power than you did prior. Almost every study on minimum wage has stated this, just that the effects will be very minor, and most skilled jobs will adjust. And again, this is not a reason to not raise minimum wage. It should also not be surprising that if you raise minimum wage, you will have more people making minimum wage.

I'm not even going to try to explain how market forces react different for an unskilled worker vs a highly skilled worker. If you can't see how they're different, then I suggest you need to do more reading.

[Themius]

Can you quote where I said that was my hypothesis? Otherwise please leave your strawmen at home.

I did actually say in long-term outcomes, that they were worse off. It's literally a fact.

Prove this fact.

Nevermind hundreds of economist have disproven this already.

[Endus]

Can you quote where I said that was my hypothesis? Otherwise please leave your strawmen at home.

That's the argument you're defending. It was Krakan's hypothesis, that I was responding to, in the post you quoted to contradict. No straw-man whatsoever. If you weren't defending that hypothesis, then you were the one moving goalposts and not establishing what those new goalposts even were.

I did actually say in long-term outcomes, that they were worse off. It's literally a fact.

You mentioned one short-term anecdote. And then later, when you pointed to the $15/hour minimum wage era, admitted that they still offered higher wages than that, which contradicted your earlier claim regarding the short term, ironically supporting my position.

If you were making more money than minimum wage, and minimum wage goes up but yours does not, you will have lower buying power than you did prior.

You're mis-using "buying power". That's measured against prices and cost of living, not comparatively to other wage-earners.

If before the adjustment, you could buy 20 widgets/week, and others working with you could buy only 15, but after a wage increase, you can now buy 25 widgets/week but your colleagues can now afford 22, your buying power has increased. Definitively. It's measured against how many widgets you can afford with your wage, not how many widgets other people can afford.

Almost every study on minimum wage has stated this, just that the effects will be very minor, and most skilled jobs will adjust. And again, this is not a reason to not raise minimum wage. It should also not be surprising that if you raise minimum wage, you will have more people making minimum wage.

There, a hypothesis.

One that is demonstrably false.



Overall downward trend. Occasional bumps where the minimum wage was bumped (see 1983, 1991, 1997, 2009), but then a downward trend resumes shortly, and averaging those bumps out, the overall trend is still downward.

This is exactly what I meant by you focusing exclusively on short-term effects, and ignoring the long-term.

[Krastyn]

Prove this fact.

Nevermind hundreds of economist have disproven this already.

Hundreds of economists have already proven this. Or did you miss the section on inflation?

[Theodarzna]

i bet you think that since Trumpbots act like this people supporting Biden and Democrats will all do the same.....

Though we did not see this happen during Obama.
Sure there were some zealots but come on even you do not believe the statement that you are making.

I watched as the Liberals transmogrified into NeoCons in just four years time, people are now championing Free Trade regimes and foreign wars and occupations. At the very least I've seen Trump people criticize Trump, I cannot say the same for the Liberals whom only criticize insurgents and defend the party brand and establishment no matter the cost to ones own integrity.

[Krastyn]

That's the argument you're defending. It was Krakan's hypothesis, that I was responding to, in the post you quoted to contradict. No straw-man whatsoever. If you weren't defending that hypothesis, then you were the one moving goalposts and not establishing what those new goalposts even were.

You are talking about Krakan's hypothesis, and I actually quoted your response to Antiganon, who didn't quote Kraken, but his comments on low wage workers barely above minimum, and he at no point in his posting quoted Krakan. So yes, it's still a strawman. You took what I said, decided to add in doctors and lawyers, which I never talked about, and then said because it didn't affect them, what I said was wrong. It's literally a strawman.

You mentioned one short-term anecdote. And then later, when you pointed to the $15/hour minimum wage era, admitted that they still offered higher wages than that, which contradicted your earlier claim regarding the short term, ironically supporting my position.

Prior to any change, they offered $3/hour more than mimimum, or 60% above minimum wage at cap.

Now, they're offering $2/hour more than minimum or 13% above minimum wage at cap.

So as I said before, relative to minimum wage a capped employing is worse off both in relative or absolute terms. In other words, their income did not scale with the rise in minimum wage. Which was the entire point.

You're mis-using "buying power". That's measured against prices and cost of living, not comparatively to other wage-earners.

If before the adjustment, you could buy 20 widgets/week, and others working with you could buy only 15, but after a wage increase, you can now buy 25 widgets/week but your colleagues can now afford 22, your buying power has increased. Definitively. It's measured against how many widgets you can afford with your wage, not how many widgets other people can afford.

And you're again, completely not understanding what people are telling you. Because you're assuming that persons wage went up. If you actually read and understood what I said, your example would have been:

Before the adjustment I could buy 20 widgets / week, and my colleagues could by 15. After the change I can now buy 19 widgets per week, because the cost of widgets went up due to the increased cost of production, while my wage did not change. My colleagues can now buy 17 with their increase in wage.

There, a hypothesis.

Overall downward trend. Occasional bumps where the minimum wage was bumped (see 1983, 1991, 1997, 2009), but then a downward trend resumes shortly, and averaging those bumps out, the overall trend is still downward.

This is exactly what I meant by you focusing exclusively on short-term effects, and ignoring the long-term.

Man, talk about picking a biased, garbage source to try and prove me wrong. Giving me a graph about how in the US that the percentage of people making the federal minimum wage has gone down is useless. By 2013 (where your graph ends), at least 20 states had minimum wages that were above the federal level. Of course the number is going to go down if states move the number higher. It doesn't change the fact though, that those people are still making the minimum.

Your graph also doesn't show whether the decrease because people started making more money, or those jobs were simply offshored.

I'll counter with some data a little closer to home for you, here.

And quote one of the highlights:

Between 1998 and 2018, the proportion of employees earning minimum wage grew from 5.2% to 10.4%, with most of that growth occurring between 2017 and 2018. This coincided with notable minimum wage increases in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

I believe that data says my hypothesis is demonstrably true.

[Felya]

I watched as the Liberals transmogrified into NeoCons in just four years time, people are now championing Free Trade regimes and foreign wars and occupations. At the very least I've seen Trump people criticize Trump, I cannot say the same for the Liberals whom only criticize insurgents and defend the party brand and establishment no matter the cost to ones own integrity.

The same liberals that want a peace treaty with Iran? The same liberals that Trump vetoed denying him the same war powers Bush got towards Iraq? Also, a reminder, you posted a defense of Dick Chainy, while defending Flynn as the greatest injustice in US history. How you like him being pardoned?

You have seen Trump supporters criticize Trump? The same 80% who think he won the election by a land slide? Present it... show us Trump supporter saying anything negative about Trump.

@Jettisawn Theo just claimed you don’t exist... lol

[Zan15]

I watched as the Liberals transmogrified into NeoCons in just four years time, people are now championing Free Trade regimes and foreign wars and occupations. At the very least I've seen Trump people criticize Trump, I cannot say the same for the Liberals whom only criticize insurgents and defend the party brand and establishment no matter the cost to ones own integrity.

gaghahahhhahah, trump people criticize trump? what we up to a dozen republican leaders who even said poo about the election debacle.
damn you really think that then your total view is distorted and nothing you say can be taken serious.

[Antiganon]

So was I, "doctors" is a stand in for most professions ranging from the minimum to around the upper-middle level of income in terms of upward push from minimum wage increases without specific provisions.

Again, the "it doesn't help most workers" line is a myth that isn't supported by any historical evidence ever and has been thrown around in opposition to minimum wage increases for years despite that.

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One day I would really like to be able to talk about a given government policy without Americans insisting the wheel needs to be reinvented because they think being uniquely immersed in historical disinformation is "exceptionalism".

Then why did you say doctors, if that's not what you meant?

Doctors make a comfortable salary and have nothing to fear from a minimum wage increase. Nor does anyone else for that matter, but speaking as a person who started in retail at $7.10/ hour, getting a $0.25 raise after working my ass off for a year and taking on extra responsibilities to make it happen, then having minimum wage increase by $0.25, and new hires who put in zero extra effort make the same as me, it was demoralizing and killed any desire to excel.

Again, I'm not advocating against a minimum wage increase or anything along those lines. Nor am I making an argument about prices raising along with wages. I'm talking about the demoralizing effect of a wage increase that applies to everyone in your place of work making less than you, but not you, because you were BARELY above the old minimum wage, you got there thru hard work and dedication, and everyone else just coasted and eventually got the same rate increase anyway.

[unfilteredJW]

I watched as the Liberals transmogrified into NeoCons in just four years time, people are now championing Free Trade regimes and foreign wars and occupations. At the very least I've seen Trump people criticize Trump, I cannot say the same for the Liberals whom only criticize insurgents and defend the party brand and establishment no matter the cost to ones own integrity.

This is a lie and can be summarily dismissed.

[Felya]

This is a lie and can be summarily dismissed.

Parlor is having a meltdown over ‘write in Trump in the GA special election’... but, it’s democrats that can’t see any faults in Biden...

A NYC oligarch, billionaire, with business all over the world... that is fighting for the working class, against globalization... gets questioned by his supporters as he sends hundreds of emails and texts since the election, demanding money. A billionaire demanding money... but, it’s liberals that don’t question Biden...

There is a fight between progressive and justice democrats, while republicans fight who can kiss Trump’s ass faster, but democrats don’t question Biden...

Tim Pool has an excuse for his smooth brain... there is no excuse for anyone to copy him.

[Theodarzna]

gaghahahhhahah, trump people criticize trump? what we up to a dozen republican leaders who even said poo about the election debacle.
damn you really think that then your total view is distorted and nothing you say can be taken serious.

In media, I'd say Tucker Carlson saying this stolen election stuff is nonsense is a good example that I can point that happened within the last five weeks.

However, a good example of what lapdogs the Liberals have become is with their ever shifting attitudes on Julian Assange, Whistleblowers, Chelsey Manning, Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald. I can recall when he was this hero of great regard by the MSNBC crew, now he is a villain despite having not shifted an inch.

[Cthulhu 2020]

What the hell does that have to do with anything I said? The fuck? Where was I even talking about Liberalism? What the fuck does it matter whether a town is 'liberal' or 'conservative'? Is it a choice what town you're born in now?


I mean, sure, big bussineses trive in liberal countries, but that had nothing to do with my point of how not everybody has a choice to what store they shop at. You can believe in the free market all you want, but it does always work like you think it does.

You were trying to call out people for being hypocrites, that they shop at Wal Mart while speaking out against it. And yet the most vocal antagonists of wal mart are liberals. Seriously dude, you're trying way too hard to pin the hypocrite tag on anyone and it's not working out for you.