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Even The Feds Admit Minimum Wages Cause Unemployment
Submitted by Nicholas Freiling via The Ludwig von Mises Institute,
Minimum wage doesn’t apply to everyone.
When Congress first established minimum wage in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, it left a loophole for businesses that employ people with disabilities.
The Secretary, to the extent necessary to prevent curtailment of opportunities for employment, shall by regulation or order provide for the employment, under special certificates, of individuals ... whose earning or productive capacity is impaired by age, physical or mental deficiency, or injury, at wages which are lower than the minimum wage.
These special certificates are known today as 14(c) permits, and thousands of employers have one. Some studies claim that more than 300,000 Americans work for subminimum wage under the auspices of such permits.
This isn’t well known. Advocates of minimum wage often base their support for the measure on ethical grounds, claiming that all workers deserve a degree of compensation regardless of their productivity. Such was the reasoning of Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who raised his city’s minimum wage last week to the unprecedented level of $15 per hour under the guise of “equal access and opportunity for all.”
Yet minimum wage advocates rarely address the issue of minimum wage exemptions. If minimum wage is supposed to help those who otherwise would not earn a “living wage,” why exempt people with disabilities — often the least productive of us all?
Ironically, Congress presumes the answer to this question is in the minimum wage legislation itself, undermining its logic in the process.
When Congress passed the 14(c) exemption along with minimum wage in 1938, they did so, as quoted above, “to prevent curtailment of opportunities for employment” of people with disabilities. The authors of the bill understood that minimum wage leads to unemployment for those “whose earning or productive capacity is impaired.” So in order to avoid the negative publicity associated with putting people with disabilities out of work, they exempted such people from minimum wage.
But this begs a question. If people with disabilities are exempt from minimum wage because their earning capacity is impaired and finding employment might otherwise be impossible, why don’t people without disabilities whose earning capacity is equally low also qualify for an exemption?
Admittedly, this question is opposite of that asked by most people who are aware of the 14(c) exemption. Where the exemption is known, it’s often derided as an act of discrimination against people with disabilities — not everyone else.
But as economists have shown, minimum wage doesn’t help the lower class. It prohibits employers from hiring anyone whose earning or productive capacity is below the enforced minimum hourly wage, creating permanent unemployment among the least productive people. As economist Murray Rothbard noted, “laws that prohibit employment at any wage that is relevant to the market must result in outlawing employment and hence causing unemployment.”
So by exempting people with disabilities from minimum wage, Congress actually discriminates against the non-disabled — those who cannot work under the auspices of a 14(c) permit — and favors people with disabilities.
But of course, if Congress intends minimum wage law to be effective toward its end of ensuring no one works for less than the specified hourly wage, this couldn’t be otherwise. If everyone were exempted who could not find work at the going minimum wage, minimum wage would be pointless and ineffective. On the other hand, if no one were exempted and everyone subject to the same minimum wage law regardless of physical condition, people with disabilities would be hard pressed to find work and many of them would sadly become unemployable.
It’s a sticky situation. By continuing to exempt people with disabilities from minimum wage, Congress reveals its implicit awareness of minimum wage’s negative effects on the least productive people. Yet to end all exemptions means to disadvantage people with disabilities in the workplace who already have a hard enough time finding work. Finally, to repeal minimum wage altogether and allow everyone to negotiate wages freely would mean to admit a seventy-five-year long mistake that harmed thousands, if not millions, of unskilled laborers over the past half-century who found themselves unemployed at some time or another.
The 14(c) exemption for people with disabilities reveals the brokenness of minimum wage law. It makes the policy all the more heinous, as lawmakers insist on enforcing, and even strengthening, such laws while exhibiting their full awareness of how it harms the least productive people. Nevertheless, ending the 14(c) exemption will do more harm than good. Instead, the exemption should apply to everyone — with or without a disability — who cannot find work in the current minimum wage environment. Only then will Congress, to use its own words, “prevent the curtailment of opportunities for employment” for everyone who wants to work.
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unemployment for americans-- yes, but higher wages for illegals capturing all their jobs.
they'll sit on the corners and demand $10 over min. now!
and under the table!!! no tax revenues WTF2
WTF
Nobody's higher minimum wage ever helped anybody get a job.
I say pay Prezbo & Congress under 14(c) exemption.
They're clearly worth every penny ;-)
This article is bullshit. The productivity of disabled people is low, that's why the lesser wage. The productivity of non-disabled people is higher, thus the higher wage. Simple as that. It's one thing to underpay a disabled worker who can produce only 1 widget per hour, but where is the justification to underpay the non-disabled worker who is making 100 widgets per hour? That is simply exploitation.
The real message in this bullshit article is that people on minimum wage don't work hard. Quite the opposite of reality.
Well said.
Einstein reportedly said that two things were infinite: the Universe and human stupidity.
I would add: human ruthlessness, human predation, and economists' bullshit.
I would add: human ruthlessness, human predation, and economists' bullshit.
Human ruthlessness doesn't enter into it really, pure human stupidity all the way. Those who think there is a collective (oh gawd!! COLLECTIVE!!) benefit in paying a few people a lot and paying the majority a pittance are wrong now and have been wrong since the dawn of man.
Seriously, do people have no gawddamn sense or what? Economic world is collapsing in on itself as income inequality reaches astronomical levels. Connection?? Rights going out the window as middle class shrinks? Connection??
Why does a middle class even exist??? When did it not exist?? Zh'ers are so dense on this issue (and many others) it's mind boggling. Particularly when most zh'ers seem to be on the lower (to lowest) end of the economic spectrum
Especially exasperating is Americans, who live in perhaps the most price controlled nation on earth and then pretend that there are open markets for things like labour. Any of them notice that US obsessively controls the price of oil.....and that almost everything is priced relative to oil???
If US didn't control oil, labour wages there would be SHIT, like Bangladesh shit. But i guess that's just the market lol Trending in that direction as us loses grasp of black gold I might add.
The article is not bullshit, merely your narrow perception of it is. I suspect either you have not actually read it or your reading comprehension is horrible.
The point is that having a lower minimum wage for less productive people defeats the purpose of having any minimum wage in the first place, in the same way that a mailing someone a letter saying that the post office does not exist makes no sense.
The conclusion is that the minimum wage concept as a whole is internally inconsistent and thus should be discontinued. It has nothing to do with how hard anyone works, nor would it, because the labor theory of value was debunked hundreds of years ago.
Our President, Barry, answers this question by being employed.
i genuinely hope every seattle fastfood worker gets replaced by a retard.
looking for a job ?
Uh-huh-huh-huh...you said retard beavis
How would you tell?
Minimum wage is for taxing purposes only. Why doesn't anybody ever mention that? Why do so many people try to make it so complicated?
Complicated - Avril Lavigne - Lyrics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzzkuVJCFQI (4:05)
Beatles Cartoon - Taxman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hYpAYWqiwo (5:19)
The Stooges - I wanna be your dog (1969)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwmU343eBu0 (3:08)
my rent is $500 per month.
how many hours must i work if minimum wage laws are repealed and i receive $1 per hour?
500 hours x $1 per hour = $500
500 hours / 4 weeks per month = 125 hours per week
let's repeal the 40 hour work week as well....
someday a "von mises" will be fondly used as a epitaph for extreme buffoonery.
"dude! did you pull that von mises outta your ass? dude!"
Ah yes, snarky insults, the last bastion of the fool without a real argument.
How do you reconcile your world view with the fact of reality that the average wage is and always has been well above the prevailing minimum wage in any nation that has a minimum wage? You can't, because the scenario you painted above is impossible. If there is so much downward pressure on your wage that it could fall to $1/hr, it would simply not exist in an environment with a minimum wage, and you'd never get employed in the first place.
You simply cannot talk about economic issues without consuidering supply and demand, unless you want anyone with a shred of knowledge to instantly dismiss you as a fool.
another relevant question: why don't people see minimum wage as a price control like any other commodity subsidy that we're introduced to in 10th grade economics? Dairy products, corn, sugar, labor. everyone knows the supply-demand dynamics of products that fall under a price control regime, but once you start talking about 'labor' it's somehow, and suddenly, different.
You don't understand the difference between people and commodities?
Spoken like a shit-for-brains economist. Or a psychopath.
People are commodities, have you learnt nothing from this administration?
sumo You don't understand the difference between people and commodities?
Spoken like a shit-for-brains economist. Or a psychopath.
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Rootin' for Putin People are commodities, have you learnt nothing from this administration?
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Probably the better way to put it is that labor is a commodity. And sumo is shit for brains.
good god, sumo. have you ever worked at a for-profit organization in your life? or taken a course in accounting? i'm not talking metaphysics, i'm talking business.
what's the difference between labor at Lennar and labor at Habitat for Humanity?
what unfortunately uneducated folks like yourself fail to grasp because of your ignorance is that "the provision of labor" is a commodity, not people themselves. jesus, man. get a hold on that wild imagination.
in the tree-huggin fervor with which you projected your assumptions on me, it didn't even dawn on you that people can say "at that wage i choose not to work" or "at that wage I choose not to hire anyone."
now grab your canvas bag and stew on that while you shop at Whole Foods with your bleeding heart prius-driving friends.
edit: it dawned on me that you must be little travelled American. A Saudi princeling I went to school with actually told me this once during a discussion of the global sex trade: "you Americans, you value life more highly than the rest of the world." if you've never met anyone who would burst your 'people are not commodities' bubble by literally buying a person (for a while or indefinitely), you need to open your eyes to the realities of the world.
This may very well be the dumbest article that I've ever read. Not only should the disabled be entitled to at least minimum wage, so too should restaurant workers such as servers.
If nothing is required of businesses, there will be an even greater gap between the rich and poor. As it is, companies get tax breaks (aka "business incentives") from every U.S. state and don't create jobs in exchange for that corporate welfare.
To make matters worse, more and more companies are running ads for unpaid interns. There's simply an unwillingness to pay anyone. There's also a desire on the part of big business to bring back slavery, as is shown in the recent article about supermarkets selling shrimp that was harvested through the use of slaves.
So, please spare me the pro-business crap about how fair pay is bad for working-class people.
What makes you think you are qualified to determine what "fair" is? Not a dig, but a sincere inquiry. I once had this debate with a college ECON professor. He has never operated a business, much less made a payroll, but I digress. I guess we really are the sum of our experiences.
Bingo. The only people that can efficiently determine a "fair" wage is the person selling their labor and the person buying the labor. If I want to sell my unskilled labor for 2$/hour recogonizing that in addition to my wage I am getting an education in a career I want to pursue...so be it. Leave it to our "all knowing" leaders to take that opportunity away from me.
Guess my only option is to go 6 figures into debt to get a useless college degree.
Thats the plan their banking masters want you to follow.
When you increase labor wage, who absorbs the cost of goods increase? If your customers refuse to buy the product, what happens to your company? Do you think a fucking unicorn will fly by and bailout the business? Think again.
Atomizer you are correct, except.......if you are favorite of the political class (GM is alive!) and then unicorns do seem to be alive and shit cash all over the place for the privileged few.
Well aware that you know this and your comment is talking about the little folks.
This is hands-down the dumbest comment I've ever read on ZH.
That's a lot of damn words merely to say "I'm dumb enough to believe two wrongs make a right."
Aaaaaaaand...
"I have no basic understanding of the ramifications of living in a world of scarcity."
I did appreciate how your "rebuttal" totally ignored the arguments of the article, instead focusing on another subject entirely.
Which, of course, is the hallmark of the evil of politics.
Either educate yourself, shut the fuck up, or go to fucking HuffPo (or some other site where your idiocy might be appreciated). All you're doing here is displaying your ignorance, and a lack of humanity wrapped in "good intentions."
Dot....
Dumb and getting dumber… And I did own a business.
Anyway, below is the link for the ‘Magnus Opus’ about this issue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u067PRj_Qy0
dot_bust This may very well be the dumbest article that I've ever read. Not only should the disabled be entitled to at least minimum wage, so too should restaurant workers such as servers.
If nothing is required of businesses, there will be an even greater gap between the rich and poor. As it is, companies get tax breaks (aka "business incentives") from every U.S. state and don't create jobs in exchange for that corporate welfare.
To make matters worse, more and more companies are running ads for unpaid interns. There's simply an unwillingness to pay anyone. There's also a desire on the part of big business to bring back slavery, as is shown in the recent article about supermarkets selling shrimp that was harvested through the use of slaves.
So, please spare me the pro-business crap about how fair pay is bad for working-class people.
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The only thing you are entitled to is a kick in the ass. You are cannon fodder for the reset.
Don't they already employ retards in Washington D.C.? Full pay, health care and other benefits.
"Minimum wages cause unemployment"
Yeah because it starts cutting into executive pay so they stop hiring. If their were a concomitant reduction in overall exec pay for every increase in workers wages the company wouldn't feel a thing. This would have a positive effect on production but it's neva gunna happen.
In a world without the Fed, or the federal government providing protection, NONE of the massively overpaid CEOs would have the opportunity granted them by the evil-doers known as voters.
As I ask people constantly, "If I have a magic checkbook, what can I not corrupt?"
Dot_bust...With respect.
I operate a small business, very small, 2 employees both with me for ten years plus. They know that the customer comes first, without the customer we close the doors. Both of them have families and I care about that.
If some government official r aises the minimum wage it doesn't affect us directly as they both EARN far more than that. It will however affect the number of times they frequent the establishments that will have to raise their prices to meet expenses, maybe not Microsoft but sure as hell the LOCAL pizza joint. I HAVE to make payroll and rent if I don't there is no bailout for me. It seems to me that this will develop into nothing more than more taxes for more central control. Not bitchen just watchin.
People are now
lucky and rich
unlucky and poor
Or an evil capitalist trying to go out and make a dirty buck
Of course there is the last group, those doing quite well for themselves, robbing the evil capitalists in the name of the poor.
In a free market, one unobstructed by monopoly, a person could have a business and pay whatever he wishes, but so could his neighbor, thereby functioning as a market and ensuring that most would receive the maximum value for their labor. Our laws were supposed to be set up to eliminate or at least minimize monopoly. What we see instead is nothing but. Anyone who would want to start a business has an uphill climb for sure, with not much promise of profit. Look at those business making money today. It seems most are doing so by cutting employees and buying market share to eliminate competition. Competition is the thing that makes it all work and when you eliminate that, you have nothing but destruction. Workers are harmed and eventually their employers are as well, and we see what we have now with more and more mergers, larger and larger businesses, and fewer opportunities of entry into any market unless you just happen to invent it yourself.
There it is, once we fix this 14c exemption it will be off to the races.
The real problem seems to me to be what are low wage workers alternative options? Try opening a lemonade stand to get the point.
I say Minimum wages don't cause unemployment, who you rather believe me or the feds ?
The only thing minimum wages have accomplished is replacing American jobs with automation or illegal aliens. We are preached to that OUR jobs are not good enough, that we should refuse the wages offered and instead turn our job over to an illegal or a machine, while we go home and wait of our debit card to arrive. The utopian road to hell.
dumbStruck I say Minimum wages don't cause unemployment, who you rather believe me or the feds ?
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Then why not pay burger flippers $100/hour? You certainly are dumbstruck.
$100 an hour , strawman arguement, I said minumum wage not maximum wage. Cesspool, good handle for you.
You now get paid nothing. Thank you for playing. Jerk
Anybody besides me ever work for minimum wage ?
After a day or week, you are either given a raise, given a lecture, or shown the door.
I have.
Its a great incentive to learn something that someone will pay you more than a minimum wage. A side benefit is, if you stay and work your way "up the ranks" so to speak, YOU get to walk out on them.
And if you become indispensable to them its even better and if you time it just right, you get the added satisfaction watching them squirm and go into an epileptic fits trying to replace you on-the-fly when you split.
Yes, its very sweet...and cold...and just business ;-)
I once (1980's) worked at a restaurant for over 4 years making minimum wage. By year 4 (age 20), I was the assistant manager....and still making minimum wage! Needless to say that was a dead end hole, and I was in college (working my way through), but you get my point. If they do not have to pay more, they will not, and you are fooling yourself if you think otherwise.
Today, there are even fewer opportunities to work your way up the business employment ladder. Young folks sure have received the shaft, and times are worse.
They were traditionally referred to as "entry Level" jobs. You were given a chance to work at a "minimal" wage while you showed your ability to produce greater value. If competition existed and your employer didn't come through, you left to give another a shot, usually at a slightly higher wage, again proving yourself.
Question, in all of your interactions with others, how many of them would you be willing to hire with money out of your own pocket? How many of them showed any intelligence or were even engaging? So many I see are like automatons, barely functioning, almost brain dead. Go to a county office and try and work with those folks and see how many appear to be do anything beyond their absolute minimum?
Sure there are hard working people but most are NOT working minimum wage. Yes, everyone's wages suck now, including most small business people. We have seen little we could call a recovery and if lucky maybe an occasional good month.
Until we can get the monopoly of government off our back, not just their regulations and taxes, but their crony relationships with business that corrupt the market place, no one will see their circumstances improve, and while a minimum wage increase may not spell the end of things, it will overall only add to our problems.
But we can keep wishing upon a star, the Obama system maybe, and see how it works out.
We know competition works, we have seen it. Its not perfect, as nothing is except in fairy tales. All of the economic pipe dreams of some capitalist/socialist hybrid are unproven and dangerous, especially in a time of real crisis. A crisis to big to waste.
That tradition has gone not the window. Today, millions of people work for less than $10 per hour. If these people were paid more, demand for gods and services would increase.
I started my first job after school when I was 12 years old.
I started at minimum wage - but after a month I got a raise -
I have not worked a minimum wage job since.
How / why does a 12 year old getting an after school minimum wage job - and after a month getting a raise deserve a down arrow?
I can only guess that the folks doing the down arrow junking have never been able to get a job that pays more than minimum wage.
Minimum wage causes illegal immigration of unskilled thugs who rape, plunder, murder, live 20 to a hovel and send their earnings home where they will live like kings when they are deported, until they return.
FUCK YOU JERRY.
YOU TOO, KATHLEEN.
First of all the word deserve needs to be stricken from the English language. I truly despise that term as it is usually used by someone begging for something they haven't EARNED. It fits right up there with entitled. And useless.
That aside this whole minimum wage argument shouldn't even be debated. It is yet another government implemented means of control that will inevitably fail, due to the fact that you can not override the natural tendencies of our societal structure. Forcing people into agreements they do not support will never work. Awarding those who haven't earned it in the first place is equally destructive. This has shitbomb written all over it.
The bigger issue as far as I'm concerned is the difficultly one has in receiving fair compensation for a hard days work. There is a massive disconnect between a current days labour and the current compensation offered as such. There was a time as a young man, that I (unknowingly as it were) supported free market capitalism. I believed that if I was to work hard, produce results and continue to advance my skills then I would never want for anything.
Bring in the slap to the face of reality!! As it turns out, that is not the scenario that would unfold. In today's work force, the first amount of your hard work usually goes into taking up the slack of your co-workers. It does seem lost on most people what it means to be paid a days wage. Minimum wage really works this one into the mold. Secondly, it becomes expected from your employer that once you have shown the ability to go above and beyond that you will continue to do so. I suppose it is understandable as in today's profit driven world, who wouldn't want an obedient wage slave willing to go the extra mile. Especially when the bottom line is showing increased profits. How easy it is to overlook the those who are down in the trenches when one is riding high on the horse of increased productivity. After all it is upper managements insight that has provided this added value now isn't it?
The conclusion is that without POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT to send the message that yes, it is recognized when an individual has put forth a increased effort, and that yes, one will be rewarded for improving the production in their work space, not only to those that are making an attempt, but also to those that are not, you simply won't inspire people to make a conscientious effort to improve. Unfortunately the politicians are taking the lead on this one as opposed to the free market "capitalizers". ahem.
There is no solution that includes the terms;
working harder
stop borrowing
living within your means
competition
Hence the necessity for positive reinforcement. The terms you have mentioned do nothing to inspire. Without inspiration you've got a zombie nation going through the motions, begging thy neighbour to get ahead. And politicians making a career appeasing them.
Until the uber wealthy begin to see the balance of our social structure as needing serious realignment, we will be doom with a lacklustre workforce.
This issue isn't getting fixed from the bottom
Hey hey!!
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QY2iKzm62AM
The root of the problem is that a business, unlike the government, can't force their customers to pay the resulting higher prices.
Business tends to hire the best they can get for their wage dollar and when faced with higher costs has to find ways to reduce the amount of labour or cut somewhere else.... Government rarely faces the same dynamics because the just budget for higher taxes
Raising minimum wage tends to reduce the opportunities for folks who are looking for entry level positions
The folks who state that raising minimum wage is good tend to come from academic, union or government backgrounds where they never have had to try to make a payroll.
My best staff earn the most and if I don't pay them fairly they move on.
I would love to pay my staff more... but I am tired of watching my customers complain about higher prices and then go line up at costco
The debate is specious. We live in Oz, where money is created at the whim of the banksters, perverting all exchange. They need inflation to keep the ponzi going, and this is one method to push prices up. Unskilled labor is getting killed under these circumstances with the employer pocketing the difference. We have no free markets, which means we have no free men, and there is no honest exchange of wages and labor. The debate is specious so reading this article is a waste of time.
Well said. It is a standard script prepared by servile shit-for-brains economists sucking up to Oligarchs. It is intended to distract the "little people" from what is going on.
If TV and iShit don't work, distract them with "economics" which is as reliable and insightful as astrology.
If minimum wages are unfair, why don't YOU work for ten cents an hour and help make everyone else rich ?
By the way, as from July the 1st the minimum wage in Australia will be $16.87 an hour. And our unemployment rate is half that in the USA.
Low wages aren't the answer. That's where China is.
Keep in mind that $16.87 is the rate for a permanent, whether full or part time. Then you have 25% loading casual rate, as much as 2.5 times that rate for working on public holidays, 2x for Sunday work, 1.5x for Saturday work. My wife works as a cleaner in the Adelaide CBD. Recently she showed me a pay-slip. There were three holidays in it, Good Friday, Easter Monday and ANZAC Day. For those days she was paid at 2.5 times normal pay of just on $22 an hour. So she got $55 an hour. So add another 8% for the holiday pay she will get added from this sum (4 weeks annual leave) and add another 12% for superannuation the employer must now contribute. A couple of percent at least for the sick day entitlements, and we are talking real money. By my sums, that totals to over AU$67 per hour, or more than US$62.50.
My second job was as a storeman with a big company that had me busting my guts as a 16 and 17 year old for less than half of the wages of an adult. As much as my foreman tried to get me a fairer wage, the company refused and kept me on minimum wage. After 18 months I quit. The same job was then taken by adults, one was soon found to be no where near enough, and so from that point on for at least the following 5 years they had two adults doing the exact same job. So they were now paying over four times the wages they once had to pay me. No doubt if there was no minimum wage, these greedy parasites would have done their best to pay me a lot less.
My first job was selling Mexican weed. My second job was selling Columbian cocaine. My third job was making desks for Prison Industries at .88 cents hour. I did get room and board as part of compensation with the third job but the housing was cramp and no available women anywhere. My fourth job has been making sure I never do the third job again.
Minimum wage increase will cause wage inflation. Fed does not want this.
Y'know... you guys always sound like what you want is to go back to the 1950s. Well fine: in the '50s it was possible for a single unskilled laborer To feed and house a family. This was a defining characteristic of the large American middle class everyone seems so proud of. You want that back? You either blow up another debt bubble, or you bring inflation-adjusted wages back to pre-1970 levels.
"or you bring inflation-adjusted wages back to pre-1970 levels."
We have that now. That's the point. Look of graph 13 from this report by John Williams:
http://www.shadowstats.com/article/no-445-special-commentary-review-of-economic-systemic-solvency-inflation-us-dollar-and-gold-circumstances
Mainstream economists lie about everything, even the rate of inflation. Gov keeps changing the method of calculation, to keep you quiet and distracted, and economists go along.
Do you understand? You've been conned. You're arguing for the very people who prey on you. You follow their fucking script like a good little sheep. They frame the arguments the way they want, they fake the numbers, and you buy into it.
sumo "or you bring inflation-adjusted wages back to pre-1970 levels."
We have that now. That's the point. Look of graph 13 from this report by John Williams:
http://www.shadowstats.com/article/no-445-special-commentary-review-of-economic-systemic-solvency-inflation-us-dollar-and-gold-circumstances
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You need to look over your data and your logic better. The chart 13 is weekly earnings. But that can be effected be deflation.
That does not jive with chart graph 24, Inflation Corrected Real GDP or graph 29, Inflation Corrected Retail Sales. Both of those charts are below the year 2000.
wierd reverse dup. See below.
You anti-minimum-raise haters drive me batshit crazy. Do a little little research. This is ZH goddammit I thought you were smarter than that. The minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, since the 70s, should be about 12 bucks an hour. Astronomically more important than this is the disparity between the wages of CEOs of companies and the bottom rung employees on the ladder. In the late 70s the average CEO made about 26 times the amount of the entry level guy. Today he makes over 200 to 700 times that much money depending on which industry you look at.
This is just another example of the rich gutting the middle class. Minimum wage is trashed so they can make more profts for the shareholders. Increasing the minimum wage would mean corporate America's top of the top would maybe have to sell off one of their vacation homes in Cancun since they'd have to take a cut to pay an equitable amount to the slaves who make them rich.
Here's just one link to my stats above, though there are many more if you bother to look;
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/14-1
Meet your minimum wage competition, Baxter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXOkWuSCkRI
He is too dumb to strike. He is really,really dumb.
He will become as intelligent as a human, briefly. Then he will be your boss.
I can comment on this because I work at a company that uses the 14c exemption. What the author and the national Federaltion of the Blind don't understand is that a "commensurate minimum wage" is what is allowed by the 14c, in other words, you are paid based on what you can produce, compared to what a "normal" person can produce.
14c workers have to be time studied twice a year and companies have to do yearly comparisons of like companies and their wages to find out what the industry is paying people in that local. If a person can produce 25% of what a "normal" average is, they are paid 25% of the industry wage! Now, here's where it gets hairy. If a company has to employ EVERYONE at minimum wage, why would they hire four people at minimum when they can get a single person at minimum who is "normal"? Gee, 1 person at 100% capability and pay or 4 people at 25% capability and 4 times the pay!
14c doesn't give the company an unfair advantage, we have to employ 2-4 times the number of people a normal business would to accomplish the same amount of work. But these are folks who otherwise couldn't hold a "competitive job" in the outside world. Yet here they get steady work, steady pay, a sense of accomplishment and paid vacations! My best workers are the developmentally disabled who come to work every day and do their job. You're lucky if your "normal" staff shows up with a 90% attendance record.
Maybe we should time study "normal" people and pay them based on what they actually produce! Naw, that would drive the unemployment rate to new highs, especially among government workers
Austrian School economists care nothing for your facts!
They reject the Scientific Method in favor of "praxeology".
In the words of Ludwig von Mises himself:
Mises liked to try and baffle with bullshit and his disciples faithfully maintain tradition. Cut through the verbal masturbation though and the true Austrian School colors are clear to see: they are theologists who reject science yet demand to be considered as scientists.
Their belief system states that whatever they (of self-professed superior intellects) believe to be true IS true and where evidence suggests otherwise, that evidence is to be ignored (very Ayn Rand-like).
Here's an example of the evidence these guys flat out ignore in favor of their own beliefs: http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02.pdf
Evidence that clearly calls bullshit on the Austrian claims that a raised minimum wage is such a bad thing. Never mind the influence of a continual current account deficit that is always ignored by these clowns as paying attention to it wouldn't serve the interests of their employers.
Dig into the Austrian School theology and it's little more than "get your stinkin' hands off my stash", funded by the globalist neoliberal 1% and supported by legions of useful idiots who resonate with the vibe without realizing how they're being screwed via the back door.
Both Hayek and Mises were present at the birth of the Beast: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloque_Walter_Lippmann
double post
Minimum wage is a farce, the nominal min wage is $0. The welfare adjusted min wage is -$15/hr. The min wage is part of the welfare system.
Take WalMart as an example, their profit was $19B and the taxpayer spent $40B providing welfare to their employees. The only way they are profitable is by putting a large burden on the taxpayer. If the welfare system did not subsidize WalMart, they would have to pay a better wage.
The welfare system had to be created immediately after the minimum wage to hide it's negative effects. Before the min wage and welfare, this country created the largest middle class the world has ever seen.
The burger-flipper myth: I often hear a myth that goes like this, the min wage is not inflationary because the marginal cost of paying the burger-flipper is small compared to burger output, (i.e. an increase of $3/hr only equals $.03/burger).
It takes 2000 people to make a burger, follow me:
We're close to 800 and we haven't yet baked the bun. Are you starting to see how inflationary price fixing is to wages.
If you support a 25% increase in the minimum wage, try tipping every person you encounter 25%. The gal at the grocery store, the gas station, your dry cleaner. Report back in a week and let us know if it is inflationary.