This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Majorities In Several States Vote To Punish Low-Skill Workers
Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Economic Blog,
My anti-democracy critics will shake their heads in dismay at me, but I’ve been forced to come to the conclusion that there’s no reason to believe that plebiscitary democracy is any worse than the usual kind. Indeed, in American states that must hold plebiscites to authorize tax increases, one hears regular howls from the pro-tax crowd about how “direct democracy” is awful and that “representative democracy” is so much better. There’s even this federal lawsuit by pro-tax groups claiming that Colorado’s requirement that voters approve tax increases is unconstitutional. In other words, those who favor tax increases hate voter referendums and initiatives. Internationally, of course, there are the secession votes and the upcoming vote on gold in Switzerland. I have a hard time coming up with a reason why such things are comparatively bad (compared to an alternative in which everything is up to the elected elites).
That said, the news isn’t always good with such voter-approved measures. A majority of voters in four states voted to raise the minimum wage:
If there was upsets and contention in much of midterm voting, there was one topic on which the electorate was largely united: raising the minimum wage. Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota all had ballot measures on raising state minimum wages above both their current levels and the federal $7.25 an hour figure.
All four states passed the measures, most by significant margins. More than two-thirds of voters in Alaska agreed to raise minimum wage to $9.75 by 2016. Sixty-five percent of Arkansas voters set the state on course to adopt an $8.50 figure by 2017. In Nebraska, 59 percent said the number should be $9 an hour by 2016. Only South Dakota stood out with a slimmer margin; 53 percent voted to raise minimum wage to $8.50 an hour next year. In Alaska and South Dakota, minimum wage is now pegged to inflation, meaning that it will rise as the cost of living does.
What these voters said with their votes was “I’m in favor of making it illegal for people with low productivity to get a job. Teenagers, people who were poorly educated by failing public schools, people who have never had a job, and people who are not very intelligent, should all just stay home and do nothing because we want to make sure that no one can afford to hire those people.”
Wages are a reflection of the worker’s productivity. When wages increase (assuming a relatively-free market) it is because the worker’s productivity has increased, either because of improved capital (such as better equipment) or because the worker himself has improved (e.g., through more experience).
An employer simply cannot afford to pay an employee something above and beyond what the worker produces for the company. If he does, then the wage is generally being subsidized by the other workers who must now earn less than their level of productivity indicates, because some of that must go to pay the employees who are money-losers.
In practice, the overwhelming effect is this: employers don’t hire low-productivity workers whose productivity is below the minimum wage, and in many cases will simply replace workers with capital (i.e., automated cashiers, etc.) which have been made relatively economical by the increase in the price floor. The federal government itself admits this employment effect, since it has included a loophole in the minimum wage in its own regulations for disabled workers. Early progressives also assumed it would cause unemployment, which they thought was a good thing.
Increasing a minimum wage is a death sentence for the careers of the most “at-risk” members of the population (to use a phrase favored by the left). They will have to earn money under the table (i.e., illegally), work in an unpaid-internship, or simply go on welfare.
Meanwhile, detractors of free markets will say “gee, look, the employment rate looks just fine in NE, SD, etc.” Ken Zahringer explains.
* * *
Still not convinced? Numerous Mises Daily writers have covered this topic, of course. For more, see:
How Minimum Wage Laws Increase Poverty – George Reisman
The Crippling Nature of Minimum-Wage Laws – Murray N. Rothbard
Welfare, Minimum Wages, and Unemployment – Greg Morin
Even the Feds Admit Minimum Wages Cause Unemployment by Nioholas Freiling
How Special-Interest Groups Benefit from Minimum Wage Laws by Gary Galles
Mythology of the Minimum Wage - D.W. MacKenzie
The Unseen Costs of the Minimum Wage - Josh Grossman
The Minimum Wage Forces Low-Skill Workers to Compete with Higher-Skill Workers – George Reisman
»
- 15815 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
I guess those small business owners didn't really need the workers, anyway.
“You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir?” -- Joseph Nye Welch
A common argument from neo-classical economists is that minimum wage legislation causes unemployment.
Any student who enrolled in an undergraduate degree at the Faculty of Economics at Sydney University in 1971 had to complete four year-long courses in economics, out of a total of ten such courses: Microeconomics and Quantitative Methods in the first year, Macroeconomics in the second, and International Economics in the third.
Forty years later in 2011, the Faculty of Economics and Business evicted the Economics Discipline into the Arts Faculty, and the Economics-free entity renamed itself as University of Sydney Business School.
There is now just one compulsory semester-long economics subject (Economics for Business Decision Making) in any Bachelor of Commerce degree at Sydney University, out of 24 such subjects—and that pattern is replicated across the globe. Economics has declined from 40% of any business-oriented degree to 4% in 40 years.
For a profession obsessed with linear regression, it has suffered a near-perfect linear regression of its own. — Steve Keen
http://www.debunkingeconomics.com/the-self-destruction-of-economics/
So what he is hinting at is that increasing minimum wage causes innovation to skyrocket by orders of magnitude. So I agree with Max Keiser then, make minimum wage $100 an hour and bring in the machines.
This was on Drudge today, 50% of JOBs will be obsolete and done away with by 2025
http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/50-of-occupations-t...
The9thDoctor,
Sorry, your article might have ‘lots of’ relevance for the minimum-wage topic; however, it will become irrelevant as we have less and less oil (2019), followed by natural gas (2022), and electricity (2027).
By the way, I am glad you decided to join Zero Hedge posters. We, I believe, need more minds like yours.
Sally Struthers never advertised a career flipping burgers......
What did I miss?
Dear Mises Institute Fuckwits.
No, it works like this. When banksters are free to lend as much money as they like to idiots, the idiots bid prices up to unaffordable levels and the rest of the population is forced to either compete - i.e. take on unrepayable levels of debt - or do without.
EVERYTHING ELSE IS IRRELEVANT. DEBT HAS SWAMPED EVERYTHING ELSE.
No. It goes like this....
Humans establish The State. Everything else is fucked up from from that single root cause. Violence is the only tool of The State. Violence is the failure to reason.
"less and less oil (2019), followed by natural gas (2022), and electricity (2027)."
funny prediction. Be vague about the quantity and specific about the year,
or the other way around, and your 'forecast' can hardly be incorrect !
I didn’t want to bore you with the details…. But gee, thanks.
Anyway, the message is that:
a) We’re running out of time. People fail to understand that about the last 1/3 won’t be (economic and energetic) recoverable. So, depletion will hit us really fast.
b) And because of our mindset (male=economic growth and female=baby demographic), we’re doomed beyond salvation.
So, enjoy while last…. Our energy descent is gonna be horrifying.
I just hope that WW-3 stays in Europe and Asia…. Just like WW-2.
But, unlikely.
He who foretells the future lies, even if he tells the truth. ( Arab proverb )
You're a STUPID FUCK,DO US A FAVOR AND GO HANG FROM A ROPE.
Somehow I think you can learn a thing or two from her. ( not that I agree with this particular post )
There is a say in the Middle East that goes something like this:
My father rode a camel. I ride a Rolls Royce. My son rides on his private plane. My grandson will ride a camel.
From a BRW magazine in the '90s, doing an article on the richest xxx families in Australia. (Forgive my fuzzy memory and paraphrasing as it was over 20 years ago, but I did memorize the numbers involved) :
Some guy works hard and goes from rags to riches. He hands over the empire to the kids. Two thirds of the time the kids blow the family fortune and 99% of the time if the kids haven't blown it then the grand kids have.
Looks like a close match to your saying.
Either way seems a win-win for me.
If we have energy abundance in the future, robots will do all the work and we get a worker's utopia.
If energy supplies rapidly decline, we will not have modern industrial agriculture, so unemployment will be solved since we will need 50% of the population working to produce food.
Matt,
Consider this, by Nate Hagens
Twenty (Important) Concepts I Wasn’t Taught in Business School – Part I
17. Cheap energy, not technology, has been the main driver of wealth and productivity
One barrel of oil, priced at just over $100 boasts 5,700,000 BTUs or work potential of 1700kWhs.
At an average of .60 kWh per work day, to generate this amount of ‘labor’, an average human would have to work 2833 days, or 11 working years.
At the average hourly US wage rate, this is almost $500,000 of labor can be substituted by the latent energy in one barrel of oil that costs us $100.
Unbeknownst to most stock and bond researchers on Wall Street, this is the real ‘Trade’. — Nate Hagens
http://www.themonkeytrap.us/twenty-important-concepts-i-wasnt-taught-in-business-school-part-i
There are various estimates done based on how much energy there is and how efficient it can be used, I've seen one barrel = one year of hard labour at 60 hours per week at 3500 calories per day.
Either way, less energy means much more cost for everything. We definitely live in interesting times.
Matt
And to harvest (calorie) and to raise (protein) take lots of oil. I read that both can take from 20 to 33 percent of our oil consumption.
And, there's NO replacement for it (for oil).
“One of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.” -- Reinhold Niebuhr
As far as food goes, it is certainly possible to grow food without oil inputs, by using a great deal more human labour and/or livestock. It is not currently very economical to do so, so only the few people who do so out of idealogy do it.
However, as long as the decline in oil production is not overly rapid, I believe most people will have enough time to adapt; I think it would take at least two years of concentrated effort to switch food production away from oil. Cuba's experience with the fall of the Soviet Union and sudden reduction in oil products is a good example.
"And to harvest (calorie) and to raise (protein) take lots of oil. I read that both can take from 20 to 33 percent of our oil consumption.
And, there's NO replacement for it (for oil)."
You are thinking inside the box. You type as if all of humanity from the begining of time used oil such as we use today.
How did humanity survive before the 1800's?
a) The world had less than 1 billion people
b) Life expectancy was 35 to 40 years old average in the US
c) The vast majority of deaths before the mid-20th century were caused by microbes—bacteria, amoebas, protozoans, or viruses
d) The first European settlers to North America mostly died of starvation, with (according to some historians) a side order of stupidity. They picked unnecessary fights with Native Americans, sought gold and silver rather than planting food or fishing, and drank foul water.
As Charles Mann points out in his fascinating book 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, one-third of the first three waves of colonists were gentlemen, meaning their status was defined by not having to perform manual labor. During the winter of 1609–10, aka “the starving time,” almost everyone died; those who survived engaged in cannibalism.
e) And, because they didn’t have the best medical creation ever: The refrigerator.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/life_expectancy_history_public_health_and_medical_advances_that_lead_to.html
Only A and C are really applicable to humanity today. If we lose knowledge of clean water, soap, toilets and toilet paper sure, lots of people will die from bad water.
Whether we can make and distribute vaccines and chlorine without petroleum, maybe we'll live long enough to find out.
Live expectency often is calculated including infant mortality; if 50% of children die at birth, your life expectency is about half of what it would be if 99.9% of children survive. I expect some of that might increase, but basic knowledge of washing hands between deliveries, etc should continue forward.
If you removed “stationary Population” (when people died before the age of 5), then, you aggregate population measures between 30 and 55 years old, you will have a more accurate age of death.
As of 2010, the average is 67.2. But I can’t tell you how long you and I will live.
However, looking forward, our demise will come from diminishing returns from our complexity society.
Here’s an example:
What we will run out is the ability to extract these resources because of Labor and Technology cost. The easy resources we're finishing using it.
Then, we will always need one form of mineral to extract another mineral; and we will need more and more minerals as we extract less and less minerals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
You only need new minerals for expansion. Iron has been recycled for thousands of years; if population flattens out or declines and consumption per person goes down, all of the existing above ground iron will be more than enough. I bet you could make a lot of bicycles from a car.
I believe we have sufficient knowledege, widespread basic education and available resources, such that, barring a global catastrophy such as a killer meteor, there is no reason we should go backwards more than the 17th century.
I feel it is likely that more modern ideas, such as hygiene, vaccines, water filtration, and bicycles, will stay around long after the affordable oil runs out.
In respone to your comment, "We’re running out of time ...we’re doomed beyond salvation", I believe once again you are thinking inside the box. Yes, I agree that oil has been the catalyst for the exponential growth in population and production of goods, and most importantly: for food production. A wealth of white papers with empirical evidence can be found on the subject. Once again, I agree that oil is a limited, consumable, resource.
The fact of the matter is that, "running out of time" and "we're doomed", are nothing more than illogical fallacies.
Will many people on this planet die quickly if tomorrow we have no oil? Of course. How will all the food be produced and transported to those who need to eat it to sustain themselves? I speak of those who cannot feed themselves directly with their own production.
However, everyone is going to die if we have infinite oil at zero cost, or everyone is going to die if we have no oil at any cost. We all run out of time with or without oil.
In addition, the record of history clearly shows that man can survive and thrive without oil in its current form and use.
Now, if it was your intention to express your fear of not being able to live your life, to the end, in your current lifestyle and accommodations surrounded by your culture and others: One day you will not have to fear. One day you will be dead.
What does it profit a man to gain the world yet lose his soul?
Got 2 post. How?
<--- Green Arrows for The9thDoctor (Yours wasn't working for some reason)
It doesn't work because I found a way to "disable" it!
I have radically different ideas than the right-leaning libertarians and the neocons who have been visiting the site. Problem was, I was getting downvoted to oblivion and as soon as someone saw the downvotes, conformation bias and Asch conformity dictates that I am "wrong", and that I am a troll.
Now people have to +1 or -1 reply and actually have a debate.
Pretty cool huh?
Bringing the fight back into Fight Club!
--> old news
--> new news
Polls are also a way around it. LOL
Is there a way to disable your comments from displaying on my screen? I don't hate you, I just have read enough. :)
--> LOL
--> LMAO
"I found a way to "disable" it!"
Really? Do tell...
That's my downvote btw...just because I can. :)
Welcome to the weekend fluff pieces at ZH.
so if the great depresion had 20 percent unemplyment, how bad will things be with 50 percent unemplyment
Have your 12 gauge in working, loaded condition. Milestones
Listen EI.
Neo-classical economic theory died a painful death at the first issue of QE.
Bring this nonsense elsewhere, at once!
Sorry Bangalore Equit...
But you listen,
Neoclassical economics will peak at “global warming” coming crisis (2020/2025) then, it will die for good.
<sigh> I hate being forced to respond to idiocy...
1. Neo-classical econ has been dead for some time... unless you're a mental armadillo whose brain is impervious to reality.
MMT was born, and quickly died when it ran full tilt into reality. Keynesian Economics is a success given that the sole purpose of JM Keynes was to write an economic theory that would bankrupt the world so the Fabian Socialists could enslave the rest of the people in it. "The Plan" seems to be working quite well so far.
2. Oil and starvation - a. Russia recently found a new oil field that is larger than the Gulf of Mexico (who gave it to them?) - and there is apparently some evidence that oil is not a finite commodity - but one that is being renewed as we use it. (Not yet proven - but an interesting hypothesis.) So if that is the case, then it's not that we use it that counts, but how FAST we use it. (Just speculation) As to using oil - well... it's useful, so it will be used. Get over it.. Errecting holy sepulchers before the proper time in worship of the Black Liquid is not helpful.
b. I'm really doubting that people will be starving because the oil gets too expensive to use in Agriculture... given that the average suburban home has a large enough yard to raise not only enough food to feed the inhabitants of the house, but also some surplus to sell to the folks who live in apartment houses. Given that all of the people in the USA could be housed in ONE State, there's a LOT of arable land for food production out there.Currently the US Government pays multiplied billions a year to farmers to NOT use otherwise productive land.
Now - if you said that the "EASY" food would soon be gone, I'd be willing to consider the possibility - given the general tendency of many people to loaf instead of work in the sun and get bitten by mosquitoes... a tendency that would change radically and quickly when the belly begins to rumble.
The only economic theory that not only makes sense, but also reflects reality is the Austrian theory with its "seen and unseen" doctrine, and the insistence of a provable 1:1 real life correspondence with reality.
Oh. I forgot to reply to part of your screed...
Anthropogenic Global Warming (now commonly known as ""global warming" or "climate change") is pure unscientific unadulterated bullshit. Learn some real science and just walk away from the UN propaganda machine
This is true but because of the masses of money being thrown at this "problem", this will be promulgated as Truth by those who reap the rewards. Anyone with a modicum of interest and time can delve into the research and find the flaws.
Americans have the attention span of a gnat and glean all their knowledge from news sound bites and summations from " trusted" sources. If the majority has the benefits of a Classical education based on the trivium, we would not be where we are today.
Miffed
Choices:
1. Raise prices (lose sales)
2. Reduce workforce (lose sales)
3. Reduce quality (lose sales, maybe business)
4. Outsource if possible.
5. Move to another state.
6. Automate the jobs away.
My guess is that the last option will be the most commonly taken.
My guess is your guess is a lot of hot air.
Certainly the popular line of thinking.
Just Do It, employers.
Anyone who thinks fast food workers deserve a minimum of $15/hr should go open a business and pay them $15/hr. Until then, STFU. Every employee who feels like they are underpaid is free to leave and find another job or open their own business.
--> $15/HR paid with all the federal, state and local regs and taxes
--> $15/HR paid without all of choice #1's stuff
Therefore using this reasoning, if all business owners decided of their own volition to raise the minimum amount they would pay workers, it would cause unemployment.
Uh huh.
if you raise the minimum wage, prices go up to pay the increase in wages and the people are no better off.
True; however, the price only increases by the portion that labour is a percentage of the total inputs.
For example, let's say a product costs $1, of which labour is $0.10 per unit at $5 per hour. If we double minimum wage to $10 per hour, the price of the product only increases to $1.10 with $0.20 in labour inputs.
Glad you get it. Peter Schiff didn't. Neither did a lot of other people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLr5oWfoWRY
Double the minimum wage for 15% price increase? I'd take that trade until we ran out of resources.
But ultimately almost all prices are wages so if skilled labour actually did have leverage to demand proportionately more than unskilled labour, then we should end up no better off.
Excepting that inflation dilutes debt. We win again (but savers cop it in the nuts). Excepting that banksters still lend money to idiots and thus push the price of everything way above what is affordable no matter what you earn.
Are you only doubling wages for fast food workers? What about the people at the bread and meat factories? how about the produce? How about the truckers? How about the gas stations? The loaders and warehouse workers? Looks like the price of everything will go up everywhere, not just McDonald's. Did you take that into account or do you just want to double the wages of McDonald's employees?
It's that word, MINIMUM. When you are forced to hand that pay rise over to your MINIMUM wage workers, your MINIMUM wage CUSTOMERS get the exact same pay rise. Now, are you better off? Or worse off? Or everything stays the same except for savings and debt loads???
What are skilled workers getting where you are?
Here, minimum wage is $10.50 and trades jobs start around $30, so a 50% increase in minimum wage would still be half of what a skilled labourer gets.
Of course, we'll see how long Saudis flood the market with cheap oil, could be lots of unemployed tradesmen from the oil sands and tight oil soon.
You don't think the cost of other inputs will increase as labor increases across the board or is this minimum wage increase only for fast food workers?
All of the inputs produced by minimum wage labour will increase, for sure. There would probably be a ripple effect; if increasing minimum wage from $5 to $10 resulted in a direct 10% increase in prices, you may get 10% increase in the labour costs of everything else, which may lead to a 5% increase in the price of those goods and services.
Besides all the imported goods, most things made domestically are not made by minimum wage workers.
I think rapid change to minimum wage could be catastrophic; I think maybe a 5% raise every three months spread over 5 years would be a lot better than suddenly raising minimum wage from $5 to $10 or $7.50 to $15.
The nonsense about why not $50 or $100 per hour is because they intentionally ignore the impact rate of change has. As long as we are going to have a monetary system that intentionally creates inflation, and drives down the purchasing power of money, I believe we need a minimum wage that increases along with the loss of purchasing power.
Oops! Let's not forget the "tax effects" of those cascading wage increases. If you live in Europe, where the VAT reigns supreme, then costs would rise exponentially as moar taxes are added at EACH LEVEL.
"Cost" of a Hamburger? By raising the wages of each stage of input production (buns, condiments, farm input costs to produce the meat/meat substitute, oil costs, wage and tax increases (again) at EACH LEVEL for transportation of product inputs & etc, I'm thinking that the price of a hamburger would increase MORE than the percentage of wage increase. (Gotta LOVE a VAT!!! The tax that keeps on taking!) And even without a VAT - you still have increases in costs at EACH LEVEL for EVERY INPUT. What? You think that only the point of sale cost would increase because the burger flipper gets more? ROTFLMBO!!! Someone needs to look around and figure out how the world REALLY works!
On their own volition means they are making enough money to give the employees a raise. Force someone who's treading water to raise wages and that will cause unemployment.
Only if they are unable to pass the costs on to their consumers.
If a fast food place tried to raise the price of its products 10%, it would lose business to its competitors, so unless the fast food companies collude to raise prices, or labour organizes and forces them to pay more, or government raises minimum wage, the prices will stay flat as will wages.
This whole anti-minimum wage argument that the Mises institute spouts is just rearranging the chairs on the sinking Titanic.
Until the Fed is abolished, debt is interest free, and war is done away with, this argument is beyond silly.
Let's advocate sweatshop conditions and call it libertarianism! (sarc)
As for replacing dead end jobs with machines, hurry the F up already. I want a burger machine pronto! I want unemployment to be 100% because jobs and work are yet another form of dictatorship.
The boss determines when you show up, what to wear, what you can say, everything is monitored, everything is put in a dossier and submitted to the State, yet the only school of thought against labor are the post-left anarchists.
This is better than silly wage arguments.... Abolish work!
http://www.primitivism.com/abolition.htm
^^^^^^^^^^ THIS ONE!
From the link:
"Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren't free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or-else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing.
And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace. The liberals and conservatives and libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in any moderately deStalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques. A worker is a par-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called "insubordination," just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. Without necessarily endorsing it for them either, it is noteworthy that children at home and in school receive much the same treatment, justified in their case by their supposed immaturity. What does this say about their parents and teachers who work?"
On the one hand, robots take our jobs. So why do those of us remaining with jobs have to work so hard???? All this increased technology and we still have to work 40 - 84 hours per week. Why?
The price of a house went up from half the minimum wage to 100% of the minimum wage. With all of our technology, why do we have to work so hard?
I agree except for the debt being interest free. What is the point of lending someone money and taking the risk of not being repaid if you get nothing in return? No reward means no risk, means no more lending.
Free the Mexican 3 million
Both the Retards and the Dumbass party want "Immigration Reform" Code for cheap labor for their sponsors.
Obama will whip out his executive order pen and open up the flood gates of illegals, the Retards will feign shock and stomp their feet and propose a bill (prepackaged and written by the lobbist 10 years ago) and pass a "compromise".
Vichey DC will be happy, the media will cheer and the american worker will weep.
Thanks for voting sucka's
Chick Fil A average wage is probably 8.50 starting, not bad for a yute. If you don't suck ass, can speak normal english, and not look like a human pin cushion ink blot it works but they make money selling a half way decent product, sell shit and get paid shit.
Minium Wage raises are an expected consequence of the Free Money Army. You don't want Minimum Wage increases.?.....then get off your asses, go riot in front of the Fed, the Congress and the White House. Get arrested if needed. Use violence if needed.
If not.....then shut the fuck up. Justice will out. Economic Justice will out. Even if it is the wrong thing according to some economic theory......those theories are meaningless in the era of Free Money Keynesniaism. If this is the only way for people at the lower rung to half way catch up to inflation then so be it.
And it's utter bullshit that companies won't hire folks at the higher rates. If you can't then you will go out of business and stronger companies will pick up those folks and give them a job. Once again.....your fault for not voting in the right politcians. And your fault for not revolting like our Founding Fathers.
If you are not going to get off your ass and revolt......then shut the fuck up and suck up that Minimum Wage increase.
Besides.....if you as a business owner can't do the job yourself because you are unwilling or unable due to the fact that your business has outgrown your ability to provide that service or product then you owe the people a living wage who come in to do those jobs you can't or won't do yourself.
You paid yourself a living wage when you were flying solo. It may have meant beans and rice for dinner. But you paid yourself a living wage. Now you want to turn around and skim off other people's labor for your benefit because you won't do it or can't do it ?
Fuck you. Pay them a living wage. Or give up the business and go work for someone else who will skim off your ass. See how you like it.
and how well is your socialist/communist utopia working on th real world? cause no one is skimming anything off anyone in in socialst/communist countries are they? yeah, right
Fuck you. Open a business and pay those people a living wage instead of forcing your opinions onto others.
What's the living wage for a single mother of 5 children in NYC? So now a business owner will have to pay her $150K so she can run the cash register for them?
<--- Giant Douche
<--- Turd Sandwich
The same as it always was.
And to address one of the article's quotes:
An employer simply cannot afford to pay an employee something above and beyond what the worker produces for the company.
Unless... you are a VC-funded startup. Daily catered lunches, "random NERF shootouts", hipster 20something bitchez, unlimited free whatever the fuck you want.
Best of all, an upcoming 1B valuation w/ a -3M revenue. Fowaaad!
Australia's minimum wage is $15 per hour, one of the highest in the world. So they must hate low-skill workers the most in this world.
And if you really loved your low-skill workers, they should be working for free as the Canadian bankster stated recently
Top banker tells jobless youth to work for freeWinnipeg teens aren't impressed with recommendations from Canada's top banker that jobless university graduates beef up their resumés by working for free.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/top-banker-tells-jobless-youth...
Australia can get away with a high minimum wage because they aggressively deport illegal immigrants, thereby saving the $15/hour jobs for actual Australians.
I feel sorry for the poor little bitches that can't keep up with the minimum wage. I really do - remember - 'no child left behind'.
Big brother is sticking his nose where it don't belong. A worker is always free to quit if he or she doesn't like the arrangement, no one is forcing them to work for whatever a business is willing to pay.
There are more mom and pop businesses going under. The idiots in government assume everyone gets a pay check whether a company is making money or not or just barely surviving. At least they are doing it on their own and not going for hand outs.
This corporate, beaurocratic mentality has got to go. Don't get me wrong, I don't like to see people working and not being able to provide for themselves. For most people who are reasonably intelligent and willing to put in a little effort, low pay is usually a catalyst to moving up. For the others who can't or won't do what it takes, they are lucky to have work that pays something.
In the time it took me to increase my skills to the point of increasing my wage by 40%, the price of real estate increased by 400%. Not everyone was increasing their skills at the same rate as me. The price of real estate cripples everyone and everything but the minimum wage cops all the blame.
To quote a well-known cartoonist, "BRING ME THE HEAD OF WILLIE, THE MAIL BOY!"
BTW, now I have higher wages, it is much, much easier to do more courses and increase my skills even further. But given that the last couple of courses I did have yet to pay for themselves and appear to have no respect in the workplace, I think that from now on I will rely on relevant on-the-job training. No, I don't expect to get any on-the-job training - 'cos the competitive companies with record profits couldn't possibly teach anyone how to use their own proprietary equipment - but I do expect that such a move will leave me more time and money to do what is in my interest for a change.
If workers were not required to work for a corporation, you'd have a point.
If you are not allowed to grow your own food and you need permits and licenses just to do business and if you don't earn dollars to pay property taxes you lose your home. In such a system, you must acquire dollars or you lose everything.
Exactly, I used to manage a fast food restaurant in San Jose. When minimum wage went up the people making minimum got the full increase. The shift managers and higher paid employee's didn't so they got screwed.
2 down arrows, why ? I just stated something I observed.
You mean the higher skilled employees couldn't negotiate a pay rise? I thought they had some kind of leverage and the boss would have to pay them more money to keep them or they would go elsewhere.
OR PERHAPS THE MISES INSTITUTE IS FULL OF SHIT WRITTEN BY YEAR TEN DROPOUTS WHO HAVE THEIR HEADS STUCK FIRMLY UP THEIR OWN ASSES!!!
Or perhaps the Mises Institute is not what it claims to be, and is in fact a propaganda arm of the US equivalent of the Chamber for Commerce and Industry - i.e. a UNION OF EMPLOYERS. On this last sentence, I could be wrong. I did not bother checking. Feel free to look for me. I'm just drawing a conclusion from the evidence they present me. I could be wrong. They might just be genuine idiots.
well stupid fuck at that level they have no choice. Hey I got a great idea lets pay everyone the same. sarc/ Isn't that comunism ?
Lessons learnt from Animal Farm:
1. Don't be a Communist.
2. Don't work for a Capitalist.
Remember, the animals were slaves to the farmer. The farmer sold the farm produce to other people. He was a Capitalist.
The farm would have done fine under the pigs if production had have stayed in the farm but the pigs traded outside the farm with Capitalist transactions.
Communism was accepted by the Animals because it was better than the Dictatorship they were already under. But then the Communism turned out to just be a disguise and a new Dictatorship emerged.
The Animals never traded with each other (i.e. never tried Capitalism on the local level, but then what did a chicken have that a cow wanted?)
Is China a Communist country or a Capitalist country. Or do TPTB just pick and choose whatever bits suit them at the time?
Is the US Capitalist or Communist? How about, "Heads I win, Tails you lose". TPTB just do whatever suits them at the time and pay dickheads to justify their actions under whatever paradigm is acceptable at the time. No-one believes in divinity any more? Fine, we'll call it Economics. All hail the precious entrepreneur, becoz no-one can survive without him becoz he is brave and takes risks, oh hang on, if he wasn't there then wouldn't prices go up until there was less risk and then others would take his place? No, we have to bail-out the entrepreneurs - actually, it doesn't quite work like that. Just keep paying your tithe to the banksters and they'll sort it all out for you becoz there is no better way!
Re "... at that level they have no choice":
and as I mention below at 5428545:
The minimum wage went up? That means your customers are also richer. They can afford to pay more. How much more?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLr5oWfoWRY
But why would your boss give you a pay rise when he can just convince you that he has no choice???
To mangle Jamie Dimon's quote: That's why your boss is richer than you.
nightshiftsucks
How exactly did you get screw? Did they cut your salary?
Ohh. Let me guess? You're jealous?
Something to do with 'relativity'...
Well stupid fuck If I was worth .50 cents an hour more yesterday than the other person then why am i not worth .50 cents more than them today ? i tried to be fair but it was up to the owner. I had some great people working for me,they deserved to be paid ..50 cents more an hour than the newbie yet they got .35 cents and I got nothing. I don't care about the past,I make great money now and I'm in the 10%. So my question would be why should the shift manager work harder when the new person will catch up to them eventually.
Hello and welcome to the real world, night shift guy. Relax, take a deep breath, and recognize this is where the Mises bullshit breaks down big time. If Mises shit was true then yes indeed you would have enough leverage to demand proportionately more than the minimum wage. So why can't you demand a proportionately higher pay than a minimum wage worker? BECAUSE IN THE REAL WORLD THE MISES INSTITUTE IS FULL OF SHIT AND EVEN HIGHER PAID WORKERS HAVE NO LEVERAGE AND THE FREE MARKET WAGE IS WHATEVER PEOPLE ARE DESPERATE ENOUGH TO WORK FOR WHICH IS A BOWL OF RICE / PORRIDGE PER DAY AND A BED ON THE FACTORY FLOOR. Oh, you haven't seen that minimum wage? Check out who makes your shoes. You may or may not learn something.
But your boss told you that he can't afford to give you a pay rise because he had to give all the money to the minimum wage workers? Of course! Why would he give you a payrise when he can fob you off with a bullshit story? Why would he give you a payrise when hundreds of others are willing to take your place? But according to Mises Institute propaganda, this is all fair and good and nothing to worry about. You want more money? You have to work harder, I mean smarter, I mean start your own business and innovate, I mean borrow money even though you don't know how to pay it back, I mean take more risks, I mean find someone onto whom you can dump all your losses, I mean manage your risks ...
Can your boss afford to give you a pay rise? Why not?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLr5oWfoWRY
Note that my conclusion is the opposite of what Schiff tries to portray with this video. But everyone forgets that the minimum wage rises apply to customers as well as workers. According to this vid, a $15 per hour minimum wage (DOUBLING the minimum wage at the time) would translate to a 15% price increase. Losing? The worst that can happen? Everyone demands proportionate wage rises and we end up with bigger numbers on price stickers but relatively no better off and no worse off. According to Mises Institute, if you are twice as productive as a minimum wage worker then you can demand double their wages. So why doesn't it happen? Because minimum wage is too high? Then you just demand more money. Boss can't afford it? Why not? The customers are richer too! It's the old joke about the universe doubling in size every five minutes. I was going to check with my ruler but blow me down, my ruler had doubled in size too!
What have I left out?
1. Higher minimum wage means more jobs go overseas ... but where does that stuff get sold, back here? So they want rich customers but poor workers, eh? Worked great for the first few companies, but now for some strange reason there appear to be fewer rich customers ...
2. Debt. Inflation erodes debt. With a minimum wage rise, servicing debt becomes proportionately smaller so purchasing power increases.
3. Externalities. Wages can increase until production cannot keep up with extra demand.
4. New debt. The price of real estate swamps everything else.
“Intellectual dishonesty is the hallmark of the leadership of Austrian Economics. Nowhere is this more palpable than with their disingenuous, dishonest and destructive defense of deflation.” -- Anthony Migchels
You know excrement I always tried to make a judgement on you,couldn't figure you out. I have come to a decision,you're a piece of shit and better not walk in the crosswalk while I'm stopped.
Too bad your life on the night shift sucks, loser. Get some help with the anger management issues.
Really you stupid fucking govt troll. the govt is destroying my kids future and I'm suppose to be ok with that. Where you at dip fuck ? Let's have a coffee and discuss it.
The drunker we get the more we project. You better sober up before you go to Walmart to set up for tomorrow's sale.
Really you stupid unionn govt fucking troll,where you at or STFUP.
BTW stupid fuck i'm a line maint tech so when you take my food order tommorow it better be right.
You know excrement who are you ? What are you're experiences ?
Minimum wage means crap with few benefits and no hours.
Chill employers, you need only to see employees once a week now, with a minimal increase in paper work. Most can't fill out a W-4 anyway.
Teenagers, people who were poorly educated by failing public schools, people who have never had a job, and people who are not very intelligent, should all just stay home and collect free money from the people that work and produce.
Fixed it for you.
The incompetent work for the Government.and have not need to compete anyhow.
They work at the DMV, DOT, TSA, Army, Navy Marines, Police Departments, HUD, and so on. The dumb people drive cars, buses, they drive trash collection vehicles and conduct traffic. You often see them in gas stations at movies and in voting booths and in church. Dumb people from the government are seen at hospitals and are responsible for the overall decrease in human intelligence because they have families of stupid people. They eat and eat and go on disability early then drive fat carts around Walmart. Dumb people stink bitchez.
Idiocracy
if a minimum wage is so good, then pay all hourly workers a million dollars
The only flaw in your plan is that the price of real estate would go up by an even greater amount and still negate any benefits from the extra dollars.
No-one complained when the price of real estate quadrupled, but they wonder why their minimum wage workers seem poorer than before.
Clearly Jamie Dimon is worth the $20MM he's pulling in...I'm just trying to understand how that jives with the idea that "Wages are a reflection of the worker’s productivity." Retard.
Productive workers to me are farmers, miners, construction workers, food service workers making my meals, hospitality workers cleaning my hotel room after I leave, barbers that cut my hair, manufacturers that make products I use. Some how those workers make crappy wages.
Yet real estate gurus and bankers are the wealthiest in society. The only thing they are "productive" at is financial schemes to trick wage-earners out of their hard money.
This is why I hate the Mises crowd. They are a bunch of elitists who are envious of the Rothchilds' wealth and power, and they are upset that they aren't invited to the big boys' club upstairs, yet they share the same snooty ideologies.
--> LOL
--> LMAO
<------- Green arrows for The9thDoctor (Your green arrow button doesn't work. I think it has something to do with copy/paste)
If you start a post here with something in italics, votes cannot be given.
Wages are NOT the refection of productivity.... profits are - wages are a function of supply and demand which in a contrived open border is endless labor for lower and lower wages as people starve to death everywhere else and then finally here
this is a bogus argument which is set up to discredit unions which is the only reason manufacturing wages went up at all from 1935 to 1975
Man in Florida 90 + age was arrested for feeding the homeless - why not just have the cops shoot the homeless..they shoot horses dont they!
lets get a national referendum on Murder by Neglect as National Policy - stop pretending!
Hey all you von Mises nutcakes, let's try this one.
If raising the minimum wage will cause unemployment to go up, let's lower the minimum wage and drive it in the other direction until we get full employment. Would that not be a good thing? Let's take it down to $5 and see if we can get full employment.
Ryan: What makes you think at the von Mises nut factory, that we have free markets here? We have a corporate welfare system.
Well dumb fuck I just explained it above. The minimum wage workers get the full increase wether they deserve it or not. The higher paid employee's don't get the full increase. So the least productive/experienced catch up to the more productive/experienced workers. Why should I work harder when I will catch up to my supervisors through bullshit ?
That's why you quit that job and become a real estate guru or a banker. That's the career paths this crap society rewards.
I was in the same boat as you way back when, when rookie new hires made the same wages as me who worked there for 2 years. It was a wake up call that I worked at that place 2 years too long, so I walked out for a better paying job, with those 2 years on my Resume.
Entry level work should be short term and used to build a concrete foundation for a resume, but at the same time, the entry-level work does require compensation because you need to eat, wear clothes, have a place to live, and live a life between those shifts.
I've done well, I changed careers and took a pay cut. My supervisor is God I worked at the same place for 10 years and the pay wasnt fare. The new supervisor was on top of it and rewarded the people who worked hard. Sometimes paitience pays off.
false dichotomy...choking back laughter...vevry one in business in stae pays same minimum wage ergo a level playing field...now modify business model or go the fuck out of business because you are not savvy enough to compete in market place.
I may a little slow, but if minimum wage jobs are largely in the service business (fast food, retail), and a state legislates an increase, I find it doubtful that people will travel out of state to get a nickel off their Big Mac or Walmart purchase. So what is all the fuss about?
As to business in manufacturing, they are not in the states any more if they have to pay minimum wage - they are long gone to Asia!
Stupid article in my humble opinion.
Last of a breed.
I am a surviving gray hair in industry because I learned my skills and talent from the age of 10, paid under the table
under min wage. I finally went legal min wage at age 14.
All along my engineering career, how talent is held back, is all the no talent hacks pretend everyone is as
ignorant and incompetent at they, its how they justify themselves.
Sort of how they oppress free will with their denomocracy terror statutes in the marco scheme.
They do this in the interpersonal level in business and commerce.
I found ways to break out and express my skills and talent and have nothing but distain for the ignorant.
It was created by labor unions to keep poor and marginally unemployable out
of work and opportunity to develop.
Then they had to develop war on poverty tax scams so that 85% of black children are now
born out of wedlock,
and priced out of min wage.
And I imagine the states scam is the payroll tax inflation and the federali scam is the SS tax inflation.
Same shit.
http://pragcap.com/quantitative-easing-the-greatest-monetary-non-event
QUANTITATIVE EASING: “THE GREATEST MONETARY NON-EVENT”2009
With Obongo, Krugman and Lew... and especially that radical racist asshole Sanchez... is anyone really shocked that this minimum wage horseshit is not working???
Sooner or later, it will punish mid-skill workers, then high-skill workers, then chaos .....
Over and over, Zero Hedge republishes basically bullshit articles upon the minimum wage issues, which present superficial analysis of the economic systems.
The fundamental basis of the economy is organized lies operating robberies, in which the production of destruction controls production. Everyone has some power to rob, and power to kill as the most extreme form of the power to rob. Governments assembled and channeled that power to rob through their assertions about sovereignty, primarily expressed as the power to tax. The best organized gangs of criminals, the biggest gangsters, the international banksters, were able to apply the methods of organized crime to the political processes, in order to effectively privatize the government's monopoly over the power to rob.
The main way that happened was that governments agreed to give away to privately controlled banks the power to make the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts, which fiat money was intrinsically worthless, except that fraud was enforced by governments demanding the collection of taxes in the form of that fiat "money," which enabled that fiat "money" made out of nothing as debts to be deemed legal tender. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY IS SYSTEMS OF ENFORCED FRAUDS, WHICH BENEFIT THE PEOPLE AT THE TOP OF THE SOCIAL PYRAMID SYSTEMS FANTASTICALLY, WHILE SCREWING EVERYONE ELSE.
Meanwhile, those people who gained the privilege to legally create the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts then made so much profit that they were able to buy up control over all other social institutions, like the schools and the mass media, so that the vast majority of people would be utterly brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit world view. MOST "SOLUTIONS" PROPOSED BY MOST PEOPLE STAY INSIDE THAT BULLSHIT FRAME OF REFERENCE, WHICH IS WHAT THE ARTICLE ABOVE DID, AS WELL AS EVERY OTHER ARTICLE ASSOCIATED WITH MISES THAT I HAVE EVER READ.
One way or another, the only genuine solutions to these runaway political problems are for the death controls that back up the debt controls to come back to the front and center, where they actually always were, but were able to be more and more deliberately ignored, as the established systems of enforced financial frauds became more socially successful (within their overall context of funding the Earth's natural resources to be strip-mined.)
The basic problem is that EVERYONE has some power to rob, while governments have assembled and channeled that power to rob into systems which attempted to assert a monopoly over that power, while the best organized gangs of criminals were able to achieve a near monopoly over the power to control the government, through dominating the political processes, through the vicious spirals of the feedback loops of the funding of the political processes, including funding illegal political activities. That was the context in which people suffering from the accumulating effects of privatization of the public powers ended up owning practically nothing, while, against third world peasants and/or robots, they had practically no remaining ways to compete by selling their labour.
That social reality is hyper-complicated, and full of shades of grey, however, to over-simplify that for the sake of this comment, the poor are the victims of the public powers to rob being used against them, in ways which they do not understand, since they have been conditioned to not want to understand. Fiddling with the wages that the poor are paid is trivial tinkering within the established systems, which does nothing sufficient, since no good reforms are possible, when still being done on top of the utterly rotten foundations of fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems.
The deeper dilemma is that there are no ways to better resolve these problems without facing that facts that money is necessarily measurement backed by murder, as the most abstract form of the ways that all private property is based on claims backed by coercions. Everything regarding the ownership of natural resources and the means of production was based on the history of backing up lies with violence, which became systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence.
Those who were the best at doing that became the most wealthy and powerful people, while those who were not as good at doing that were more and more robbed or expropriated. Since those are the realities, there are two extreme alternative possibilities. One is the path we are on now, whereby the rotten foundations of the debt slavery systems, generating numbers which are debt insanities, finally provoke death insanities, whereby the vast majority of poor people end up being mass murdered, in order to preserve some neo-feudal systems for a while longer (although that could not be done in the longer term, because it would still be based on operating through systems of enforced frauds, which generate collective criminal insanities.) The second extreme alternative possibility is that there are some real, radical revolutions, which are based on greater awareness of the ways that the political economy operates through backing up the money system with the murder system. (Of course, in the hyper-complicated social realities, those TWO aspects will mutually influence each other, rather than be mutually exclusive.)
The basic problems can not be resolved without putting the political economy issues back inside of the human ecology issues, where they truly always were, but which became more and more deliberately ignored, as the social successes flowing from the triumphant systems of enforced financial frauds became greater and greater. All of those problems are being amplified many orders of magnitude by progress in science and technology, such as with automation, and so forth, while those problems are also running into the real limits of being able to continue to strip-mine the planet's natural resources at an exponentially increasing rate, as "paid" for with "money" made out of nothing as debts.
The basic realities were that everyone has some power to rob. That power was always distributed, but ended up being assembled into governments, which tried to monopolize that power, at the same time as that power was transformed into a sophisticated social slavery system by the way that the monetary systems were developed, as government enforced frauds, which benefited the banksters and their buddies, while screwing everyone else, worse and worse, through the vicious feedback loops of money & politics.
In that context, guys like Ryan McMaken via The Mises Economic Blog provide a superficially correct analysis, which is based on the ways that our entire political economy operates with attitudes of profound deliberate ignorance towards the human ecology, as well as every other aspect of the relationships of industrial and natural ecologies, because the human energy systems are almost totally dominated by triumphant systems of backing up lies with violence, which enables almost everyone living within those systems to believe in bullshit, as well as be proportionately successful within society by taking advantage of the flows of enforced frauds that dominate the physical economy, directing what that actually does, including how that distributes the benefits from doing that.
One way or another, sooner or later, the deeper realities of the murder systems that back up the monetary systems are necessary to address, in order to deal with the real problems caused by the historical ways that we ended up living inside of a civilization whose economic activities were controlled by integrated systems of enforced frauds. The best theoretical solutions would be to have greater use of information, enabling higher consciousness, about the ways that the death controls were operated, to back up the debt controls, through a revolutionary combined money/murder system, that was able to regard everything human civilizations did in ways which were consistent with general energy system concepts.
However, that is not remotely possible, but rather would take a series of political miracles, for enough people to understand enough how the entire political economy had become controlled by enforced frauds, whereby the vast majority of people were reduced to becoming incompetent political idiots, or Zombie Sheeple, who had already been mostly fleeced to exhaustion, while being set up to be slaughtered. Indeed, the most probable future "solution" inside of that situation is for the debt insanities to provoke death insanity situations, through which the majority of the dispossessed people who do not own any of the natural resources or other means of production, eventually end up being mass murdered.
The only genuine alternatives to those scenarios would take better death controls, in which more people understood and participated in making those better death controls become realities. The interesting hyper-complicated questions are how and when do those sorts of trends, (which I oversimplified above as two extreme alternatives) actually blend back into each other ???
+1 Radical Marijuana
Hopefully you can be a contributor on Zero Hedge, because your essays are much better written and well more thought out than most of the "articles" on here.
Keep up the excellent work!
Thanks, 9th, I enjoy reading your comments too.
These arguments against raising the minimum wage would have some meaning if we had:
Otherwise, put this article on your backup hard drive.
+1 ebworthen
Exactly!
Good one. I like that. It's true, these things are working against a wage that could work if the system were honest.
What do you think will happen when jobs offer $3 an hour, yet rent, gas, and food remain the same or even increase?
The end result will be working and being on welfare at the same time.
Then Mises wants austerity.
So now you are down to $3 an hour and no handouts. Theft will be the only way to make ends meet. Then we need corporate prisons and private security guards to deal with all of the crime, and the Mises proposal of corporate ran private courts.
Mises is just right-wing corportism in disguise folks.
I've looked into this one side and down the other and the Mises and their Rockefeller origins make me cringe. They want to go back to the company store model that the Unions fought against during the Industrial Revolution. If you are a .001%er, its excellent. If you work for a living, prepare to be had. Then Mises praises the Rockefeller monopoly. I mean the more I read into, the more I realize these are the same corporate shills that I can't stand.
Right wingers peddle Jobs, jobs, jobs, all day, but I don't want a Just Over Broke. I want to retire. I want to escape the rat race and do what I was put on this earth to do, not waste time with financial gimmickery.
This why I lean towards left libertarianism and even into post-left because the left has its own problems and baggage. The right wants corporations for me to be a slave to, and the left wants the state for me to be a slave to.
With this rapid exponential rise in technology, hopefully we can both abolish work and abolish the state at the same time. Our problems with housing, food, water, recreation, transportation, ecosystems and resources, will be technical instead of political or monetary. That's my goal for the 21st century.
These abolish minimum wage arguments to me are so petty, because the rat race is a giant distraction from what humans are truly capable of, especially with all of this information at our fingertips.
Strange : upper arrow doesn't work for your comment.
I upper-arrow it here ..
Fine, just make it in the same law that CEOs can have their wages clawed back by stockholders who did not like the way their stocks performed, for any reason.
The amount clawed back would not exceed the amount they had earned in the last 40 years. Sorry but in order to make it work we would have to go beyond the amounts the CEO earned at that one company. We want to make sure the CEOs are properly motivated by the stockholders.
It goes without saying that any CEO that has had any wages garnered in the last 40 years would not be able to work again as a CEO.
I was going to make sure the nonperforming CEOs got jail terms but then I realized that all of congress is already in the CEOs pocketbook and that jail terms would never happen, so I think that we just bundle these two laws together.
The shareholders get to vote for the board of directors, so can oust these idiots anytime. But as been demonstrated for at least 150 years here, people tend to vote with their heads up their ass for their decision makers.
My bumper sticker when Obama was first running: 'You Get What You Vote For'.
My bumper sticker for the next election: 'You Have A Vote, But Not A Choice'. Just keeps getting better, eh?
You seriously believe that whopper of a lie especially given the current structure of large US-based companies & their board of directors?
Not even a year ago, Coca Cola governing board decided it had the right to dip their hands deeper into profits and screw their shareholders on the dividend. Why? Because they wanted the money. NEVER have I believed the argument that the board looks out for the interests of the share holders. You have to watch these thieving pricks each minute.
In the Old South there was general support for slavery, so much so that they fought a long bloody war to retain it. The elites of the Old South had every reason to fight, their economy was based on Zero Wage Minimum Wage. To lose the freedom to set wages at zero would kill big and small business in the south.
What the bottom 90% of white southern folk, those who owned no or maybe one slave, could never grasp that in an economy with a minimum wage at zero and plenty of labor willing, against their will, to fill the positions, their wage bargaining power was pretty fucking low. Yet, these very same people were the ones wh fought hardest on the battle fields to save that system. Poor Whites in the south could not command a wage, or even get a job, not when millions of blacks in chains were willing to work for the South's leagl minimum wage, which was zero.
Before everyone pisses their pants over a guy making $8.00 an hour when business seeks to pay them $5.50, they should consider that everyone is in this giant world labor market. You may praise a lower minmum wage for all, good for employment you will say. But when the guy from India arrives in your office, well educated, well spoken, highly motivated and fully able to replace you at half the wage, you may see this a little differently.
The great love some people have in commanding the lowest possible wage for some people while seeing themselves as exempt from labor competition and the drive for wages to go to the bottom, amazes me. Like the poor white trash charging Yankee lines with their swords, trying hard to enforce the law of zero minimum wages, they had been duped and were the biggest fools of that war.
Good point. And now we have a totally rigged and manipulated market that funnels massive wealth to those who can influence the way the rigged game is fixed. Yet most of those who are doing the best get hysterical at the idea of setting minimum wage high enough that the poorest can actually afford to eat.
I tend to disagree with the slavery angle. Slavery isn't zero minimum salary but it is zero worker mobility. That is the advantage of slavery.
This guy lost me with "wages are a reflection of the worker's productivity". It seems he lives in economic theory la-la land.
Wage growth completely de-coupled from productivity gains a couple of decades ago at about the time globalization caused a race to the bottom by big manufacturers searching out the lowest wages.
In America, worker productivity has more than doubled in the last ten years but wages have been stagnant and are now trending even lower.
Asshole needs to get out of his fancy office and vist reality a bit more often.
If these Mises guys actually grew up in the hood, and worked their way up through these dead end jobs, *cough* *hmm* they would have a different tune.
These Mises guys were born on third base and thought they hit a triple, and Ha Ha to the guy who walked to first, he should have swung harder instead of getting 4 balls. It's beyond joke level. At least the guy who walked followed the rules of the rigged game/system.
Over 30 years of productivity gains have been denied to labor.
All this talk of minimum wages is bullshit until ALL productivity gains are passed through businesses to labor and to capital/management equitably AND taxation of labor and capital is harmonized completely one way or another.
Capital doesn't perform work and should not have a higher claim on productivity gains than labor which generates the increased output.
Hey... Troll. Why don't you get a REAL job? How much are the Socialists paying you to post here, elitist? (You are an elitist because you don't think you should be subject to the vote arrows - like you're too GOOD for that... too GOOD for your opinions and BS to be voted on by the rest of us, the "little people.")
And just for grins and giggles - I grew up on the poor side of town, the blue collar side. Sorry - there was no special wonderfullness there. You want to make icons out of poor people? Good luck with that.
Doesn't raising the minimum wage make the defined benefit pension worth much less?
My observation has been that real mom and pop small businesses never pay minimum wage. The only enterprises that do are corporate entities. So how is raising the minimum wage going to affect mom and pops?
No kidding. I helped out a friend's small business for a lunch.
I learned something new, got a meal out of it, and she could use the payroll for the full timers who need it.
well stupid fuck i worked for someone who owned a franchise and he did pay minimum wage. he's now my brother in law and he thinks I made the right decision. Fast food is getting expensive and I eat out less.
Hey raising the minimum wage lifts all union wages. It is a gift!
"Indeed, in American states that must hold plebiscites to authorize tax increases, one hears regular howls from the pro-tax crowd about how “direct democracy” is awful and that “representative democracy” is so much better."...
To all those in the "representative democracy" bucket I bring you gifts!
Because you will be baying at the moon when the cannon turns your way and you become obsolete in the eyes of your government who will declare you "disposible" when you run out of money to feed them.
What we sow we shall reap!...
Those who advocate full employment advocate total and unending war.
They also advocate perpetual slavery. Wasn't technology supposed to increase productivity and make our lives easier? What happened to the four hour working week?
Boo Hoo...
The serfs now are doing what the wealthy have done for years, petition gov't for perks. Now if the middle class can afford a lobbying firm, they can vote themselves all sorts of fun stuff from the gov't. Perhaps tax credits, subsidies, depreciation...all that stuff the wealthy lobbied for and got. What? The plebes aren't supposed to do this? Someone had better remind them of their PLACE!
Wages are already being subsidized by the provision of food stamps etc which are then indirectly paid for by the taxpayers generally.
Equally so, and perhaps even more so, business is the beneficiary of corporate welfare through a whole lot of subsidies, tax breaks, loopholes etc which are compounded even further by not being penalized to the requisite degree when they have engaged in illegal behaviour at the expense of their customers.
The bottom line is that government need to butt out of creating complexities and glossing over problems with handouts to both sides. Let the markets create their own equilibrium and let families and communities figure out their own futures.
Why all the panic? Worried that this little experiment might not wreck everything? Let's just see what happens. Maybe if we're lucky we'll see lots of layoffs of those recently hired women, and the price of prostitutes will drop further.
You know who make strange bedfellows? Libertarian economic theory and oligarchic corporate despotism.
Yet in arguments like the one presented, and in the earlier Von Mises Institute post that advised cutting benefits, it looks like nobody wants to put the squeeze on labor as much as free market economists!!
haha, so weird, yet true.
Proponents of free markets also supported the liberalization of trade (GATT) which resulted in the offshoring of American Industry. Just watch the Sir James Goldsmith interviews to see an industry shill spouting free market rhetoric.
The logic was: American companies that offshore their labor will have more money left over to invest in their American enterprises. The profits will help them hire *more* American workers.
Offshoring of American manufacturing had the loud support of free market proponents, because free market theory is splintered when it comes to protectionism and the social good. Surely, the results of this free market competition have been disastrous for Americans on the whole. Libertarians seem to believe that freedom of markets and efficiency of economics supersedes the claims of labor on quality living conditions and working wages.
A slave-shop in Indonesia is in many ways a logical outcome of free-market race-to-the-bottom in terms of seeking the lowest cost for labor.
The day Libertarians scream about Corporate Tyranny as much as Government Tyranny...I might listen. But so far, there's not a PEEP of opposition to the corps from libertarians. This tells me all I need to know.
I feel outraged that those parents who have looked at their current finances, the cost benefits of an Edumacation with a final look at their offspring before shaking their heads should have the book thrown at them for not co-signing on FREEEEEE Studente Pay As You Go Nowhere nonScholarDIPs JPM Owns Your Butt Open Source Community College Pogwams.
"in American states that must hold plebiscites to authorize tax increases, one hears regular howls from the pro-tax crowd about how “direct democracy” is awful and that “representative democracy” is so much better"
What the pro-tax crowd are really saying is that they are anti-democracy. How dare the people decide for themselves.
work for free
its the same 5000 year old luciferian conspiracy meme
enslave and rule the world
you are not special. there is nothing special about you. you are property of the state, and the church.
you are not an individual. you are a "body" and a "soul" that is all. and if your soul is not black, it will be after the fabian socialist fascists get done with you.
I have only earned the minum wage when I was homeless and unemployed, $0.00/hr. Every single job I have ever held since I was 15.5 has been above minimum wage. So what the fuck are YOU doing wrong that you are earning minimum wage? You, as an individual, negotiated with your employer for your wage. You alone bear the responsibility for earning minimum wage if that is what you agreed to.
Missing the point arguing! Would it matter if minimum wage was $25 an hour if a pint of milk cost $14?