Support NeoGAF

[Absinthe]

Just so I'm clear, I support a raise in the minimum wage, I support more restrictions on corporations to pay all employees better and I empathize with people who have struggles I couldn't fathom. We should encourage others to better themselves and not to feel helpless in life but minimum wage should be seen as a start, not an end.

I mean as long as you ignore the time period in US history where it was, and you ignore the President who ushered in minimum wage's statement on it being a livable wage, sure one could make your argument.

The FLSA says nothing about a living wage but If you're referring to Churchhills statement on living wage then it's enough for one person to live on in most cases. For example, in Washington it's $11 an which equals ~$1900 a month which is plenty for one individual. Last year it was $9.47 which equals ~$1650 a month, still a living wage.

Furthermore I do agree in raising the minimum wage at a federal level to a more reasonable level, but I do not agree that it should be enough to support a family.

It was absolutely intended to be lived off of. If it had been properly pegged to inflation it would actually be around 23$ right now.

This idea that some jobs are not real jobs is an invention of a warped worldview.

All jobs have fallen behind what they should be if properly pegged to inflation. That's a much bigger issue and there should be some sort of regulation that dictates what CEO's should make in relation to their employees etc.

 

[AntraxSuicide]

every state has at least one major urban area. i live in texas, which uses the federal minimum wage, and we have a population of about 27 million people. roughly 60% of that is urban, which comes to 16 million.

the other problem is that most red states will react harshly if any cities within them try to raise their minimum wage. north carolina's HB2 is best known for the transgender bathroom ban but it also reversed charlotte's minimum wage hike and might never have passed if that hadn't been a consideration.

Mississippi doesn't really have an urban area. Jackson is our largest city, and it's population is only 1/15th of the total state population. $15 would ruin most of the state. I think with some of the good calculations (Oregon has one above that I think would work) MS can afford about $12/hr.

 

[The Horror the horror]

Dollar Tree Inc.’s profit shot up 41% in the latest quarter and margins expanded amid more shoppers coming to the retailer’s stores—and spending more while there.

Like rival Dollar General Corp., Dollar Tree generally has benefited recently from rising wages among core customers. Dollar Tree said it opened 584 new stores in 2016 as other retailers such as Macy’s Inc. have detailed plans to shutter locations.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dollar-trees-profit-margins-rise-as-sales-climb-1488377830

In today's paper.

 

[kirblar]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dollar-trees-profit-margins-rise-as-sales-climb-1488377830

In today's paper.

An increase in lower and middle-class purchasing power is a good thing. You're not going to find much disagreement there.

Whether or not the minimum wage is a good way of achieving an increase is a completely different debate altogether.

 

[dLMN8R]

An increase in lower and middle-class purchasing power is a good thing. You're not going to find much disagreement there.

Whether or not the minimum wage is a good way of achieving an increase is a completely different debate altogether.

It's a "completely different debate" we're having right here, in this thread. It's a debate backed with many concrete examples straight out of Seattle and other areas which have raised the minimum wage.

At this point the burden of proof is on the detractors to prove that raising the minimum wage doesn't work. All of you detractors have been screaming from the hilltops for decades that raising the minimum wage would lead to the end of small business profitability entirely and be a disaster for the economy.

Well, prove it? Cities and states have increased the minimum wage significantly despite the endless claims. Those policies have been in place for years now in many cases. You have plenty of opportunity now to prove your case.

Why hasn't anyone?

And why is Tom Douglas such an asshole about it?

Reposting from earlier:

Employees in the food service industry in Seattle and the surrounding area:

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/201...-or-no-evidence-of-price-increases-in-seattle

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/201...ed-minimum-wage-has-led-to-businesses-closing

We do not find compelling evidence that the minimum wage has caused significant increases in business failure rates. Moreover, if there has been any increase in business closings caused by the Minimum Wage Ordinance, it has been more than offset by an increase in business openings.

The City's job growth rate tripled the national average... The City's job growth rate outpaced its robust performance in recent years... Seattle's low-wage workers who kept working were modestly better off as a result of the Minimum Wage Ordinance, having $13 more per week in earnings and working 15 minutes less per week

For example, Tom Douglass was yelling from the heavens before it was implemented:

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/ar...-15-minimum-wage-would-affect-his-restaurants

I don't know that it would put us out of business, but I would say we would lose maybe a quarter of the restaurants in town, would be my guess.

Three years later, Tom Douglas' biggest concern?

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2016/12/30/chef-tom-douglas-on-seattle-food-scene.html

Too many restaurants are opening up!

 

[Boney]

Instead of a minimum wage increase we should focus on having easier credits. Works like a charm every time.

 

[AntraxSuicide]

It's a "completely different debate" we're having right here, in this thread. It's a debate backed with many concrete examples straight out of Seattle and other areas which have raised the minimum wage.

At this point the burden of proof is on the detractors to prove that raising the minimum wage doesn't work. All of you detractors have been screaming from the hilltops for decades that raising the minimum wage would lead to the end of small business profitability entirely and be a disaster for the economy.

Well, prove it? Cities and states have increased the minimum wage significantly despite the endless claims. Those policies have been in place for years now in many cases. You have plenty of opportunity now to prove your case.

Why hasn't anyone?

And why is Tom Douglas such an asshole about it?

Reposting from earlier:

I don't think many here (other than that "poor people are just lazy" poster) are arguing against raises in places like Seattle. But if we're talking an absolute number for the federal minimum wage, you gotta fix that number with Bumfuck, Mississippi in mind.

Or you go variable across the country, which seems better and more credible based on research than a few trial runs in areas that don't translate well to the minimum areas of living. $15 is catchy, and is honestly too low for most cities, but it's too high for most of the South and rural West.

 

[dLMN8R]

I don't think many here (other than that "poor people are just lazy" poster) are arguing against raises in places like Seattle. But if we're talking an absolute number for the federal minimum wage, you gotta fix that number with Bumfuck, Mississippi in mind.

Or you go variable across the country, which seems better and more credible based on research than a few trial runs in areas that don't translate well to the minimum areas of living. $15 is catchy, and is honestly too low for most cities, but it's too high for most of the South and rural West.

I realize now I didn't explicitly state it in this thread - I completely agree that $15 doesn't fit everywhere. I think it needs to be increased to be relatively proportional to the cost of living.

For example, while Seattle is heading toward $15 now, Washington State just passed this last year: $11 in 2017, $11.50 in 2018, $12 in 2019, and $13.50 in 2020.

 

[SMattera]

IAt this point the burden of proof is on the detractors to prove that raising the minimum wage doesn't work. All of you detractors have been screaming from the hilltops for decades that raising the minimum wage would lead to the end of small business profitability entirely and be a disaster for the economy.

Well, prove it? Cities and states have increased the minimum wage significantly despite the endless claims. Those policies have been in place for years now in many cases. You have plenty of opportunity now to prove your case.

Why hasn't anyone?

And why is Tom Douglas such an asshole about it?

Reposting from earlier:

Seattle is home two of the greatest companies in the history of the world. These two companies are, among other things, leading the cloud computing revolution, which depending on how you look at it, could be the greatest technological revolution in 100 years. It's also home to numerous promising startups and satellite offices of major Bay Area tech companies. Most of the employees of these firms are very high skilled and make many many times the minimum wage.

Which is to say, the Seattle restaurant industry is well posistioned, even with a minimum wage of $15+. If the minimum wage is set below the market wage, it has no effect. Possibly, the Seattle restaurant industry could be doing even better without increases in the minimum wage. And of course, Seattle rent is absurd and is rising faster than any other city in the country.

There are many studies that show the minimum wage has an adverse effect on employment. Here's a few:

http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~j1clemens/pdfs/ClemensWitherMinimumWageGreatRecession.pdf
http://economics.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/files/events/Meer_West_Minimum_Wage.pdf
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12663

There are other interesting things you can look at. For example: Why racists love the minimum wage laws and Ignoring Economics

 

[KarneeKarnay]

I think we do need it and that the lack of job will be evened out, by the new income. A lot of people will lose jobs, but those jobs will almost certainly be positions in which automation was already suited.

In theory the amount of money generated by the new income, will allow for the growth of more businesses and more jobs. In reality this will only work, as long as the government is willing to crack down on businesses that take advantage and pay under the wage. Corruption is really the only thing that should stop the growth of new businesses (other than incompetence).

If the government were to do this, they would need to start free skills workshops. Courses that people unemployed can take for free that offer them a new skills set that could be used. This will help deal with the short term problems of automation.

 

[dLMN8R]

Seattle is home two of the greatest companies in the history of the world. These two companies are, among other things, leading the cloud computing revolution, which depending on how you look at it, could be the greatest technological revolution in 100 years. It's also home to numerous promising startups and satellite offices of major Bay Area tech companies. Most of the employees of these firms are very high skilled and make many many times the minimum wage.

Which is to say, the Seattle restaurant industry is well posistioned, even with a minimum wage of $15+. If the minimum wage is set below the market wage, it has no effect. Possibly, the Seattle restaurant industry could be doing even better without increases in the minimum wage. And of course, Seattle rent is absurd and is rising faster than any other city in the country.

There are many studies that show the minimum wage has an adverse effect on employment. Here's a few:

http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~j1clemens/pdfs/ClemensWitherMinimumWageGreatRecession.pdf
http://economics.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/files/events/Meer_West_Minimum_Wage.pdf
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12663

There are other interesting things you can look at. For example: Why racists love the minimum wage laws and Ignoring Economics

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to go read 150 pages of technical research papers, and then another paper from 2006 - nearly a decade before the current (and most significant in years) Minimum Wage laws were put in place.

I have a strong feeling you didn't read those research papers either. But if you did, feel free to summarize them yourself. If you didn't, feel free to point me to credible summaries of those papers.

Also: New York Post? Seriously dude? A Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid rag?

And another piece of "Commentary" from RCP from well over a decade ago?

If all you have are research papers you personally didn't read, a Murdoch rag, and two articles from over a decade ago, I'm guessing that you really don't have a strong case to personally argue for yourself.

 

[TheLaughingStock]

I mean as long as you ignore the time period in US history where it was, and you ignore the President who ushered in minimum wage's statement on it being a livable wage, sure one could make your argument.

Lol...

 

[SMattera]

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to go read 150 pages of technical research papers, and then another paper from 2006 - nearly a decade before the current (and most significant in years) Minimum Wage laws were put in place.

I have a strong feeling you didn't read those research papers either. But if you did, feel free to summarize them yourself. If you didn't, feel free to point me to credible summaries of those papers.

Also: New York Post? Seriously dude? A Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid rag?

And another piece of "Commentary" from RCP from well over a decade ago?

If all you have are research papers you personally didn't read, a Murdoch rag, and two articles from over a decade ago, I'm guessing that you really don't have a strong case to personally argue for yourself.

Stunning. Ad hominems and blanket dismissals. It's clear you don't wish to have an honest discussion.

For anyone else reading this, if you click the link, the first page of each study summarizes their conclusions quite succinctly.

More broadly, the general consensus among economists (you can find many surveys about this) is that the minimum wage has an adverse effect on employment. Still, many economists support modest increases in the minimum wage because they believe the higher wages among the people who have minimum wage jobs is worth the job loss.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Stunning. Ad hominems and blanket dismissals. It's clear you don't wish to have an honest discussion.

For anyone else reading this, if you click the link, the first page of each study summarizes their conclusions quite succinctly.

More broadly, the general consensus among economists (you can find many surveys about this) is that the minimum wage has an adverse effect on employment. Still, many economists support modest increases in the minimum wage because they believe the higher wages among the people who have minimum wage jobs is worth the job loss.

It is absolutely untrue there is a general consensus amongst economists. However, if you were to plot the findings of the most prominent studies conducted on the issue on a funnel graph showing strength of finding against significance of finding, it looks like this:

...that is, the elasticity of labour with respect to wages at low levels of wage is very low - either 0, or incredibly close to 0. It's pretty noticeable as well that the larger the sample size of a given study, the more likely it was to find a 0 relationship.

I was tempted to write a big long post addressing why precisely you are wrong, but fortunately someone else has done it far better than I ever could, so I'll simply pass on the links:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/

Probably the best article piece to read on this.

 

[SMattera]

The distribution is skewed to the left.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

The distribution is skewed to the left.

So you didn't read the article.

 

[Tain]

Love too split hairs and do apologetics for the system we live in instead of recognizing how fundamentally horrifying and dehumanizing it is, on-line.

i make more money than poor people and i am obviously better than poor people: the system is good 👍

 

[Cyrano]

I realize now I didn't explicitly state it in this thread - I completely agree that $15 doesn't fit everywhere. I think it needs to be increased to be relatively proportional to the cost of living.

For example, while Seattle is heading toward $15 now, Washington State just passed this last year: $11 in 2017, $11.50 in 2018, $12 in 2019, and $13.50 in 2020.

I'd say it needs to be proportional to inflation, since cost of living is exploited (manipulated downward by locales that want to advertise themselves as "cheap" to live in) quite a bit (mostly because it's a much more understandable index than inflation, though both have similar impact when implemented at the state level).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottw...-over-cost-of-living-adjustment/#6ae758582eb4

Also, the more common and easily understood reality:

 

[SMattera]

So you didn't read the article.

I did. The author writes:

"The bell skews more to left than to the right, which means more studies have found negative effects of the minimum wage than positive effects of the minimum wage."

Then concludes that this may be publication bias. Please educate me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that, in order to accurately assess publication bias with a funnel plot, the underlying population studied should be the same. Without looking at the individual studies plotted here, I would assume that they look at very different populations of workers and very different periods of time.

There is, of course, a bias problem with studying the minimum wage and its effects. Most sane people implicitly acknowledge the job-killing potential of a minimum wage. That is why no one is proposing a minimum wage of $100/hour. Because they know that, if enforced, it would have a devastating effect.

Instead only modest increases (which are likely to be at or near the market wage) are enacted into law, and therefore it's not surprising that you see only a slightly negative effect.

 

[Earthstrike]

This is flawed from the beginning IMO. The logic of this follows:

1: Increase minimum wage
2: ???
3: People have more money
4: Jobs are created to deliver more goods to more people

Where is the guarantee that employers are going to be willing to pay more for bottom-tier employees vs using automation or reducing employee numbers and putting the extra workload on the remaining employees?

I am ALL FOR paying lower and middle class people more money, and ALL FOR reeling back the rich owners. But a $15 MINIMUM wage does not address the vast majority of problems facing the working class. It's a lazy solution.

What the hell is with the question marks for step 2. If you increase the minimum wage, the wages of people working those jobs will, in fact, increase, because their wage has increased. All your criticizing with your post is your own nonunderstanding of how increasing the minimum wage causes people to have more money.

 

[TarNaru33]

This is flawed from the beginning IMO. The logic of this follows:

1: Increase minimum wage
2: ???
3: People have more money
4: Jobs are created to deliver more goods to more people

Where is the guarantee that employers are going to be willing to pay more for bottom-tier employees vs using automation or reducing employee numbers and putting the extra workload on the remaining employees?

I am ALL FOR paying lower and middle class people more money, and ALL FOR reeling back the rich owners. But a $15 MINIMUM wage does not address the vast majority of problems facing the working class. It's a lazy solution.

I am tired of people calling it a "lazy solution" as if there we are saying that increasing the minimum wage is the only solution. It is one solution that can be easily implemented if people stop fretting so much of the detail.

Automation is already here, the only thing slowing it down is it's technological advancement and the price of entry for it. It already claimed thousands of jobs already.

Too many of you worry about the states and areas that are least populated in U.S and want to peg U.S national minimum wage to their living standard when the vast majority of U.S citizens are in urban areas.

https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/ua/urban-rural-2010.html

Now I wouldn't be against such a thing if majority of states were willing to let cities handle their own minimum wage and be willing to increase their own minimum wage. They do not do this because Republicans are typically against any increases. The rural parts of U.S literally hold the urban one's hostage due to the political mapping.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Then concludes that this may be publication bias. Please educate me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that, in order to accurately assess publication bias with a funnel plot, the underlying population studied should be the same. Without looking at the individual studies plotted here, I would assume that they look at very different populations of workers and very different periods of time.

Well, you could have read the cited metastudy...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2009.00723.x/abstract

Or to quote the abstract:

The minimum-wage effects literature is contaminated by publication selection bias, which we estimate to be slightly larger than the average reported minimum-wage effect. Once this publication selection is corrected, little or no evidence of a negative association between minimum wages and employment remains.

There is, of course, a bias problem with studying the minimum wage and its effects. Most sane people implicitly acknowledge the job-killing potential of a minimum wage. That is why no one is proposing a minimum wage of $100/hour. Because they know that, if enforced, it would have a devastating effect.

Instead only modest increases (which are likely to be at or near the market wage) are enacted into law, and therefore it's not surprising that you see only a slightly negative effect.

Of course. But we can extrapolate from precedent. In 1968, the minimum wage corresponded to 54% of average hourly earnings. If it had kept on track with that figure, it would have been $11.84 today. Most minimum wage studies and consequently metastudies consider 1968 within their dataset, because it marks one of the extreme values. Nevertheless, the modal finding in the field is either 0 correlation or an insignificant correlation. So we have to consider the scale of the effect you'd see when going from outside this dataset to $15. It would be extremely surprising if there was some enormous shift in elasticity passing from $11.84 to $13 or $13 to $15 - there's no prima facie reason why we ought to suppose this. So even if we credit the standard minimum wage model, rather than say the monopsony wage model (where you might even expect increases in employment in some industries, and given the dataset encountered so far is equally plausible), and suppose there will be some decrease in employment... it would be a very small decrease indeed.

This is especially true when you consider that for the states that people have been concerned with in this thread (the Southern states), the truth of the matter is that the monopsony wage model is more likely to be right than the alternative. "mom and pop stores", scrapping to get by on some tiny margin, are actually much more likely to exist in relatively affluent Northern and coastal states. Most of the employers down in the South are actually conglomerates and major corporations, and this is especially true for employers of those earning minimum wage. If anything, the Southern economy has more underexploited slack than that of coastal states.

 

[TarNaru33]

This is especially true when you consider that for the states that people have been concerned with in this thread (the Southern states), the truth of the matter is that the monopsony wage model is more likely to be right than the alternative. "mom and pop stores", scrapping to get by on some tiny margin, are actually much more likely to exist in relatively affluent Northern and coastal states. Most of the employers down in the South are actually conglomerates and major corporations, and this is especially true for employers of those earning minimum wage. If anything, the Southern economy has more underexploited slack than that of coastal states.

Eh, Where did you come by this information?

Personally I do not believe U.S should peg it's minimum wage to the lowest living standard as it leaves out majority of the country as most of U.S populace are in urbanized areas. Rural life has been decreasing due to technological advancements, it is time they start adapting to it in my view. In all honesty, I do not see a minimum wage increase devastating even the lower living standards of U.S even more than the issues they have now.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Eh, Where did you come by this information?

www.census.gov/econ/susb covers all these kinds of statistics. Mom and pop shops are generally pretty pricey because they don't get the economies of scale that being a big company affords, so they tend to be concentrated in relatively affluent, middle-class areas that can meet those prices. The South and the Rust Belt have proportionately more big firms.

 

[Bonen no Max'd]

So Crab, if I'm following, you're saying that in contrast with the assumptions made by people (large minimum wage hikes work in affluent cities but would be devastating to poorer communities) that because most of these poorer communities are largely serviced by monopolies and large corporations they would actually benefit the most from a minimum wage hike because the employers can more easily eat the cost?