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This will certainly be made worse by raising the min wage, as suggested in the article, not helped. Contrary to the apparent popular opinion, companies aren’t b
by mjfl 6y ago
This will certainly be made worse by raising the min wage, as suggested in the article, not helped. Contrary to the apparent popular opinion, companies aren’t bottomless pits of money and many are barely surviving. How do people get away with having this fantasy as one of the central “truths” of their universes?
Many of the barely surviving companies are those that employ “vulnerable people”, think grocery stores- laser thin margins, managers that aren’t actually making much more than employees. Nuking those businesses will improve the health of the job market? are you kidding me?
- cambalache 6y agoI suggest to decrease the minimum wage to 1 USD/h like in Mexico. Other option is that the bosses may give the employees a tract of land in rent as payment, they can keep a small portion of their production for themselves.
- flyinglizard 6y agoSome Nordic countries, which usually come up at some point when discussing employment dynamics, do not have a minimum wage and yet no one earns only $1/h.
- radus 6y agoThose same countries have very expansive social safety nets that are non-existent in the US.
- rayiner 6y agoYou mean like universal healthcare for low income people (Medicaid)? Or retirement security for low income people (Social security)? What exactly are you referring to?
- cambalache 6y agoFree college education 4-6 weeks of mandated paid vacation Substantial paid parental leave Option to opt in for half-time working and the companies are mandated to comply Universal healthcare not related to your job situation nor to the whims of the coverage of your health policy Option to join an union with no repercussion Any other question?
- bhupy 6y agoNobody doubts that Nordic countries have generous social safety nets, but I think rayiner is scoffing at the notion that the US's social safety net is "non-existent", which is laughable. The US spends close to 80% of its Federal budget on social programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, EITC, SNAP/EBT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:2019_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/... And that's not even including State-level welfare. Each State has its own unemployment insurance, welfare programs, and subsidized state university. In Georgia (where my alma mater is), university is essentially free if you can maintain a GPA > 3.5. On top of all that, the government is currently debating another big round of welfare and stimulus. A Republican has proposed a massive overhaul of welfare to provide up to $15,000 a year in cash for parents: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22264520/mitt-romney-checks-parents-4200 https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22264520/mitt-romney-chec...
- dualthro 6y ago> In Georgia (where my alma mater is), university is essentially free if you can maintain a GPA > 3.5. Why do I always see that the GA Tech OMSCS is ~$10,000? This is a serious question. If it's essentially free with a good GPA I might actually enroll.
- rayiner 6y agoThe Georgia program (HOPE) is for in-state high-school students getting their undergraduate degree, not people getting graduate degrees.
- cambalache 6y agoNo, they earn substantially more than in America, which is exactly the opposite of what OP is proposing.
- bhupy 6y agoNo, they do not. Norway is the only Nordic country that has a higher median adult income, and it's not by a whole lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income#Median https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c... These numbers are after taxes and transfers, so they encode all of the welfare programs in the respective countries.
- cambalache 6y agoI was talking about minimum-wage earners, the difference is day and night. So,yes they do.
- bhupy 6y agoYou'll have to provide some citations. Here's one study, reviewed jointly by Dr. Henrique Schneider, professor of economics at Nordakademie University in Germany and the chief economist of the Swiss Federation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-richer-than-most-nations-of-europe/ https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-ric... In the US, we have welfare programs that target the poor (yes, some slip through the cracks unfortunately). Once you account for all taxes, transfers, and non-welfare benefits, the poorest 20% are on average richer than most European nations. This is measured by looking at annual per capita consumption among the bottom 20%.
- cambalache 6y agoThe article you provided are from the same people who deny global warming(The Heartland Institute). Dr. Henrique Schneider is a conservative Austrian (as in the school) economist with loony ideas about science: https://ecaef.org/the-anthropocene-fallacy-learning-from-wrong-ideas/ https://ecaef.org/the-anthropocene-fallacy-learning-from-wro... So allow me to be quite skeptic about the quality and validity of his "research"
- chickenpotpie 6y agoCorrelation not causation. They don’t have minimum wage because they don’t need minimum wage. This is like saying that antibiotics give you an infection because only people with an infection have antibiotics.
- AshWolfy 6y agoThey have strong unions with sectoral bargaining
- chickenpotpie 6y agoWhat’s the point of doing that? That’s $2000 a year at full time. No American can even come close to living on that and frankly I would rather be unemployed
- cambalache 6y agoSarcasm
- bluntfang 6y agoI think you make a good point here that a lot of people miss: we have things like cheap groceries because as a society we prey on vulnerable people. When do we accept that the reason we get to have avacados and limes year round everywhere in the country is because we are all collectively taking advantage of people? And we have to accept that if we want to take advantage of people less, our day to day will be more expensive.
- dudul 6y agoMaybe going on a tangent here, but it's really the idea of a federal minimum wage that doesn't make sense to me. Cost of living can literally be an order of magnitude apart between 2 given states.
- calvinmorrison 6y agoAnd differences can be a magnitude apart living in different parts of the state! I live in a major east coast city, where a small rowhome in my neighborhood is 200k+ in good condition. new houses in the state capitol 2 hours away? No problem coming in under 100K. So COL varies wildy even within a state, as is no surprise.
- dudul 6y agoI don't disagree, this is just making my point even more :) And reinforces the original comment that a minimum wage that doesn't take these disparities into account may simply be a death blow for a lot of small businesses in low CoL areas.
- chickenpotpie 6y agoBecause it’s literally the minimum wage. States are free to raise it higher if their cost of living is higher, but it makes sense for the federal government to say “there is nowhere in the country where you can support a family on less than this dollar amount so everyone should have to pay at least this”
- nathanvanfleet 6y agoI love how Americans just think there is no other country that might have, say, higher minimum wages or socialized medicine. It's just impossible they say. Not sense in comparing or seeing other places approach, America is just too exceptional.
- jacob2484 6y agoNote that in Europe the economies are not as dynamic and has lower GDP growth on average. There are costs to higher taxes and more regulations. We're not exceptional, things are done differently.
- naebother 6y agoI always have to remind myself of our glorious GDP growth as I use food stamps to buy groceries after clocking out of a 12 hour shift at Walmart.
- mjfl 6y agoWell, that GDP growth technically means you have a better opportunity to trade up in the USA than anywhere else in the world, if you apply yourself, get yourself trained, etc. you want to make people believe that these career choices are impossible to escape and they really aren’t.
- DangitBobby 6y ago> than in anywhere else the world This is definitely not true. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_th...
- mjfl 6y agoIt certainly is true, but academics who want to conduct sophistry can use the metric that gives them the answers they want. Comparing USA to Denmark using in-country income percentiles gives Denmark a much lower bar to hop over for this BS "social-mobility" as defined in the article.
- anonAndOn 6y agoNuking, how? Where do you think you are going to get your cheap bananas? Your bananas are going to go up from $0.29/lb to $0.39/lb and the grocery clerk is going to have a little more rent money.
- cobookman 6y agoYou assume the store wouldn't replace the grocery clerk with self-checkout machines or install an amazon go like-system. Robots & specialized technology solutions are year-over-year going down in cost. If labor continues the upwards cost trajectory we'd simply be accelerating the replacement of unskilled labor with robots. Great example is Knightscope. It's able to meet security guard compliance & insurance needs at an hourly rate cheaper than humans. And given enough time, I'm sure it'll end up more reliable. https://www.knightscope.com/ https://www.knightscope.com/
- noahtallen 6y agoIndeed, this is a great argument for UBI, since it will not be possible to maintain a job supply which can provide everyone with a life. :)
- klmadfejno 6y agoThat's a pretty terrible reason for UBI imo. If UBI is built to offset the lack of jobs, more people will choose not to work. If people choose not to work, the price of labor will go up. If the price of labor goes up, more and more labor will be outsourced to countries without UBI. It will create an underclass of non-citizens who don't get the luxury of UBI but live in an economy built for people who do.
- calvano915 6y agoPeople just choosing not to work in a thread about about ever-increasing numbers of workers with multiple jobs. Really??
- petermcneeley 6y agohttps://www.workforce.com/news/labor-and-benefits-expenses-in-supermarkets https://www.workforce.com/news/labor-and-benefits-expenses-i... If you doubled the employee wages the prices would increase less than 10%. If minimum wage went up these businesses would not disappear; prices would just simply increase. Most modest increases in minimum wage would simply result in income transfers from higher to lower.
- mjfl 6y agoIf minimum wage goes up the stores will simply be replaced by Amazon- is that what you meant to say?
- stu2b50 6y agoThey would raise prices? Which would disproportionately affect me, who makes a good bit more than minimum wage, since I still buy from those vendors but my wage is not increasing. While lower income workers would have the prices raise on them, but less than by the amount that their page is rising (because the cost is also spread on people who won't have their wages increased). Which is fine by me. It can present a problem to positions like, say, academic adjunct, since those are budgetary and can't simply increase prices. But for the most part I don't see anything apocalyptic about a minimum wage increase.
- mjfl 6y agoThey would raise prices, and be immediately replaced by Amazon, who can outprice them with scale and robotics. All this time you are complaining about a society dominated by a few large players, but every policy you advocate favors the dominance by a few large players.
- rland 6y agoRaising minimum wage leads to efficiency gains, because companies automate their processes to remove labor from the equation. We can take care of those people who cannot sell their labor at above minimum wage. It's not a law of the universe that they need to be exiled to starvation or eviction. (American corporations would love to have you think so!) Of course, this means that if you own a big company like McDonalds and put all your workers out of a job by automating, you need to do your part to take care of them. When jobs are automated, overall revenue doesn't go down. It often goes up. It's a misallocation that the increased revenue doesn't go to displaced workers in the form of welfare. Groceries are already adapting: they employ fewer people than they did prior, especially in high-cost areas. They already are removing cheap labor: self checkout. The increase in productivity goes to the worker who still remains, in the form of a higher wage.
- sand_castles 6y agoRaising the minimum wage in a vacuum is not doing to do much. The problem with the US is monopoly corporations, monopoly landlords, monopoly banks, monopoly educational institutions and monopoly governance, while the individual and the family unit is left to fend for themselves. Automating jobs does not always work out. Self-checkout counters are a nightmare if you are blind or cannot read the local language. A society that would value the wellbeing of the blind and weak would not try to automate everything.
- mjfl 6y agoIt is just simply not true that we can maintain a huge portion of the population on unemployment for an indefinite period of time. It would come out to trillions of dollars per year, the math just doesn’t add up. And I should remind you that not every company is McDonalds or Amazon, but this kind of thinking supports their dominance rather than undermines it because their competition are less able to afford to comply with regulations. Wouldn’t you feel like a fool if you killed all small business in the US and ended up only with a few big players? Isn’t that the scenario everyone is afraid of? Stop making it a self fulfilling prophecy.
- AshWolfy 6y agoExcept it would increase demand and therefore profit
- mjfl 6y agonot if total payrolls stay constant.