4 ms·

What is funny about it? He's reflecting on the low wages v. amount of work involved to make those wages worth his time. Every one has their limits, but well-to-

What is funny about it? He's reflecting on the low wages v. amount of work involved to make those wages worth his time. Every one has their limits, but well-to-do people working low paying jobs (in his case, personal and external factors) are a good indicator how much discrepancy exists in terms of work effort v. minimally accomodating income comes their way in return. Thus the worker shortage and BS argument that people don't want to work. Blue collar work deserves a living wage. Austin, at least in the area he works in, has an average of 110,000 USD/y, yet the workers can barely survive living with roommates 40 minutes away. That's 80 minutes of your life just driving in addition to menial income - average that out and it's even worse. Texas is embarrassingly low in its minimum wage laws. Why is it acceptable for a base wage of 2.13 USD/h for waiters when considering the cost of living has increased across the board in every way? Where does the disconnect lie here? Why is it acceptable that minimum wage is stil 7.35 USD/h, which decides how much the "higher" paying blue collar jobs pay in comparison? You are exhibiting what I would consider an elitist mentality.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
>Why is it acceptable that minimum wage is stil 7.35 USD/h, which decides how much the "higher" paying blue collar jobs pay in comparison? It has been a long time since the minimum wage decided anything, even in Texas. And in states that have not updated their minimum wage, it is because the voters are not voting for leaders that will raise the minimum wage. And those same voters are sending Senators and Representatives to the federal Congress, where again, they do not raise the minimum wage.
- fishtacos 3y ago
  The minimum wage is a factor in relative wage offering, even if it doesn't decide everything. The employers' argument ends up being "well, we're paying double minimum wage, so those who don't like it are lazy, entitled people." The problem here lies in a living wage that's decided by living costs in any geographical area, not the absolute wage itself. You are eggregiously conflating thw two.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Supply and demand curves for labor have moved well past the federal minimum wage, that is why it is not a factor. Employers’ or employees’ arguments are irrelevant, the only thing that matters is how many buyers there are relative to sellers (or a higher minimum wage).
    - fishtacos 3y ago
      Clearly not, given there's worker demand for blue collar jobs that offer 12/13 USD/h in an area where that doesn't even meet rent, let alone savings, buying or repairing a car, let alone the prospect of having children, buying a house or investing into one's 401k (pensions be damned, amirite?)
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        We’re conversing about two different things. I claimed that the federal minimum wage is too low to have an effect on wages, since the supply and demand curves for labor require employers to pay more than minimum wage to find anyone.
        fishtacos 3y ago
        And I'm simply disagreeing with you. You are way off - if the cost of living is too high for offerings for low-skill/blue-collar work is too low to make a living sustainable enough to affect the "demand curves", that means that something is off and the only enforcement mechanism, if we want to have a functional society that doesn't depend on welfare, is through government intervention. That comes directly from the federal minimum wage.
FredPret 3y ago
Even left-wing economists are not a fan of the minimum wage, which is mostly political theatre. If the market judges a particular level of software engineering to be worth say, $300/hour, and flipping a burger to be worth $20/hour, then that ratio will persist no matter what you do to the minimum wage. You could pay the burger flipper $1m/hour, and then inflation will kick in mightily, and the engineer ends up at $15m/hour, and the burger flipper is back to feeling poor again. The best thing is real economic growth - fiddling with the numbers does nothing
- medvezhenok 3y ago
  I think the more defensible statement would be that in the long run, the engineer would end up at $15m/hr. Even that is not a guarantee, since burger flippers and engineers are not interchangeable. This analysis is missing huge path dependence and varying time lags (i.e. the Cantillon effect). If the minimum wage doubles over night, sure engineer salaries will rise, but with a large lag, since wages tend to be sticky. So the ratio would fall from 15:1 to 7.5:1 overnight, and then slowly recover (over the course of years, likely). And that's assuming that the previous [lower] wage was not artificially suppressed via monopoly / monopsony power or something (which is definitely possible within a single industry)
  - fishtacos 3y ago
    In the meantime, people still need a roof over their head, need a car to get to places (at least in large swaths of concrete jungles, like in TX, as the RTFA explained), which means jack to those who aren't in that position. In other words, you are explaining away huge wage inequality via elitism.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    You're right. What I'm trying to get at though is that minimum wages won't help poor people - it only helps them feel supported. The only real help is to improve their power in the market.
    - paulmd 3y ago
ncallaway 3y ago
> What's funny about it? He's reflecting on the low wages v. amount of work involved to make those wages worth his time. What's funny is he is reflecting on this _after_ his prior gig was running a state labor department. This is the kind of thing that you should have _already reflected on_ if you are running a state labor department. The fact that you can _run a state labor department_, and not yet reflected on the low wages v. amount of worked involved to make those wages shows exactly "how disconnected well-to-do people can be". It's good that he learned the lesson, but it's a damn shame that he learned it after he was in a position to actually do something useful with that knowledge.
- fishtacos 3y ago
  Running the labor department has nothing to do with setting minimum wages. That's a legislative honor that neither side of this republic has the political will to touch, so as a result, neither would employers care.
  - ncallaway 3y ago
    While a labor department obviously doesn't set minimum wage, they do often handle all kinds of labor/employer disputes (such as wage theft, denial of breaks, mandatory overtime complaints, retaliation complaints, handling worker's comp claims, etc) that would strongly benefit from someone who already has this understanding (or at least has spent time thinking about it). Maybe a $300 wage theft complaint doesn't sound like that big a deal to a labor secretary making $196,000. But it could be an absolutely ruinous for some workers, and represent a huge amount of work to make up.
    - fishtacos 3y ago
      He's no longer secretary of labor. He's a former secretary of labor discussing something he had to first-hand experience, as opposed to seeing it from the disconnected pulpit. Similar to how the pope, pardon the analogy, claims the greatness of Christiandom while never mentioning the dissonance between criminality of switching the pedophiles in te church to other geographical areas to save them (and the Church's reputation) from due criminal prosecution.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

>Why is it acceptable that minimum wage is stil 7.35 USD/h, which decides how much the "higher" paying blue collar jobs pay in comparison? It has been a long time since the minimum wage decided anything, even in Texas. And in states that have not updated their minimum wage, it is because the voters are not voting for leaders that will raise the minimum wage. And those same voters are sending Senators and Representatives to the federal Congress, where again, they do not raise the minimum wage.

fishtacos 3y ago
The minimum wage is a factor in relative wage offering, even if it doesn't decide everything. The employers' argument ends up being "well, we're paying double minimum wage, so those who don't like it are lazy, entitled people." The problem here lies in a living wage that's decided by living costs in any geographical area, not the absolute wage itself. You are eggregiously conflating thw two.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Supply and demand curves for labor have moved well past the federal minimum wage, that is why it is not a factor. Employers’ or employees’ arguments are irrelevant, the only thing that matters is how many buyers there are relative to sellers (or a higher minimum wage).
  - fishtacos 3y ago
    Clearly not, given there's worker demand for blue collar jobs that offer 12/13 USD/h in an area where that doesn't even meet rent, let alone savings, buying or repairing a car, let alone the prospect of having children, buying a house or investing into one's 401k (pensions be damned, amirite?)
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      We’re conversing about two different things. I claimed that the federal minimum wage is too low to have an effect on wages, since the supply and demand curves for labor require employers to pay more than minimum wage to find anyone.
      - fishtacos 3y ago
        And I'm simply disagreeing with you. You are way off - if the cost of living is too high for offerings for low-skill/blue-collar work is too low to make a living sustainable enough to affect the "demand curves", that means that something is off and the only enforcement mechanism, if we want to have a functional society that doesn't depend on welfare, is through government intervention. That comes directly from the federal minimum wage.

FredPret 3y ago

Even left-wing economists are not a fan of the minimum wage, which is mostly political theatre. If the market judges a particular level of software engineering to be worth say, $300/hour, and flipping a burger to be worth $20/hour, then that ratio will persist no matter what you do to the minimum wage. You could pay the burger flipper $1m/hour, and then inflation will kick in mightily, and the engineer ends up at $15m/hour, and the burger flipper is back to feeling poor again. The best thing is real economic growth - fiddling with the numbers does nothing

medvezhenok 3y ago
I think the more defensible statement would be that in the long run, the engineer would end up at $15m/hr. Even that is not a guarantee, since burger flippers and engineers are not interchangeable. This analysis is missing huge path dependence and varying time lags (i.e. the Cantillon effect). If the minimum wage doubles over night, sure engineer salaries will rise, but with a large lag, since wages tend to be sticky. So the ratio would fall from 15:1 to 7.5:1 overnight, and then slowly recover (over the course of years, likely). And that's assuming that the previous [lower] wage was not artificially suppressed via monopoly / monopsony power or something (which is definitely possible within a single industry)
- fishtacos 3y ago
  In the meantime, people still need a roof over their head, need a car to get to places (at least in large swaths of concrete jungles, like in TX, as the RTFA explained), which means jack to those who aren't in that position. In other words, you are explaining away huge wage inequality via elitism.
- FredPret 3y ago
  You're right. What I'm trying to get at though is that minimum wages won't help poor people - it only helps them feel supported. The only real help is to improve their power in the market.
  - paulmd 3y ago

ncallaway 3y ago

> What's funny about it? He's reflecting on the low wages v. amount of work involved to make those wages worth his time. What's funny is he is reflecting on this _after_ his prior gig was running a state labor department. This is the kind of thing that you should have _already reflected on_ if you are running a state labor department. The fact that you can _run a state labor department_, and not yet reflected on the low wages v. amount of worked involved to make those wages shows exactly "how disconnected well-to-do people can be". It's good that he learned the lesson, but it's a damn shame that he learned it after he was in a position to actually do something useful with that knowledge.

fishtacos 3y ago
Running the labor department has nothing to do with setting minimum wages. That's a legislative honor that neither side of this republic has the political will to touch, so as a result, neither would employers care.
- ncallaway 3y ago
  While a labor department obviously doesn't set minimum wage, they do often handle all kinds of labor/employer disputes (such as wage theft, denial of breaks, mandatory overtime complaints, retaliation complaints, handling worker's comp claims, etc) that would strongly benefit from someone who already has this understanding (or at least has spent time thinking about it). Maybe a $300 wage theft complaint doesn't sound like that big a deal to a labor secretary making $196,000. But it could be an absolutely ruinous for some workers, and represent a huge amount of work to make up.
  - fishtacos 3y ago
    He's no longer secretary of labor. He's a former secretary of labor discussing something he had to first-hand experience, as opposed to seeing it from the disconnected pulpit. Similar to how the pope, pardon the analogy, claims the greatness of Christiandom while never mentioning the dissonance between criminality of switching the pedophiles in te church to other geographical areas to save them (and the Church's reputation) from due criminal prosecution.