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Even people making minimum wage struggle to make ends meet. Do you propose that this will significantly change if we remove minimum wage? I understand the "pri

by pyre 12y ago

Even people making minimum wage struggle to make ends meet. Do you propose that this will significantly change if we remove minimum wage? I understand the "prices will fall" mantra, but cost of living goes up with inflation. One would think that there would be no need for a minimum wage because as cost of living goes up, no one would be paying the 'bare minimum' anymore. The problem is that this is not what we see in practice. Another consideration is that middle-/upper-class wages would (in my opinion) no fall as a result of minimum wage abolition. This does not have an insignificant impact on prices too (just because cost goes down does not necessarily translate into lower prices, maybe just higher profits).

mikeash 12y ago
I don't see him proposing that minimum wages should be removed, or that anything will "magically" work out if they are. I merely see him stating that minimum wages contribute to this particular problem, which is true. It does not then follow that minimum wages should be eliminated. This sort of knee-jerk reaction makes it really hard to discuss any sort of public policy in a rational way. The moment you point out any problem with anything, somebody will come along and "rebut" your statement by pretending that you just stated that everything would be better if you eliminated the thing you're discussing. It's really annoying!
- normloman 12y ago
  Why would you blame minimum wage for this problem if you weren't implying we should reform or abolish it? Also, the process of proposal and rebuttal you describe has another name: Debate. And the constant rebutting is why it works so well. You attack the other side's idea while defending your own and the best ideas survive the process.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    "Why would you blame minimum wage for this problem if you weren't implying we should reform or abolish it?" Seriously? It's possible to think that something causes a problem while still thinking that it's a net gain. Is that concept actually foreign to you? Do you truly think that you must either see no faults in something or you must think it should be changed? Debate involves a mutual discussion. The process I describe, where a person "rebuts" something that was never said, is not debate, it's simple argument.
    - normloman 12y ago
      Yeah, I the fact that you could support it as a necessary evil (benefits outweigh the costs) slipped my mind. My bad. I still thought the post heavily implied something needed to be changed about minimum wage. Debate and argumentation are essentially the same. Debate can imply something formal, and argument can carry a negative connotation. But both are, by definition, adversarial methods of arriving at the truth. They require people to take sides, if just for the sake of argument.
  - gojomo 12y ago
    Mentioning minimum-wage laws as a contributing factor isn't quite 'blaming' them. Also, even minimum-wage proponents can (and often do) admit there are tradeoffs involved with such mandates, they just think those tradeoffs are worth it. You've guessed right that I don't personally think the tradeoffs of price-controls on wages are worth it. (Among other problems, the very young & low-skilled, who get priced out of essential starter jobs, are hurt more than those who remain employed at the higher wages are helped.) But we don't have to agree on that to reach common understandings on other particulars of how employers and employees adjust to constraints.
gojomo 12y ago
Did I mention prices at all? (You've slipped into some other scripted debate, with fuzzy political euphemisms like "making ends meet", which is only tangentially related to the point I'm making about the topic of this article.) The point above is that the system has many, many parameters in constant dynamic adjustment. Setting a minimum on one that's easy-to-observe (hourly wages) in law doesn't just cause that one value to change. The adjustments happen all over. Marginal workers aren't hired or kept-on-staff. Hours of operation are trimmed. Outfits run on slimmer crews. It's harder to find someone to ask a question. Lines for check-out get longer. Facilities go a little longer between restocking/cleaning. (Minimum wages mean grosser store bathrooms.) Unregulated, harder-to measure benefits get trimmed. The topic of this article, schedule predictability or flexibility, is just such a benefit. And it doesn't require conscious tit-for-tat book-balancing action by employers for these trade-offs to happen. As they notice they're making less, adjustments happen. (Or, smaller businesses that are slow to adjust simply become uneconomical and leave the market: minimum wages benefit Wal-Marts & McDonalds, with their expert formula operations, over intuitive "Mom-and-Pops".) Over time, since more people are now eager for extra hours at the legally-mandated higher salary, it's easier to place more informal demands on those people, like "you better take every shift when offered, or it won't be offered again". There are likely some good workers who'd prefer steadier work, in predicable shifts, at a lower wage. That agreement is made illegal by minimum wage laws, and they are forced to compete with a larger group of people looking to scoop up shorter, more random, higher-paying shifts.

by pyre 12y ago

mikeash 12y ago

I don't see him proposing that minimum wages should be removed, or that anything will "magically" work out if they are. I merely see him stating that minimum wages contribute to this particular problem, which is true. It does not then follow that minimum wages should be eliminated. This sort of knee-jerk reaction makes it really hard to discuss any sort of public policy in a rational way. The moment you point out any problem with anything, somebody will come along and "rebut" your statement by pretending that you just stated that everything would be better if you eliminated the thing you're discussing. It's really annoying!

normloman 12y ago
Why would you blame minimum wage for this problem if you weren't implying we should reform or abolish it? Also, the process of proposal and rebuttal you describe has another name: Debate. And the constant rebutting is why it works so well. You attack the other side's idea while defending your own and the best ideas survive the process.
- mikeash 12y ago
  "Why would you blame minimum wage for this problem if you weren't implying we should reform or abolish it?" Seriously? It's possible to think that something causes a problem while still thinking that it's a net gain. Is that concept actually foreign to you? Do you truly think that you must either see no faults in something or you must think it should be changed? Debate involves a mutual discussion. The process I describe, where a person "rebuts" something that was never said, is not debate, it's simple argument.
  - normloman 12y ago
    Yeah, I the fact that you could support it as a necessary evil (benefits outweigh the costs) slipped my mind. My bad. I still thought the post heavily implied something needed to be changed about minimum wage. Debate and argumentation are essentially the same. Debate can imply something formal, and argument can carry a negative connotation. But both are, by definition, adversarial methods of arriving at the truth. They require people to take sides, if just for the sake of argument.
- gojomo 12y ago
  Mentioning minimum-wage laws as a contributing factor isn't quite 'blaming' them. Also, even minimum-wage proponents can (and often do) admit there are tradeoffs involved with such mandates, they just think those tradeoffs are worth it. You've guessed right that I don't personally think the tradeoffs of price-controls on wages are worth it. (Among other problems, the very young & low-skilled, who get priced out of essential starter jobs, are hurt more than those who remain employed at the higher wages are helped.) But we don't have to agree on that to reach common understandings on other particulars of how employers and employees adjust to constraints.

gojomo 12y ago

Did I mention prices at all? (You've slipped into some other scripted debate, with fuzzy political euphemisms like "making ends meet", which is only tangentially related to the point I'm making about the topic of this article.) The point above is that the system has many, many parameters in constant dynamic adjustment. Setting a minimum on one that's easy-to-observe (hourly wages) in law doesn't just cause that one value to change. The adjustments happen all over. Marginal workers aren't hired or kept-on-staff. Hours of operation are trimmed. Outfits run on slimmer crews. It's harder to find someone to ask a question. Lines for check-out get longer. Facilities go a little longer between restocking/cleaning. (Minimum wages mean grosser store bathrooms.) Unregulated, harder-to measure benefits get trimmed. The topic of this article, schedule predictability or flexibility, is just such a benefit. And it doesn't require conscious tit-for-tat book-balancing action by employers for these trade-offs to happen. As they notice they're making less, adjustments happen. (Or, smaller businesses that are slow to adjust simply become uneconomical and leave the market: minimum wages benefit Wal-Marts & McDonalds, with their expert formula operations, over intuitive "Mom-and-Pops".) Over time, since more people are now eager for extra hours at the legally-mandated higher salary, it's easier to place more informal demands on those people, like "you better take every shift when offered, or it won't be offered again". There are likely some good workers who'd prefer steadier work, in predicable shifts, at a lower wage. That agreement is made illegal by minimum wage laws, and they are forced to compete with a larger group of people looking to scoop up shorter, more random, higher-paying shifts.