https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAcaeLmybCY

I'd pay 1.4% more to save the government (and thus the taxpayers!) $300M....

Saving woukd imply that the govt wouldn't spend the additional 300m elsewhere on something else rediculous. We know that's not true.

Yea, like the military! Abolish it. Education! We should only educate the rich, the peons don't need to know anything! Also the roads! Who needs them!? And maybe let's legalize slavery while we're at it!?

We should all just go back to a feudal lifestyle! That way there's no government, and the local Lord can do whatever the fluff he wants, and we'll just have to take it. And anybody who wants to *become* a Lord can just work hard, save up their grain, raise an army of a few thousand, overthrow the Lord, and his allies who come to his aid.

Market will fix itself no matter what we try to do.

Wages up = prices up = demand down.

Demand down = supply down = reduction in workforce.

Reduction in workforce = less taxes collected

Obviously this takes time...the plan is to immediately boost the economy which in the short run increasing the min wage will help.


Although generally I am a hardcore liberal I am totally against ANY min wage. Let the market determine what the min wage should be.

If you pay less than similar type jobs of your competitors your good workers will leave for more money and you will be left will the bottom of the barrel workforce...similarly if you pay top wages you will have the best workers but low profit margins b/c high salary costs thus businesses will have to find a happy equilibrium.

jcatron is exactly right.

Min Wage laws, just like any other price floors, has widespread unintended consequences, but they sure do make your heart feel good.

When I get home tonight ill type up my experience as a walmart employee as I worked there during college.

qz, I've told you a MILLION times.... we're NOT rebuilding Utopia!!!

Government needs to balance budgets, cut frivolous spending. They already tax us enough.

You would be right *IF* we had a free market.

The fact, as martian pointed out, that corporations are making large profits indicates that we are not, in fact, in a free market economy. Otherwise competition would drive prices down to the point where there were no profits.

Also, have you ignored all of the empirical data supporting an increase in the minimum wage?

And if everybody had a living wage, they would be able to cut much of what you no doubt refer to as "frivolous spending".

Sadly not everyone is performing a living wage job. This isn't socialism.

Correct; and it's moving towards feudalism.

Lol you should cut a lot of government spending from all of those categories listed.

Yes I have ignored all of the empirical data supporting it.

Actually, there is not very much frivolous spending - thats pretty much a tea party myth. Unless you include our gargantuan defense budget, which is pretty frivolous. Medicare, SS, defense and interest on the debt make up over 80% of the budget. The FBI, Highways, EPA, national parks, FAA, education, etc. all share from the remaining 17%.

That certainly does not mean that I think the minimum wage needs to be $15. Minimum wage should be a starting point, not a goal.

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2010/12/01/minimumwagejobs/

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/...ise-the-u-s-minimum-wage/

http://www.brookings.edu/...nimum-wage-kearney-harris

Are you saying $15/hr is a goal, and not a starting point?

I made more than that as a student during my summer jobs!

No, I'm saying that the minimum wage should be $7-9 and should be a way for young or inexperienced people to break into the workforce. If you are trying to raise a family working at McDonalds, then perhaps you need to reevaluate some of your life choices.

The minimum wage is already $9.95 here in Alberta; it's clearly not enough, as we can see. Also, "break into the workforce"?? What is that supposed to mean? Go work at McDonalds so you can become an engineer? It doesn't work like that, unless it was just a part-time job during your education.



Perhaps; but realizing that 3.6 million people work at minimum wage jobs, less than a quarter of whom are under the age of 19... http://www.bls.gov/...ted/2013/ted_20130325.htm ... perhaps we should actually take into account reality.

+1

Sorry, but that is a "YOU" problem. If you work at Mcdonalds and are not a teenager, you need to re-evaluate your life choices. Find a career path and work hard to find another job.

Just that easy eh?

Holy fluff balls, this is still going and now in 2 threads.

Qz, the video you posted is fine until it makes an assumption on that price increase and how it will be applied. As I stated in another thread 100% of any cost increase to any corporation will be passed on to the customers. This happens because of market and being forced to grow profits, because it is the easiest way to absorb costs, and sadly to show the government that they have no power and will take revenge on the pawns(all of us).

This cost increase will be put on the best selling products, in Walmart's case likely soda, baby products, hygiene and personal care items, toys, and mostly popular selling food. It won't be a penny either, it will likely be an adjusted amount to ensure even the lowest selling stores in those products meet some average. In addition to that they will use this as an opportune time to increase profits for their shareholders.

This is not even taking into account that if this liveable wage is spurred by a minimum wage increase that every part of their business will be affected by it. Labor costs more so all of the local service providers(lawn, snow, parking lot maintenance, security, etc) will charge more, some product production will go up, all distribution will go up, most if not all food items will be effected, and really the list just goes on.

So your 1.4% increase is really just bullfluff, it's a targeted opportunity to exploit.

I forgot to mention how price increase paired with depression level unemployment will drive demand down, driving supply down, raising prices even more.

Vicious cycle = US Depression = World Depression = Financial Collapse for most countries.

Congrats your stupid minimum wage increase ruined the world.

Well, I watched the video with a skeptical eye, because in my experience, these obviously produced with an agenda youtube videos have a tendency to use misleading figures...

I can't believe not a single person here has noticed something that jumped out at me immediately (or maybe people noticed and just didn't want to sink their own argument?)

So, a 1 penny increase on a box of macaroni will save the US taxpayers $300,000,000 in food stamps that supposedly won't be handed out.. that sounds pretty impressive.

But am I really the only one here who bothered to figure out what 1.4% of Walmart's annual sales works out to?
http://news.walmart.com/...rate-financial-fact-sheet
Walmart's 2013 US sales were more than 274 billion dollars. Since the video maker included Sam's Club, we need to include that too. 56 billion more. That's more than 330 billion dollars in sales. 1.4 percent of 330 billion is over 4.6 billion.

Walmart shoppers would pay 4.6 billion more for their groceries and other items, in order to supposedly save the tax payers 300 million. This doesn't seem like such a bargain any more. Especially when you consider that the increased Walmart bill will be foisted mostly upon the poor, who we're supposedly trying to help here. And who gets the lion's share of the tax savings if it ever actually materializes? You guessed it.. the rich.. the top 10% of earners, who pay more than 70% of the US income tax. (http://www.ntu.org/...ho-pays-income-taxes.html)

I'm also extremely skeptical of the claim that increasing every Walmart employee's hourly wage that much would only result in a price increase that is less than the rate of inflation, but I'm not going to look up all the data I'd need to check that one right now....

Because I'm more keen on answering this particular gem:



Now come on, QZ. Don't be like blid and put arguments in the mouths of your opponents which they've never said. You're better than that. At least let me MAKE the ridiculous arguments before you ridicule them.

But, since you brought those items up..

Military: We absolutely do waste a fortune here. We don't need to occupy 3/4 of the world to be safe.

Education: I could hunt down the figures, but I've done that before enough times to know that it is a waste of time. When confronted with the truth, people just change their argument. Since the FEDERAL government decided to stick it's nose into education, spending has skyrocketed and results (test scores) have been flat or declined.

Roads: This is actually one of the very few powers which the founders specifically granted to the Federal Government in the Constitution.

Slavery: Really? You're going to go back to that well again? Slavery was wrong because it allowed one group of people to take away the liberty of another. A Federal minimum wage is wrong for that very same reason.

How about a couple other Federal epic fails you didn't mention:

Poverty: Since the "War on Poverty" began in the sixties, there has been no significant decrease in the percentage of Americans who live in poverty, despite the trillions of dollars we've spent.

The "War on Drugs": Again, trillions spent. Millions of Americans incarcerated simply for making up their own minds about which intoxicants to use. Millions of families torn apart and homes wrongfully invaded. No significant results.

I don't know.. in light of all of the above, ssewellusmc's concern about the Federal Government wasting the 300 million they'd supposedly save doesn't seem so absurd to me.

WHERE DID BOMBAY SAY EASY? I BELIEVE THE PHRASE USED WAS "WORK HARD".

I WORKED MANY MINIMUM WAGE JOBS IN ORDER TO PUT MYSELF THROUGH SCHOOL SO I COULD GET A BETTER JOB AND NEVER HAVE TO WORK ANOTHER MINIMUM WAGE JOB AGAIN. I NEVER SAT AROUND WISHING SOMEONE WOULD RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE SO I COULD KEEP MOPPING FLOORS AS A CAREER. I DID NOT NEED THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR TO SAVE ME, I TOOK MATTERS IN HAND AND SAVED MYSELF.

RATHER THAN PAYING AN EXTRA 1.4% IN TAXES SO WE CAN RAISE MINIMUM WAGES, I'D GLADLY PAY AN EXTRA 1.4% IN TAXES TO LOWER TUITION AND GET MORE KIDS A BETTER EDUCATION SO THEY CAN RAISE THEIR OWN MINIMUM WAGE.

THE MIGHTY CLAN [DANGER]! APPARENTLY SHOULD HAVE GONE WITH THE LIBERTARIAN THEME THIS SET.

YAR!

Those two words are key. Last I heard McD's management was paying well over 50k per year. Work your way up if McD's is where you are.

Don't want to work there all your life? There's government programs that subsidize on the job training for different careers, including apprenticeship. But even there you'd have to work hard to move up.

[quote poster=Cornfed; 30926; 555699]

Never said it was easy. I should know. I don't have a college degree. I started working as a temp making ~minimum wage. After that I found a job that paid me 18 grand a year, worked hard. Was able to then apply to another job in a couple of years and with it a pay raise. Did this a couple of times, working hard, learning my trade and being promoted within the companies I have worked for.

Took me years and years(14 years later) of hard work to be where I am today. No one paid for a college education for me. But now I have a wife and kids, a 2200 square foot house and a really good job. I worked too hard to get where I am to just keep pissing away money to the government to had over to people who are not deserving. Not once when I was in a minimum wage job did I say they need to raise minimum wage. It drove me to better myself so I could find a better job and earn more.

That is what we need to instill in people working minimum wage that need a living wage job.

I love all the people in here that started out working for minimum wage and then argue that the minimum wage should be abolished.

http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/chart.htm

According to ya'll, there either shouldn't be a minimum wage or it should still be $0.25 / hr, since any raise in it would be "bad".

That's BS Sam. "test scores" have declined... lol... we haven't had consistent tests by which you could even measure that. We teach calculus in high school now and algebra in the 4th grade. (just examples). And the federal government hardly sticks its nose into education at all. It is 90% driven by locally elected school boards who tend to be comprised of populist idiots who know nothing about education. The best School Boards are the ones who hire a competent and well educated superintendent and then get the hell out of his/her way. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case.

Instead we have tons of local politics and local cronyism throughout the system. Corruption is not uncommon but it is not a "federal" problem -- it is almost always a local problem.

The federal government's share of education spending is ~8%.

http://www2.ed.gov/...ew/fed/10facts/expend.gif

I would bet that the libertarian folks around here opposing the minimum wage would also oppose a government workforce training program, so might as well throw that option out.

Why would anyone want the government controlling the skills being produced for the labor force? The market drives that... not what the government feels should be a desired skill (aka green energy jobs).

Throw it out? It'd have to be removed as it's already in place. I know for a fact that thousands of people each year go through it in my county alone.

Heh.. it's all BS.. ok.

In 1980, the year after the Dept of Education was formed, Federal spending on k-12 education was 6.9 billion.
In 2010, it was 73.3 Billion.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/...n_15bs2n_2025_501#usgs302
That's not adjusted for inflation though. Adjusting that 1980 figure to 2010 dollars gets you to 19.4 billion spent.

That's an increase of 377%. Substantial enough that you'd think there'd be some indication of it in scores. Yet math, reading and science scores all remained absolutely flat for the entire 30 year period. You say that's because we're teaching harder math earlier... what about reading? Have we invented a lot of really hard to read words in the last 30 years?

But OK.. you say there are no consistent tests. I disagree, but what indicator would you look to in order to determine the success of k-12 education system.

Graduation rates maybe?

Graduation rates peaked in the mid-70's. From there they dropped gradually until the early 80's, remained stagnant for about a decade, then dropped sharply in the 90's. Around 2000, they began to rise again, and by 2010 had finally gotten back to where they were in the 70's

30 years, nearly quadrupled Federal spending, same graduation rate.

Is there anything you can point me to that would indicate that the Department of Education was successful at anything other than spending money?

The department of education has been successful in passing kids through without actually teaching them much, creating 2 generations of populous that dont have skills, and dont have much of an education to fall back on. The little outside of core studies, has been radically liberal in teaching that bypasses entirely HOW and WHAT our country was founded on. I just heard the other day that they no longer use the term "slave trade" (which is exactly what it was) they call it the trans atlantic trade triangle or some fluff like that because it is more politically correct.

and this common core bullfluff is just that, bullfluff. It is no coincidence that private schools and home schooled students score MUCH higher than public school kids.

It is good practice to take whatever the federal govt gets its hands on, and run the hell away from it because they are going to fluff it up.

Ya'all (both sides) expose yourselfs to too much news telling you how to think. This is why I only watch porn. (Seriously what was the last porn you saw that was political in nature? )

Nailin' Palin

And my new viewing list begins.

"Market will fix itself no matter what we try to do."
No, not really: that only works if you have a competitive environment. :P

There's wayyyy too much Fisking on these types of threads.

nyaaahh

Nothing wrong with a good hard Fisking.

Well, I would argue that the trans atlantic trade triangle is a more *accurate* description of what it was; in terms of the shape of the trade, and the fact that it was not exclusively slaves. Though i would still use the slave trade to describe it.

The more you tax the more people cut down, like what you see in tobacco sales in NY with the highest tax rate in the nation, its taxed so high that people are smuggling it from else where, the higher you go on taxes the less revenues, its called Point Of Diminishing Returns, that's an economical term, and at some point when taxes get too high you will reach PODR.

Wages up = prices up = demand down.
There's no evidence of that. Classical economics says: Wages up -> demand up ->prices up ->Wages up (this is called inflation and economic growth)
And I quote:
"We also have real-world experience with higher minimums. In 1998, the citizens of Washington State voted to raise theirs and then link future increases to the rate of inflation. Today, at $9.32, the Evergreen State has the highest minimum wage in the country – not far from the $10.10 per hour proposed by Barack Obama. At the time it was passed, opponents promised it would kill jobs and ultimately hurt the workers it was designed to help.

But it didn’t turn out that way. This week, Bloomberg’s Victoria Stilwell, Peter Robison and William Selway reported: “In the 15 years that followed… job growth continued at an average 0.8 percent annual pace, 0.3 percentage point above the national rate. Payrolls at Washington’s restaurants and bars, portrayed as particularly vulnerable to higher wage costs, expanded by 21 percent. Poverty has trailed the U.S. level for at least seven years.” "

And since someone is going to try to fisk this.. pre-emptive fluff YOU

Are you sure about that??, did you not do your own research and got that pile of trash from a state source?, I thought so, as a former business owner that had 50% of my costumers in WA, I say BULLfluff to "it didn't hurt the economy" I saw it happen first hand, bro!, been to commercial and industrial zones in WA since 98?, did you talk to business owners? didn't think so.

You libs go ahead and keep drinking that kool aid your peers give you.

raise Min. Wage, to a price that will allow people to work, goto school, and beable to pay rent... then that break into working thing, can be done.

Google the workforce investment act. Low income (or no income even) can be subsidized for schooling and/or training, even on the job training. Enrollments range from 14 to adults, from people just entering the workforce to dislocated workers. I believe this can also cover rent in some cases though I need to double check.

Then google headstart, which gives parents subsidized preschool from birth to 5 years old, and sometimes older.

These are both federally funded grants already in place. The tools are already there to do what you're saying.

Wow, so I provide data that shows federal spending amounts to 8% of what is spent on Education and then you say "but wait, that 8% is 377% higher now so why haven't we seen radical change?!?!?!?" How about you go look at what has been happening with the the 92% of educational spending and the changes in local governance (the system we are under) before blaming the federal government which is a miniscule part of the pie?

Do you know what the federal spending goes towards? When $200M gets thrown into K-12 in a federal program, that typicall affects maybe 50 out of 16,000 school districts. The Federal government is not the driver of K-12 in the United States. There are countries with federalized education systems -- this is not one of them.