(02-08-2019 03:02 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(02-08-2019 01:41 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(02-08-2019 12:45 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(02-08-2019 12:09 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(02-08-2019 11:55 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  But it isn't that easy. If it was true that all minimum wage increases kill jobs, then why do we have a net increase of jobs with a minimum wage in the first place?

Net increases in population have a little to do with that when you think about it.

Quote:Why then, did we not have a mass exodus of jobs when the federal minimum wage was increased multiple times?

In the long term the minimum wage has zero effect. Everything stabilizes with a ratchet upwards. Nominally speaking everyone wins. Relatively speaking no one gains.

It is the short term effects that are pernicious. For example, the guy whom is replacing 15% of his head count with technology readily admits that he constantly 'upgrades' employees to better positions from the lowest level. Minimum wage jobs are fundamentally training grounds.

Now, instead of a 6 head count at the front, he is reducing to 3. There are now, by definition, 50% fewer people who stand the chance of being upgraded to, say, manager of straw counting (which may disappear because of other California policies).

So the left sings Hosannas over the lives they have 'uplifted' -- all the while the training grounds for further advancement for *lots* more people is being curtailed.

Idiotic.

So in the long term the minimum wage increases have a net zero effect. So in order to keep that net zero effect that is caused by inflation, shouldn't we continue to increase the federal minimum wage?

Without that, the net effect would be negative, as cost of living climbs and wages stagnate...

The minimum wage workers in 1947, 1962, 1975, 1991, 2001, 2014, et al, made differing amounts, but it did not change their standard of living very much, if any.

It is a kind of chicken and egg question as to whether the increases helped them to keep up with inflation or if the increases were contributors to inflation. I suspect it was a bit of both - more of the former at the time of increases, more of the latter a few years later.

In 1964, I could get a minimum wage of $1.25 and a BBQ sandwich for $.50. Now, the proportions are still about the same. My co-workers in 1964 did not live in the nicest housing. Ditto for MW workers today. If you want to improve the lives of MW workers, don't give them raises - give them opportunities for other jobs. Nothing will raise income and living standards like competition for labor. Stifling the incentive for people with money to put it to work in new businesses is stifling opportunities for workers. That's why 70% tax rates and wealth taxes are bad - not because they hurt the wealthy, but because they hurt the poor.

I need to eat at the BBQ places you're eating at! I can't find a $3.50 BBQ sandwich anywhere but McDonald's (heck, the McRib might even be more expensive than that). If we're talking BBQ sandwich buying power, instead of house buying power, about 1 hr of MW work = 1 bbq sandwich.

Is it that you're against raising the minimum wage at all? Or that you don't agree with the drastic increase in the minimum wage that some suggest?

I agree that the best way to help others is by increasing opportunity - that's why I think a federal job guarantee is a good idea, and some of the Green New Deal initiatives are great. Similar to the alphabet soup of admins in the 30s/40s, investing significant bucks into our own country would both provide more, technical/skilled jobs for people who are stuck in minimum wage jobs, as well as updating our crumbling infrastructure. Yet all I hear is derision about every part of the green new deal, it seems...

Because you have the classic progressive/Keynesian fixation that the best means for such action is via the government as an actor or through government regulation and control.