I don't think either one of us is going to "win" the argument, but I am enjoying knocking down the examples you provide. :)

I also never said it's ludicrous for ideals to drive the government, just that I wouldn't have a problem with most of the programs that you mentioned going away or undergoing enormous reforms.

Well, when we're talking about how realistic the ideals behind those programs have to be, I think we're splitting hairs, more than anything else. I don't want to argue too much, because I agree with you that the ideals of some of those programs are twisted, and I agree with you that eliminating poverty entirely is a pipe dream, but I think it's unfair to say that the ideals behind the minimum wage program aren't somehow aimed at eliminating as much as possible. Whether that is a 'healthy' ideal for the government, in general, or in particular, I don't think I'm really equipped to say...but it seems like it certainly could be worse.

Jesus I wouldn't even want to make that a month, nevermind a year.

I just want to mention that I remember making $3.35/hr. Good times.

Me too and I only made it for one job. It is a starting point and part of attaining marketable skills. That is pretty much the norm. Very few people stay in the bottom fifth of the wage range.

So the only criteria we have is you show up to work for 40 hours a week? It doesn't matter if you have any skills or talents. If you work hard when you get there. As long as you are there for 40 hours it's everyone else's responsibility to make sure they live nicely? What happened to the concept of bettering yourself?

There is a huge gap in rich and poor, but I also think that huge gap is often justified. Spend an evening with a head of a multi-national company and then spend one with a guy who can only get minimum wage jobs. Those people are night and day apart. It's not like all these rich people just happened to catch a lucky break one day that set them apart. It's completely different lifestyles, motivations, and actions they have taken.

That isn't to say that there aren't issues in society. I do think we have a problem with heads of companies extorting money. There should be rules in place to stop someone from getting hundreds of millions in compensation when their public company is losing billions.

Tax dollars may not go directly into it, but it is still a social program. You pay for it with higher prices as a consumer and lower wages and less benefits if you are skilled. When you force a company to overpay an unskilled worker, the cost needs to be made up somewhere else.

As I noted several times in this thread, this cost you keep talking about didn't seem to be such a burden in the mid-90s when minimum wage was raised, unemployment went down and the economy was booming. And you also ignore the potential benefit to said companies: more money being spent on their products.

My point is about the people in the corporoate sector who have helped run our markets and corporations into the ground. I see the rich being painted with some "hero" brush for keeping our economy thriving. Just as many of them are doing a piss poor job and making things harder for the rest of us. Most of those are making filthy amounts of money for doing a piss poor job.

I am not advocating that CEOs should make as much as a cashier. I am suggesting that there is more at play in modern America than simple "relative scarcity". There's a reason why the rich are getting richer and others are not.

And no, it is not envy. I have no interest in being rich. I'm not poor and I make enough and figure I can find a way to continue doing so. If someone puts all their effort into making their way up the ladder and making money, I'm all for it. Not all of us want to. But I am against a system which is rigged to help get those people more and more money at the expense of a worker's pension account or workplace safety or healthcare.

There's a big difference between living in poverty and living nicely. And there's still a concept in bettering yourself. What's the point of anyone showing up to work if they could live a better life through government assistance? We're going to be paying for it either way.


Not sure where this came from. I don't think anyone is arguing that all poor people should be made rich. This isn't Trading Places.

We also had massive welfare reform in the 90's that could have accounted for that as well. The Earned Income Credit forced more people into working. Whlie the Federal Minimum Wage was raised, many states already had higher minimum wages in effect. And the economy was booming because it was a massive bubble that eventually burst. I would say that cheap oil prices, the strong dollar, and some funky accounting helped our economy boom much more than raising the minimum wage.

Nonetheless, the point is what is fair to people? Do we want a society where our unskilled workers are overpaid? Is there not some moral dilemnia in that?

You aren't arguing that poor people should be made rich, but you are arguing that unskilled workers should be overpaid.

And where is that motivation to better yourself if the government is going to make sure you're taken care of either way?

Are we near that point where we consider "unskilled" workers overpaid?

SI

Someone is worth what they can get on the open market. When you force a company to pay more for the lowest skilled workers, they can be deemed overpaid.

It depends on how you define that. Pretty much every other country in the world's unskilled workers are obtaining a lower average wage. That probably means that ours are over paid and is pretty much why a lot of the unskilled jobs are going away in our markets.

Of course that is a real world answer and does not factor in what we want versus what is realistic.

The funny thing about the minimum wage is, it was put in place originally around the turn of the 20th century to cause minimum wage workers to lose jobs. I believe, the first federal minimum wage only applied to women, children and minorities. The theory behind it by the power structure at the time was that these were undesirable workers and by forcing the cost of their services up, employers would hire cheaper labor i.e. not the undesirable workers.

I don't think it really ever shifted into a virtual social program until FDR.

But there are lots of ways that cost can be overcome that don't include taking money from the middle class. Profits could be cut. Efficiency could be increased. Sales could be increased. New tax benefits could be found. The higher wage could even motivate the employee to work harder thereby paying for themselves in added efficiency.

Why do you assume that any help to the poor means you're getting the shaft?

Not the unkilled workers. Anyone can do those jobs.

And the evolution of wealth distribution is a lot more complicated than just the "rich are evil and screw everyone" theme you're trying to portray.

The Inequality Myth - WSJ.com

I don't quite understand the point that the rich "need" the poor....I mean, if all the poor in the US died tomorrow for some reason, there's a lot of collateral issues there beyond how the standard of living of the rich is impacted. But no matter the situation, in a capitalist economy, the rich tend to the be the more successfull, intelligent, driven people, and they'll tend to succeed (and their children). I know you're focussed on the random bad CEO that makes too much, but that's a small, small cross-section of the "rich" (and most of those CEOs, if you read any of their bios, rose their way through the ranks from limited means, and then ran into a buzzsaw of a bad economic situation).

The best thing about the Obama years will be that we can get answers to all these hypotheticals, this idea that it's simple to help the poor without harming the middle class, etc. It's all been in hypotheticals that couldn't be proven wrong, which has given this idealistic view a lot of bravado. But now, it's time to put up or shut up. If Obama and a Democratic Congress don't pull off these ideals, then they couldn't be accomplished without a greater harm.

No one said it's simple. You're the ones saying it's simple, that minimum wage increase automatically harms the economy, and dismiss any evidence to the contrary.

And I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing that there shouldn't be a minimum wage, so it sounds like everyone wants unskilled workers to be "overpaid", just that we disagree on the amount.

Hell, I'd probably accept the $7.25 if it was set to be adjusted for inflation, but I know the value of that wage is going to significantly decrease over time.

Before the minimum wage was increased from $5.15 in 2006, the inflation value of that wage was at the lowest in 54 years. (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774473.html)

The rich can't make everything themselves nor can they provide a large enough demand for goods. There needs to be a balance for a capitalist economy to function well.

That was a good time to raise minimum wage, in a booming economy (or if slightly before the booming economy, a time that had very low unemployment). But I'm completely illogical to contend that raising the cost of labor increases the demand for the labor. The unemployment rate would have been even lower without the increases, but since the rate was acceptable and declining no matter what happened, it was a good time to do it.

Minimum wage has pretty much kept up with inflation, which is more than you can say for middle and lower middle class salaries over much of the same time period. Why should the unskilled, who contribute the least, gain on the lower middle class and middle class?

It may be illogical, but in some circumstances it may be true.


http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/...onomic_de.html

That's intersting, obviously there's a happy middle ground that's optimal....If you increase minimum wage too high, too quickly, you'll have massive unemployment and hurt businesses and the middle class, and if minimum wage drags too low, you create little incentive to take those jobs for some people, the poor's labor is exploited, ect. But small, strategic increases can definitely be beneficial to the economy as a whole.

I think it's basically at the right level, and should be adjusted for inflation. It times of high unemployment though, I think any increases are damaging. I GUESS others think it needs to increase more rapidly, to bring the poor to a level closer to the lower middle class and middle class.

Except I show that it hasn't kept up with inflation, considering it went a full decade without being increased, and when the evil socialist Dems finally forced an increase in 2006, it was at the lowest level in over a half century.

And your point on middle and lower middle class salaries doesn't match my experience. The entry level salaries at my current job almost match what I'm getting now after 5 years of annual wage increases.

And as we moved away from a manufacturing based economy, so was the value of those workers.

Middle class salaries (relative to inflation) have also been stagnant, at best, over that decade. That's a tough thing to measure, but it's just consistent with what I've read over the years. I haven't seen numbers to contradict that.

And it's not just some evil socialist sympathy plan to help the poor out. I think the economy functions better when people at the bottom have more money, as they have more money to put into the economy. If income disparities between the top and bottom continue to grow, I think it not only hurts the people at the bottom, but the people at the top will wonder where did all of their customers go.

Ancedotes and too much Thomas Sowell in this thread.