Originally posted by Cow Poke
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Income Inequality?
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Originally posted by Spartacus View PostOmnom rich people.That's what
- She
Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
- Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)
I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
- Stephen R. Donaldson
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Originally posted by Sam View PostThis is not substantiated. Here's a chart showing minimum wage increases (nominal and adjusted) by year:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2376[/ATTACH]
and here's a chart of US inflation rates by year:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2377[/ATTACH]
Increases in the minimum wage have not caused long-term growth of inflation. What it would do is reduce poverty and increase consumer spending (leading to short-term GDP growth). A minimum wage increase to $10.10 would bring about 4,600,000 people out of poverty, according to various economic studies. The likely cost of this growth would be about 500,000 jobs lost in the short-term, if I'm remembering correctly.
Arguing that increasing the minimum wage will increase inflation only makes sense if the supply doesn't rise to match increased consumer spending. Since we remain in a demand-side slump where the problem is too little demand rather than too much, increasing the minimum wage and thus increasing consumer spending is likely to have predominately beneficial effects to the economy, allowing us to faster reach potential GDP, and is likely to have little to no effect on the inflation rate.
And for what it's worth, economists responding to Chicago Booth's IGM poll overwhelmingly agree that the costs of a minimum wage increase to $9/hour and indexing the minimum wage to inflation are sufficiently low that the economic benefits of doing so make for good policy.
Suppose unemployment went down though months ago the wage floor went up 20%? Can we thereby conclude that raising the floor was a good idea? NO! The unemployment rate might have gone down even futher had the floor not been raised.
How, then, are we to settle the wage floor argument? Actually, Seer's, Cow Poke's, Sparko's and others' reasoning is for the most part sound economics.
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Originally posted by Sam View PostThis is not substantiated. Here's a chart showing minimum wage increases (nominal and adjusted) by year:Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostYou admitted to being a redistributionalist. That's somebody who takes money from one person and gives it to somebody else. Who gives you that authority?
Why? Do we owe Mary a job more than we owe Homer a job? Who are you to decide which one of them gets to work?
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Originally posted by Psychic Missile View PostIt comes from the same authority that allows for taxes. In exchange for living in a society, people have a portion of their money pooled for distribution to needed purposes.
My concern is that in a depression, there will be a race to the bottom for employees. Don't conservatives complain that illegal immigrants take jobs because they're willing to work for less?
And you're ignoring the question.... Why? Do we owe Mary a job more than we owe Homer a job? Who are you to decide which one of them gets to work?The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Originally posted by Sparko View Postan example would be nice.
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostBut you're not talking about that -- you're not talking about directly increasing the tax on the business - you're doing "price controls" backwards -- forcing them to pay MORE for something than they are already paying.
In a depression, all bets are off.
And you're ignoring the question.... Why? Do we owe Mary a job more than we owe Homer a job? Who are you to decide which one of them gets to work?
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Originally posted by Bill the Cat View Posthttp://www.cbo.gov/publication/44995
So, while the CBO model favors raising a portion of the low-wage workers' standard of living, what about those who will NOT benefit from it? They get driven even deeper into poverty, and the gap between the haves and have-nots remains just as wide."I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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Originally posted by Psychic Missile View PostAs the price of food in general goes up, healthy choices can remain affordable if funds are redistributed in a household's budget. Most likely, this will put a strain on less immediate but still important items. Whether or not you agree with Obamacare, the problem it was created to solve was unaffordable health insurance. People on a tight budget distributed money that would have gone to health insurance to other, more immediate areas.
But let's take groceries for an example. If people can't afford certain grocery items, then those items will go unsold. Which will drive those companies out of business or they will have to lower their costs. To lower their costs they can either take less profit, lower the quality of the product, or lower the cost of their labor. If there is not much profit to give up, then either the quality will suffer, or they will begin laying people off.
forcing everyone to pay more for labor just means that those groceries will cost more too, because the producers will have to pay more for labor. So while you might have more to spend on groceries, those groceries will cost more and you are no better off than you are now.
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Originally posted by seer View PostNonsense Sam. There are other causes of inflation, and other conditions that could keep it down or in check. It is simple logic. If you give the hamburger flipper a three dollar an hour raise how do I not pay more for a hamburger? Do you think the company is going to eat all of that increase (pun intended) or does most, if not all of it, get passed on to the consumer?"I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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Originally posted by Sam View PostIf your logic conflicts with reality (as shown on the two posted charts) then it's your logic that's faulty, not reality. Your claim that increasing the minimum wage necessarily causes an increase in the inflation rate does not correlate to the nation's history of inflation rates and minimum wage increases. Arguing that a minimum wage now -must- increase inflation is specious logic (and I'll note that we should be much more worried about deflation now than inflation, anyway!).Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s
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Originally posted by Sparko View PostYou are talking about people deciding what to spend money on. That was not quite what you said previously ("The problem is that there is an area in which goods can be priced that is technically affordable but brings living expenses up to an unreasonable degree.")
But let's take groceries for an example. If people can't afford certain grocery items, then those items will go unsold. Which will drive those companies out of business or they will have to lower their costs. To lower their costs they can either take less profit, lower the quality of the product, or lower the cost of their labor. If there is not much profit to give up, then either the quality will suffer, or they will begin laying people off.
forcing everyone to pay more for labor just means that those groceries will cost more too, because the producers will have to pay more for labor. So while you might have more to spend on groceries, those groceries will cost more and you are no better off than you are now.
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Originally posted by Psychic Missile View PostWhen people have to make sacrifices from necessary expenses, that means living expenses have been raised to an unreasonable degree.
I'm not talking about specific items, I'm talking about grocery items as a general whole. I do not accept the argument you present in that last paragraph. I do not think an increased labor cost, which makes up a negligible amount of the cost of a good compared to materials, would drive up the price of goods to the point where it cancels itself out.
Second, labor isn't an negligable cost. It is one of the major costs in producing anything. This goes back to my comment that you don't really understand economics at all.
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