Moderator: Uccisore
Urwrongx1000 wrote:You should take an economics class.
There is no way 30-dollar minimum wage is feasible without massive inflation. A gallon of milk would cost $5 or $10.
Although I'm not saying this is a good or bad idea. It could very well be a good-idea, but you haven't proved your case. You need to demonstrate economic wisdom, how it would be realistic to expect such an increase, and demonstrate what "benefits" there would be for average or poor people. Poor people would still be poor. There's always an element of humanity that wants to drop out of the system, be lazy, not try, beg borrow steal. They'll never be middle class no matter how you rig the system.
The best such an increase of inflation would do, is make it easier for people to move up (and down) the economic ladder. It could potentially increase the size of the middle class. But that's not necessarily a good result either.
I assume you're fairly young or at least new to arguing about this kind of thing. You won't have to look far to find someone with many counters to the things you've said.
Employers as more price makers than price takers
will react to minimum wage increases by hiring less workers to decrease their expenses
and/or raising their prices to increase their revenues,
in order to maintain the same level of profit that they feel entitled to, if any at all. They are the ones who make the decisions
That's the theory anyway, and this natural "pareto-like" distribution seems to happen in any free system.
Unfortunately the alternative to a free system tends to stifle creativity and increase bureaucracy because you can't just set up a venture outside the plan just because you can - because now you're not allowed. The cost of time, effort as well as any money goes into maintaining the system and away from the system just working for us rather than for itself for its own sake. It doesn't really matter who you vote for, they're not going to be able to escape these things so easily, though some at least try.
WendyDarling wrote:I agree.
WendyDarling wrote:What about FC's idea of doing away with personal income taxes found here:http://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=193409#p2682025 that would free up each individuals money lost to bureaucracy, but would the corporate greed skyrocket against individuals charging individuals higher costs and offering less wages to make up what the companies now have to pay out?
Doing away with personal income taxes is a way to allow individuals to have more discretionary income and that 10%-40% freed up would help many folks.
Also the numbeo site did not make clear how they arrived at their calculations. I guess I need to see exactly how they filled out the calculator aspects for the $900+ canadian/$700+American for a single person seemed awfully low (but I suspect that cars expenses were not included, nor healthcare costs). Also, I was bummed that it didn't cover any smaller communities expense sheets.
Mimisbrunnr wrote:So Gloominary, what do you think the people who are currently making $30 an hour will think about this? Sure, you may not care what they think but do you think that someone who has worked hard and probably spent a lot of money to get themselves trained to a point where they have the skill sets to make $30/hr is going to continue to see the benefit of doing so?
Do you know that a lot of jobs at that wage are jobs that require licensing, certifications, regular testing and training? Do you know a lot of jobs at that wage are subject to regulations and laws specific to their industry that for example could see them fined or land them in jail for simply forgetting to do X or write down Y? Do you know there are a lot of dangerous jobs at that wage that could easily injure or kill people with a small error or slip in focus, or jobs that over time are dangerously unhealthy for a person? Why the hell would anyone work in a mine if they can just ask you if you want fries with your Burger Supreme combo? And then what happens to those jobs that only a fool would take at that point, and what happens when all the french fry artist positions are full?
Livable wage? What is that? Does that get you a detached house, cars, 50mb/s internet and a dishwasher; how about drugs, fast food, trips to the movies? Who decides what is livable? Why can't they pop out kids? How will you enforce this, certainly not by kidnapping and forced abortions? It's good you are thinking, but I'm not sure you understand the full ramifications of arbitrarily raising minimum wage.
So Gloominary, what do you think the people who are currently making $30 an hour will think about this?
Livable wage? What is that? Does that get you a detached house, cars, 50mb/s internet and a dishwasher; how about drugs, fast food, trips to the movies?
Who decides what is livable?
Why can't they pop out kids? How will you enforce this, certainly not by kidnapping and forced abortions?
Unless 30 dollars accurately represents in the market the value of what you contributed to society/humanity/etc, then it's immoral to take it as pay. So if all the breadmakers of the world make all the bread that they can, and then there isn't enough for everyone in the world to have bread, then first the breadmakers and wheat farmers and so on should get some bread and then after that the people who contribute things of value that benefit the breadmakers should get some, then after that the people who contributed less should get a little, and if there's some left then they should maybe hand it out to the people who didn't do anything that was worth a loaf of bread just because they're hungry I guess. But if everyone thinks that there's some set rule that everyone is going to get some bread then they're just being naive about how the economy works. It's not like there's some warehouse somewhere full of bread that's enough to feed everyone forever. People have to make that shit and it takes time out of their lives and takes their effort. Rich people with a lot of money could hand it all out and the grocery stores would run out of bread because everyone would buy it up and then not only would there be no bread, but all the money would go right back to the rich. The reason that they don't hand out money equally to everyone in the world is that there would be no incentive for breadmakers to make more bread than they themselves needed to eat, and because rich people hoarding money makes it so that people who don't want to farm wheat and help make bread either have to get off their asses and help out, or not get to share in as much bread. At a certain point when you have enough money to buy everything that you want, you buy that shit. Then the money that you have leftover you use to help society by at least trying to be sure that you don't make incentives for people to just lay around on Earth sucking up resources and not doing anything to help out in procuring them. Some people simply don't want to have to earn what they need, any they don't want to have to sacrifice things that they want. They just want it handed to them. I'm not talking about the disabled, or the mentally challenged or those who are truly unable to care for themselves. If those were the only people wanting welfare then welfare wouldn't cost as much as it does. I'm talking about the ones who spend money on pet food, and who buy video games and who drink sodas when water is cheaper and healthier. The guys who smoke 2 packs a day and complain that they can't afford healthcare when the cigarettes would cover the insurance and on top of that make them healthier. They don't want to be healthy, they want to win some perceived class war and they want something for free. What kind of parent would allow a child to grow up being placated under this frame of mind? A culture of dependence happens when you think that all your problems are someone else's fault/responsibility. I feel like I'm living in a world of people who got picked up and patted on the back every time they cried as a baby and every time they fell down as children. Emotional cripples who just cannot, and who simply will not accept that there's only 1 person who should be looking out for each person in the world and that it's themselves. When I'm looking out for myself and I'm doing ok, that's how it's supposed to be. When someone else isn't and then they want my help, that means that I'm going to have less than I deserve because someone else isn't cutting it. It may be that I'm luckier, or smarter, or have found more opportunities. Who cares? People should have the right to benefit from their luck and their intelligence and their opportunities without others coming along and wanting a piece of something that they feel entitled to. Just because something bad happened to you, or because you're unfit for the task of supporting yourself in the world doesn't mean that someone else should be obligated to take care of you. No one has a right to nice things and to a sense of economic security just for standing around at some job or another for 40 hours a week. A lot of jobs are already charity in and of themselves. A cashier making 15 bucks an hour is a joke. It's not even necessary to have someone do that job and yet companies pay people all the time to just fucking stand there and do something a customer could do themselves. Then the asshole charity cases have the nerve to say they're underpaid. Ridiculous. Not everyone is as smart or as lucky as everyone else, and so if everything is distributed equally, then it's not really fair. Intelligence and luck are like lotteries. If you're born dumb and unlucky, then you have to work harder and you get less out of life. It isn't right to put the burden of raising up all those people on the ones who are born smart and who are lucky. It's also bad for natural selection. The longer we hold up the dumb and the unlucky artificially, then the longer we have to deal with the problem of people not participating in advancing humanity.
Gloominary wrote:Actually, I'm familiar with most of the counterarguments people are going to make, I just don't care.
It's like people are on fire, and we're having a debate about what's the best way to put the flames out or if anything can be done.
Gloominary wrote:Two people having to work full time to support a small family is a bad economy, by any sane definition of a bad economy.
Gloominary wrote:Climate change and resource depletion are seriously threatening the survival of thousands of species, and our species.
Gloominary wrote:I think part of the problem is immigration, the more people (most of them use to a lower standard of living, and having large families to support) you have lined up to take your job for less, the less bargaining power you have.
That's why I don't think we should have any immigration period, zero.
Gloominary wrote:If employees are being paid double what they are in many cases, I don't think corporations could fire half the population to compensate, and still run their corporations, and I don't think you can work the average employee much more than they already are without breaking them.
Gloominary wrote:As for the employees who are laid off and can't find work, just give them welfare until they can, or permanently, and increase the welfare given, so it's above what the unemployed get today, but still below what the employed will make, so the employed still have an incentive.
Gloominary wrote:Solution: government freezes the prices for essential goods and services like food and housing, or reduce them.
Gloominary wrote:Well we, as a democracy, just have to start incrementally taking things over, and making more of the decisions.
Gloominary wrote:There's nothing free about this system, even a purely capitalist economy with no corporatism or socialism, the kind so called 'libertarians' are arguing for, is still intrinsically unfree.
For example, under a capitalist system, I can pay government to reserve and protect a piece of land for me, privatize it, a piece of land say I myself never physically set foot on.
Gloominary wrote:And even so, creativity is a luxury, if you want to be creative, go paint a picture.
Right, so an argument from pathos rather than logos. Prepare to be dismissed by those who can just as easily and authentically say they equally don't care about your concerns - but like you said, you don't care. Communication breakdown.
A sane definition of a good economy might be one that maximises contributions from as many people as possible
(potentially even their kids and retirees too)
And as long as we can keep on top of it and continue to innovate our way around such problems, our species will persist. The vast majority of species that have ever existed are already extinct, and newer ones are being discovered all the time. Natural selection is topping up everything we're losing.
And the other side of the same coin is that immigration allows access to new perspectives and non-local talent that can be combined with local talent in order to achieve better results than we could from the utilisation of just local talent.
And of course, the lower the wages, the more employees can be hired and/or the products or services can be sold cheaper. Thus you don't need as large a wage in order to afford the same stuff you always bought before.
a living wage for all those not in work so they aren't forced to accept a low wage out of fear of being given even less in benefits or nothing at all to live on.
Unfortunately you might have a great deal of home owners and landlords not wanting their property to drop in value to much less than they paid to buy it.
The problem is that things have to get much much worse than they currently are to motivate such a revolution.
Decentralised then. Granted that there is nothing free about any system in a deterministic universe where everything is determined to do what it does by prior things since long before you even existed.
Further, everything you do effects everyone else at least minimally and indirectly.
And even a weaker definition of freedom has a dual nature: one man's freedom in a finite space is another man's restriction as you say.
Absolutely disagree. We need to be creative to get around this seemingly naturally emerging inequality that is just going to grow until only one person has all the wealth. I agree that the environment is an issue, but its destruction is only really a natural consequence of free "decentralised" markets. The problem is that the ideology, based around self-interest, has enough people competing on equal enough grounds so as to mutually keep everyone else in check. But with growing inequality, this Classical Liberal ideal just gets further and further out of wack and the environment and the poor pay for it.
Gloominary wrote:Everyone who can work should work some at least.
Everyone who can't work should have a, 'livable income',
First of all, it's against personal "Freedoms" to force people to work against their will. Perhaps you are pro-slavery then too???
Secondly, people who don't work, don't deserve income.
Money doesn't appear from nowhere.
you are want to give-outs to lazy people
then are you doing so in your personal life?
because you probably don't have a job, and are probably living under your parent's roof, or somebody else is footing your bills.
Gloominary wrote:Everyone who can work should work some at least.
Everyone who can't work should have a, 'livable income',
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