If the $15 Per Hour Minimum Wage is so Good Why are Unions Getting Exemptions From it?

originally posted by: WeAreAWAKE
Lets call this what it really is...redistribution. You raise an idiot worker to $15.00 an hour from $7.25 and hour for no reason, no increased value, etc. So what do you do with the $20.00 manager who is a great worker? Raise him an equal percentage...a little more than 100% to $40.00 per hour? Of course not because your business would have to close. So you give the manager a few bucks...now he makes $22.00 per hour. What have you done? You have taken the percentage you would give the manager, but can't and raised the idiot.

Wealth redistribution and nothing else. It isn't anyones fault that the idiot is an idiot or unskilled, etc. This is like more welfare for the unskilled and therefore, destroys the reasons for better education, working smarter or harder. The same old liberal BS...take from everyone and give to those who don't deserve it.

Correct. You shrink the gap between the higher and lower paid employees. What is the manager going to do? Not work and have no income? The manager still does better than the minimum wage employee, so they are still getting a payoff for their skills and education.

there should be a MAXIMUM wage.

a reply to: Aazadan

While driving up the costs of that product or service as the company passes on the added expense to the end user....thee and me. OR the product or service is no longer affordable and the demand shrinks hence the jobs as well.

It solves nothing except votes for the left. Economic hocus pocus, unfortunately, the stimulus response crowd buys into it...

originally posted by: Aazadan

You haven't read a word I've written have you? CPI isn't accurate.

Then why reference it? We should not trust the numbers I linked but yours instead?

Shadowstats provides much more accurate numbers, and they even source it from the government.

And where did the ones I link get sourced from? Mars?

They peg inflation right now at 7.4%. If your yearly salary increase was less than this you lost purchasing power.

I beat it by quite a bit when all was said and done.

Earnings and purchasing power are not the same thing. Even if they were, are you sure you have value? Can you honestly say that only those who are more skilled and harder working than you make more than you? Do you not have any subordinates who are more talented than you? Is everyone who has a higher earning position than you more talented? If you can't say that these are true, then how can you be assured of your own value? You must admit the possibility that you are not paid at a rate commensurate with the value you bring to the company, which opens up the possibility that you are over paid relative to your ability.

Maybe I am over paid, maybe I am GROSSLY overpaid. That is a situation I will happily deal with since I am the one that instilled that perception of my value.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
Then why reference it? We should not trust the numbers I linked but yours instead?

Again, you didn't read a word I said. Tell me this, what does CPI measure? CPI does not measure the change in the cost of goods from year to year. It measures the change in total household expenditures from year to year. If households spend 1% more, that in turn says there is 1% inflation. Since 1982 CPI has not measured the change in cost of goods. Changing it was an accounting trick to bring down runaway inflation. We never got rid of that inflation from the Carter years, we simply stopped counting it.

I beat it by quite a bit when all was said and done.

Good for you. The average wage in the US went up by 3% last year. Inflation was 7.4% That's a 4.3% decrease in purchasing power for the average household. Look at it from a macro not micro economic perspective.

Maybe I am over paid, maybe I am GROSSLY overpaid. That is a situation I will happily deal with since I am the one that instilled that perception of my value.

That's a feeling of self worth, not value.

What you're essentially stating here is screw society so long as you get a good deal. That's a ridiculous notion if you expect society to exist.

originally posted by: nwtrucker
While driving up the costs of that product or service as the company passes on the added expense to the end user....thee and me. OR the product or service is no longer affordable and the demand shrinks hence the jobs as well.

It solves nothing except votes for the left. Economic hocus pocus, unfortunately, the stimulus response crowd buys into it...

Time worked to purchase something declines when the minimum wage goes up, and therefore wage gap shrinks. I made a handy chart a couple pages ago that charted several goods over the past 50 years and correlated them with time worked in order to purchase. The time to purchase something was not surprisingly, less when minimum wage was higher.

This is due to two factors.

First 100% of the cost of a good is not made up in the price of the wage. Lets take Walmart for example, they have multinational suppliers, an increase in the wage in the US doesn't increase the wage of every single person in the supply chain. Therefore a 100% increase in the cost of the wage doesn't correspond to a 100% increase in the cost of the product.

Second, each person can only consume so many goods. One of the myths prevalent in our society is that of the super consumer, a person with immense wealth who has an insatiable appetite for things, and buys well beyond what they have the capacity to use. It's based on the idea of a person who purchases 400 pairs of jeans per year, buys 36 hours of tv shows per day, eats enough food to sustain 30 people, maintains 7 residences for personal use, and so on. It's a ridiculous notion. What ends up happening in reality is that people consume more as their income rises, but only to a point. After that point quantity, and thus the amount of labor/jobs to sustain them ceases to increase while quality continues to go up. Because of this, you see a greater economic impact for the same amount earned among a population if it is spread among everyone so that everyone has something to spend rather than divided so that a smaller percentage has all of the spending power.

You can see this principal at work under for example both of W's stimulus packages where he directed a few hundred dollars each time which were directed at lower and middle incomes so that there was a lot of spending money to go around and spur the economy, the taxes to pay for those having come directly from the wealthy (effectively the same thing as just having a higher minimum wage).

a reply to: Aazadan

Sorry, but arguing whether it's 100% or, certainly, a large percentage is semantics. That percentile is spread to the rest of us.

Next is of course those who make that 15/hr already. One can safely assume that they are, to some degree, higher skilled than the current minimum wage earner. Now they will go for higher wages and then the next rung and the next, now we have inflation taking off,which of course a deficit spending gov't wants as inflation lowers the percentile of the debt in relation to the current 'devalued currency'.

The labor time spent has decreased, a principal incentive/factor is labor costs. The higher those costs, the greater incentive to lower the labor time in that same production,,,,that equals less jobs.

Now factor in the further gap between undeveloped nation wages and ours, it increases...further job losses.

Of course Wal-Mart has increased wages. Obama removed the one incentive Wal-Mart offered their employees, inexpensive health care. Now no longer a cost for Wal-Mart-hence big business support for both ObamaCare and legalizing the illegals....all at our expense.

Don't like your wage? get trained, on line, or course, there are lots of grants at all levels of gov't.

Else we end up with idiots promoting two bedroom apartments as a standard for minimum wages. All it does is push the freebie mentality to garner votes.

Rent a studio suite....

a reply to: nwtrucker

It's much more than semantics, it's the difference between a proportionally rising rage and a disproportionate wage. If wages are proportionate that means jumping from $8 to $16 doubles the cost of goods and all things remain equal. When it's disproportionate going from $8 to $16 doesn't double the cost of goods, it only raises them by say 75% rather than 100%. This results in a stronger wage for those on the bottom, up to a certain point and a weaker wage for those above that point.

Those who make $15/hour right now would be worse off if the minimum wage went to $15/hour because their purchasing power would decline, however the economy as a whole would be healthier. Lets push this to an extreme example, lets say that out of our country of 300 million+ people, 99% of all of the money belonged to a single person. Would the economy be healthier if they only owned 98% of the money? That would double what the majority are spending/circulating going from 1% to 2%. Yet that one person with most of the money is worse off.

However, this all goes back to the point I made earlier that a $15/hour minimum wage is a bad idea. Not because we shouldn't have that (we should in fact have a $24/hour minimum wage right now, if wages were keeping up with the cost of goods), but because the economy needs time to adjust to such a market. As a result, you can't shift the minimum wage (or any wage for that matter) upwards by more than a couple percent per year without causing a lot of small businesses to shut down which defeats the whole point.

Inflation (the on paper rate) is pretty much meaningless. CPI which is how we track the official inflation rate is manipulated to return any number the bankers want. The calculation for how it's determined is secret, and there's no oversight on it. You can see this in action right now where the amount of money in circulation isn't changing the official rate with all the bailout funds that were given, dumping money directly into circulation (or at least circulation among large corporations).

The problem with trade with developing nations is that we cannot compete with their wages. It's simply not possible because of the difference in the value of our currencies. When $1 has the buying power that $50 has here even if our workers live extremely modest lifestyles it's simply not doable. I've tried to do this myself using some of the online coding websites and gave up because even if I can code 4 times as fast as someone in India (which I can do), and work for $3/hour (which I have done), despite being much more cost effective in this scenario I still could not make enough to live on because that wage is only worth $3 here while it's worth $30 somewhere else.

As far as Walmarts health care perk, maybe it's just me but I've never been comfortable with the idea that my employer should be providing my health care. In many ways it's even worse than the government determining my care because I have some say in how the government operates through pestering representatives and voting (or convincing others to vote a certain way), and there is the letter of the law you can hold them to (where as corporate policy can change at a whim, and is much harder to bring a successful lawsuit against). I have no say in how my employer operates, other than if I don't like it go somewhere else.

originally posted by: Aazadan
Again, you didn't read a word I said.

At this point all you are saying is, 'My numbers good, your numbers bad'.

Good for you. The average wage in the US went up by 3% last year. Inflation was 7.4% That's a 4.3% decrease in purchasing power for the average household. Look at it from a macro not micro economic perspective.

I think your numbers are erroneous considering where fuel prices have come down to. You obviously want to make a point and will use whatever figures support your claim.

That's a feeling of self worth, not value.

What you're essentially stating here is screw society so long as you get a good deal. That's a ridiculous notion if you expect society to exist.

Is that so? The company I work for feels I am worth what they pay me, that is VALUE. Who cares what I think it is at that point?

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: WeAreAWAKE
Lets call this what it really is...redistribution. You raise an idiot worker to $15.00 an hour from $7.25 and hour for no reason, no increased value, etc. So what do you do with the $20.00 manager who is a great worker? Raise him an equal percentage...a little more than 100% to $40.00 per hour? Of course not because your business would have to close. So you give the manager a few bucks...now he makes $22.00 per hour. What have you done? You have taken the percentage you would give the manager, but can't and raised the idiot.

Wealth redistribution and nothing else. It isn't anyones fault that the idiot is an idiot or unskilled, etc. This is like more welfare for the unskilled and therefore, destroys the reasons for better education, working smarter or harder. The same old liberal BS...take from everyone and give to those who don't deserve it.

Correct. You shrink the gap between the higher and lower paid employees. What is the manager going to do? Not work and have no income? The manager still does better than the minimum wage employee, so they are still getting a payoff for their skills and education.

Yes...but not a fair compensation. He/she may have spent thousands and years in school for what? A few bucks more per hour? Is that what we want to squash? People learning and educating themselves to make themselves better? When you destroy the desire and reward of becoming better for the sole purpose of making someone who didn't or doesn't feel more equal...you uplift the idea of being "satisfactory" and destroy the idea of excelling.

originally posted by: RoScoLaz4
there should be a MAXIMUM wage.

Why? What if I were so freaking smart, educated, etc. that I can cure cancer, fix the economy, etc. Shouldn't I be rewarded for acting on those skills? Or do you want to offer me $20 per hour to do this when I can stock shelves for $15? What if I decide...why work so hard and make my intelligence work for others, when I can just slack off, stock my shelves and collect my $15? Let alone that I may have decided up front to forget the education and not become someone able to do special things like that?

Someone somewhere said you wouldn't create a world full of nothing but geniuses because a genius won't be happy to sweep the floors. You need people that cover the scale to do everything required in a society.

a reply to: [post=19407194]Aazadan[/post

It's difficult to almost impossible for wages to move up based on the natural supply and demand laws when those laws are manipulated by this administration. Not only do we have one million legal immigrants per year-they want to increase that number to two million annually- we have somewhere around 20 million that are given work permits instead of deportation.

We now officially have a shrinking economy. Increasing the minimum wage will shrink it more. The spin not withstanding.

Personally, I don't require an agency to calculate the inflation rate. Simple logic and empirical evidence suffices. That is off topic so I won't go there in this thread.

As far as corporate supplied medical coverage versus gov't supplied, evidence, at least to this point, says otherwise. I live approximately one football field's length from the Canadian border. The number of Canadians that come to the U.S. for medical services is huge! That's the option that Canadians have in their system,-one that's pretty good when measured against other socialized systems- they leave it and come to a supply and demand system.

An employee had the option of buying his own coverage, not working for Wal-Mart and going somewhere else for employment as well as a complete range of private options and cost levels that have disappeared under the Affordable health care Act. (unless your rich, that is. Then no matter what 'system' is used you will always have an option to purchase the best.)

It is enforced. This gives you more options than private coverage??? Methinks you are , at best, a moderate democrat...

a reply to: nwtrucker

It extends beyond this administration. Like I said before the minimum wage problem has been decades in the making, 35 years now actually. Now, that doesn't give Obama a pass because he hasn't taken steps to make things better but he's not solely responsible for the current mess either. The problem spans 5 presidential administrations, 8 labor secretaries, and 18 different sessions of congress.

Increasing the minimum wage, provided it's a small increase wouldn't shrink the economy, which is what I've been trying to say for several posts now. It is a bad idea to give an overnight $15 minimum wage, and it is a bad idea to give an overnight $10 minimum wage. On the other hand it is a very good idea to give a for example 1% annual increase above the rate of inflation. If we were to do that right now here's what you would see in the next 10 years, assuming the real rate of inflation remains at 7.4% (in an ideal world it would go down).
2016 - $8.07
2017 - $8.75
2018 - $9.49
2019 - $10.27
2020 - $11.15
2021 - $12.09
2022 - $13.10
2023 - $14.20
2024 - $15.40
2025 - $16.69

The problem with not using an agency to calculate inflation and only using your own experiences is that you're looking at things on a micro economic level while issues such as currency supply and inflation are macro economic issues. The two are quite different from each other.

Well, what I can comment on for current health care isn't much. I don't get any free coverage and I can't afford any coverage so I simply get to go without, I can't even really afford the fines for not having it. From my point of view this is exactly the same as it was pre Obamacare. I haven't had health coverage since the day I turned 18, what I remember from being a kid is that the only health care option we had was offered through my parents employer. They chose what was covered and how much would be paid out. Furthermore, I remember a point where I was getting an expensive treatment for something and my mom wanted to switch jobs, but wouldn't be able to afford paying for my care. She was forced to continue working for her current employer because of health coverage. I see that is little more than indentured servitude.

Single payer is a better outcome than that, but individuals having a choice so that we can take advantage of market competitiveness is even better than that. No one has really put together a solid plan though, the Republican idea of opening insurance up past state lines is good but it doesn't do enough on it's own. The last plan the Republicans had was the Heritage plan in 1988 and it's almost exactly what Obamacare is today and the last plan the Democrats had was Hillarycare and that has been rejected how many times now? No one seems to be able to come up with an actual method to go about making health care affordable and accessible while maintaining market conditions.

As far as being called a moderate democrat goes, I've been called everything on these boards from a filthy conservative for my stance on the second amendment, to a radical leftist because I don't mind big government so long as it's competent. The closest I get to identifying with a party is the Pirate Party but I disagree with them on economic and voting issues.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
At this point all you are saying is, 'My numbers good, your numbers bad'.

If that's how you want to take it then go for it, facts clearly aren't going to sway you from your beliefs.

I think your numbers are erroneous considering where fuel prices have come down to. You obviously want to make a point and will use whatever figures support your claim.

Fuel prices have been down for about 6 months now as a result of massive supply being created by the Saudi's to try and shut down fracking. They can only sustain such production levels for a limited time because other OPEC nations can't afford it. The prices used take averages over time spans, and spikes/dips in production do little to change multi year averages. In addition, since fuel prices hit their minimum they have gone up again by quite a bit. Using the gas stations around here as an example they went down as far as $1.99, we're back up to $3.15 now which isn't all that much lower than before the supply glut started.

Is that so? The company I work for feels I am worth what they pay me, that is VALUE. Who cares what I think it is at that point?

Do they? Would your company pay you less if they could? If they would, they value you at less than they're currently paying you.

originally posted by: WeAreAWAKE
Yes...but not a fair compensation. He/she may have spent thousands and years in school for what? A few bucks more per hour? Is that what we want to squash? People learning and educating themselves to make themselves better? When you destroy the desire and reward of becoming better for the sole purpose of making someone who didn't or doesn't feel more equal...you uplift the idea of being "satisfactory" and destroy the idea of excelling.

They're already spending thousands of dollars and years in school for a few bucks more per hour. Lets look at the 50's, 60's, 70's, and even 80's. Plenty of people went to college, despite college being less profitable then than it supposedly is today. Despite college being less profitable did people stop going? I think you under estimate what people will do for economic gains, and self improvement. Using todays economic scale lets say not going to college gets you a $25k/year job, going to college gets you $40k/year. Do you really think people would stop going if they only got $35k/year instead?

The whole concept of capitalism and competition states that people will work hard for any gain what so ever. If you had to work 100% harder for 10% more profit (which is a much worse rate than we're discussing here), many many people would still do that because they would still be getting more.

originally posted by: WeAreAWAKE
Why? What if I were so freaking smart, educated, etc. that I can cure cancer, fix the economy, etc. Shouldn't I be rewarded for acting on those skills? Or do you want to offer me $20 per hour to do this when I can stock shelves for $15?

That's a 33% higher wage, isn't that a reward for your intelligence? Lets put it this way, maybe this will say more about your character than any economic statement. If you could cure cancer, how much would you demand people pay you to be cured?

originally posted by: Aazadan

Fuel prices have been down for about 6 months now as a result of massive supply being created by the Saudi's to try and shut down fracking. They can only sustain such production levels for a limited time because other OPEC nations can't afford it. The prices used take averages over time spans, and spikes/dips in production do little to change multi year averages. In addition, since fuel prices hit their minimum they have gone up again by quite a bit. Using the gas stations around here as an example they went down as far as $1.99, we're back up to $3.15 now which isn't all that much lower than before the supply glut started.

Fuel prices will go lower as additional fracking technology comes into play. It does not matter what OPEC does as existing wells will have extraction costs that rival the Saudis in a few years. Gasoline is down and will remain down and I am not nearly paying $3.15, we are still in the mid to low $2's.

Do they? Would your company pay you less if they could? If they would, they value you at less than they're currently paying you.

If they could they most certainly would, but once again, the cannot because I have VALUE. That is how the free market operates. If I feel I am not receiving fair compensation I am free to work elsewhere for more. If I cannot get more than I am at my market value.

This is not a very difficult concept.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
Fuel prices will go lower as additional fracking technology comes into play. It does not matter what OPEC does as existing wells will have extraction costs that rival the Saudis in a few years. Gasoline is down and will remain down and I am not nearly paying $3.15, we are still in the mid to low $2's.

OPEC is a major player here, even with the US supplying all that we can our supply increases don't have as great an impact on the market, and especially not domestically as we sell to anyone who will buy at the highest price. OPEC nations give their citizens a much better deal on oil.

If they could they most certainly would, but once again, the cannot because I have VALUE. That is how the free market operates. If I feel I am not receiving fair compensation I am free to work elsewhere for more. If I cannot get more than I am at my market value.

Someone in the country is doing the exact same job as you and making more money. Someone is also doing the exact same job as you and making less money. That's atleast 3 different wages for the same job. Which is the market rate? People are not paid according to their market value, they're paid at whatever they can convince someone to give them. The two are not the same thing.

originally posted by: Aazadan

OPEC is a major player here, even with the US supplying all that we can our supply increases don't have as great an impact on the market, and especially not domestically as we sell to anyone who will buy at the highest price. OPEC nations give their citizens a much better deal on oil.

Of course it has an impact, as you admitted above. Why else would OPEC change their production due to fracking in the Balken?

Someone in the country is doing the exact same job as you and making more money. Someone is also doing the exact same job as you and making less money. That's atleast 3 different wages for the same job. Which is the market rate? People are not paid according to their market value, they're paid at whatever they can convince someone to give them. The two are not the same thing.

Semantics. The free market is a negotiation. I want X, they want to pay Y, I need to give the perception of my value being closer to X than Y. Not some arbitrary number that Washington has concocted.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicusSemantics. The free market is a negotiation. I want X, they want to pay Y, I need to give the perception of my value being closer to X than Y. Not some arbitrary number that Washington has concocted.

Where did I say Washington should determine the wage? Setting a minimum wage and setting every wage are very different things. You can look at the US in the past, or at just about any nation on earth right now with a strong minimum wage and see that it has lead to them having a strong economy with a robust middle class. Setting every wage is a different monster, something the US even tried during the great depression with price fixing. It ended in disaster.

The point about a free market is that nothing is ever paid for at it's market rate. Things have an intrinsic value, sometimes people try to temporarily change the perception of that value through things like marketing, hype, lies, or self promotion but that only changes what a person thinks the value is, not what the value actually is. You can see a historical example of this in the tulip craze of 1636. Another example would be a prospective job seeker for a position that requires some skills. If you can land two interviews at once it becomes possible to play one company against the other to give you a better deal to work for them. The value of that persons work and skills don't change, only the compensation for doing so.

originally posted by: Aazadan
Where did I say Washington should determine the wage?

By advocating for a minimum wage. Is this not what the entire thread is about?

The market dynamics Manhattan (New York) are not the same as in Manhattan (Kansas).

Setting a minimum wage and setting every wage are very different things. You can look at the US in the past, or at just about any nation on earth right now with a strong minimum wage and see that it has lead to them having a strong economy with a robust middle class.

As I stated earlier, middle class real earnings began to drop when we came off the gold standard and they will not go up in relation to GDP until the dollar is relinked to gold or a basket of commodities.

The point about a free market is that nothing is ever paid for at it's market rate. Things have an intrinsic value, sometimes people try to temporarily change the perception of that value through things like marketing, hype, lies, or self promotion but that only changes what a person thinks the value is, not what the value actually is. You can see a historical example of this in the tulip craze of 1636. Another example would be a prospective job seeker for a position that requires some skills. If you can land two interviews at once it becomes possible to play one company against the other to give you a better deal to work for them. The value of that persons work and skills don't change, only the compensation for doing so.

I can play two or more companies against each other right now and I am currently employed. I get calls regularly from recruiters looking for me to transition. Why do you think I have such a lucrative bonus, commission and yearly increase structure?

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

If check the inflation rate used by the government against your own calculations with prices of things then and now you will see that we have experienced an inflation of over ten times based on cost living such as houses and other assets and cost like medical coverage and anything really.

Do the math.