It’s always telling that you never see an actual dollar value attached to this nebulous “living wage”–the ideologues know that doing so would force them to make a concrete argument, which can then be scrutinized properly (and invariably fall apart once realism is applied).
The people who make these arguments don’t realize that “the more productive entrepreneur” is invariably only the biggest corporations with the deepest pockets. This ‘argument’ put into practice would slaughter 99.9% of small businesses, leaving only the megacorporations to be employing anyone. And what happens when all their positions are filled? Well, the rest have no jobs and no income at all, but hey, at least they don’t have a job that’s paying ‘less than living wage’.
It’s always telling that you never see an actual dollar value attached to this nebulous “living wage”
That’s because what’s a living wage depends on what things are needed, and what they need, making it inherently variable. A living wage should cover everything a family needs: food, shelter, transportation, childcare. If you live somewhere where you need a car to get anywhere, then a living wage needs to be cover car payments. If you life in a walk-able neighborhood, then you don’t need a car, hence the living wage there would not need to cover car payments. So here is the argument: A family should earn enough to cover food, shelter, transportation and childcare.
The people who make these arguments don’t realize that “the more productive entrepreneur” is invariably only the biggest corporations with the deepest pockets.
That’s not true. The corporation with the “deepest pockets” is the one who has the most money, they’re not necessarily the most efficient one, e.g. they could be wealthy because they are a huge conglomerate, but they need a huge bureaucratic apparatus to manage their operations.
This ‘argument’ put into practice would slaughter 99.9% of small businesses, leaving only the megacorporations to be employing anyone.
Not true, see above. Also, if wages are higher, more people can safe money, allowing more people to start a business. Hence we’d have more small businesses, rather than less.
And what happens when all their positions are filled?
We decrease the amount of labor time that is considered full employment, forcing them to hire more people to reach the same output.
That’s because what’s a living wage depends on what things are needed, and what they need, making it inherently variable.
And conveniently, always able to be argued that it hasn’t been achieved yet. The equivalent of always answering “how much do you think you should be paid?” with “More.”, ceaselessly.
A living wage should cover everything a family needs
So everyone should be paid as much as it’d take to support a family, even if they’re single?
If you live somewhere where you need a car to get anywhere, then a living wage needs to be cover car payments.
Car payments? What car? What term? What interest rate? Car payments vary WILDLY, based on both individual decisions, and different creditworthiness. “Sorry boss, you gotta pay me more, because I got a 96-month auto loan on this BMW at 18%”.
This is a joke, right?
If you life in a walk-able neighborhood
So we’re implementing wage legislation on the “neighborhood” level? Sure, let’s add to the unrealism pile, lol.
food
What kind of food?
shelter
What kind? Apartment? House? How many bedrooms? Bathrooms? Square footage?
childcare
For how many children?
if wages are higher, more people can safe money
More people will have NO money, because they’ll have been fired by their employer who realized they cost more than they’re worth to the company.
You can’t save money without an income.
And even if you’re one of the lucky ones who still has a job, there are practically zero small business categories with profit margins large enough to support such a massive increase in labor costs.
We decrease the amount of labor time that is considered full employment
So, the existing workers’ income drops again? lol
forcing them to hire more people to reach the same output.
You can’t force them to hire anyone. They will hire more people only if doing so increases their profits. If it doesn’t, they won’t. Period.
I see what you’re doing. You can’t go and say “Poor people shouldn’t be able to feed themselves”, or “Children of poor parents shouldn’t get an education”, so you focus on implementation details which can be questioned without looking bad, and you ask the questions in a way as to suggest that the less fortunate are only in their situation because of reckless financial decisions.
What kind of food?
Right back at you. What kind of food should less fortunate people eat?
Your assumption that reasonably higher wages would lead to unemployment simply has no basis in reality. If we take the US as a baseline, then we see that countries with a higher minimum wage are not poverty ridden hellholes.
You really don’t. You see what you want to see, and what makes it easier for you to avoid the objectively obvious consequences of your policy suggestions.
Your assumption that reasonably higher wages would lead to unemployment simply has no basis in reality.
L M A O
I don’t know if I could strawman a shinier beacon of economic ignorance than you just volunteered.
However, according to leading economists—including famed billionaire investor Warren Buffett—minimum wages can actually raise unemployment by giving employers less incentive to hire and more incentive to automate and outsource tasks that low-wage employees previously performed.
Higher mandated minimum wages also force businesses to raise prices to maintain desired profit margins. Higher prices can lead to less business, which means less revenue and, therefore, less money to hire and pay employees.
When forced to pay workers more per hour, companies have to hire fewer workers or assign the same number of workers fewer hours to keep from going over their predetermined wage expense limits. Many companies do just that or, when possible, they ship jobs overseas, where the per-hour expense of an employee is significantly lower.
Automation is another alternative that many companies turn to to avoid higher wage expenses. This is particularly true in large cities like Los Angeles and Seattle. Rather than giving their order to a live employee at the counter, fast-food customers input what they want into a computer, which also accepts payment and even deposits the paper sack full of food when it comes out of the kitchen.
Oh look, leading economists saying the exact same things I am. But no, this all must be an ‘assumption with no basis in reality’.
If only you were as knowledgeable as you are condescending.
Sure, that isn’t hard at all, unless you got your head stuck up your ass.
You question the need to have adequate nutrition, access to affordable (or preferably free, as it is here) childcare, affordable housing and transport and to top it off, you seem to have something against a wage you can actually live on, instead of barely getting by month-to-month.
So yes, you definitely dehumanize a vast majority of the human beings that try to survive on this planet, and you do it in a really ugly way, too.
You are literally lying. I did not say or even begin to imply that. Are you really so shameless to be this blatantly dishonest, when there is a full record of everything I literally wrote right there as evidence of your lie?
[You question the need to have] access to affordable (or preferably free, as it is here) childcare
Again, a lie. I was making a point about how the fact that people have differing numbers of children makes the assertion that ‘a living wage must include the cost of childcare’ overly simplistic. I was trying to get them to actually think their position through and go into more detail about how they think such should actually be calculated. Do you do it based on the average number of children people have? Do you have an amount X that must be added to one’s wage per child they have? And so on.
affordable housing and transport
Again, similar to the above, all I did was ask for more detail because this is too simplistic. “Housing” is something with an EXTREMELY variable cost. And both “transport” and the need for it, also vary wildly from person to person.
I know that general ‘cost of living’ varies from place to place, so a single dollar amount is not appropriate for a ‘living wage’ proposal. But my point, clearly, is that even defining living wage by saying, for example, that part of it should include ‘the cost of childcare’ is STILL not specific enough, to be something you’re even at the level of being able to PROPOSE to anyone. If those ‘pieces’ that add up to the living wage are never defined, how do you expect them to be calculated?
There are hard questions here that ‘minimum wage should be living wage’ proponents NEED to answer, if they expect their cause to go anywhere. All I did was point that fact out. To call that “dehumanizing” is absolutely ridiculous. Insisting that you formulate your proposal to a degree that it’s ACTUALLY ACTIONABLE, is not even on the same planet as ‘questioning the need to have adequate nutrition’ or any of the other bizarre bollocks you accused me of.
So no, shame on you, for having such poor reading comprehension.
Nah, it’s you. Hiding your argument behind semantics and policy is even worse than coming out and saying you think all the poor people should die - at least then you’d be honest, instead of these theatrics.
Yeah, well, small businesses shouldn’t handle all the economy.
They don’t, they employ ~48% of people. It would absolutely NOT be healthy for the economy to torpedo them, and it’s always really ironic to see the same crowd suggest policies that would do so, who also complain about things like a Walmart opening in an area and undercutting the local small businesses, causing them all to go under.
It’s always telling that you never see an actual dollar value attached to this nebulous “living wage”–the ideologues know that doing so would force them to make a concrete argument, which can then be scrutinized properly (and invariably fall apart once realism is applied).
The people who make these arguments don’t realize that “the more productive entrepreneur” is invariably only the biggest corporations with the deepest pockets. This ‘argument’ put into practice would slaughter 99.9% of small businesses, leaving only the megacorporations to be employing anyone. And what happens when all their positions are filled? Well, the rest have no jobs and no income at all, but hey, at least they don’t have a job that’s paying ‘less than living wage’.
That’s because what’s a living wage depends on what things are needed, and what they need, making it inherently variable. A living wage should cover everything a family needs: food, shelter, transportation, childcare. If you live somewhere where you need a car to get anywhere, then a living wage needs to be cover car payments. If you life in a walk-able neighborhood, then you don’t need a car, hence the living wage there would not need to cover car payments. So here is the argument: A family should earn enough to cover food, shelter, transportation and childcare.
That’s not true. The corporation with the “deepest pockets” is the one who has the most money, they’re not necessarily the most efficient one, e.g. they could be wealthy because they are a huge conglomerate, but they need a huge bureaucratic apparatus to manage their operations.
Not true, see above. Also, if wages are higher, more people can safe money, allowing more people to start a business. Hence we’d have more small businesses, rather than less.
We decrease the amount of labor time that is considered full employment, forcing them to hire more people to reach the same output.
Don’t argue with stupid. I mean, you can if you want, but… whatever anyway.
And conveniently, always able to be argued that it hasn’t been achieved yet. The equivalent of always answering “how much do you think you should be paid?” with “More.”, ceaselessly.
So everyone should be paid as much as it’d take to support a family, even if they’re single?
Car payments? What car? What term? What interest rate? Car payments vary WILDLY, based on both individual decisions, and different creditworthiness. “Sorry boss, you gotta pay me more, because I got a 96-month auto loan on this BMW at 18%”.
This is a joke, right?
So we’re implementing wage legislation on the “neighborhood” level? Sure, let’s add to the unrealism pile, lol.
What kind of food?
What kind? Apartment? House? How many bedrooms? Bathrooms? Square footage?
For how many children?
More people will have NO money, because they’ll have been fired by their employer who realized they cost more than they’re worth to the company.
You can’t save money without an income.
And even if you’re one of the lucky ones who still has a job, there are practically zero small business categories with profit margins large enough to support such a massive increase in labor costs.
So, the existing workers’ income drops again? lol
You can’t force them to hire anyone. They will hire more people only if doing so increases their profits. If it doesn’t, they won’t. Period.
I see what you’re doing. You can’t go and say “Poor people shouldn’t be able to feed themselves”, or “Children of poor parents shouldn’t get an education”, so you focus on implementation details which can be questioned without looking bad, and you ask the questions in a way as to suggest that the less fortunate are only in their situation because of reckless financial decisions.
Right back at you. What kind of food should less fortunate people eat?
Your assumption that reasonably higher wages would lead to unemployment simply has no basis in reality. If we take the US as a baseline, then we see that countries with a higher minimum wage are not poverty ridden hellholes.
You really don’t. You see what you want to see, and what makes it easier for you to avoid the objectively obvious consequences of your policy suggestions.
L M A O
I don’t know if I could strawman a shinier beacon of economic ignorance than you just volunteered.
Quote https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080515/minimum-wages-can-raise-unemployment.asp :
Oh look, leading economists saying the exact same things I am. But no, this all must be an ‘assumption with no basis in reality’.
If only you were as knowledgeable as you are condescending.
I wrote that a reasonable increase in minimum wage won’t lead to increased unemployment, as we can see in pretty much any country with strong unions.
The way you dehumanize people is pretty abhorrent.
…you don’t know what “dehumanize” means, do you?
Cite literally one example of me dehumanizing anyone.
Sure, that isn’t hard at all, unless you got your head stuck up your ass.
You question the need to have adequate nutrition, access to affordable (or preferably free, as it is here) childcare, affordable housing and transport and to top it off, you seem to have something against a wage you can actually live on, instead of barely getting by month-to-month.
So yes, you definitely dehumanize a vast majority of the human beings that try to survive on this planet, and you do it in a really ugly way, too.
Shame on you.
You are literally lying. I did not say or even begin to imply that. Are you really so shameless to be this blatantly dishonest, when there is a full record of everything I literally wrote right there as evidence of your lie?
Again, a lie. I was making a point about how the fact that people have differing numbers of children makes the assertion that ‘a living wage must include the cost of childcare’ overly simplistic. I was trying to get them to actually think their position through and go into more detail about how they think such should actually be calculated. Do you do it based on the average number of children people have? Do you have an amount X that must be added to one’s wage per child they have? And so on.
Again, similar to the above, all I did was ask for more detail because this is too simplistic. “Housing” is something with an EXTREMELY variable cost. And both “transport” and the need for it, also vary wildly from person to person.
I know that general ‘cost of living’ varies from place to place, so a single dollar amount is not appropriate for a ‘living wage’ proposal. But my point, clearly, is that even defining living wage by saying, for example, that part of it should include ‘the cost of childcare’ is STILL not specific enough, to be something you’re even at the level of being able to PROPOSE to anyone. If those ‘pieces’ that add up to the living wage are never defined, how do you expect them to be calculated?
There are hard questions here that ‘minimum wage should be living wage’ proponents NEED to answer, if they expect their cause to go anywhere. All I did was point that fact out. To call that “dehumanizing” is absolutely ridiculous. Insisting that you formulate your proposal to a degree that it’s ACTUALLY ACTIONABLE, is not even on the same planet as ‘questioning the need to have adequate nutrition’ or any of the other bizarre bollocks you accused me of.
So no, shame on you, for having such poor reading comprehension.
Nah, it’s you. Hiding your argument behind semantics and policy is even worse than coming out and saying you think all the poor people should die - at least then you’d be honest, instead of these theatrics.
“Make minimum wage a living wage?”
“How much would that be?”
“You think all the poor people should die!”
If your fingers were any further in your ears, the tips would be touching.
I hope you become willing to use your brain one day.
Yeah, well, small businesses shouldn’t handle all the economy. We do need medium and large and gigantic economic agents too.
They don’t, they employ ~48% of people. It would absolutely NOT be healthy for the economy to torpedo them, and it’s always really ironic to see the same crowd suggest policies that would do so, who also complain about things like a Walmart opening in an area and undercutting the local small businesses, causing them all to go under.