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Blindy.ing:
But at the same time, people who make minimum wage should be able to afford to, you know, eat, so maybe it's just something that needs to happen every now and then. It has been a long time.
Myth 1: People who earn minimum wage are in poverty
Fact: Only one in five minimum wage earners come from families that are below the poverty line, and only 2% of all minimum wage earners are over the age of 25. The vast majority of all minimum wage earners are kids breaking into the work force.
The vast epidemic of minimum wage earners struggling to live on $5.15 an hour that the american democratic party wants you to believe in does not exist.
Inflation issues aside (if they even exist, which I doubt) it stands to reason that if you point a gun at a company and force them to pay $7/hr for work that is only worth $5.15/hr, the business will comply by firing half their workers and making the remaining do twice the work.
Just like with asinine anti-"gouging" legislation, you can control PRICE, but you cannot control COST.
How do we know businesses will do this? Well, there's always the legendary case of the leftist activist group ACORN who, around 2004, successfully lobbied the california state government for a minimum wage increase, then immediately began lobbying to be exempt from the increase. The excuse they used? If they had to obey the minimum wage increase, they would have to fire workers, point blank.
Your average, non-political joe blow believes minimum wage increases are a good thing because your average, non-political joe blow is fantastically ignorant of the forces of economics at work around him. Minimum wage is a hot-button, as anybody who caught any democratic campaign ad recently knows.
Emotional appeals involving raising the minimum wage are easy to make because it's easy to fool people into believing that minimum wage earners are POOR and that raising the minimum wage would make them LESS POOR when in reality neither of these are true, but jesus christ HOW CAN YOU OPPOSE HELPING THE POOR!?
Posturing as being a pro-minimum-wage-raiser is an excellent way to win the hearts of the ignorant people who may be on the fence. But there's more than just that!
Many unions and other collective bargaining organizations negotiate contracts that are based on the minimum wage, where workers earnings are defined as (minimum wage)*X where X is a multiplier specific to a given position. Because of this, a minimum wage increase means a round of wage increases for every worker under that contract... with absolutely no negotiation needed. As a result, union lobbyists push for minimum wage increases as if their lives depended on it, and the democrats are receptive to them because they already know that minimum wage increases are already a huge hot-button emotional appeal.
In short, a minimum wage increase will ultimately HURT poor people and will make it harder to get into an entry level job to establish a work history. This is true of ANY minimum wage regardless of the dollar amount, and it only gets worse if you raise it.
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Almond who doth quote:
I agree, thing is If you tied Congress own pay hikes to it maybe they would stop voting themselves one every few years. I'm not for a higher min wage I'm against elected officals voteing themselves pay raises and benifit increases.
Congress's pay increases don't have a goddamn thing to do with the minimum wage and don't even belong in this discussion.
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x--AlmondO-('-'Q) :
I was suggesting that you link the two such that Congress could not give them selves a pay riase without raising the Min wage the same percentage. I feel this would solve the "problem".
Yeah, link two things that congress WANTS TO DO and suddenly they won't do it?
What possible reason could you have for linking congressional pay rates to the minimum wage, anyway? Like I said, they're two completely dissimilar concepts. If you want to keep congress from raising the minimum wage, stop fucking voting for congressmen who are promising to do that. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 11-30-2006 at 12:38 AM.
Call me naive, but I think it would work.
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Almond probably says this to all the girls:
I don't think Congress really wants to raise the min wage its a red herring to distract people from other issues. Don't forget most Congressmen are bought and sold by Pacs who won't want them to raise min wage either.Call me naive, but I think it would work.
You still aren't offering a reason elected official's pay rates ought to be linked to minimum wage. There's no conceivable reason that the minimum rate businesses in this country may pay their employees should somehow be linked to the rate at which elected officials increase their salaries. Neither one has any impact on the other. It'd be like saying the price per barrel of oil should be tied to the price per bale of cotton.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java the thoughts aquire speed, the teeth acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Almond booooze lime pole over bench lick:
I don't think Congress really wants to raise the min wage
I already gave you two good reasons why they, in fact, do want to raise the minimum wage, and pressure groups like Pacs are among them.
If you linked congressional pay to the minimum wage, you'd see MORE people trying to raise the minimum wage because now you've given them EVEN MORE direct personal benefit to doing so. Even if you were right (which you aren't) and congress really DIDN'T want to raise the minimum wage, linking it to their salary would be a handy way of rapidly changing their minds.
You're not naive, it's just that the things you're saying don't make a damn lick of sense.
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I like it when Maradon! says:
-snip-
First off, I was just saying that minimum wage is a pitiful amount of money, not that everyone earning minimum wage is destitute.
But to address your study here, I'd like to point out the scope of your study.
quote:
Relatively few Americans earn the federal minimum wage. In 2005, 1.9 million Americans reported earning $5.15 or less per hour. Some workers earn less than the minimum wage: Restaurants can pay workers less than the minimum if their tip income elevates their income above $5.15 per hour. Additionally, many minimum wage workers appear to round their wages down to $5.00 per hour when surveyed about their earnings.
This study is just about people who earn exactly $5.15 or less per hour.
I'm not sure that you took a minute to think about it, so let me come out and say it. Most people who are making a living working in "minimum wage jobs" are actually making a little more than minimum wage, as the vast majority of jobs give you a small pay raise every 6 months or so. You're seeing the statistics on people who have been working at a minimum wage job for 6 months or less. Yes, that means mostly teenagers working a part time job along side school. No, that is not an accurate representation of the demographic that works for a living on $5.xx an hour and would be benefited by a raise in the minimum wage.
It is in no way surprising that the Heritage foundation would go ahead and post such a misleading study. Blindy. fucked around with this message on 11-30-2006 at 08:38 AM.
quote:
Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Blindy. who doth quote:
I'm not sure that you took a minute to think about it, so let me come out and say it. Most people who are making a living working in "minimum wage jobs" are actually making a little more than minimum wage, as the vast majority of jobs give you a small pay raise every 6 months or so. You're seeing the statistics on people who have been working at a minimum wage job for 6 months or less. Yes, that means mostly teenagers working a part time job along side school. No, that is not an accurate representation of the demographic that works for a living on $5.xx an hour and would be benefited by a raise in the minimum wage.It is in no way surprising that the Heritage foundation would go ahead and post such a misleading study.
The heritage foundation was citing outside sources.
This study has been conducted numerous times, by the Cato institute and the Jerome Levy Economics institute independently over the last 10 years or so, and they account for state minimum wages and small pay raises. And no, you're wrong: It is an accurate demographic, the vast majority of minimum wage earners are kids under 25 and have no dependents.
Further, even if you were right, that still wouldn't change the fact that RAISING the minimum wage would only put more of whatever demographic is affected on the street.
So again, it isn't true that minimum (or 5.xx) earners are poor, and it isn't true that raising the minimum wage would help them.
First off, 46.7% of minimum wage earners are over the age of 25 (879,000 out of 1,882,000 workers). Not 2%. The statistic that you were misquoting is that 2% of the work force over 25 earns minimum wage (879,000 out of 59,235,000 workers). I'm sure it was an honest mistake on your part. Source.
Second off, if 53.3% of a group is "A Vast Majority", then "A Vast Majority" must not mean what I've always thought it meant. If 124,000 people is that big of a difference, then Gore's 500,000 vote advantage over Bush in the 2000 elections must have been "A Staggeringly Huge Majority", so I fully expect you to use such a descriptor from now on when addressing the topic. But a 6.5% difference, especially considering the logical issues with the sample group, does not make for a very convincing argument.
Finally, the study who's numbers we are pulling this data from is specifically separating the workers between who makes less than 5.16 and who makes 5.16 and more. People under 25 are much more likely to be starting a new job and have less experience, and therefore are more likely to make exactly the minimum wage as opposed to slightly above it. Understand then that these statistics can not be said to represent all of the working poor. If you can find some statistics on all wage earners making less than $7.00 an hour, then we can use them to debate who would be effected by an increase and what the makeup of the working poor is.
/boggle
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
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Bloodsage needs to learn to type:
So you argument is that raising the minimum wage will somehow magically translate into higher earnings for those earning more than the minimum wage?/boggle
If you're making $5.75 and the new minimum wage is $7.00?
Edit: To clarify, I'm not arguing for the minimum wage to be raised, I'm just calling bullshit on Maradon's statistics. I don't support raising the minimum wage. Blindy. fucked around with this message on 11-30-2006 at 01:48 PM.
quote:If someone makes $6/hr, and the minimum wage goes from $5/hr to $7/hr, then that person will be making at least $7/hr. As for whether it helps that person, that depends on whether his/her cost of living increases proportionately. Though that may not be what you meant. Somebody also mentioned the N*minimum wage union jobs, though I don't know anything about those.
Roll the dice to see if Bloodsage is getting drunk!
So you argument is that raising the minimum wage will somehow magically translate into higher earnings for those earning more than the minimum wage?/boggle
Not digging myself further into the argument; just hoping this will clarify.
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Bent over the coffee table, Blindy. squealed:
If you're making $5.75 and the new minimum wage is $7.00?Edit: To clarify, I'm not arguing for the minimum wage to be raised, I'm just calling bullshit on Maradon's statistics. I don't support raising the minimum wage.
That's still a silly thing to get wrapped up on. And since you don't have any data on the subject, either, it's disingenuous to claim it'll make a difference.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
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Bloodsage's opinion of themself must be pretty good:
That's still a silly thing to get wrapped up on. And since you don't have any data on the subject, either, it's disingenuous to claim it'll make a difference.
Isn't it equally disingenuous to claim that it won't make any difference as Maradon has done?
The truth is we don't know what the actual statistics are for wage earners under $7.00 an hour. I'm just saying that it makes sense to me that they would be skewed further towards older and more experienced workers than the statistics of those making $5.15.
And I don't think a quoted number 44 points off is a silly thing to get wrapped up on. You'd rip me open for such a blunder, especially when it's as crucial to the logic of my argument as the "Vast majority" is to Maradon's.
If you're arguing that the minimum wage should be a "living wage" you need to present the case that the entire philosophy of the program needs to changed and that doing so will benefit the economy.
If you're just baiting Maradon!, carry on. 
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
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I wish Bloodsage would say this more often:
Without knowing what percentage of people making less than $7/hr are older, it's silly to assert that the figures would be changed. One literally cannot make a logical assertion one way or the other since, as several people have mentioned, it's fairly hard to find a minimum wage job at all, so even the kids are earning more in most cases.
Maybe, Maybe not. I don't think it's that unbelievable that 25 year old working in a "minimum wage position" would have been more likely than a 16 year old to have received at least a 1 cent raise.
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If you're arguing that the minimum wage should be a "living wage" you need to present the case that the entire philosophy of the program needs to changed and that doing so will benefit the economy.
Nah, I'm just saying that it's a pitiful amount of money. I don't think you have to argue that it should be a living wage to say that it's not very much money.
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If you're just baiting Maradon!, carry on.
"Don't want to sound like a fanboy, but I am with you. I'll buy it for sure, it's just a matter of for how long I will be playing it..."
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