Posted by alexzeitler 10/22/2024
For anything to "result" from this, it would have to happen. What evidence do you offer for such a phenomenon?
What is the federal minimum wage? Who benefits from it being $7.25 an hour? Not the common people
This is not rocket science. And it is stupid. At some point fewer and fewer Americans will be able to afford the things corporations sell. If you are a predator and you kill off your prey, you will die.
We, the people, need to start enacting laws that benefit the people. First and foremost is one that reverses Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This decision by the Supreme Court represents the height of incompetence or stupid.
Why is this not happening? Are the opinions and situation of common Americans ongoing and visible? Or does the NYT cater to wealthy corporate advertisers? Does it feature articles like "What house can you buy Portland, Maine with $1.5 million" while the number of homeless in Portland, Maine is staggering. Is the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos (aka Amazon) really going to talk about corporate excesses? Since our media is now utterly dependent on corporate advertisers, which of those media are going to oppose corporate excesses?
We need to fix this.
The data on higher minimum wages is not clear and it is not obvious it would benefit all Americans (or even the poorest Americans). Even if I agree with you, your rhetoric costs you an ally.
> This is not rocket science
No, its economic policy and its arguably much much more complex than rocket science. We’ve been thinking about rockets for about 100 years, political economy for about 2500.
Only one side of this is, in fact, being misconstrued, as is evident by the recent deaths of women in states with abortion bans:
https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-abortion-ban-ambe...
False balance is its own form of fallacious thinking.
"Up until around 32 weeks," and not all with medical diagnoses. And this is under current law. Can you say that everyone should be completely comfortable with this?
> and the other wanted to control women’s bodies
and you:
> Can you say that everyone should be completely comfortable with this?
So... control of women's bodies, as claimed in the OP? Why is it necessary for you to be comfortable?
Abortion is the ultimate debate; with no clear answer from any biological, moral, legal, ethical, philosophical, or even religious clause, and science leaning the "wrong" direction depending on social "norms".
Social norms are friction against the ability to be honest with peers - that are nearly all going to be incentived to lie about their actual opinion, and project the opposite (but vote the way they are told anyway)
You've been duped [1].
There is an extensive scare campaign around raising the minimum wage that is motivated by one thing only: allowing the wealthy to retain more of the profits generated by their workers. That's all that's happening here.
There is a well understood principle hhere too called the alienation of labor [2]. To summarize, without pushback workers will become increasingly estranged from and unable to produce the products they produce.
This is ultimately bad for the corporations that are exploiting them and the society as a whole because if nobody has any money, then there are no customers for your business. Over recent decades we've extended this by invoking debt. Housing debt, student debt, medical debt, credit card debt. These are temporary patches to a system that is fundamentally exploitative.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
[2]: https://irle.berkeley.edu/publications/press-release/new-stu...
This is not an honest summary of the literature.
Every recent increase in the minimum wage in America has produced zero to positive local employment effects [1][2][3][4]. Per your source, however, it also causes (non-monetary) inflation [5]. Moreover, we find in other countries that there is a limit to the tactic: in France, minimum-wage increases significantly decrease employment [6].
So no, people expressing scepticism towards minimum-wage increases are being duped no more than those being told it's corporate propaganda. They're asking legitimate questions that have nuanced answers. (It's also reasonable to ask if rural Alabama might have a different minimum wage from New York City.)
[1] https://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02...
[2] https://www.nber.org/papers/w4509
[3] https://sp2.upenn.edu/study-increasing-minimum-wage-has-posi...
[4] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.35.1.3
[5] https://irle.berkeley.edu/publications/press-release/new-stu...
[6] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...
1/ it pulls data from Uber eats. Many restaurants added “vanity” service charges to bills to provide visibility to the law changes. Instead of increasing menu prices, they add a mandatory service charge. I don’t know if this is accounted for in Uber eats takeout/delivery pricing
2/ most of the restaurants are fast food chains (think McDonalds). Full service business is included, but the sample size is much smaller. Even if it’s full service, the user isn’t “serviced” as these are delivery/takeout prices.
3/ the analysis is only national chain restaurants.
Marx is right, the only thing that matters is labor + capex to create products / services. If rich people want to move money around buying expensive crap that's marginally better and isn't too much harder to produce, we should encourage that. As of now, most of the S&P 500 focuses on producing products for the common man or other businesses. This is exactly what you'd want to see and I don't see why we should rock the boat and reduce the total labor spent on the needs of the average person (minimum wage labor).
Why should I? One side is happy to push absolute known BS about "post birth abortions", about harvesting of fetal body parts for everything from alternative medicine to a quest for immortality.
The time for "assume good faith" is long, long, long gone. These arguments are not in good faith. And I can rule out good intentions when you can't even have a sincere argument about it and lie through your teeth, knowingly and deliberately about it.
If compromise isn't possible on any issue because the other side is evil incarnate and completely unreasonable - well that doesn't leave many nice places where a democracy can go.
Once you reach this stage, your commentary pretty much just becomes elaborate whining, which makes a poor impression of yourself and actually pushes people away from your position. At best you might get some likes on social media though, which can feel nice.
Most of the web consists of this, so if that's what you prefer, I guess it's just going with the flow.
> if you ... simply fail to understand the opposition's position ... your commentary pretty much just becomes elaborate whining
So, so good.
The one where it is okay to be absolutely, and objectively, dishonest, to get what you want?
When you have people who say "I don't actually care if your position is correct", your position that it is somehow my obligation to cater and pander to them, and that it is a failing of mine to not be willing to do so is farcical.
This is literally idiocracy in the making.
If I make a poor impression on people by repeatedly shutting down their horseshit about doctors performing "abortions" up to a week or a month after birth, or that babies are being harvested in the basement of a pizza parlor for their adrenachrome, and you're more concerned about how I should be "understanding" of that perspective, again, you're also supporting the idiocracy.
Doesn't that increase the chances that one side consists of a significant number of good people who have simpy been duped? How does demonising them help?
Knowing that the vast abortions are preventable and essentially extremely ethically lazy birth control may also be a factoid worth "evangelizing".
Embryonic stem cells only come from four to five day old blastocysts or younger embryos. These are eggs that have been fertilized in the laboratory but have not been implanted in a womb.
Ironically, 'science' and 'religion' actually oppose each other as to when "life" begins. Which ironically neither side can even cognitively process, because they are so blinded ideologically.
There are people trying to abolish the minimum wage in the US.[1] "Abolishing the federal minimum wage would help small businesses. Some economic theory suggests it would lower labor costs, expand the worker pool, raise profits, and reduce costs for consumers, as businesses tend to pass off the burden onto them. Also, ending it would delay the automation revolution. At a time in which ChatGPT – the AI chatbot that answers questions – is all the rage, more jobs get lost to machines every day (Burton & Wolla, 2021). The first ones to go are minimum-wage jobs. “Increasing the minimum wage decreases significantly the share of automatable employment held by low-skilled workers,” according to Professors Lordan of the London School of Economics and Neumark of UC Irvine (Lordan & Neumark, 2015). Cost-effective measures such as AI and self-service counters become less appealing when one isn’t forced to pay workers more."
Plus, it's weakly enforced. "Wage theft" is bigger than burglary, larceny, and robbery combined.[2] That doesn't include misclassification as an "independent contractor".
[1] https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2023/03/10/opinion-the-case-...
I'd like to see some hard data and sources for this assumption, it's quite a big one and since you started the argument with the unrealistic view that those jobs are only stepping stones to better ones or performed by youngsters with access to their parents' home I cannot trust your argument prima facie.
>I'd like to see some hard data and sources for this assumption,
>this assumption, it's quite a big one and since you started the argument with the unrealistic view that those jobs are only stepping stones to better ones or performed by youngsters with access to their parents' home
That is where they live now, and are told they aren't allowed to work, or else their substituent welfare money they are dis-afforded (against their collective interests long term).
They can be something, and feel something, than the federal definition of "so low its illegal"
It also is blatantly unfair. Why enforce a minimum wage for legal workers, when illegal workers will ignore it (gun argument!?) and the border is open (but not for guns???).
The border is open for guns and it's a huge problem for Mexico to have a country with such insane gun policies next door.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/05/2...
Our border is open to human trafficking, domestic infiltration, and massive practically a neo-chemical weapon.
Hm. That suggests an idea. A higher minimum wage for illegal workers.
Employers get a choice. Verify immigration status with E-Verify/RealID, and pay at least minimum wage. Or don't, and pay at least twice the minimum wage.
Offer sizable rewards for reporting wage theft. 3X penalty at least. Jail if the total stolen passes the felony threshold.
Now that would stop illegal aliens from taking low-end jobs in the US.
>Now that would stop illegal aliens from taking low-end jobs in the US.
You can be worth a million dollars but if you are lied to, you will work for bread.
I'd argue everyone benefits from a world where cures exist but are expensive, when the alternative is everything that exists is affordable, but progress halts.
We don't need to forcefully regulate drug companies, all we have to do, as taxpayers, is ask for something in return for our tax dollars. "We will pay to develop your drug, but then we get to regulate the price, and you'll still make a reasonable profit. That's the deal, take it or leave it." No force, no compulsion, just us taxpayers asking for something in return for our dollars and coming to an agreement before handing over our dollars.
Can you share examples? I am genuinely asking.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullartic...
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/us-tax-dolla...
Also, the prohibition on letting Medicare negotiate drug prices could be seen as taxpayer funded drug development, assuming that money were used to fund drug development rather than enrich shareholders.
[1] https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/08/29/hhs-selects-the-fi...
[2] https://www.levernews.com/americans-paid-11-billion-to-make-...
> pharmaceutical and biotechnology sales revenue increased from $534 billion to $775 billion between 2006 and 2015
> worldwide company-reported R&D spending, most of which went to drug development (rather than research) ... $89 billion in 2015 dollars
> During the same period, federal spending, which funded a greater amount of basic research relative to industry, remained stable at around $28 billion
So only ~11% of total revenue was being reinvested, mostly into drug development.
And basic research was funded largely by federal spending.
same drug costs $10k in US is sold for $5k in EU and $10 in India.
The biggest question is: Why should US consumer subsidize pharma R&D so that pharma can sell it globally and hoard profits in Switzerland?
note: all pharma companies are incorporated in a way to pay de-minimus tax in US/EU/Asia via transfer pricing schemes and hoard all extra profits in Switzerland because of Swiss laws taxing licensing IP only at 15%
example:
1. Pharma, Inc sells drug for $10,000 in US
2. it licenses IP from Swiss entity and swiss entity charges it $9999 royalty
3. Pharma, Inc pays US tax on $1 of profit at 35%
4. Swiss entity records $9999 profit and pays 15% tax
US consumer think twice: do you want to pay $10,000 for a drug + $20,000 in insurance premium+copay when you can travel to India/Egypt/Turkey/Germany and get the same treatment for the same brand name drug for 1/10 (or 1/1000 of cost).
We need to talk about geographical arbitrage of healthcare costs more
For some reason, only we do. As far as the crazy-high prices.
Who are the “we” and who are the “they” in your telling?
The rest of the world. Including many countries host to major drug companies.
Somehow I don’t think they’ll let those companies’ R&D departments starve if the US stops paying $700 for things that cost other countries $120, or what have you.
How have so many people lost their hearts and minds to this tail-chasing madness?
Can you give a source on this one, you state it like it's something obvious and studied but I don't follow? I'm curious how this policy doesn't result in increased off shoring in a world where USA doesn't control 100% of resources, and a theoretical world this would result in inflation normalizing against the increased monetary supply.
Looking at a few studies online, it seems as though there is no long term correlation between increasing the minimum wage and inflation.
Just so it's clear I think if there is a legal solution to this it's on taxing the high end of incomes, inheritances, and capital gains, not the low end.
If there were a long term inflationary effect, then industries particularly sensitive to minimum wage costs should have significantly higher prices in Australia compared to the US. That doesn’t appear to be the case; perhaps they absorb the additional costs in the profit margin. It can’t have no effect, but it’s clearly not as simple as you were implying.
There are offshore clothing manufacturers that arrange the clothes on racks and pack them in the containers.
Once the package reach the destination they do directly on display. This "saves" the company from having to pay someone higher wages for arranging clothing displays.
The companies will always chose lower costs wherever they can get away with.
This does not include those in tipping industries where they are allowed to have a base pay of under the minimum wage.
I stand by my claim that (essentially) nobody is working for minimum wage in 2024.
like they work 4hr/day and accumulate ~1000 hours/year and then work off w2-payroll
In NC, where I live, the average wage for an entry-level crew member at McDonalds is $12.16, effectively 20% lower than the original purchasing power of the 1996 minimum wage.
https://www.indeed.com/cmp/McDonald%27s/salaries?location=US...
Singapore comes to mind, their government focuses extremely on improving life for the common person.
Enumerate specifically at which number rights begin to be eliminated, and why. Be careful, you might not like what the people actually think of you when you strip their rights from them. But since you are so adamant about the "stupidity" of Citizen's United, you ought to have an actual stance here. There is a number here, tell me, and everyone else here, what that number is, we don't even need to touch the rights if you are too skittish to answer.
"We, the people" is a phrase that means something very specific, take a bit of caution that you are not using it nefariously.
See the Powell Memo written by a future Supreme Court Judge in the 1970s for details.
Research has shown that democratic support is not what gets laws passed in the US, but corporate support.
- drug prices: research is expensive and assuring safety by extensive testing is even more expensive.
- minimum wage: if wages are higher then many jobs won't be economically sustainable any longer and then the former employee is becoming unemployed plus still sustained service are more expensive now.
- house prices: first of all it's not being homeless vs owning a home. secondly lower house prices, less incentive to build, fewer houses, more expensive apartments, more homeless people.
the problem is we try to solve problems with money. not going to work any longer. worked for a while while the fabric of society was still sufficiently in tact. isn't any more. we have to ask spiritual questions. yes, i know it's a trigger word. but that's how it is. you wanna know what society is now about - spend a day on instagram. a majority of the youth seems to be obsessed with clips about guys punching each other in the face or stomach while keeping a straight face. it's no longer - mommy i want to be an astronaut when i'm old - it's mommy i want to fight, bully and be able to keep a straight face when someone kicks me in the guts while someone else films it and i hope some equally shallow dame sees it and we found a family based on values i learned from some sun glasses wearing guy on tiktok who talks like a retarded drill sergeant.
there is no hope ...
We don't have consensus around the solution. Also, look at our current election. The problem isn't corporate money in politics. It's just money in politics.
> Since our media is now utterly dependent on corporate advertisers, which of those media are going to oppose corporate excesses?
The ones not dependent on advertising.
I some times wish that were actually the case. Revolutions don't happen until people can't afford bread. So they're drip feeding us just enough to keep things on that edge. In a lot of ways life is cheaper and easier now for consumers overall. Everyone can afford a big screen TV, smartphone, etc. Consumer goods are kept at that level. But assets have simultaeneously reached levels that are completely unattainable for 90% of people. They want to keep us in this "constant now" where there are no thoughts of retirement or wealth or ownership of anything. Just a nonstop struggle to keep the lights on in a way that's just bareable enough to not rock the boat.
Really? I imagine that a very large percentage of the voting public, almost certainly a majority, benefits more from cheap services than they do from the minimum wage. The median weekly wage in the US is ~$1150, which is 4 times as much as someone would make from working 40 hours at the federal minimum wage. There is some upward pressure on wages overall when the minimum wage is raised but my understanding is it's negligible beyond a narrow threshold. So most Americans wouldn't see any personal benefit from doubling the federal minimum wage (making it higher than at any point in US history, adjusted for inflation). On the other side of the equation, nearly everyone purchases labor intensive services from people working near minimum wage, at least occasionally.
None of that is to say the minimum wage is a bad policy, but in the same way most people probably wouldn't want to pay a sales tax that raised the earned income tax credit, many people would be upset about the higher prices that followed a minimum wage increase. That's basically what happened during the pandemic; a very tight labor supply resulted in wages going up dramatically at the bottom end of the income ladder and the resulting inflation was very unpopular.
Not sure that's sustainable though.
Stop it with minimal nonconsensual death & reactor fundamental design principles.
It's the only ethical way out of such a system.
> Why is this not happening?
Because Americans, as a whole, have zero class consciousness, thanks the hyper-individualism of liberalism and possibly the most successful propaganda campaign in history ie the Red Scare.
We have people who unironically will champion for the likes of Jeff Bezos to pay less in taxes and will identify more with Bezos than their fellow worker.
The wealthy and the corporations embarked on an intentional journey to destroy class consciousness and to buy the government. It's fascism, pure and simple. They even say it out loud [1]:
> "This is a tough question, but this is maybe the question that confronts us right now. There's this guy Curtis Yarvin who's written about some of these things," Vance said,
This isn't fringe. This is from Peter Thiel's alleged blood boy [2] and VP candidate, JD Vance. What did Yarvin say?
> "If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia," Yarvin says in the clip.
[1]: https://www.salon.com/2024/10/01/rachel-maddow-sounds-alarm-...
[2]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to...
Not a great example. The evidence of its effectiveness is mixed, and the burden of the wage increase hits small businesses early. The Walmarts of the world are better equipped to cope.
Maybe it's a good idea, maybe not; I'm just saying it's not obvious.
I'm unlikely to change my mind by someone who simply accused their opponent of being a paid shill, but other than that I'm probably a fairly marginal "opponent" of minimum wages that you could win over with a few cited well-written sources. See if you can better model what would convince me!
This is like asking why stupid people aren't smart.
Source on that. Higher federal minimum wage causes low profit, manufacturing jobs to move off shore. The higher the federal wage the more automation becomes a higher ROI. The more those in poverty have to spend, the more competition for scarce resourcing (e.g. housing), and the more housing inflates in cost.
Simply raising federal minimum wage doesn't necessarily benefit all.
This is a model for shit labour productivity à la the Soviet Union or Argentina. Much better to have no minimum wage and a UBI, to avoid distorting your industry through your wage policy.
I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying everyone who has tried something like this wound up with a sclerotic industry. At a certain point, you wind up with the subsidy grantor deciding who can and cannot participate in the industry. Those already in don't want competition. The rest follows quite simply. (Moreover, your export market gets constrained because foreign countries will overcorrect undoing your subsidy with tariffs.)
We do this sort of thing in America. It's why we have booming shipbuilding and steelmaking industries.
I take no stance on the article or parent comment, just for your reading.
I also don't think this is a good phrase to use in reference to society, politics, or the economy.
It's an old joke. The joke is it's working as designed for the companies.
“To seize the benefits of rapid technological progress, while managing its risks, it is essential to foster responsible technology governance and regulation, advance the digital transformation of sectors and industries, and promote tech-enabled solutions to serve people and the planet. How can policies, regulations and institutions be transformed to scale technologies responsibly?”
https://www.weforum.org/communities/gfc-on-technology-policy...
The defendant certainly didn't kill his wife, he said so himself!
Take from it what you will.
This very article reeks of authoritarianism. Read her blog, not the first time she’s advocated for bureaucratic regulation of tech companies.