Progressive Radio Rants -- Minimum Wage

[leftysergeant]

You must really hate people who do volunteer work.

Who does volunteer work for a for-profit corporation?

That was so utterly random!

 

[Francesca R]

If you do not want to pay a man a decent wage, you have the option not to hire him. [ . . . ] If paying for the labor to make it costs more than you get back, make it yourself.

If the job is not worth a day's provisions, it is not neccessary to the business concerned or there is no demand for the service or product.

If it is unreasonable to produce the product or service at a reasonable price without stealing labor to do it, somebody's business model totally sucks. It may even be that the product is not worth making, or was under-priced to begin with.

Translation: If a worker's labour is worth less than minimum wage, they should get lost.

Elimination of the minimum wage would, possibly, lead to full employment

Translation: At least some workers are unemployed due to minimum wage. Doesn't matter, they can get lost.

Regressive much?

 

[leftysergeant]

Now, answer the question. Why is it that you are free not to pay a minimum wage for services, but you want other employers to be required to pay them? Why can you hire someone for a lower wage, but you want to make it so other employers can't?

Pay attention to what I am saying. I have the choice of paying for a service or not. I seriously doubt that any private business owner is going to provide a service at less than a profitable rate. If he does, then he is not going to be in business very long. He should probably have been working for somebody else (at a decent wage) to begin with. I keeep hearing the lunatic right saying that we should be rewarding the risk takers, but that would just be rewarding stupidity if they can't make a profit from their own labor because nobody wants their crap, and rewarding immorality if they make it by screwing their workers.

It comes down to this: If you are not helping your employees get ahead, you have no right to expect them to help you get ahead.

As far as I'm concerned, if you won't apply your standards to yourself, those standards aren't worth diddly.

I do apply those standards to myself. I shop around a bit before hiring anyone to do work that I cannot do myself, but I expect to pay at least minimum wage for it.

Usuallly, I wind up doing it myself.

 

[leftysergeant]

What if the job's worth what it costs for a teenager to have some spending money? Or a retired person to have some bingo money?

Straw.

 

[iknownothing]

Since I found Progressive Radio, I have been listening to them a lot. But not for the reasons one might think. I find it a study on human nature and how our brains work (or don't work properly) to preceive the world.

For several years, I listened to a lot of conservative Christian radio. Not because I agreed with them; the longer I listened, the weaker I found their ideas and arguments. I stopped when my son was a baby, since I didn't want him to grow up influenced by it.

Still, it was an interesting window on human nature.

They are the ones who, I find, are on the wrong track and it is ironic that they are convinced that they are the intelligent, compassionate and correct ones.

Is there a political, religious or social faction anywhere in the world that doesn't think it's the intelligent, compassionate and correct one?

 

[portlandatheist]

The economy is not a zero sum game

Total bull flops.

Unbelievable.
From wiki:

Cutting a cake is zero-sum game, because taking a larger piece reduces the amount of cake available for others. In contrast, non-zero-sum describes a situation in which the interacting parties' aggregate gains and losses is either less than or more than zero

Many economic situations are not zero-sum, since valuable goods and services can be created, destroyed, or badly allocated, and any of these will create a net gain or loss. Assuming the counterparties are acting rationally with symmetric information, any commercial exchange is a non-zero-sum activity, because each party must consider the goods it is receiving as being at least fractionally more valuable than the goods it is delivering. Economic exchanges must benefit both parties enough above the zero-sum such that each party can overcome its transaction costs.

Seems like you are really concerned that the "cake" is sliced fairly without any thought or notion to the fact that the size of the entire cake can become much larger or smaller overall regardless of how it is divided. No matter how much you believe the economy is zero sum, it simply isn't.

 

[Skeptic]

I keeep hearing the lunatic right saying that we should be rewarding the risk takers, but that would just be rewarding stupidity if they can't make a profit from their own labor because nobody wants their crap, and rewarding immorality if they make it by screwing their workers.

So you don't like business who succeed, because if they succeed it must mean they must be "immoral" and steal from someone. And you don't like businesses who fail, because it means the owners were "stupid" (as if the only reason to fail in business is stupidity!).

So essentially there is no way, you believe, to be in business except for being stupid or dishonest.

 

[Skeptic]

It comes down to this: If you are not helping your employees get ahead, you have no right to expect them to help you get ahead.

So you're saying that if someone hires you for less than the wage you think you deserve to "get ahead", they have no right to expect you to, you know, actually do the work you were hired to do.

Okay, that's nice to know. You're fired. Next!

 

[Skeptic]

If you start from the assumption that the economy is a zero-sum game, of course capitalism and businesses are evil. But that's like starting from the assumption that 2+2=5 and proving that 5 is an even number. Once you start from an obviously false premise anything you want follows.

 

[Ziggurat]

If the "value" of my property goes up it just means that I have to pay more in taxes to stay put. And if the new millionaire is buying everything from China and shopping for groceries outside the neighborhood, what bloody good is he to anybody but himself?

I never figured you for the type to argue that tax revenues don't do anyone any good.

 

[leftysergeant]

I never figured you for the type to argue that tax revenues don't do anyone any good.

Ad valorem property taxes are absurd. Property should be taxed according to the burden that the use of that property places on the government and societal infrastructure. A farmer with three hundred acres of cabbages places less a burden on the fire department than does the owner of a ten acre industrial park, but if that industrial park is next to your farm, you're paying for his fire protection, environmental monitoring and police coverage. Assuming a booming ecconomy, who do you think is making the most money? See? Ad valorem property taxes are a rip-off.

 

[leftysergeant]

Unbelievable.
From wiki:


Seems like you are really concerned that the "cake" is sliced fairly without any thought or notion to the fact that the size of the entire cake can become much larger or smaller overall regardless of how it is divided. No matter how much you believe the economy is zero sum, it simply isn't.

Pseudo-scientific gobbledigook.

 

[leftysergeant]

If you start from the assumption that the economy is a zero-sum game, of course capitalism and businesses are evil. But that's like starting from the assumption that 2+2=5 and proving that 5 is an even number. Once you start from an obviously false premise anything you want follows.

The idea that it is not is pseudo-science. Material resources are finite.

 

[Ziggurat]

Ad valorem property taxes are absurd. Property should be taxed according to the burden that the use of that property places on the government and societal infrastructure.

Aren't taxes on income similarly absurd, since they don't actually scale with the burden placed on government and societal infrastructure? Oh sure, there might be some correlation, but it sure as hell isn't perfect, and it's rather explicitly NOT the rationale behind our income tax structure. In many cases, income tax burden is lowered specifically for people who represent a greater burden on government. So while I understand the logic behind that objection, it's simply not credible for you to be making it, because I know you don't honestly believe it.

And even if you did, it's not even what you previously claimed. You dismissed your new millionaire neighbor as having contributed nothing by bidding up the price of property and buying a house. But he's paying taxes, isn't he? You may not like your new higher taxes, but surely you don't mind his high property taxes, do you? So either we conclude that property taxes do no good, or that your previous objection that your millionaire neighbor contributed nothing was hollow from the start. I'm inclined towards the latter.

A farmer with three hundred acres of cabbages places less a burden on the fire department than does the owner of a ten acre industrial park, but if that industrial park is next to your farm, you're paying for his fire protection, environmental monitoring and police coverage.

Are you? If that park has a higher property value (quite likely), then he's going to be paying more in property taxes. And farms require environmental monitoring too. They also tend to have less fire protection, so the farmer's fire risk might actually be higher. As for police, well, like I said: the property is likely more valuable, and probably pays higher taxes. It may also produce more tax revenues through other means (income taxes, sales taxes, etc) which may shift the tax balance even further in that direction.

Basically, one cannot conclude anything from your hypothetical scenario. There's too little information, and unless you took a specific example, the relevant information would be meaningless if you simply made up values for it.

 

[leftysergeant]

Aren't taxes on income similarly absurd, since they don't actually scale with the burden placed on government and societal infrastructure?

How many times need I repeat that the idea is to tax people in relation to the benefit they recieve from the infrastructure, both physical and cultural? If you are making commercial use of a resource, pay for it. Is this concept really to vast for a Republicon mind to embrace?

(Silly question, on reflection.)

Are you? If that park has a higher property value (quite likely), then he's going to be paying more in property taxes.

Not always. Real estate speculators in most states seem to insist that all property should be taxed according to "highest and best use." Which means that if it is next to a new industrial park, the highest and best use is to sell it to build another industrial park. So suddenly, because some swine capitalist decided he doesn't want to farm on the land next to me, I can't afford to anymore.

Sucks, utterly.

And farms require environmental monitoring too.

True, but it should not take an act of congress to shut down environmental hazards like Smithfield Ham's hell-hole farms. And, by all means, they should pay thousands of times more than they do to clean up the mess they make.

 

[Ziggurat]

How many times need I repeat that the idea is to tax people in relation to the benefit they recieve from the infrastructure, both physical and cultural?

*receive
That's clearly NOT the idea. Else we wouldn't have anyone on welfare. And even if it were, an income tax is a poor method to achieve those results, since a consumption tax would more closely reflect the burden you place on infrastructure. The problem is that a consumption tax is generally regressive - even though the rich pay more, they pay a lower percentage. But that rather proves my point: that's not the result you actually want, even though you're claiming it is.

If you are making commercial use of a resource, pay for it. Is this concept really to vast for a Republicon mind to embrace?

*too (I'll be generous and assume "Republicon" was an intentional insult)
When insulting someone's intelligence, it helps to not make elementary mistakes.

Not always.

Then you're objecting to specific cases where you disagree with real estate tax valuation methods, not with the generic concept that more valuable property should be taxed at a higher rate.

True, but it should not take an act of congress to shut down environmental hazards like Smithfield Ham's hell-hole farms.

But it does. Farmers are not inherently any more moral or noble than anyone else.

 

[Ziggurat]

The idea that it is not is pseudo-science. Material resources are finite.

Material resources != wealth. The idea that it does is not even pseudo-science.

 

[portlandatheist]

Pseudo-scientific gobbledigook.

That notion is completely absurd. For example, even an invention such as a washing machine or the building of a bridge can effectively make everybody wealthier. Having said that, your distorted views actually make sense to me now given the assumption that economics is zero sum, if I shared that assumption, I'd have very similar views as yours.

 

[Skeptic]

How many times need I repeat that the idea is to tax people in relation to the benefit they recieve from the infrastructure, both physical and cultural?

If that were the case, then the poor -- not the rich -- should be paying the most taxes (proportionally speaking at least), since naturally they get more "out" of the infrastructure, social programs, etc. than the rich.

 

[leftysergeant]

If that were the case, then the poor -- not the rich -- should be paying the most taxes (proportionally speaking at least), since naturally they get more "out" of the infrastructure, social programs, etc. than the rich.

Absurd.

The poor are a resource to the rich, when they need the labor. Bear in mind also that many of the poor are poor because they were injured serving the interst of the snivelling rich. Just the number of people with asthma these days is directly related to industrial pollutants, so here you have a population that is not able to produce at normal capacity because some dirtbag decided that it was more important that he make a profit than that he not poison neighbors who will not share in the wealth he "creates."