Myth Pro and Con about the Minimum Wage

Daylight said:
If it's alleged that raising the minimum wage will drive up prices, couldn’t you also say corporate executives giving themselves massive raises and bonuses do the same?
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It's a fair point. The response is often, "To get top talent, you need to pay it." Easy to say, considering who sits on these boards that hire the "top talent."

edited grammar
 
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Earthborn said:
Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but you seemed to be saying that the argument "People who work harder than (you/others/the rich/etc.) deserve a living wage" is evidence of the ignorance of the one saying it. I don't see it as evidence of ignorance, only as evidence of a particular opinion.
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Actually, I'm just saying that other people seem to consider it as evidence, but I find the first statement as being at least as much so. So technically, we're not in disagreement, but I see your point.
 
BPSCG said:
What do you mean "luck"? An event whose occurence is not readily predictable?
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Sounds like a reasonable definition.

Creation is very rarely a matter of luck, despite what a_u_p might think.
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The question is on you: what do you mean with "luck" ?

If so, we all have luck, every single day, some of it good, some of it bad.
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Obviously.
 
HeavyAaron said:
Hey, if that's what it means, than I'm all for it. But that seems an odd definition of the term to me. And I doubt people who use it mean that. But absolutely a firm SHOULD charge whatever price maximizes their profits (or minimizes their losses.) It so happens that in a truly competitive market that is also the most efficient pricing for society as a whole. Which seems to run counter to the notions people who use the term seem to have in mind.
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Well, there's always going to be variation ... especially with commodities manufactured by small numbers of suppliers (or just one). Take gasoline prices as a recent example. Each supplier was hit with high expenses and had to raise prices ... up and up they went, even to well over $3.00 a gallon. Could the market bear this? Since we all need this product we were forced to pay it, but it did impact the economy -- manufacturers started looking again at how to increase gas mileage in their vehicles, advertising reflected this as well and sales of big gas guzzlers did take a hit. This was a case of the market seeing the effects indirectly to the product that was responsible. Then there is real estate. Prices can go up and up over a period of years -- but when the market gets overpriced sales drop. Where one could go from neighborhood to neighborhood looking for a house up for sale and see nothing, now shows in those neighborhoods several homes for sale on just one street. As a group these homeowners have a choice -- they can lower their price and make the sale (pricing it at what the market can bear and make their best profit), or cross their fingers and wait for a lofty buyer to happen by.
 
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BPSCG said:
RANT! Someone explain to me why this pimply-faced, slack-jawed knuckle dragger deserves to be paid minimum wage to do something I can do just as well and twice as fast, despite my complete lack of formal training in the lucrative field of gas pumping.
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Nobody "deserves" anything. There isn't some magical entitlement fairy who gives things to people who have "earned" them. If giving a minimum wage to some pimply-faced dweeb produces more happiness than giving it to someone more competent, then so be it.
 
slingblade said:
Just as I am allowing for yours.
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I see those Communication classes are really starting to pay dividends. I'm guessing there's a "repeat what the other person just said back to him" lesson, right?
 
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Actually UserGoogol, BPSCG's little rant is an excellent argument in favour of increasing minimum wage. A minimum wage decreases employment because all jobs that are worth less are illegal. So if someone thinks it is worth it to give a minimum wage to a pimply-faced, slack-jawed knuckle dragger who doesn't deserve it, for a job that isn't necessary, minimum wage level is obviously set too low... :)
 
Earthborn said:
A minimum wage decreases employment because all jobs that are worth less are illegal.
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No, a minimum wage law doesn't make the job illegal; it makes paying someone what his labor is actually worth illegal, if his worth is less than the minimum wage.
So if someone thinks it is worth it to give a minimum wage to a pimply-faced, slack-jawed knuckle dragger who doesn't deserve it, for a job that isn't necessary, minimum wage level is obviously set too low... :)
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More government interference in the labor market; New Jersey is one of only two states in the United States that forbids people to pump their own gasoline, even though it's something millions of people do millions of times every day without incident, even after having had virtually no training in the process.

So New Jersey requires gas station owners to hire people to do jobs you could probably train a chimpanzee to do (I am not exaggerating), and the U.S. government requires the gas station owners to pay them at least $5.15 per hour.

Hmmm... I wonder if NJ has some statute that requires a human being actually pump your gas for you...
 
BPSCG said:
I opted for #2. I'm sure you would have taken #1, but we can't all be working class heroes such as you.
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Have no fear, I know that the rules for LPG cylinders don't allow you to fill your own, that rule is the same here, so nice try, but no cigar.

I think you can probably still figure out the import of my statement.
 
The Atheist said:
Have no fear, I know that the rules for LPG cylinders don't allow you to fill your own, that rule is the same here, so nice try, but no cigar.

I think you can probably still figure out the import of my statement.
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Actually, since the only way your statement made any sense at all would be if you were unaware we're not allowed to refill our own tanks, then no, I can't figure out the import of your statement.
 
Nice to see how much utter tripe - and some sensible comment - has been posted here while I've been sleeping.

You may have guessed that this is a pet peeve of mine. As a recruiter, I often meet men who work 50-60 hours per week, all at or about the minimum wage (here around $11-00, equivalent #USD7-50). Most of them somehow support families on the pitiful amount they receive. None of them are crack-heads, meth addicts, drunks or bums; it isn't possible to be in one of those groups work 60 hours a week and still keep a job.

All the time, I see and hear people, sitting safely in their $500,000 homes, after coming home from their $100k+ pa jobs, comfortably sitting and watching a 42" tv whining about why "those people" don't do more with their lives.

Yeah, right.

Most are disadvantaged by lack of English, education or intellectual abilities. I find it highly ironic that many of those same, rich, white whingers are 100% supportive of government-supported employment conditions for Downs' Syndrome, or other intellectual disabilities - it's ok to be retarded, but not ok to be plain dumb, obviously. Accordingly, it's ok to abuse the stupid, but not those genuinely IH. Wouldn't want the hoi-polloi to think one was bigoted against the retards, would one?

The constant amongst people at the minimum at the minimum wage level is that the jobs they do are the worst, most mind-numbingly boring or dirty jobs. Cleaners are a case in point. We don't want to clean our own filth, yet we don't want to pay more than a pittance to get someone to do it for us. Go visit any hospital and have a talk to the cleaners. Then think about how long that hospital would remain anywhere near effectively clean if all the cleaners gave up because they don't get paid enough. (As an aside, you can count what percentage of them are white-skinned.)

My answer to the bloated plutocrats who cry about the measly amounts paid to the lowly-paid is to suggest that, for a week, they swap jobs with the cleaner/dustman/checkout operator/LPG filler, then come back and talk to me about how easy those minimum wage jobs are and why they don't even deserve the paltry amount they are currently worth.
 
BPSCG said:
No, a minimum wage law doesn't make the job illegal; it makes paying someone what his labor is actually worth illegal, if his worth is less than the minimum wage.
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Which means that those jobs will usually disappear. For all intents and purposes it is the same as making the jobs illegal, unless you want to argue that minimum wage does not have an effect on employment.

So New Jersey requires gas station owners to hire people to do jobs you could probably train a chimpanzee to do (I am not exaggerating)
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Of course you are not exaggerating. There are a lot of jobs that you could train a chimpanzee for, maybe even yours. There are even jobs a chimpanzee would be better at then a human, them being 5 times stronger and all. The reason that chimpanzees are not trained for them is simply because there is a shortage of chimpanzees so humans are cheaper. Well, that and the fact that humans don't tend to protest unpleasant working conditions quite as violently.
 
a_unique_person said:
How does Bill Gates pulling a schoolboy scam mean that he gets to buy as much food as the whole world can eat? (figurartively speaking) In practice, it breaks down.
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I'm sorry, I think you're directing the question at me, but I don't know what "a schoolboy scam" is. Could you please define the term?

Aaron
 
BPSCG said:
So New Jersey requires gas station owners to hire people to do jobs you could probably train a chimpanzee to do (I am not exaggerating), and the U.S. government requires the gas station owners to pay them at least $5.15 per hour.

Hmmm... I wonder if NJ has some statute that requires a human being actually pump your gas for you...
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It's worse than you think, BP ...
The current minimum wage rate in New Jersey is $6.15 per hour (effective October 1, 2005). The next increase will be effective October 1, 2006 (increase to $7.15 per hour).
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And as for the intelligence of anyone in charge out this way ...
As do many lawmakers, station owners and motorists in New Jersey. Critics of a shift to self-service say pumping their own gas would be especially hard on the elderly, could create a safety hazard as inexperienced motorists try to fill their tanks and cost many station attendants their jobs while doing nothing to lower prices.

Assemblyman Francis Bodine, a Republican, says that after stopping at self-service stations in the South recently, he found that gas in New Jersey was the same price or slightly cheaper. "So I don't see any economic savings to having to pump your own gas," he says. "The flip side of it is ... there'd be some job losses." Besides, he says, "If I'm in a tux going to a black tie (event), I don't want to stop and handle a gas pump."

Bill Dressler, executive director of the New Jersey Gasoline Retailers Association and Allied Trades, says there are safety concerns. While attendants are trained, many motorists would be novices. "It could be put in the wrong container," says Dressler, whose group represents about 2,200 of the state's 3,800 gas stations. There could be "somebody getting out and smoking and they didn't turn the engine off."
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... it seems like that's never going to happen either. Gee, I imagine that all those residents are totally baffled as they stare at the pumps (waiting hours on end for an attendant) whenever they drive to another state that allows one to pump their own. "It could be put into the wrong container" ... what an a**hole!! Just what is this jackhole thinking? ... I'm going to put the gas into the radiator?
 
Just thinking said:
Gee, I imagine that all those residents are totally baffled as they stare at the pumps (waiting hours on end for an attendant) whenever they drive to another state that allows one to pump their own.
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I've never understood the attractiveness of the idea that voters are not only idiots, but that they should also be told that they're idiots.

But then, I haven't lived in New Jersey, either.
 
Let me get this straight. New Jersey requires, by law, that an attendant pump your gas? You can't do it yourself?
 
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