Obama to raise federal minimum wage via executive order

Yep, it's pretty clear you missed my point entirely. Next time, pay attention.

 

You have no point. Democrats weren't willing to negotiate on the individual mandate because the whole concept of group insurance requires a mechanism to make it solvent, ie participation. They wanted to negotiate the mandate much like negotiating the fuel that runs a car because you know the car won't run without fuel. That's the kind of nonsense Republicans were trying to peddle. The same way Republicans shut down government to attack Obamacare and the same way they've set record fillibusters to attack his Presidency. Now you want to say it's Obama's fault? Thanks Obama for turning Republicans into a frenzy and making everyone suffer their obstructionism. If only you had done what Republicans wanted, which was to give us no health care insurance options, then we could have been freed from Republican stoogery.

 

Right, but wouldn't you assume that most, if not all, wages would have to rise? Using the fast food example (note, that I know this is NOT what the President will supposedly be proposing tonight), if 'burger flippers' earn minimum wage, assistant managers, $10 and managers $15 and the minimum wage goes to $10, wouldn't the other two wages have to rise as well?

It would seem to be the same for the government contractors. If the janitor makes $7.25 and now will be making $10, shouldn't the guy that is now making $10 make more as well? I suspect the contract won't spell that out, but it would stand to reason that there will be unhappy contractors if the janitor's salary (heaven forbid) gets closer to theirs.

 

Chicken or the egg.

CEO's pay rises exponentially, would it stand to reason that there will be unhappy janitors and contractors get farther away from the CEOs?

In my political thinking, I really could care less about people's feelings. I want the best decisions to create the most stable economic climate so our society can grow.

Reducing poverty and adding buyers into the market is more important to me than someone's feelings about their salary vs. a Janitors. You both worked all day long, get over it.

 

Most likely, yes. But in part, it depends on the contractor and their wage structure. A construction company might have a lot of minimum wage people and then a lot of well-paid people without a lot in between. In that case, you might not have an affect.

Assuming there is a gradual rise in wages, then yes, you'd probably see rises elsewhere - I assume that is intentional, though. The Obama perspective is to bring up the people at the bottom - that doesn't just include the minimum wage guy. The $7.50 guy would make $10. The $9 guy makes $11. The $11 guy makes $12.

The general idea is that more of what the government pays out goes to people at the bottom of the wage scale instead of the ones at the top. Whether it works, I have no idea. There are so many factors involved in looking at the long-term effects of a minimum wage hike that I think it's hard to really study the issue well. I'm not a huge fan of making this jump overnight - I think a gradual increase is best. I think that would be a disaster in the larger economy, but I don't know enough about the economics of federal contracting to know how much leeway there is there and how much of this increase will come out of the company's bottomline vs raising the cost of contracts.

 

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No it doesn't really stand to reason because two contexts aren't very good analogies. Your simple example breaks down when you try to superimpose it across the millions of participants in the vast realm of procurement. The structure of government contracting generally gravitates toward low bidding anyway, so if you have any faith or intuitive belief in markets (and it appears you do) the problem would cure itself.

The weird part is why you think this is so bad. How dare market participants use information to affect market outcomes!

 

Where did I say I think it is bad? I am simply pointing out that most of the 'raise the minimum wage' arguments only discuss the person making minimum wage and getting a bump in pay. They don't address those who were making more than minimum wage (presumably because their job requires more skill than a minimum wage employee). So, what do you think? Using the example of minimum wage being raised to $10/hour, should employees of companies who were making $10/hour also be given raises?

 

So, if the janitor makes $7.50/hour and the folks who manage the janitorial team make $10/hour and the janitors all get a bump in pay to $10/hour, the managers should continue to be happy with their $10/hour?

 

They probably won't be, but so what. Whats their alternative?

What is better to you?
1.) Janitor managers happy by their salary bump over their subordinates.
2.) People having a better shot at coming out of poverty.

 

Oh to take down the Senate Minority Leader!

Poll: Ky. Voters Could Punish McConnell For Opposing Minimum Wage Increase

Senate Minority Leader Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) re-election effort could suffer if he votes against a minimum wage increase, according to a poll released Tuesday.

 

That was the best part of the speech.

Otherwise it was pretty humiliating to see the president either shill for or beg the corporations to treat ordinary Americans nicely.

 

Elected representatives = Corporate Paid Representatives
these days

Rocket River

 

...And I get poorer as the days go by....

 

Are McDonalds federal contractors?

 

So basically what you're saying is that every incident of raisign the miniumum wage results in a cascading amount of real/nominal wage increases across the board.

This should be fairly easy for you to illustrate because the result would be a period of broad based substantial price inflation following each increase. Can you show us an example of this?

 

$10.00 an hour job really isnt going to help you get out of poverty.

And once again, good luck finding people who make less than $10.00 an hour working for the government.

 

One of the problems with raising the minimum wage for people that make more than the minimum is that they generally don't get those wage increases in most instances so all that has happened is that they are effectively closer to a minimum wage employee so their buying power diminishes.

The example would be if a worker made 7.50 an hour back when the minimum wage was 5 bucks an hour (rounded for math purposes) they made 50% more than the minimum. if the minimum is then moved to 7.50, they become a minimum wage employee. Now eventually employers will start to pay those jobs more and they might be able to leave their job for one that pays more (if they're lucky) but in the short term all that has happened is that they have become poorer.

 

Can federal contractors not replace their employees with machines? That was the point.