Are you saying exec pay is efficient? I recall long ago papers that noted US exec pay was significantly higher than exec pay in other countries given simlar company size and performance. My recollection could be well out of date though.... EDIT... Sam's quicker at correcting typos than I am at noticing them. "Your honor...I meant to say NOT guilty....My client pleads NOT guilty. Sorry about that."
You are going to have to explain this to me 500,000 blacks refused to work for the minimum wage (since it was too little money) so they got sacked and replace by 500,000 whites who would work for that cheap?
No, assuming that this is true, the story would run that whites refused to work for what the blacks were being paid, then the min came in, and they applied for the blacks jobs and got them. Quite honestly, it's very irrelevant data. There's no indication that an increase in 2006 (or any of the dozens of wage increases that have occurred since 1933 http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/chart.htm) wouuld have the same effect.
What a find. I'll also add that the minimum wage increase in 1993 also led to the rise of the Third Reich and even more discrimination of the Jews in Germany.
Maybe blacks haven't lost jobs since 1933 due to minimum wage (well they have, I just dont have any data readily available to prove it,) but teenagers have. Read the article I provided from the cato institute.
How much effect does globalization and an influx of cheap labor have on working-class wages? And of course higher minimum wages lead to higher unemployment. Theoretically if we raised the minimum wage to $100/hour - what do you think would happen? I'm not arguing against some level of minimum wage - merely pointing out that there are side-effects. Also it may not make sense to raise an artifically maintained wage along with an influx of cheap labor. I saw one California gubernatorial candidate's theme as simple "Double the minimum wage!". This guy was also for open borders. It seems that at some point we have to reconcile these 2 agendas. Forgot the guy's name but it wasn't a serious candidate - but his outlook is shared by many.
I'm still somewhat stunned that the Cato Institute had an easier time finding 73-year old employment/race data, back in an era before the civil rights era in which racial data became commonly tracked, than it did finding data in response to the two dozen plus subsequent minimum wage increases, many of which occured in the last 25 years, which are far more relevant to the current debate. EDIT: I should add, that essay by the Cato institute is nearly 20 years old itself. With unions greatly weakened, and most min wage jobs being non-unionized, I don't think one could write the same essay today (also, the economy took off shortly after thsi article was written, despite two increases in the minimum wage (90 and 91).
The Cato Institute did not in any way refer to 73 year old employment/race data. That was from another source.
It's not irrelevant and obsolete as long as racism is not irrelevant and obsolete. A minimum wage allows employers to be racist.
What? That's asinine. Employers can be racist with and without a minimum wage. What allows employers to be racist is the fact they can see what color their workers are. Therefore employers should gouge out their eyeballs with a plastic fork. Come on, you're smarter than that.
Without a minimum wage, employers would still be racist of course. But if a black, for example, is offering his services to a racist employer at a lower cost than a white, the employer would hire the black, or be driven out of business. When a minimum wage exists, though, whites and blacks would be paid the same amount, and the employer could easily discriminate against the black without incurring any negative effects.
...only if his internal racism value was less than the marginal difference between the black and white wage. How is he going to be driven out of business? Are we at perfect equilibrium in the labor market? Pareto Optimal Conditions? The amount of assumptions you've built into this hypothetical are so staggering that you don't even comprehend them all (not to mention that there are many more options that you've filtered out, such as illegal workers - which torpedos the entire thing in the real world.) Furthermore, your first sentence "without a minimum wage, employers would still be racist" pretty much invalidates the rest, as the same scenario you described would still occur in many cases...... No negative effects ....except for violating title VII the Civil Rights act of 1964, and being subject to various civil actions and penalties from the EEOC, DOJ, state enforcement bodies, private citizens and nationwide class actions, which is a very big issue in the real world. I hate to break it to you, but a lot of things have changed since 1933 with regard to labor markets. This is stupid. This is not just a red herring, this is a dead herring.
No, no, no. A minimum wage allows employers to be obsequious, purple and clairvoyant. Get your *facts* right next time.
That was a 1% increase AFTER accounting for inflation. I am not disputing an increasing income disparity, only that as long as most people are keeping pace with inflation or better, then it shouldn't matter what the top 1% are doing. It doesn't really effect any of us if Bill Gates is worth 50 billion or 100 billion, in fact, it would be better for him to make more, because he would pay more taxes.
Yes, wealth is NOT a finite resource. If one person is getting richer, it doesn't mean that another is getting poorer as a result, they are actually likely to get richer as well.
Can you give any examples? I was always under the impression that the richer you get, the faster you can make your money grow if you choose to invest it. And being poor isn't about what you have, it's about what you don't have compared to others.
True. Even ignoring the fact that being right allows you more option, some of which might see a greater return, just having more moeny drawing interest would get you more interest. False. Being poor is about what you can afford to buy, independent of how much other people have. Mark Cuban has nowhere near the money that Bill Gates has, but he is not poor. If poverty were relative to what other people have, then the number of people living in poverty would always be the same, in terms of percent of the population. Instead, it is measured against a monetary figure. If everyone had nothing, they would all be poor, even though they all have just as much as the richest man.
that contradicts my what my econ professor said when i was in college. you may be thinking of just the dollar value each person can have, since the government can always print more. however, the goods and services each dollar chases IS finite, mostly given a certain period. if more resources were available within a certain pool, the government can issue more money with minimal inflation, respectly of course.
