Partly, yes. But that's not what you said: And that's been my point this entire time. By continually increasing the minimum wage in perpetuity, there will eventually be cheaper alternatives. Yeah, ok: My point is that your statements are consistently vague so it's hard to gauge exactly where you stand. And it leads to you saying things that you don't realize you're saying. It's just something to think about before posting.
The minimum wage would be $10.50/hr if it had kept up with inflation. The minimum wage would be twenty something per hr if it kept up with productivity. This would actually be best unless one likes the current transfer of wealth up to the 1% as the current system is so successful in doing.
What is this productivity you talk about? Are you saying there are more than twice as many burgers flipped within the same time period?
And I stand by what I said. The single best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. This is especially true with human behavior, but also true of other things as well, including economies and how they react to things like the minimum wage being increased. Not according to the data. In addition, the real increase in the minimum wage is so minimal over time that the relative cost of automating those jobs stays far more expensive than just paying the labor costs. Eventually, this will cease to be true, but I haven't seen any indications that this time is imminent. I disagree, I choose my words pretty carefully. You have chosen to read in things that I didn't actually say, make assumptions that aren't accurate, and demand a level of specificity that it should be obvious I wasn't trying for. I was going for "vague" in my initial statements because I wasn't interested in doing calculations and putting in anything approaching real effort given that I was talking to Commodore, someone who hasn't demonstrated intellectual honesty nor shown any ability to look past his biased partisanship.
The productivity of American workers has dramatically increased over the last 50 years, meaning they are producing far more of the items their companies sell, without similar increases in wages. The owners of the business are making all of the profit from these increases in their workers' productivity.
Well are you saying finance guys on Wall Street are ten times or perhaps one hundred times more productive and valuable to society than say 35 years ago? As Paul Volker said the last worthwhile finance advancement was the ATM. The rest of their "advancements" are just sophisticated techniques for tax evasion and diverting gains in productivity to their gang.
The wages of the finance guys on Wall Street have absolutely nothing to do with their value to society. It's based solely on the value they bring to their firm. If you're going to argue that minimum wage workers have become more productive over the years, then you should try to justify that statement instead of making strawman arguments. And since people believe that increases in production can be attributed to advancements in technology, you should explain why it's the worker, not the technology, who deserves the credit.
What inaccurate assumptions have I made? And for what it's worth, you should always try to be as clear and specific as possible. Ambiguity will never convince anyone of anything.
I was going for, and hit on the nose, being dramatically more accurate than Commodore's statement. You made a whole bunch of assumptions that I'm not interested in detailing as that would require far more effort than this discussion is worth. Look back at your responses to me and you will see how many things you chose to attack me for that I simply didn't say. Every one of those was a mistaken assumption.
Nope. Every one of my responses was accurate. If you recall, I asked if your reply to Commodore was serious. You said it was. Remember?
Nope. Every one of your responses was about picking nits and trying to make my statements mean something other than what was intended, as I have detailed throughout the thread.
How about providing an example where I tried to make your statements mean something other than what you intended? Give your original statement, your intended meaning, and my misinterpretation of it.
So... you are saying a burger flipper today is dramatically more productive than a burger flipper 50 years ago?
Why is that a stupid point of view? Nobody should be entitled to a share of society's productivity gains. If your company feels that your job is worth a certain wage, that's what you get. Of course there is. If a company wants to be competitive, it needs to retain the top talent. And in order to retain the top talent, you need to give them an incentive to work for you instead of your competitor. Yeah, that's a shame. It kind of embodies the "work smarter, not harder" mindset, doesn't it? In your example, the teachers, fast food workers, plumbers, govt workers....they all got paid for their services. That should be the extent of their compensation. On what grounds do they deserve even a penny of the DOS guy's success? Society fosters innovation, sure. But it doesn't contribute anything towards it.
What does that have to do with minimum wage? Are minimum wage workers dramatically more productive than they were 50 years ago?
Yes, wages haven't been going up with prices and we're all getting poorer because of it. You can thank the federal reserve for that one. But I fail to see how outlawing labor contracts is going to help.
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I don't know where you are coming from. Perhaps the simplistic libertarian/conservative econ 101 creed. In which case no explanation is needed as that faith is often immune to facts or history and certainly any ethical or arguments based on compassion. Maybe you are just reflecting just the prevailing biz school vibe that has permeated the general culture. There is more to society as whole and civil society than can be explained by deducing everything from the level of what is good for a single business (even if not merely a struggling mom and pop as defenders of low minimum wages do). As an aside, if you insist on seeing the fundamental unit of society as being a business, businesses flourish best in a stable society which is not sustainable with growing extreme differences in wealth unless there is a strong police state and those are seldom that stable in the long run.
