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Economics Discuss Economics here.

View Poll Results: Minimum Wage
We need to RAISE it to keep up with inflation,and keep people solvent 9 47.37%
We need to LOWER it, to relieve economic business pressures 0 0%
ELIMINATE it, so people can negotiate their own / govt has no business setting it 9 47.37%
We need a salary CAP to avoid such massive disparity in wealth distribution 1 5.26%
LEAVE it where it is, forever. 0 0%
Voters: 19. You may not vote on this poll

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  #21 (permalink)  
Old 09-10-2008, 03:02 AM
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Originally Posted by Technocratic_Utilitarian View Post
Unions were easily destroyed by businesses by simply firing them, going around them, or hiring their own paramilitaries to break them up. It wasn't until the government protected them and followed up by creating laws regarding worker treatment that things actually changed.

Unions often lost. The reason why the government supported big businesses was that the businesses had a "legitimate" claim to their rights being violated by workers who sat-in, struck, or inhibited transportation.

The worker does not exist on an even playing field with the owner.

If we had no laws at all protecting workers, we would soon be just like the third world countries where businesses now send their shoppes abroad to be made by people who get paid pennies an hour. Big business will turn YOU into a third world wage serf. The only reason they can do what they do with third world sweatshops is that they have no even playing field there either. You must work to survive, and in the absence of worker protections, they will pay you the least amount they can in the worst conditions they can while still getting a product out of you. They literally have nothing else. To refuse to work under horrid conditions means they starve to death. That's not a bargain at all.
Your premise is defeated by REALITY. The minimum wage is not roughly $40k per annum, but the per capita GDP is.

Unskilled labor unions were easily defeated because they were.....unskilled. Craftsmen and skilled labor have ALWAYS been at an advantage over their unskilled counterparts because well, they have something other people don't.
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  #22 (permalink)  
Old 09-10-2008, 11:52 AM
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Originally Posted by Oregon Elephant View Post
It's for preventing cartels and a lack of choice. Choices only work when there are choices to make. If you're choices are $0.10/hr, $0.10/hr, $0.10/hr, $0.10/hr, and $0.10/hr, then you're SOL. When there are no wage laws, every employer will cut wages on the lower workers, and effectively prevent them from going anyware else to find better wages (since everywhere will still only pay ****). So the worker becomes stuck with the option of, work for $0.10/hr, or not work and get $0.00/hr. That's how it was back before labor laws, when working 60 hours a week was part time, and most poor children had to drop out of school in order work so that there would be food on the table for them.

The Government has every right, and requirement to ensure that it's people are not being taken advantage of by companies. I find it funny that some people want to send our workers back to the lifestyles of the 19th century, yet call income tax "slavery."
Government has no rights and it has no authority to tell employers what they must pay their workers.
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  #23 (permalink)  
Old 09-10-2008, 11:53 AM
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Originally Posted by Skerlnik View Post
Good point, OE.

I think the arguments against the minimum wage would be more effective if there weren't millions of jobs that paid that absolutel bae bones minimum. That leads me to believe that if the companies weren't required to pay at least that, they'd love to pay far less. This also leads me to think that companies look to hacking the benefits of their own workforce to obtain slightly greater profitability. Burning the village to save it. Most companies I have ever worked for considered us all completely expendable, replaceable commodities.

That said, there is also no more reciprocal "loyalty" on the part of workers, either, who agitate for greater flexibility of movement. Which is great for the workers, but leaves the company pretty hosed -- giving them training and benefits, only to see them leave en masse once some competitor with slightly higher wages comes along. Used to be you went to work for Ford or US Steel, and you had a job for life.

I have no idea what an "ideal" minimum wage would be, but it's pretty obvious that the American Dream isn't gonna happen on what it is now. At least we need to tie the min wage in to inflation indexes or something, or some other flexible indicator. I keep reading stories about how "real wages" have declined.....
Have you ever considered that most of those minimum wage jobs aren't even worth minimum wage?
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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

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  #24 (permalink)  
Old 09-10-2008, 11:55 AM
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Originally Posted by ViolaLee View Post
The economy grows when the population has enough money to buy things. If the population is too poor to buy things, and only the rich can make purchases, the country fails. Trickle down economics does not work. Bottom up is the only way to have a healthy society.
Well, no, what happens is that companies end up having to lower their prices because there isn't enough of a market among the rich to buy all their products.
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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

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  #25 (permalink)  
Old 09-10-2008, 01:01 PM
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Originally Posted by Space_Coyote View Post
How can a businessman liquidate his holdings if there is nobody to BUY said holdings? How can he spend his money if nobody is producing goods and services? You live in Candyland OE. Unions have been amazingly more effective and garnering higher wages than the government could ever hope to be. One of the friends of the family I knew growing up is an iron worker (master welder). He's a member of the union, and pulls down $75k a year performing his SKILL. Not bad for somebody who only has a GED under his belt huh?
How is there no one to buy his holdings? Are you saying that the one company is going to be producing everything in this country? If he liquidates, he can spend his money at other companies, ever think of that? Or he can simply move to another country with his small fortune and flip off all the union workers as he flys aways. And by the way, the unions haven't been able to do squat until the government began to protect them.

Quote:
Matter of fact, UAW is a similar story. Hell, now you've got guys pulling down $40k a year to work on an ASSEMBLY LINE. Yeah, those workers didn't benefit at all from unionization. Oh, and the oil cartels, they don't pay their workers well at all. I mean, the free housing overseas, the $50k+ jobs for rig workers, it's a real hell-hole.

Thank GOD for the minimum wage. Afterall, without it, oil companies would pay their workers $2 a day......
Your entire argument is a pathetic strawman. I never said no one benefits from unions, or that middle class jobs would be effected by the removal of minimum wage. Try to present an actual argument and not just drivel.

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Actually no. The minimum wage cannot account for the average household American income being over $40k. Unionization is to THANK for better pay, not the government. As I noted, the nineteenth century was characterized by government PROTECTION of cartels and capitalists. If you completely eliminate the government from the picture, the worker/employer relationship becomes equal again.
The 19th century was the removal of government from business, it was practically economic anarchy. The only time the government stepped in was when protesters were actually breaking the law (as they would still now). It is very easy for an industry to completely destroy a union when the government is completely out of the picture, and the industry only takes a small hit, but to them, it is considered an investment.



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Clearly my point when straight over your head. You work to support yourself, and the government, on threat of arrest and imprisonment, demands a significant portion of your wages for the federal treasury, all of which is consumed by interest paid on the aggregate national debt before ONE PENNY is spent on actual programs. Thus, the government takes your labor from you (your wages) and provides nothing in exchange for them other than your continued freedom. That's slavery.
Right, the government doesn't maintain the schools, or build the roads, or provide police and fire fighters, or the hospital that my grandfather is in. Those are all figments of my clandyland imagination.
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Old 09-10-2008, 01:03 PM
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Originally Posted by Chan View Post
Government has no rights and it has no authority to tell employers what they must pay their workers.
Quote:
Have you ever considered that most of those minimum wage jobs aren't even worth minimum wage?
That would be your personal opinion.
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Old 09-10-2008, 01:19 PM
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They are only not worth it because you have grown up with so many of them that you take them for granted. People used to say garbage men got paid too much, until they struck and garbage piled up. Then it was worth it.
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Old 09-10-2008, 02:17 PM
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Originally Posted by Technocratic_Utilitarian View Post
They are only not worth it because you have grown up with so many of them that you take them for granted. People used to say garbage men got paid too much, until they struck and garbage piled up. Then it was worth it.
Garbage men do get paid too much and employers should be free to fire anyone who goes on strike.
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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

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  #29 (permalink)  
Old 09-10-2008, 03:05 PM
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They don't get paid too much at all. When the garbage stops getting taken away and piles up, your opinion will change.

Ironically, you think businessmen making multimillions for doing nothing but running companies into the ground are okay, and that saying they make too much is "subjective" and no one's right to decide. Yet at the same time, you hold a double standard for everyone else. Garbage men are far more useful to society than the average CEO or MBA.

You got big business CEO syndrome.

Fascinating logic.

What you essentially want is a 19th century corporate despotism where workers make pennies a day and get fired if they dare defend themselves against obviously unethical treatment.

That fits you and your kind.
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Old 09-10-2008, 03:35 PM
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Originally Posted by Technocratic_Utilitarian View Post
They don't get paid too much at all. When the garbage stops getting taken away and piles up, your opinion will change.
Oh, knock of this damned idiotic leftist crap! You claim to be a utilitarian, try looking at this objectively. Is the actual job itself really worth what it's paid? I'm referring only to the job it self, what it takes to actually do the job. Whether garbage men decide to get greedy and demand more money is irrelevant.

Quote:
Ironically, you think businessmen making multimillions for doing nothing but running companies into the ground are okay, and that saying they make too much is "subjective" and no one's right to decide. Yet at the same time, you hold a double standard for everyone else. Garbage men are far more useful to society than the average CEO or MBA.
If those responsible for setting those salaries are stupid enough to set them that high, that's their business. That doesn't mean those jobs are actually worth those salaries.


Quote:
What you essentially want is a 19th century corporate despotism where workers make pennies a day and get fired if they dare defend themselves against obviously unethical treatment.
What I want is for the government to stop sticking its nose into it. What a person gets paid for a particular job is something for the individual and the potential employer to negotiate. When an employer can't find enough people to do a particular job at a particular wage, he'll raise the wage or offer other forms of compensation (like health insurance or paid vacations).

Quote:
That fits you and your kind.
Yes, we just love liberty and keeping government's nose out of where it doesn't belong!
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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

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