Can you explain how increasing the minimum income of families results in "multiple generations of poverty"?

Where are these businesses that can only afford to hire ex-cons for below minimum wage? Oh, right, we went over this, large companies already hire criminal labor: people who are in the country illegally, do not have a SSN and do not pay taxes. Only they do it out of greed and disregard for their fellow taxpayer because they can increase profits.

(April 14, 2014 at 10:49 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote:

(April 14, 2014 at 10:47 am)Heywood Wrote: People today, even those on minimum wage, have more stuff now then they ever did. Standards of living have gone up in this country not down.

Mission accomplished? Success? Bring out the victory banners?

Well the point is, it doesn't do any good to look at government statistics(which are skewed anyways...but that's another thread). You really need to look at standards of living. Does raising the minimum wage have a positive or negative impact on peoples standard of living.

One of my favorite FDR quotes... can't really imagine a Democrat or a Republican having the guts to say this today:

"Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company's undistributed reserves, tell you—using his stockholders' money to pay the postage for his personal opinions-/that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry. Fortunately for business as a whole, and therefore for the Nation, that type of executive is a rarity with whom most business executives heartily disagree."

If only that part I made bold was still true.

(April 14, 2014 at 10:58 am)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: Can you explain how increasing the minimum income of families results in "multiple generations of poverty"?

Raise the minimum wage to $1000 and hour if it has no impact. Chances are you get laid off. You end up poorer than before the increase.

It is simply silly to think that some peoples labor will not be priced out of the market by an increase in the minimum wage.

(April 14, 2014 at 10:59 am)Heywood Wrote:

(April 14, 2014 at 10:49 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Mission accomplished? Success? Bring out the victory banners?

Well the point is, it doesn't do any good to look at government statistics(which are skewed anyways...but that's another thread). You really need to look at standards of living. Does raising the minimum wage have a positive or negative impact on peoples standard of living.

Clearly, many more people would benefit if the poor were less poor and the rich were less rich.

The only reason labor is "priced out" of the market is to increase bottom lines. Big business does not care if their employees are homeless or destitute. They want cheap labor, demonstrated by the fact unions and regulation became a necessity.

I'm unsure how raising minimum wage by a few dollars to a living wage is in any way comparable to raising minimum hourly to $1000. Is there a point to that kind of hyperbole, or do you honestly believe if companies are obligated to pay a fair exchange for their labor, and unable to fire employees to hire cheaper labor they will simply opt out of hiring labor?

Can Heywood or anyone else really justify this?

(April 14, 2014 at 11:02 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: One of my favorite FDR quotes... can't really imagine a Democrat or a Republican having the guts to say this today:

"Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company's undistributed reserves, tell you—using his stockholders' money to pay the postage for his personal opinions-/that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry. Fortunately for business as a whole, and therefore for the Nation, that type of executive is a rarity with whom most business executives heartily disagree."

If only that part I made bold was still true.

If you took every CEO of every company and stopped paying them completely but instead divided that money around to all the employees they manage. I bet it would result in an insignificant pay increase for Joe six pack.

What CEO's make, while often obscene, isn't a meaningful factor in this discussion. There simply aren't enough CEOs to make a difference.

This is all just speculation on my part.....but I did a little calculation for shits and giggles.....I wanted to see if my claim is even plausible. So I did a little googling. Walmart CEO makes 35 million a year. Walmart has 2.2 million employees. 35 million divided by 2.2 million employees works out to $15.91. $15.91 divided by 52 weeks in a year works out to 30 cents. 30 cents divided by...say 20 hours a week works out to 1.5 cents per hour.

So if you eliminated Walmart's CEO pay...you could increase a Walmart employees wage by 1.5 cents per hour.

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(April 14, 2014 at 11:03 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote:

(April 14, 2014 at 10:59 am)Heywood Wrote: Well the point is, it doesn't do any good to look at government statistics(which are skewed anyways...but that's another thread). You really need to look at standards of living. Does raising the minimum wage have a positive or negative impact on peoples standard of living.

Clearly, many more people would benefit if the poor were less poor and the rich were less rich.

Poor people benefit the most when the economy is conducive to maximizing the production of goods and services. How many cars or refrigerators, or TVs or TV dinners, can the exceedingly wealthy consume?

(April 14, 2014 at 11:15 am)Heywood Wrote:

(April 14, 2014 at 11:02 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: One of my favorite FDR quotes... can't really imagine a Democrat or a Republican having the guts to say this today:

"Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company's undistributed reserves, tell you—using his stockholders' money to pay the postage for his personal opinions-/that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry. Fortunately for business as a whole, and therefore for the Nation, that type of executive is a rarity with whom most business executives heartily disagree."

If only that part I made bold was still true.

If you took every CEO of every company and stopped paying them completely but instead divided that money around to all the employees they manage. I bet it would result in an insignificant pay increase for Joe six pack.

What CEO's make, while often obscene, isn't a meaningful factor in this discussion. There simply aren't enough CEOs to make a difference.

This is all just speculation on my part.....but I did a little calculation for shits and giggles.....I wanted to see if my claim is even plausible. So I did a little googling. Walmart CEO makes 35 million a year. Walmart has 2.2 million employees. 35 million divided by 2.2 million employees works out to $15.91. $15.91 divided by 52 weeks in a year works out to 30 cents. 30 cents divided by...say 20 hours a week works out to 1.5 cents per hour.

So if you eliminated Walmart's CEO pay...you could increase a Walmart employees wage by 1.5 cents per hour.

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(April 14, 2014 at 11:03 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Clearly, many more people would benefit if the poor were less poor and the rich were less rich.

Poor people benefit the most when the economy is conducive to maximizing the production of goods and services. How many cars or refrigerators, or TVs or TV dinners, can the exceedingly wealthy consume?

That's a major problem, that much of the money earned by the super rich goes into a savings account and never funnels back out into the economy. I don't think the solution is dissolving a CEO's salary and spreading it to all the employees, though something in that direction would be a great start. I think all profits after a certain point should primarily go back to the workers who make it possible. So perhaps considering what Walmart makes in a given year, all employees receive a portion of that in a nice bonus that they can receive lump sum or have added to their weekly paycheck the following year.

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So if they take $5 billion out of the $17 billion in profits they made last year and divided that up between all their employees, that's another $2,272 for each person. A decent bonus.

(April 14, 2014 at 11:13 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote:

Can Heywood or anyone else really justify this?

If you divided the wealth of the those 85 wealthiest people among the 3.5 billion poorest. Each poor person would get $345.

I'm not trying to justify it here. I was just curious so I worked it out.