(November 6, 2014 at 8:18 pm)Esquilax Wrote: Your error is presuming to know what I am thinking. Most things come with a cost and a benefit; it's the job of a rational person to be able to analyze those and select those options that present the highest benefit for the lowest cost. On the minimum wage question, I find that the cost in government dependency and poverty does not outweigh the benefit of having a lower or non-existent minimum wage.

Additionally, I see no response to the meat of my post, regarding your poorly structured reductio ad absurdum above; I take it this means you accept that it was a strawman?

I don't think you are a capable of knowing what is and what isn't a "reasonable" minimum wage. Further if a legislative minimum wage went away...that wouldn't mean the minimum wage goes away. Market forces would determine a prevailing minimum wage for a particular market. I didn't bother to respond to the "meat"(if you can call it that) of your post because your position is essentially liberals like you know better what the minimum wage should be than the labor market does.

(November 6, 2014 at 7:47 pm)Esquilax Wrote:

(November 6, 2014 at 12:27 pm)Heywood Wrote: Lets solve everything by making the minimum wage $10,000 dollars an hour.

"Hey I know! If I say a ridiculous thing, the argument will vanish!"

Also known as Reducto Ad Absurdum.

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(November 6, 2014 at 8:26 pm)Heywood Wrote: I don't think you are a capable of knowing what is and what isn't a "reasonable" minimum wage. Further if a legislative minimum wage went away...that wouldn't mean the minimum wage goes away. Market forces would determine a prevailing minimum wage for a particular market. I didn't bother to respond to the "meat"(if you can call it that) of your post because your position is essentially liberals like you know better what the minimum wage should be than the labor market does.

How about my suggestion: Minimum wage set to where a full time worker isn't eligible for food stamps.

Market forces would force a higher minimum wage without food stamps. No one will work 40 hours and still starve to death. Even conservative 19th century economists agreed there was a "natural minimum wage", set to base subsistence level.

Because there are food stamps, business can get away with paying less than that natural minimum wage. This is a subsidy for their labor costs.

The minimum wage needs to be set where a 40 hour a week worker doesn't need welfare to survive. Then you'll see food stamp consumption cut in half.

(November 6, 2014 at 9:06 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: How about my suggestion: Minimum wage set to where a full time worker isn't eligible for food stamps.

Then somebody could get rid of the minimum wage for most people by setting the eligibility of food stamps at say income less than $1000 a year. Or the could raise the minimum wage by increasing eligibility for food stamps to say $100,000 a year.

Your proposal is complicated and ripe for abuse.

(November 6, 2014 at 9:06 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Market forces would force a higher minimum wage without food stamps. No one will work 40 hours and still starve to death. Even conservative 19th century economists agreed there was a "natural minimum wage", set to base subsistence level.

Do you have any evidence that people who worked 40 hours a week or more ever starved to death in this country? There was a lot of time when we didn't have minimum wage and outside special cases like people with eating disorders I doubt there has been an instance where a full time employee has ever starved to death.

(November 6, 2014 at 9:06 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Because there are food stamps, business can get away with paying less than that natural minimum wage. This is a subsidy for their labor costs.

If you're complaint is that food stamps are a subsidy for businesses....get rid of food stamps and then you won't be subsidizing businesses

(November 6, 2014 at 9:06 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: The minimum wage needs to be set where a 40 hour a week worker doesn't need welfare to survive. Then you'll see food stamp consumption cut in half.

You're probably not old enough to remember(perhaps you weren't even born) but there was a time when we set the price of gas so that working families didn't have to spend all their income just to drive to work and back.....that turned out to be an utter disaster.

I'm sorry I just don't have confidence in the government's ability to set an optimum minimum wage. The market seems to work so much better.

(November 6, 2014 at 9:06 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote:

(November 6, 2014 at 7:47 pm)Esquilax Wrote: "Hey I know! If I say a ridiculous thing, the argument will vanish!"

Also known as Reducto Ad Absurdum.

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(November 6, 2014 at 8:26 pm)Heywood Wrote: I don't think you are a capable of knowing what is and what isn't a "reasonable" minimum wage. Further if a legislative minimum wage went away...that wouldn't mean the minimum wage goes away. Market forces would determine a prevailing minimum wage for a particular market. I didn't bother to respond to the "meat"(if you can call it that) of your post because your position is essentially liberals like you know better what the minimum wage should be than the labor market does.

How about my suggestion: Minimum wage set to where a full time worker isn't eligible for food stamps.

Market forces would force a higher minimum wage without food stamps. No one will work 40 hours and still starve to death. Even conservative 19th century economists agreed there was a "natural minimum wage", set to base subsistence level.

Because there are food stamps, business can get away with paying less than that natural minimum wage. This is a subsidy for their labor costs.

The minimum wage needs to be set where a 40 hour a week worker doesn't need welfare to survive. Then you'll see food stamp consumption cut in half.

Agree 100% but I don't like the code by dems saying "nobody working 40 hours a week", because that still would not stop businesses from creating more part time jobs to keep wages down. We need livable wages and more full time work.

(November 6, 2014 at 10:05 pm)Heywood Wrote: Then somebody could get rid of the minimum wage for most people by setting the eligibility of food stamps at say income less than $1000 a year. Or the could raise the minimum wage by increasing eligibility for food stamps to say $100,000 a year.

Your proposal is complicated and ripe for abuse.

OK, that may be the dumbest thing you've posted to day, and you keep topping yourself like a ponzi scheme of stupid.

Food stamp eligibility is set by the poverty level in America and what would be basic subsistence. They're not set by arbitrary numbers just pulled out of the air by "somebody".

Quote:Do you have any evidence that people who worked 40 hours a week or more ever starved to death in this country?

Your sloppy and lazy reading habits are really getting annoying. I'm starting to understand why your such a dumb ass that you still believe in trickle down economics despite how its consistently failed on both a state and federal level.

I said nobody would ever work 40 hours a week just to starve to death, which is probably why nobody I'm aware of ever has.

Quote:If you're complaint is that food stamps are a subsidy for businesses....get rid of food stamps and then you won't be subsidizing businesses

...or we could raise the minimum wage until full time workers won't be eligible for food stamps.

Either way, following your plan or mine, wages and these corporations would have to increase because nobody would work for the current minimum wage without some means of feeding themselves. Since the minimum wage is going to be driven up by market forces under your austere, let-the-poor-starve plan, why not just do it with my plan and not have mass starvation in the US?

Quote:You're probably not old enough to remember(perhaps you weren't even born) but there was a time when we set the price of gas so that working families didn't have to spend all their income just to drive to work and back.....that turned out to be an utter disaster.

Apples and oranges.

Quote:I'm sorry I just don't have confidence in the government's ability to set an optimum minimum wage. The market seems to work so much better.

If you would read my posts, Sonnyboy, you'd see that the market would do the same thing if the government subsidy in the form of food stamps was taken away.

I'm really getting tired of spoon feeding a willfully lazy dipshit like you. Did you have a lot of problems with your school teachers getting aggravated by you not reading your assigned textbook?

(November 6, 2014 at 10:05 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(November 6, 2014 at 9:06 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: How about my suggestion: Minimum wage set to where a full time worker isn't eligible for food stamps.

Then somebody could get rid of the minimum wage for most people by setting the eligibility of food stamps at say income less than $1000 a year. Or the could raise the minimum wage by increasing eligibility for food stamps to say $100,000 a year.

Your proposal is complicated and ripe for abuse.

(November 6, 2014 at 9:06 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Market forces would force a higher minimum wage without food stamps. No one will work 40 hours and still starve to death. Even conservative 19th century economists agreed there was a "natural minimum wage", set to base subsistence level.

Do you have any evidence that people who worked 40 hours a week or more ever starved to death in this country? There was a lot of time when we didn't have minimum wage and outside special cases like people with eating disorders I doubt there has been an instance where a full time employee has ever starved to death.

(November 6, 2014 at 9:06 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Because there are food stamps, business can get away with paying less than that natural minimum wage. This is a subsidy for their labor costs.

If you're complaint is that food stamps are a subsidy for businesses....get rid of food stamps and then you won't be subsidizing businesses

(November 6, 2014 at 9:06 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: The minimum wage needs to be set where a 40 hour a week worker doesn't need welfare to survive. Then you'll see food stamp consumption cut in half.

You're probably not old enough to remember(perhaps you weren't even born) but there was a time when we set the price of gas so that working families didn't have to spend all their income just to drive to work and back.....that turned out to be an utter disaster.

I'm sorry I just don't have confidence in the government's ability to set an optimum minimum wage. The market seems to work so much better.

Mixed economies work, you cannot have all nanny state like North Korea , or no rule like Somalia, Did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason it didn't work back then was not because of government, but because of the way business influence the lawmaking.

We do not have a supply and demand market. The prices are not set by buyer demand. They are set by global corporate competition between corporations. We now have a rigged market dictated on us and we are to accept the crumbs thrown at us.

Economies now are about how much you can cut labor in order to maximize profits.

There is no way anyone can live on 7.25 and not even 10 or 15 in places like NYC.

Pay is not keeping up with the cost of living. The only way to create less dependency is to keep prices low and raise wages. Whatever profits lost in higher wages will be made up by more demand because workers will have more to spend.

(November 6, 2014 at 11:17 pm)Brian37 Wrote: Agree 100% but I don't like the code by dems saying "nobody working 40 hours a week", because that still would not stop businesses from creating more part time jobs to keep wages down. We need livable wages and more full time work.

I think there is enough productivity in this country so that nobody should have to work a 40 hour week any more.

I don't like Obamacare and think that overall it is bad for the country. However I do see it having some good effects. First, it will destroy the 40 hour work week. This will cause a lot of pain over the short run as we've built our society around a 40 hour work week. Over the long run I see a 32 hour (or less) work week becoming the norm. I would like to see people having to work less.

Second, it does help people from getting locked into jobs just to maintain/have insurance. That whole boondoggle was the result of government interference in the labor market during WWII. During WWII demand for labor was high and the government put a cap on what businesses could pay employees. Since businesses could no longer raise salaries to attract employees, they started to offer fringe benefits instead. Employer provided health insurance was one of those fringe benefits.

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(November 6, 2014 at 11:45 pm)Brian37 Wrote: Pay is not keeping up with the cost of living. The only way to create less dependency is to keep prices low and raise wages. Whatever profits lost in higher wages will be made up by more demand because workers will have more to spend.

This is simply not true. Poor people today live like middle class people of 1970. Homes today are bigger. More people have appliances. More people have cars. People have more food choices. I could go on and on.

You say pay is not keeping up with the cost of living.....but nobody is dying and everyone lives are getting better so your claim just doesn't match what we observe.

(November 6, 2014 at 11:34 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote:

(November 6, 2014 at 10:05 pm)Heywood Wrote: Then somebody could get rid of the minimum wage for most people by setting the eligibility of food stamps at say income less than $1000 a year. Or the could raise the minimum wage by increasing eligibility for food stamps to say $100,000 a year.

Food stamp eligibility is set by the poverty level in America and what would be basic subsistence. They're not set by arbitrary numbers just pulled out of the air by "somebody".

The poverty level is arbitrarily set.....therefore food stamp eligibility is determined by some arbitrarily set number.