In case anyone loses sight of what these republican cocksuckers want

[Kbrandon1]

Abolishing the minimum wage would allow employers to hire more people, since the cost of hiring a worker has decreased. Essentially classic supply and demand rules working here.

How exactly are you increasing demand? Abolishing the minimum wage would not cause a business to hire more people. More demand for a good/service causes a business to hire more people. If you abolish the minimum wage, people would make less and therefore be unable to increase their consumption which would in turn lower demand.

[Tiberius]

However if the minimum wage were to be abolished, there should be a guaranteed minimum income so that these workers have enough to live on.

I thought that's what the minimum wage is?

No. Minimum wage requires the business to pay a certain amount. Tax credits are paid by the government.

A similar (but more interesting imo) system is the concept of "Negative Income Tax"

How exactly are you increasing demand? Abolishing the minimum wage would not cause a business to hire more people. More demand for a good/service causes a business to hire more people. If you abolish the minimum wage, people would make less and therefore be unable to increase their consumption which would in turn lower demand.

You are increasing the demand of the worker. At the moment there are numerous low-paid jobs which have a minimum wage, and so companies only hire a certain amount of people. If you lower the wage, you can hire more people for the same amount of money. There is more demand for workers who will do the job for less...always. Companies will always prefer to hire 5 people at $1 an hour than 1 person at $5 an hour, simply because it's more profitable for them (5x the work for the same cost).

How you make this fair in the system is by using tax credits, or something like the Negative Income Tax which ensures that everyone gets a certain amount of money to live on and increases employment.

[reverendjeremiah]

Negative income tax my ass. They will use it to get rid of all of the social systems that we pay into for a safety net. Then once all of those are gone the rich dont have to pay their fair share for them anymore, and once that happens you can say good buy to the negative income tax because then they will be pushing for a flat tax.

Why cant the rich just pay their fair share and be done with it?

Because they are greedy fuckers and Min hit the nail right on the head. Slavery is not cheap, so to cut costs they get you to do the same work but you have to pay your own way (buying their products and renting their rooms, of course) by making jobs scarce people will line up for a 1 dollar an hour job, and even THEN those jobs would not be able to compete with China or sweat shops.

If you want to make 1 or 2 dollars per day for a 7 day worshift 16+ hours a day mandatory, then give the right wingers and Milton Friedman types everything they want.

[Kbrandon1]

You are increasing the demand of the worker. At the moment there are numerous low-paid jobs which have a minimum wage, and so companies only hire a certain amount of people. If you lower the wage, you can hire more people for the same amount of money.

You're missing my point. You are assuming that a business WILL hire more people if wages decrease. A decrease in wages will increase profitability however it has no effect on demand. If you lay off than 5 ppl making $2/hr so that you can hire 9 ppl making $1/hr you've increased the work force but reduced aggregate demand. Businesses are trimming payrolls not due to high wages but excess capacity.

There is more demand for workers who will do the job for less...always. Companies will always prefer to hire 5 people at $1 an hour than 1 person at $5 an hour, simply because it's more profitable for them (5x the work for the same cost).

This would have no effect on profitability as your labor expense has not changed. You are assuming that by hiring 5x the people that you would have 5x the productivity. That is a huge assumption. Most businesses maximize profitability by increasing efficiencies. In your scenario, the company would prefer to hire 1 person at $1/hr to increase profitability.

[Minimalist]

No. Minimum wage requires the business to pay a certain amount. Tax credits are paid by the government.

You are correct, Divi Tiberio. Of course, every cent paid to a worker in salary/benefits/training has always been tax deductible to the business in question which means of course, all pious whining by corporate bastards aside, that it costs the business absolutely nothing to hire someone. So, in the sense of tax revenue lost, the government also "pays" for the worker's salary.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

I thought that's what the minimum wage is?

I guess,if you live in India or China, or if by 'enough to live on' you mean 'not starving to death' rather than 'enough to live in modest comfort'

People on the minimum wage in the US seem to survive because they work more than one job and/or have a spouse working.is

Australia DOES have a minimum wage. Currently it is:

Australia's minimum wage is $15.51 per hour or $589.30 per week. Generally, employees in the national system shouldn't get less than this.


For junior employees, the minimum rates are:
Under 16 years of age $5.71
At 16 years of age $7.34
At 17 years of age $8.96
At 18 years of age $10.59
At 19 years of age $12.80
At 20 years of age $15.15.

http://www.fairwork.gov.au/pay/national-...fault.aspx

Of course companies such as McDonalds get around the spirit of the law by hiring mainly juniors.

[Minimalist]

Australia's minimum wage is $15.51 per hour or $589.30 per week.

As of July 24, 2009 (2009 -07-24), the federal minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 per hour

Or $290 per week. Of course, there are exemptions to even this princely sum and minimum wage jobs traditionally have virtually zero "benefits" attached.

[Tiberius]

You're missing my point. You are assuming that a business WILL hire more people if wages decrease. A decrease in wages will increase profitability however it has no effect on demand. If you lay off than 5 ppl making $2/hr so that you can hire 9 ppl making $1/hr you've increased the work force but reduced aggregate demand. Businesses are trimming payrolls not due to high wages but excess capacity.

You're missing my point. The "demand" mentioned isn't concerning the product / service, but rather the business' demand for workers. True, in most cases a business won't hire 2 people for half the price, but this is only true when considering non-minimum wage jobs. The point of jobs that are minimum wage is that practically anyone can do them, so the level of skill required is non-existent.

Take for instance, a McDonald's cashier as an example. I don't know how much they are paid per hour, but let's assume for this example that it is a minimum wage of $5 an hour. If the minimum wage is abolished, McDonalds could simply reduce all wages to $1 or even $0.01 an hour. It's highly likely they would do such a thing, since people tend to value even that kind of work at higher wages. Say that McDonalds is able to hire people at $1 an hour though; they could continue to serve people at the same rate perfectly well, but they could increase profit by hiring more workers who can do more work.

Like I said before, this doesn't always work, especially in non-minimum wage jobs where a certain degree of skill is required, usually because you end up with scenarios where there is simply too much interference (the old phrase "too many cooks spoils the broth" applies here). However, with low-skill jobs, efficiency is increased if you hire more workers at lower costs, simply because it is (a) easy to train them, and (b) the work is done faster since not much collaboration is required.

This would have no effect on profitability as your labor expense has not changed. You are assuming that by hiring 5x the people that you would have 5x the productivity. That is a huge assumption. Most businesses maximize profitability by increasing efficiencies. In your scenario, the company would prefer to hire 1 person at $1/hr to increase profitability.

Again, we are talking about minimum wage jobs here. If you have a large amount of a certain resource, and all workers do the same thing, then the more workers, the more productivity. Using the McDonalds example again, if I had 5 servers, a queue of 10 customers, and operate under the assumption that each customer order takes 1 minute, then those 5 servers would have all the customers served in 2 minutes. Add more servers, and the same amount of customers are served in less time.

Yes, it is an assumption, but one that is perfectly reasonable to make when talking about minimum wage jobs.

[reverendjeremiah]

Australia's minimum wage is $15.51 per hour or $589.30 per week.

As of July 24, 2009 (2009 -07-24), the federal minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 per hour

Or $290 per week. Of course, there are exemptions to even this princely sum and minimum wage jobs traditionally have virtually zero "benefits" attached.

What you forgot, Min, is that there is a law saying that if an employee is employed full time, then they must offer them benefits. To get around this, the minimum wage employers work them 32 hours per week

$232 if you are lucky on a min wage job.

Also, most min wage employers pay bi-weekly. So if you start a job, it takes you about a month to actually see you first paycheck, because they hold back the first paycheck.

Can you imagine working for 32 hours a week for 4 weeks straight before seeing your first pay, which only amounts to about two hundred bucks? No wonder our country is so fucking fucked in the head right now.

[Minimalist]

The invisible hand has them by the balls!