In case anyone loses sight of what these republican cocksuckers want

[Kbrandon1]

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.

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.

I still fundamentally disagree with you. In your scenario, doubling the workers would not double the productivity. The bottle neck in your example is not the # of workers but the # of registers. Say that there were only 5 registers. Adding 5 more servers would not reduce time needed. Also, there is a finite amount of space...having servers falling over each other would not increase efficiency but rather decrease it. So once again, if i'm running the business you described, I would pay enough to get the most efficient server. Since this is a low skill job, the cost of training is not figured into a wage assessment.

Bottom line, whether its a low skilled position or highly skilled position, a profit seeking business will always seek to keep pay as low as possible. The main difference between low & high skill is that low skill workers have no bargaining power & the job pool is larger; therefore the job will go to the lowest bidder.

[Darth]

Just throwing this in:

In addition to the jobs created by being able to pay half and get twice the workers, another hypothetical source of new jobs is in place where its not cost efficient to employ people at Australia's min wage of $15/h to do jobs that bring in $14.50/h. Drop the minimum wage to $10 or abolish it and suddenly there is a job opening.

[Autumnlicious]

I still fundamentally disagree with you. In your scenario, doubling the workers would not double the productivity. The bottle neck in your example is not the # of workers but the # of registers. Say that there were only 5 registers. Adding 5 more servers would not reduce time needed. Also, there is a finite amount of space...having servers falling over each other would not increase efficiency but rather decrease it. So once again, if i'm running the business you described, I would pay enough to get the most efficient server. Since this is a low skill job, the cost of training is not figured into a wage assessment.

Bottom line, whether its a low skilled position or highly skilled position, a profit seeking business will always seek to keep pay as low as possible. The main difference between low & high skill is that low skill workers have no bargaining power & the job pool is larger; therefore the job will go to the lowest bidder.

Finally!

Someone who understands economics in under the context of algorithms and optimization, and not some stupid simplistic "the supply and demand for workers by companies will set their wages" shit.

Reminds me of the ridiculous "libertarian" economic ideas. Take, for example, if a corporation becomes an abusive entity, to environment, consumers, et al.

Libertarians never seem to realize that organizing and coordinating people who are completely unassociated (i.e. consumers) is magnitudes more difficult and unlikely than the average corporation.

Corporations have a lifetime of decades. A community that could theoretically react against an abusive entity? Decades to hundreds of years (possibly longer).

So we have a complete difference in scale when it comes to the reaction time of a corporation versus that of a community, as well as the impulse required and time required to react is more difficult to reach for a community (once again, scale and social dynamics) than a corporation (which lives, financially, on quarters of years).

So in essence, the libertarian fantasy world idea of consumers banding together against abusive corporations or "choosing" another entity (if there is no viable alternative, they have to coordinate to establish such or do business with the abusive entity) is just that -- a fantasy.

It's been known to happen, but on a usual, day to day casing, a massive amount of abuse can be committed by any set number of corporations, and get away with it because the cost/time for a community to actually react and say "No" is too damn high.

And only in the few occasions where an entity (i.e. transnational corporation) goes too far (EX: oil spills) does the community (ex United States) react (ex: fines, investigations, etc).

This is the grand reason why we have:
- regulation (and avoid regulatory capture!)
- class action suits

Really, you need to understand the application of virulence theory to the interaction between a massive scale system (i.e. host or society) and another, much smaller ones (i.e. pathogens or companies).

Most "libertarians" are simplistic dolts who really are selling a system that can be wildly abused by the few, under the promise of releasing us from the few!

How frustrating...

[Minimalist]

Drop the minimum wage to $10 or abolish it and suddenly there is a job opening.

Assuming that there is someone willing to work for that amount? That is where the economic terrorism which these Republifucks employ comes in. High unemployment makes people desperate for whatever piece of shit job comes along.

There is a point where the job is so shitty that no one will take it because they can't meet their basic expenses. When that point is reached the republifucks start to attack unemployment benefits to remove another choice.

http://associated-news-network.com/2012/...tive-plan/

And here they go.

[The Grand Nudger]

Ah, let's not forget, after they create these sub-minimum wage opportunities they get pissy when "aliens" snatch them up, so they'd like to give them the boot. There's nothing like building a prison and finding it full of squatters when you bring the prisoners to their cells.

[Minimalist]

There's nothing like building a prison and finding it full of squatters when you bring the prisoners to their cells.

Such prisons also contracted out to greedy corporate cocksuckers who need a steady supply of prisoners to make money.

Kind of explains why so many Americans are behind bars.

[The Grand Nudger]

Prison population rates
1-Good ole U.S of A.
2-St. Kitts and Nevis
3-Rwanda (seriously...we're beating Rwanda on this one?)
......
24-Iran (facepalm)
117-China .....

Maybe we should just throw in the towel...fuck me.
http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldb...wb_poprate

[Jackalope]

24-Iran (facepalm)
117-China .....

One wonders if rates of capital punishment has anything to do with this.

[The Grand Nudger]

Perhaps. lets see

The following 23 countries carried out or are believed by Amnesty International to have carried out executions in 2010: Bahrain (1), Bangladesh (9+), Belarus (2), Botswana (1), China (2000+), Egypt (4), Equatorial Guinea (4), Iran (252+), Iraq (1+), Japan (2), Libya (18+), Malaysia (1+), North Korea (60+), Palestinian Authority (5), Saudi Arabia (27+), Singapore (0+), Somalia (8+), Sudan (6+), Syria (17+), Taiwan (4), USA (46), Vietnam (0+), Yemen (53+).

It might alter the rankings, we'd still be far and away on top though. So much for optimism.
http://www.amnesty.org.au/images/uploads...202010.pdf
(the rankings were determined relative to population, which, in this case, is saving China's ass)

[Minimalist]

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=867

What is the most profitable industry in America? Weapons, oil and computer technology all offer high rates of return, but there is probably no sector of the economy so abloom with money as the privately run prison industry.

Consider the growth of the Corrections Corporation of America, the industry leader whose stock price has climbed from $8 a share in 1992 to about $30 today and whose revenue rose by 81 per cent in 1995 alone. Investors in Wackenhut Corrections Corp. have enjoyed an average return of 18 per cent during the past five years and the company is rated by Forbes as one of the top 200 small businesses in the country. At Esmor, another big private prison contractor, revenues have soared from $4.6 million in 1990 to more than $25 million in 1995.

What a surprise!

Profits from Detaining Illegal Immigrants

CCA, along with many other private prison companies, was on the brink of financial collapse in the 1990's following widespread stories of escapes, inmate violence, and deplorable conditions in their facilities. CCA's stock had lost 93 percent of its value in the year 2000. The company and the industry as a whole rebounded in the early 2000's following a massive increase the amount of illegal immigrant detentions in the wake of 9/11, which created a whole new market for their facilities. Since 2001, CCA revenue has increased 88%, and they have managed to receive at least $1 billion in revenue for each of the last 8 years. [15]

Alabama

In 2011 CCA hired high-profile lobbyist Toby Roth and John Hagood, former head of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management to advocate on its behalf in the state. The state recently passed HB 56, which has widely been described as the toughest immigration law in the country, so the intensified lobbying effort may indicate that CCA is attempting to profit from the increased incarceration of illegal immigrants resulting from the implementation of the law. Roth and Hagood are both well-connected to former Alabama governor Bob Riley, who is now a lobbyist in Washington DC, giving the CCA an avenue of influence at the federal level. [16] Privatization of prisons was tried previously in Alabama with the LCS corporation, but was quickly scuttled after several incidents of escapes and frequent inmate violence. [17]

Arizona

CCA lobbied heavily for the passage of S.B. 1070, Arizona's anti-immigration bill. Just a week after the bill was introduced, CCA hired Highground Consulting, one of the most influential lobbying groups in Phoenix, to lobby on its behalf. In addition, Governor Jan Brewer's spokesman had previously worked as CCA's chief lobbyist in Arizona during his time at the Policy Development Group, and continues to lobby the legislature for CCA even to this day. CCA also made other hiring decisions to increase its influence in Arizona prior to the bill's introduction. Brad Regans,the "Vice President of State Partnership Relations," was formerly the director of fiscal policy in the Arizona House. In addition, former Arizona senator Dennis DeConcini was selected to be a member of the Board of Directors for CCA.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?tit...tributions