Why $15 an hour minimum wage SUCKS

[Spongebob]

Don't worry.

The geniuses next "solution" will be for everyone to pencil in an extra zero on all currency.

We'll all be rich.


Repeat as needed.

I truly don't comprehend your cynicism.  The economic professionals employed by Obama during the worst downturn in a century handled the disaster with a high degree of savvy.  Despite some truly challenging times, the economy slowly recovered and steadily grew with no lasting side effects.  Meanwhile, in the first decade of this century, during the W Bush administration, we experienced a relatively mild recession and emerged into a jobless recovery, where Wall Street recovered well but wages remained stagnant and job growth was sluggish.  And that was following one of the longest, most impressive eras of growth in our history.  I'm not saying W wasn't up to the task, but this sort of thing certainly doesn't establish Republican economic policy as objectively superior.  The numbers just do not support your biased ideology.

Understand this if nothing else.  Basic economic laws are simple, but the global economy is anything but simple; it's complex as hell.  So the job of guiding the country forward without damaging what we already have is a task I wouldn't wish upon anyone, but its something we have to do and we don't want to trust in the kind of people that worship a guy like Trump.  Those people are just nuts.  We need level headed people who take this stuff seriously.

I do remember similar arguments about the minimum wage every time it has been increased.  The economy has never collapsed due to such changes.  Somehow, history should inform us of something here.

[Apollo]

Fact of the matter is that any policy change benefits some and come at the cost of few others—you’re probably rarely going to have a 100% utility across the board—what is important however is maximizing the number of those benefiting and minimizing those that may have adverse effect.

Government is not in the business of ensuring equal quality of life for every single citizen—it doesn’t have such resources and no one can do that—what it can do however is to effect changes for maximum number of people while keeping the door open for those who may be affected to improve.

Bottom line is we need to rely on economic data to gauge impact and not few anecdotal cases and go from there.

[Spongebob]

Fact of the matter is that any policy change benefits some and come at the cost of few others—you’re probably rarely going to have a 100% utility across the board—what is important however is maximizing the number of those benefiting and minimizing those that may have adverse effect.

Government is not in the business of ensuring equal quality of life for every single citizen—it doesn’t have such resources and no one can do that—what it can do however is to effect changes for maximum number of people while keeping the door open for those who may be affected to improve.

Bottom line is we need to rely on economic data to gauge impact and not few anecdotal cases and go from there.

Well said, and this was the vision of the nation's founders and early Presidents.  Those who have the most sway over those in power tend to have the most influence on policy.  I would wager this isn't the common worker in the US.  Ironically, Trump actually did have a large percentage of common wage earners as his base, but because he has no true vision (economic or otherwise), there's practically no way to translate that support into policy.  And of course, he was rarely pulling the strings on policy anyway.  That distinction goes to McConnell in the Senate.

---

It just occurred to me that the issue at hand here isn't really the intellectual difficulty of a job but rather the supply of workers for a given job.  That's a major distinction and it really cuts through OLB's ideology.  Here is a short list of menial jobs that actually receive pretty good pay and it's all due to the nature of the job making it undesirable:

Diaper service worker $50,000
Slaughterer $60,000
Hair removal $60,000
ROUGHNECK $100,000
CONSTRUCTION WORKER $49,517
Exterminators $50,920
Firefighter          $49,620
Garbage collector   $30,182  (that's just under $15/hr)

This is just a few, of course, but all of these are well over the $15/hour (except garbage collector).  They have high demand because not many people want to do the work.  That's economics at work there and it's worth acknowledging that there's probably a near endless supply of people willing to flip burgers, so that's the main reason the wages can be so low.  It has less to do with the nature of the work itself.  It is easy work, but it can also be stressful.  I'm not sure how many people consider that.

We also haven't talked about innovation.  I fully expect the food industry to innovate a lot of these jobs out of existence.  Truck driving is well on its way out and I prep doesn't require as much labor as it once did.  Automation is the biggest job killer of them all.  I should know; its what I do for a living.

[Spongebob]

I just read this story online. It's not a common occurrence, granted, but it does demonstrate some of what fast food workers have to endure:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/18/us/custom...index.html

[LadyForCamus]

Maybe your wife should have chosen a better paying career path. Not sure how that’s the burger guy’s fault, or why he should have to suffer because your SO wasted her money on a degree that doesn’t pay very well. Maybe everyone deserves $15/hour; did you ever consider that? You’re mad in the wrong direction, OLB.

I don't think it is ever a waste of money to get a degree if you can, even if you never use it. Many people do get jobs in their degree field, but many don't because life and bills  and competition get in the way.  Higher education should not put someone in a lifetime of debt in any case. 

My X-wife has a PHD in microbiology, she is now back in Japan, has a good paying job in her field. But before she left after she got her degree she was telling me that others in her masters and PHD class ended up working at places like Starbucks. It happens, and it is wrong to always blame someone for not moving up. Not everyone does. 

Paying everyone livable wages isn't a demand that a dishwasher makes the same as the owner. Pay differences do exist and nobody is demanding no wealth exist at all. People like OLB don't understand this.

No, of course. I completely agree with you. I was just playing on that old right wing song: “quit blaming other people for where you are in life. Maybe you should have made better choices.” It seems like that theory stops being applicable the minute they see someone else getting something they don’t have, lol.