Call her names, then run. :disgust

What about addressing her (excellent) point? Worker productivity is WAY up. Corporate profits are WAY up. Wages are WAY stagnant.

http://www.businessinsider.com/corpo...ime-low-2012-6

http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-...90885055_n.jpg

Minimum wage in Australia is

"Currently the full-time minimum wage is $15.96 per hour or $606.40 per week."

On top of that there is 9% employer contributed superannuation, workers compensation, paid maternity and paternity leave, 10 sick days and loadings for public holidays.

$1 USD buys about 96 cents AUD.

very well said

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living...ntry=Australia

Everything in AU is pretty much double of what it costs in the US... so while $16/hr sounds high, it's pretty much equivalent to $8/hr in the US in terms of buying power...

think it's time we let business win

that way we just need to wait the 5-10 years and take over again

it literally be that easy.

I dont understand why there must be a min wage..
A somewhat free economy will adjust accordingly
supply and demand - just like anything else in a capitalistic economy.
if there is too much labor supply then take some off the additional supply off the table.

It doesnt work that way ,it becomes a race to the bottom. That's why FDR signed that law in the first place.

everyone can't be rich who will do the cheap labor? and give the big box companies huge gains? nike is ripping the whole world! :1orglaugh those guys and gals in the ref gear make peanuts! :1orglaugh

I agree to an extent. It's just like when I've done freelancing and someone tries to talk you down, eventually I put my foot down and say that they are welcome to go elsewhere and I give plenty of examples but tell them if they expect that much they'll be going around in circles wasting time and crossing their fingers.

There's making money mode and saving money mode and it's very hard to do both simultaneously. Always ironic that the coupon clippers live in trailers.

The problem is, there are enough hungry people that will work for the lower wage. I'm studying history in school and its all the same thing, nothing fucking changes. lol

Raising the minimum wage will not result in loss of employment overall and it really never does. A few mom and pops who can't keep Billy or Sally employed are statistically insignificant I'm sorry to say, and I mean that because Billy and Sally are significant so good luck to them. Anyway, the CEPR just did a study, available here http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...age-economics/ that shows it's just another of those myths that certain political factions turn to in times of discussion. Again, the red herrings will beach themselves in record numbers over this $9 an hour fed. min. wage increase proposal just like they do on everything else that is.. progressive.

its not ok keeping people on the lower end.

This is ridiculous. Minimum wage is supposed to be for people just starting off in life. Teens working at McDonalds and shit. It's not supposed to be for people with kids and/or mortgage payments. The whole "parents can't afford to raise their children on minimum wage" argument is asinine. People shouldn't be having kids if they're making minimum fucking wage. America's so backwards. Lazy and stupid people want more money for menial jobs.

You're too dumb to get the point, apparently. The powers that be thank god for your lack of reasoning.

The point is, if the minimum wage had risen at the same rate as worker productivity it would be a hell of a lot higher than it is now. Productivity is way up. Corporate profits are way up. Corporate America has billions and they're largely sitting on it. The workers are not benefiting from this rise in productivity and profits. Who is?

http://www.prosebeforehos.com/wordpr...employment.png

What? :helpme

pretty interesting comments this thread has :thumbsup

It is undeniable that after you raise minimum wage, costs of production will increase, particularly for small business. Any profit-maximizing employer will take this into account when he decides to expand, if he does so at all. So you may not see a high rate of job losses, but neither will you see a high rate of job creation for the unskilled, arguably those who need jobs the most.

Laws that restrict or stipulate the terms of voluntary employment contracts choke off economic progress and make life harder for everyone - even moreos for those for whom the laws purport to help. Outlawing employment below a certain wage, ensures that no one works for less than what bureaucrats consider a “living wage”.

In economic terms, which many of you obviously never studied, an employer cant pay an employee more than that employee’s discounted marginal revenue product; their contribution to revenue. If an employee generates $22 of revenue for every hour, their employer will not pay them more than $22 per hour. Otherwise, their contributions would amount to a net loss. Employers cannot simply raise every employee’s wages without regard for the employee’s marginal revenue product. All employees who cant generate more revenue per hour than the minimum wage are laid off.

If Elizabeth Warren raises the paper hat guy’s pay to $22 per hour he wont be wearing a paper hat very long thus many of you will be unemployed if she has her way.

For Warren and many of you, economic law, small business, and market forces are not important. What matters is cognitive resonance, feeling like workers are paid as much as you think they deserve, all the while refusing to acknowledge that wages are market prices determined by supply and demand. There is no way around the fact that increasing the price of a good or service decreases the quantity demanded of that good or service.

Anyway, everyone is forgetting Congress' intent for setting the minimum wage. The number is not important. What is important is whether you support a minimum wage. If you do, you appear to support the little guy (while fucking him in the ass). If you don't, you are a greedy fucking pig.

If free competition and non-monopolized markets are what you favor, the minimum wage should not be raised but abolished.

If people were making 22 dollars an hour as min. wage, the US would be in a lot better place..

https://youtube.com/watch?&v=QPKKQnijnsM

Your good intentions remind of how the government reacted to gas prices in NY after Hurricane Sandy. Demand for gas shot through the roof, and supply was limited, so local merchants attempted to raise prices. However, the government couldn't stand the sight of $8 gasoline, so they stepped in and forced them to keep it below $4 a gallon. The result was that gas stations ran out of gasoline almost immediately. The underlying reality of gasoline's supply and demand was changed when that hurricane hit. Gas cost $4 a gallon when demand was lower and there was no hurricane to disrupt supply. The entire reality of the situation changed, so why shouldn't the price reflect that change? The well-meaning politicians caused a very predictable consequence of shortages. Before, anyone could buy gasoline for $8, but after the law, NO ONE could buy gas. Who cares how low the price is, if there is no gas to buy!!!

You're not addressing the point Warren is making.

Who is benefiting from the huge increases in worker productivity? Hint: Not the ones who actually did the work.

http://cdn.dipity.com/uploads/events...4cbf0d5_1M.png

I have no idea what you said: This message is hidden because GrantMercury is on your ignore list. However, based on your past rhetoric I can certainly imagine.

So I will thusly reply.

You think your intentions are more important than the actual consequences. How comforting is a $22 minimum wage to the man who can't find a job to save his life? Making $7.25 is better than making $0 an hour. If nothing else, consider the absurdity of the situation in terms of liberty: a man says "I will happily work for $5 an hour" and an employer says "I will happily pay you $5 an hour" and the government steps in and forbids this?

Concern for the poor blinds you to the harm done to them by the very policy you advocate to help them. If good intentions caused only good results we could easily solve all the problems in the world. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Your response is predictable. You STILL haven't answered the fucking question.

You again, plua mea. Ce dracu, you are permanently on ignore. But I will blindly humor you.

Minimum wage laws do exactly what they are intended to do - namely elect and re-elect politicians who promote the regulation.

Politicians work to benefit their supporters (e.g. unions in your neck of the woods). Never underestimate the ability of a politician to know which side his bread is buttered.

They are, of course, aided by the village idiots (i.e. bleeding heart and self anointed intellectuals) who promote these ideas. But even these people are only espousing their beliefs in their own self interest. For example, you can't sell an economics book to government schools unless it promotes the beliefs that government employees hold dear.

There are those who get sucked into the fallacious arguments, and these people occasionally show up in the comment sections of websites such as these.

But as always, follow the money (and power) to understand the real motivations of those that create the laws.

Yeah, you're right. I can think of textile mills and looming when they were able to automate it or mechanize it, people kept working for lower wages to be competitive with the machines.

I used to weld with a machine identical to this:
http://www.knott.sk/files/image/Cont...nie/CLOOS2.jpg
Some people would bitch about it filling in for people who could have a job or when it broke down all the problems it could cause. Even though it cost 3/4 of a million dollars it worked on a line that ran 3 shifts 5 days a week non stop and sometimes even into Saturdays and Sundays. It's what allows an american wage to compete with outsourced work.
They started shipping some work back due to quality issues.

It's just the way it is. Anymore I don't get mad or think of myself better than someone because I understand something they don't, just let it pass and don't give it a second thought, otherwise you'll wear yourself out with fools. :2 cents:

Oh, okay. So according to your logic somebody should make twenty bucks an hour for working the fry machine at McDonalds, right? Because they wouldn't cause wild inflation or anything. (sarcasm)

Minimum wage is designed for menial jobs. It exists for a reason. If a person wants to make more money they can educate themselves and get a better job. Raising the minimum wage only leads to inflation. Pay somebody more and the shopkeeper will just raise his prices. It's simple economics.

Wow, Im honored!

Leopards never change their spots, this shouldn’t require too much mental gymnastics but with you it might require a lobomoty.

The world can be a hard place. But economic laws are not much different from physical laws such as acceleration due to gravity. Death or injury from a fall can be a tragedy but passing a law revoking gravity would not help. Setting a minimum wage rate gives the illusion of helping marginal workers, but in reality, it works to fuck them in the ass by denying them the chance to begin work at a low rate and prove themselves in the market place. It is an illusion that minimum wage laws can help those for whom it is said to be designed. Reality is real and has consequences regardless of your wishes, hopes or sense of fairness. For the government to deny people the opportunity to exchange their labor below a certain wage rate is simply wrong and harms poor people the most.

All prices fluctuate; or, at least they should be allowed to. By imposing a "minimum wage," the government has sabotaged the market process and hurt more than they have helped. That is totally arbitrary. Economic conditions are dynamic, not static. They are subject to constant changes and transformations. Politicians and governments do not like this. You cannot "fix" prices for labor or anything else without short circuiting economic activity.

Some people would rather have higher wages to feel better about themselves. The result is unemployment, jobs going to other countries, a youth that is unable to create a work ethic and work history, employers that are stuck with a substandard work force to choose from and a dependent class that are victims of those that think that their emotions can alter reality.

But carry on, upon passage the soup line beckons.

Not me dude

Pigshit.

Stock Holders!

We are forced to increase productivity, to KEEP our jobs...

Alas, most seem catastrophically badly educated in economic matters; probably deliberate Fabian Gradualism. ;)

What if production goes down? Would everyone get a pay cut?

Wages fell because Thatcher and Reagan attacked and destroyed Trade Union power which protected working class living standards.

It is true that minimum wage on its own will only make capital flee abroad to cheap labour countries and employ immigrants.

What is needed is politics based on empowering the working class here and in the third world. A world minimum wage. The more the Chinese workers get the better for all.

Also a maximum wage that should equal a maximum of say 5 times the minimum. We all live in the same society and all should receive the benefits of the the complex industrial information world economy we live in. (the idea that one person makes a fortune on there own is so silly, let them demonstrate how they do it on a desert island)

On a another note - would not this industry be a lot better of with people earning $20 an hour rather than $5 ?

Yeah no shit. Ask someone here how much a Coke is in Australia. Or maybe its New Zealand. One of those places has a minimum wage of $19 for a 19yr old person and a Coke is about $4.50

If that ever happened I would go from being an employer with all the headaches to a carefree employee. Maybe in-n-out would give me a job so I can sneak a couple fries once in awhile. After all the new minimum wage changes they would cost $12 a bag.

yep and at Walmart I was reading it takes 6 yrs to go from min wage to $10 an hour. 9 out of 10 min wage workers are over 20 yrs. I never see some high school kid working at McDonald or Walmart. I see people in their 20's and older. Paying those people min wage costs you money as a tax payer its below the poverty line so they get gov benefits. So its costs you money. And its not like well they work so they get less, they dont. Cost of goods for raising min wage is 4 cents for McDonald and I was around when it went from $5 to $7 . No mass firings and prices didn't go up thru their roof.
But lets look at this as only about ourselves, if you sell products be it porn, penis pills, personals or lattes at starbucks. If consumers dont have money they cant consume and you are fucked. When some guy is getting out of college with a 4 yr degree to make $10 an hour and 60k in debt. He isnt consuming anything and as a business owner you should find that a very serious matter.
A rising tide raises all boats...
PS: also before commenting on the link actually take the time to look at it.

Actually it doesnt, it will raise Mcdonalds prices about 4 cents. I was around when it went from 5 to 7 nothing went up.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w3997

Fast food prices didnt change the last time min wage went up. I remember and this study shows it.

I think you are misunderstanding what "worker productivity" is... it's simply "output"/worker... so for example: lets say a business produces 1000 widgets/year and employs 10 people then productivity = 100 widgets/person/year

now lets say, the employer invests his hard earned $$ to buy a newer/better machine, with this machine output doubles to 2000/year... so productivity jumps to 200...

so with the logic that Elizabeth Warren proposed, the worker should now be paid double? that's ridiculous...:2 cents: