Mitt Romney backs minimum wage hike

[steveh_131]

We did this before. McDonald's could raise wages to $15 an hour and in order to keep the same profits as today a value meal would need to go up less than 30 cents.

Mind sharing the math behind this? I must have missed it before.

 

[hornadylnl]

All this talk about technology replacing human labor... somebody has to develop and maintain that technology that wasn't there before. I bet that's not a minimum wage job.

Just the same as a robot doing an assembly process. No, Joe isn't welding 10 hours a day anymore, but if he would learn a new skill, he could program the robot to do it. However, Joe is gonna complain about losing his job to a robot, so Bob reaps the benefits and gets a $65k/year job.

99% of the time, Joe isn't mentally capable of running and maintaining robots.

Just today I had to help maintenance guys land an 8 wire cable that got pulled out of a motor peckerhead. They had no clue how to read the prints.

3 - 240v wires
Ground
2 - motor brake wires
2 - thermal overload wires.

And these guys are supposed to be maintenance men. Very few in our company have the first clue when it comes to robots.

 

[MisterChester]

Anyone who wonders why this country "is where it is" economically need only read this thread.

The incredible misunderstanding of basic economic principles exhibited by many of those posting here paints a vivid and frightening picture.

Quick, how do we make more revenue? Hire more people and make more product to increase demand. Or maybe we could just pay people with truckloads of cash...then they'll buy our stuff. Maybe we should, instead, insist on price ceilings for goods. Better yet, let's pull Bernanke out of retirement and finally give him his helicopter (Correction: it seems "Helicopter Ben" is not retired, but has gainful employment at the Brookings Institution).

The wage is a price for labor, which is just another commodity. Only the market - diverse, anonymous, personally interested, and making literally millions of dissociated value judgements each day - can set a price of any value/merit for any commodity.

Any politician, philosopher, or planner who thinks he can pick "the right" price for a commodity, whether corn, pork bellies, crude oil, or a man's labor is, at best, a drunk playing darts.

Pumping the circulation of "money" in the system via the minimum wage would be no more economically beneficial than confiscating the sum of said increased wage directly from the companies forced to pay it and dumping portions of it in various denominations on the streets of our cities. That is to say, no real benefit would be accrued.

The minimum wage is a price floor on the commodity known as labor. Generally speaking (barring other factors in the market in question), price floors lead to surplus. A labor surplus is called unemployment. My kids understand this stuff.

Maybe we should eliminate the minimum wage and move toward something that resembles a free market.

Only 1.1% of the American workforce makes minimum wage. Eliminating it will solve few problems. Anyone who makes over that won't be affected. If anything it'll make things worse as people in that wage range would need even more govt assistance.

 

[ATOMonkey]

Only 1.1% of the American workforce makes minimum wage. Eliminating it will solve few problems. Anyone who makes over that won't be affected. If anything it'll make things worse as people in that wage range would need even more govt assistance.

Ok, what percentage of the workforce would be impacted by a minimum wage hike?

 

[MisterChester]

Ok, what percentage of the workforce would be impacted by a minimum wage hike?

Just depends on how big the hike is, if it's immediate or over time. Can't really give a concrete percentage based on this alone.

 

[ATOMonkey]

Just depends on how big the hike is, if it's immediate or over time. Can't really give a concrete percentage based on this alone.

I see this really is the politics section....

The proposed $10/hr minimum wage would put between 25%-30% of the workforce at the minimum wage.

 

[jamil]

Only 1.1% of the American workforce makes minimum wage. Eliminating it will solve few problems. Anyone who makes over that won't be affected. If anything it'll make things worse as people in that wage range would need even more govt assistance.

It's 4.6% according to BLS published statistics for 2012. But still, pretty low. So low, I wonder why it could be such a big issue to solve such a narrowly distributed problem? Perhaps the issue isn't really the issue.

I see this really is the politics section....

The proposed $10/hr minimum wage would put between 25%-30% of the workforce at the minimum wage.

That's the real issue. Bought and paid for with other people's money.

 

[MisterChester]

It's 4.6% according to BLS published statistics for 2012. But still, pretty low. So low, I wonder why it could be such a big issue to solve such a narrowly distributed problem? Perhaps the issue isn't really the issue.

I took the same statistics. 144 million employed, 1.6 million at minimum wage. 144/1.6 = .011. Don't know where they got 4.6%.

Either way, it has such a small impact that it doesn't make sense to blame that as contributing problem. Can't say it has no impact at all, but it is negligible at best.

 

[ATOMonkey]

It's negligible now, perhaps, that's debatable though.

How negligible is a cost floor going to be when it's affecting 25% of the labor force?

I can pretty much guarantee you that my wife isn't going to find any seasonal work at $10/hr and we aren't going to pay a baby sitter $10/hr either.

This has disaster written all over it.

 

[jamil]

I took the same statistics. 144 million employed, 1.6 million at minimum wage. 144/1.6 = .011. Don't know where they got 4.6%.

Either way, it has such a small impact that it doesn't make sense to blame that as contributing problem. Can't say it has no impact at all, but it is negligible at best.

The 1.6 million is AT minimum wage. The 4.6% figure is calculated as at or below.

 

[Lex Concord]

Only 1.1% of the American workforce makes minimum wage. Eliminating it will solve few problems. Anyone who makes over that won't be affected. If anything it'll make things worse as people in that wage range would need even more govt assistance.

Eliminating it will solve more problems than maintaining or increasing it, even if the number solved due to elimination is zero.

 

[Hohn]

Riddle me this economists of INGO. Which is better? Lower prices and lower wages, or higher prices and higher wages?

It's a false dichotomy. One of the major components of pricing is the paying of wages. They are "collinear" variables.

 

[Hohn]

Ok, what percentage of the workforce would be impacted by a minimum wage hike?

100%.

Some a lot (won't get job).

Some a tiny bit.


Overall, net gain for everyone-- especially the poor-- to scrap the MW.

 

[Hohn]

Only 1.1% of the American workforce makes minimum wage. Eliminating it will solve few problems. Anyone who makes over that won't be affected. If anything it'll make things worse as people in that wage range would need even more govt assistance.

Since when are you supposed to be able to sustain yourself-- or even a family-- on a minimum wage job? Do you know that people survived long before there was a MW?

You do realize that even a poor American living in a mobile home park has a standard of living higher than more than half the world for all of recorded history, right?

 

[Bunnykid68]

Since when are you supposed to be able to sustain yourself-- or even a family-- on a minimum wage job? Do you know that people survived long before there was a MW?

You do realize that even a poor American living in a mobile home park has a standard of living higher than more than half the world for all of recorded history, right?

People do it everyday in this country by cutting out all the crap out of their lives. If it were 1975 again my bills would be tremendously lower because I wouldnt have

1) Cable Tv
2)the internet,
3) TV in every room
4)Cell phones for the whole family
5)DVD players and VCRs/DVRs for every TV
6)would still be fixing more food at home instead of grabbing fast food all the time

So just cut out those things alone and you save $250 a month at minimum

 

[Arthur Dent]

Of course I don't support companies "screwing their workers". Since you brought that up in the context of minimum wage, should I assume that you think "screwing their workers" means paying them the least that they can. Isn't that what we all try to do? We bargain for the best deal? In economic slumps, it's an employer's market, and salaries tend to stagnate or fall. In expansion years, it's an employee's market, and salaries tend to rise.

And it's not a flinching contest. It's just typical cyclical economic stuff. As I said before, people weren't *****ing so much about minimum wage when the employment rate was 5.5%. Eventually, the economy will get better. It'd get better a lot faster though without a government so eager to stifle it with all the ****ed up policies.



No, the government gave lenders incentive to give loan money to people who couldn't really afford it. And I'm not defending the lenders. They share in the blame. They were greedy. They took advantage of the government programs and took them further than was intended. They shouldn't have been rewarded for making decisions that would bankrupt them if they weren't bailed out. And we shouldn't have bailed them out.

Forty years of near stagnant wages is a cycle?

The banks were offered incentives, but they didn't have to accept. Instead they were rewarded with free money. From you and me.

 

[MisterChester]

Since when are you supposed to be able to sustain yourself-- or even a family-- on a minimum wage job? Do you know that people survived long before there was a MW?

You do realize that even a poor American living in a mobile home park has a standard of living higher than more than half the world for all of recorded history, right?

I can't tell if you're arguing for or against it.

 

[ATOMonkey]

I can't tell if you're arguing for or against it.

You're not the only one. I'm fairly sure he's just arguing to "correct" everyone.

 

[Hohn]

You're not the only one. I'm fairly sure he's just arguing to "correct" everyone.

Please help me understand how my statements can possibly be construed as anything other than opposition to minimum wage...

 

[poptab]

eEconomics - ep.12 - Minimum Wage - YouTube