Minimum wage/Livable Wage

When the owner of the business has a connection with the employees or at least sees them, I have found those employers are more generous and will pay similar to the way you pay as an individual. When there is a bureaucracy that gets between the owner(s) there is a greater tendency to pay the lowest amount possible. That is a generality but tend to be true in my experiences. But even outside of that most business people have an approach of "show me your value first...then let's talk about a good wage". Personally, that is my approach as well. If I pay someone, my offer will be the minimum I can reasonably pay. But after they show they did a good job I am excessively generous. This illustrates a core dilemma in a philosophical difference that hurts this discussion. Some are offended by a low initial wage with the need to prove their worth and therefore perform accordingly - never going beyond that minimum. What should come first? I would work for free knowing that if after a demonstration of my work I would get a more generous reward. I would take the risk.
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Re-read those studies carefully. I doubt any serious study would imply that wage rates have no impact on employment and that a mandatory minimum grater than a market wage has no impact. Outside of an inflationary impact, it is clear that there are thresholds or a range where an impact is negligible but a minimum outside of those ranges can be devastating to some categories of employment. Again using fast food cashiers, there will be a wage level when alternatives are more cost effective - there are wage levels that would limit total employment. If you have a study that is in opposition to this premise, the study is incomplete.

I can not argue with a subjective definition of "poverty". If you argue that $114 per week or about $500 per month would take 4 million people above poverty, you get no argument from me - assuming that is the end of it. But we know that is not the end of it. An objective measure would be based on what people can afford. For example if a household's biggest expense is housing (rent and utilities), how many of these people will be able to afford the average in your city? I suggest we work on something that will make a difference.

Given 50 years of a war on poverty, perhaps we need a new strategy.

 

There's no 'objective' way to define poverty. There are only political and ethical ways of defining poverty.

 

Not if it is true. I believe questions and challenges are good. Some are offended by the notion of having to respond or defend a position. And just because there questions and challenges it does not mean that at the end of the process we do not reach agreement. The problem from my point of view is that we can never get through the process.

Or, there are those who hold the view of let's just raise the minimum wage and be done with it for a few years, knowing that it won't solve anything - knowing that the legal minimum is "sticky". If "sticky" is a new concept to some, look at it from the point of view of the worker blindly accepting the legal minimum and the employer using the legal minimum not to pay a true market wage. It happens and is a risk. In my view a better approach is for informed workers with choices negotiating their wages based on market demand for their services - employers would be force to pay market wages.
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Housing affordability index.
Disposable income.
Savings rates.
etc.

could be objective measures looking at baselines and trends.

 

Science doesn't get at truth, it gets at plausibility. Plausibility depends on assumptions. Assumptions in economics vary greatly across the field. Whether a particular economic conclusion is 'true' depends mightily on the assumptions made by the person judging the conclusion.

I don't care about 'true market wages'. I don't think it has ever served humanity to pledge unquestioning fealty to the market. I don't think you think this either. It doesn't make sense to defer completely to the natural tendencies of the market, it makes sense to ask 'how much do we have to interfere to get the kind of world we want to live in.'

But they aren't 'objective'. They are standards, but standards are never objective. All of these measures depend on drawing arbitrary lines.

 

I think the federal minimum wage serves a purpose, in that if it didn't exist, there would be states with no minimum wage.

 

It totally provides cover for some state politicians to do nothing with respect to the minimum wage. But I think the alternative would be worse than the status quo.
I envision a sweatshop belt along the southern united states.

 

Housing, rents and related costs are the biggest factors affect the working poor.

In most US urban areas apartment vacancy rates are less than 5%, which basically means when an apartment opens, there is someone that is waiting and will move in within about 2 weeks. One would need at least $2,000 to get moved in, assuming reasonable credit scores. Even if we give minimum wage workers $500 more per month with a vacancy rate of less than 5% housing affordability won't change. We will have more people chasing a fixed supply of housing units. I argue affordable housing is the #1 issue - an issue not being addressed.
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When workers are informed and have the freedom of choice the market serves them well.

 

And when we successfully domesticate unicorns, I'm sure they will serve us all well too.

 

Look at history and analyze when and under what circumstances labor has done well relative to the holders of capital resources.

 

Labor first starting doing well with the passage of the Fair Labor Standard Act of 1938 (included the first federal minimum wage).

Labor did extremely well through the peak of the union movement in the 1950s, along with federal programs like the GI bill and significant federal investment in R&D, infrastructure, etc.

Labor did not do so well in the first decade of the 21st century when wages were flat for most middle class workers for the first time in 50+ years despite increases in productivity and profits and the result of which was the greatest income inequality since 1920s.

 

3. A scarcity of workers with some critical skill.
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I think I mentioned my theory that a large birth cohort has an abundance of people and revels in its political power, whereas a small birth cohort has a scarcity of people and revels in its market power. I think that's why large cohorts tend to be more politically liberal, and small cohorts tend to be more politically conservative.

 

Look at the present, where workers who are protected from the perils of unfettered capitalism are much less likely to die in garment factory collapses.

Labor has done better when it has been effective at organizing (or when it is reaping the rewards of the organizational work of previous generations).

 

I am lost with your point of view. If a person earns $20,000 er year and pays $10,000 in housing costs how is universal healthcare going to help them? Odds are that they are not spending much of the remaining 10,000 on healthcare. But even if they are on a percentage basis it will be smaller than what they spend on housing.

If the person goes from $20,000 to $26,000 with a one time minimum wage change, but with housing costs increasing to $13,000 in 3 to 5 years, what progress has the person made in real terms? Is the net $3,000 - before taxes, before other inflationary costs of living. When has the costs of food, clothing, transportation, and other needed services not gone up $3,000 in 3 to 5 years for a working poor person? Core CPI is based on middle and upper middle class expenditures, nominal CPI is also unrealistic for the working poor. For example the cost of banking, the month fee goes from $5 to $10 when below a certain balance, that is a 100% increase for a poor person while most middle class people can avoid the increase. Yes that $10 fee is 1.2% of a working person's non-housing disposable income and some pay significantly more for various reasons.

My question is when are we going to get serious about the issues of the working poor? The cycle will repeat, no real progress will be made until we address some core issues. The first is perhaps looking at how working poor people actually spend their money.

Not if the price of housing is out of control. Government controls the supply of housing in all urban markets familiar to me. Who is government really serving, landlords don't want a flood of affordable housing units they want a limited supply and the pricing power that goes along with it. To me this is the simplest thing to do - lower housing costs!

 

I know some people look at children and think "There's our future, it is in our best interest if we ensure their access to education and healthcare." Me? I think "I wish I could exploit that labor, fucking nanny state, keeping me from utilizing the potential of this abundant supply of intelligent livestock."

 

Cattle are protected too. A domesticated workforce is a dream for those who own or control capital (either political or wealth).

Nothing wrong with labor organizing and collective bargaining - I argue it is part of a free market.