Minimum Wage

[So Boerd]

Not wanting to derail the suicide thread, let's talk minimum wage here. Why shouldn't someone be allowed to offer their own services at three dollars an hour willingly?

[Gwazi Magnum]

In a perfect world? There isn't if it is willing.

The issue is that in the real world such a thing is way to open to abuse (even if say we see this kind of practice a decent amount, example: teenage babysitters).
Like for example sweat shops, and then there's also the matter of it's almost impossible to support one self for 3 dollars an hour. Back when it was legal to pay this much people would pay this little all the time and this was common enough and/or jobs were so hard to get at the time that people were forced to work their butts off for next to nothing because it was that or die.

I'm sure someone else will come in and say this far better than me (with far more info with it to boot), but in a nutshell it's something such as a simple job for a few hours for extra spending cash it should be fine as long as the conditions are actually humane. But if it's a job that's meant to be lived off of, then the person is quite simply not going to survive with such low an income and if they do, they just barely get by and leave nothing for their kids if they have any.

[Turtlicious]

Magic Magnum said
In a perfect world? There isn't if it is willing.The issue is that in the real world such a thing is way to open to abuse (even if say we see this kind of practice a decent amount, example: teenage babysitters). Like for example sweat shops, and then there's also the matter of it's almost impossible to support one self for 3 dollars an hour. Back when it was legal to pay this much people would pay this little all the time and this was common enough and/or jobs were so hard to get at the time that people were forced to work their butts off for next to nothing because it was that or die.I'm sure someone else will come in and say this far better than me (with far more info with it to boot), but in a nutshell it's something such a simple job for a few hours for extra spending cash it should be fine as long as the conditions are actually humane. But if it's a job that's meant to be lived off of, then the person is quite simply not going to survive with such low an income and if they do, they just barely get by and leave nothing for their kids if they have any.

Pretty much this, it's because people are exploitative assholes, and it would ruin it for the people who don't want to work a 70 hour week to try and make rent.

[mdk]

Minimum wages are an artificial price floor for labor, designed to counterract a structural deficiency in the quality and necessity of work. It's a belief that, if we let the market do its own thinking, an unacceptable number of people would be incapable of providing services worthy of a living wage. For instance, a kid grows up on the wrong side of town, crappy school, can't get out of the cycle, so even if he is motivated, he can't earn a position better than burger chef manager, and winds up spending most of his life just getting there while everyone else gets ahead. That's a valid concern.

The argument against minimum wages stems from the economics of inefficiency. It's supply and demand, basically -- when you move the minimum wage up, you create a situation where more people want the job and less businesses are willing to hire out at that rate. Generally speaking (and people fight about this all the time, but generally speaking) a historical analysis is consistent with that; some would say, history bears this idea out completely, meaning, it's demonstrated in the real world and not just on paper. Besides that argument, there's an element of 'My business is my business' to it, as in, it's not your job to tell me how much to pay my employees. Those are each valid concerns as well.

Personally, I don't have a problem with *a* minimum wage. It's not an economic thing (the people who argue that min. wages are good for the economy are wrong, I think, but that doesn't mean that minimum wages are necessarily bad). It's a social thing, and we're allowed to make economic policies for social reasons. If we all understood the economic impacts of those policies, we'd have much better luck in making them work. There are practical reasons why you can't just arbitrarily set the minimum wage at, idunno, ten thousand dollars an hour or whatever -- most people aren't asking for that.

[So Boerd]

Turtlicious said
Pretty much this, it's because people are exploitative assholes, and it would ruin it for the people who want to work a 70 hour week to try and make rent.

Wait wait wait, so you think there will be enough who will offer to work for less that the whole labor force is screwed? It is my body. If I can kill myself, why can't I work for too little?

[Turtlicious]

So Boerd said
Wait wait wait, so you think there will be enough who will offer to work for less that the whole labor force is screwed? It is my body. If I can kill myself, why can't I work for too little?

Because then you effect other people?

If there are 200 workers, and 100 of them are willing to work for 80 hours a week at 3$ an hour, and 100 who are willing to work 40 hours a week at 6$ an hour, then the company will fire 100 people.

Also there is a whole thing with exploitation I really don't want to get into because I have a whole gimmick with my posting where I try not to post more then 5 sentences at any given time.

e: Whoa wait what? Don't kill yourself. Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255. If you're seriously considering killing yourself over minimum wage, please call someone who can help.

[Jorick]

So Boerd said
Not wanting to derail the suicide thread, let's talk minimum wage here.

Oh, so you want to talk about a different subject entirely and not sidetrack a thread with discussion about that other topic, alri--

So Boerd said
Wait wait wait, so you think there will be enough who will offer to work for less that the whole labor force is screwed? It is my body. If I can kill myself, why can't I work for too little?

Oh, so you actually didn't want to talk about an entirely different subject and are totally fine with sidetracking this thread with discussion about the other topic.

Okay then, no point in actually attempting to engage in a reasonable discussion here, have fun with your continued efforts in trying to equate entirely unrelated things to try to support your opinions.

[So Boerd]

Turtlicious said
Because then you effect other people?If there are 200 workers, and 100 of them are willing to work for 80 hours a week at 3$ an hour, and 100 who are willing to work 40 hours a week at 6$ an hour, then the company will fire 100 people.Also there is a whole thing with exploitation I really don't want to get into because I have a whole gimmick with my posting where I try not to post more then 5 sentences at any given time.e: Whoa wait what? Don't kill yourself. Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255. If you're seriously considering killing yourself over minimum wage, please call someone who can help.

So what if someone can not compete with another worker at the same price? What if I grew up in the inner city and got a crappy education, and now I need work experience if I am to go anywhere? Offered a high school student and a college graduate both at the same price who is the company going to hire?

Today black teenage unemployment is 35% and white teenage unemployment is 20%. In 1948 Black teenage unemployment, even when blacks were openly discrimated against, was at 9.8% Congratulations, you have made a very racist law that favors white people. You are keeping young black people down, and for what? So that white people can live comfortably? Boy, doesn't that have a familiar ring.

[Dervish]

The the hell would anyone want to work for $3 an hour for twice the hours? That's goddamn insanity.

I believe minimum wage should be enough for a person to sustain themselves above poverty levels. Considering how fucking hard it can be working in retail and other similar entry-level jobs, I do not believe most workers are compensated fairly for the work they put in.

I'm not saying somebody who stocks shelves for a living should be paid like atradesman, but they should be able to afford rent, groceries, and be able to have enough left over for savings without living in constant worry that a single unexpected expense is going to force them to choose between eating and having a roof over their head.

[Brovo]

So Boerd said
Not wanting to derail the suicide thread, let's talk minimum wage here. Why shouldn't someone be allowed to offer their own services at three dollars an hour willingly?

Because then corporations would hire the cheapest labour possible, degrading the standard of living to hilariously awful levels all the while accumulating mass profits until they end up cutting each other too low and invariable collapse when nobody is able to purchase anything.

Seems pretty simple in concept to me. Now what exactly minimum wage should be set at is a different debate with several dynamics, that vary based on the country you live in and the times at hand. (ex: Sometimes it's appropriate to increase minimum wage--sometimes it isn't, and I'm sure there are rare occasions where it would be appropriate to decrease minimum wage.)

So Boerd said
Wait wait wait, so you think there will be enough who will offer to work for less that the whole labor force is screwed? It is my body. If I can kill myself, why can't I work for too little?

... You're totally insane. No I'm serious. Go see a psychiatric professional if you seriously believe this kind of logic makes any sense.

We have a minimum wage because it benefits the overall population. It's the same reason we have laws. Yes, a person could work for a lower wage than minimum, and it actually does happen, but look at all the countries which have obscenely low minimum wages, or none at all--they tend to be shit. Like we're talking massive shit, people dying of diseases we figured out solutions for here a loooong ass time ago.

It's all about balance. It's the same reason why I don't run out and go "LETS LET EVERYONE KILL THEMSELVES!" Because that would be extreme and stupid and not address the many dynamics of suicide: Like if they aren't of sound mind, the mother versus the elderly dying in the hospital, and so on.

No real issue can be broad brush stroked with one sentence. It's the reason why most bills in congress are so insanely long: They're covering every possible outcome, and every possible situation, that they can possible envision.

Yes, there would be people who would work below minimum wage, yes, there are people that do that now, and yes, their lives are absolutely terrible, pretty much universally. Ergo, it benefits society to set a minimum wage to prevent abuse against the desperate and the naive. At what level that should be set is not something I can tell you as fact: I'm not an economist, I only know the basics of how the economy works. (I understand it conceptually, just not in practice.)

MDK actually said it best honestly. A minimum wage is not the healthiest thing for a free market, but it's necessary from the social perspective, in the same manner anti-discrimination laws are necessary for employment: Because there are still some companies that would say no to a perfectly functional person just because they're chocolate flavoured, not vanilla.

Jorick said
Oh, so you want to talk about a different subject entirely and not sidetrack a thread with discussion about that other topic, alri--Oh, so you actually didn't want to talk about an entirely different subject and are totally fine with sidetracking this thread with discussion about the other topic.Okay then, no point in actually attempting to engage in a reasonable discussion here, have fun with your continued efforts in trying to equate entirely unrelated things to try to support your opinions.

He's trying to disprove an argument I made a while ago by using extremes and irrational comparisons. I'm surprised he went to the effort of creating an entirely different thread for it though.

So Boerd said
So what if someone can not compete with another worker at the same price? What if I grew up in the inner city and got a crappy education, and now I need work experience if I am to go anywhere? Offered a high school student and a college graduate both at the same price who is the company going to hire?Today black teenage unemployment is 35% and white teenage unemployment is 20%. In 1948 Black teenage unemployment, even when blacks were openly discrimated against, was at 9.8% Congratulations, you have made a very racist law that favors white people. You are keeping young black people down, and for what? So that white people can live comfortably? Boy, doesn't that have a familiar ring.

I guess you forgot to mention the part where teenagers are not socially expected to work anymore. I mean, they can, and it's usually looked on well as a mark of responsibility or maturity, but they generally... Don't have to. Not from a social perspective.

I mean technically back when slavery was legal blacks had under 1% unemployment. So obviously slavery is better than a minimum wage, right?

As well, there was also a lot less people who lived in the United States. So employing them all was not nearly as difficult. On top of that there was a booming economy, not the piece of shit we have right now, corporations were generally limited in size and scope with a few exceptions (ex: oil companies) which helped to breed the very competition that the free market uses as its crystal meth, and so on.

There's also a lot of social plagues today to keep in mind that still affect african american populations, like ghetto culture. For an example of that, look at the Crips and Bloods.

There's a hell of a lot more at work here than you would like to admit.

Also, back in 1948, blacks were paid significantly less than whites were for participating in the same tasks, because of the open discrimination. Nowadays, there's still some of that going on, but it isn't nearly as awful as it was before. (The main reason for the large pay gap between the two is because whites still hold the vast majority of top level positions in companies, which pay obscenely more than any position beneath them, which skewers the wage gap averages in favour of whites... Then again, if you look at average income based on ethnicity, asian americans actually average out the highest of the four... )

[So Boerd]

Good spin, Brovo, however the number I cited was unemployment, not labor participation. That means, of X black teenagers looking for work, 35 percent cannot find jobs compared with 20 percent of white teenagers.

If you want to play booming economy, Black teenage unemployment in 1930, not a booming economy, was lower than white teenage unemployment. So the racists established a minimum wage to keep black workers out.

[Brovo]

Speaking of spinning facts, where are you getting these numbers from? I'm interested.

[So Boerd]

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm

Not only is black teenage unemployment higher, labor participation is lower.

[Brovo]

So Boerd said
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htmNot only is black teenage unemployment higher, labor participation is lower.

I'm not actually talking about the modern day. I'm talking about the 1930's and 1940's numbers you keep going on about that make out minority populations under extreme duress and discrimination to somehow be more employed and making equal wages or better.

[Turtlicious]

If Gwazi, Brovo, and I all agree on something, (with our wildly different ideologies, and our massive hateboners,) it's probably because that thing is true.

[Gat]

Not to blow a hole in your theory mate, but im as white as they come and I spent 4 years in unemployment while actively seeking work. You know why I kept getting passed over despite 2 or 3 interviews a week, because my education capped out at year 12. Which was actually standard in the state I grew up in. Lots of people looking for work with better qualifications than myself.

So to deal with that I took additional courses for career paths I was interested in. I also volunteered in a few places to build up dependable character references. Still I got passed over for people a few years younger than myself because companies could pay them a few dollars less an hour.

All that while I watched people living in my area slack off and do drugs regularly while collecting unemployment benifits. They still filled the unemployment statistics but they werent actually trying to get a job.

[Gwazi Magnum]

So Boerd said
Wait wait wait, so you think there will be enough who will offer to work for less that the whole labor force is screwed? It is my body. If I can kill myself, why can't I work for too little?

You're new to OT so I'll just leave it as a warning this time.
It is bad practice to bring up past debate's into a current one, especially when it's being used to disprove someone.
Someone's stance/argument should be judged and evaluated on that stance/argument, not on past arguments they made.

Now, everyone's guilty of slip ups here including me.
But in good practice separate debates should remain separate debates unless if both parties agree to bring it up, but even then it's usually because it's actually relevant to the current debate happening. More often than not though, you'll find thread separation to handle it such as say debating feminism/sexism and one of the topics comes up for women's rights in Abortion. Instead of having an abortion debate inside the feminism debate it is taken to a separate thread to handle abortion specifically.

So Boerd said
Good spin, Brovo, however the number I cited was unemployment, not labor participation. That means, of X black teenagers looking for work, 35 percent cannot find jobs compared with 20 percent of white teenagers.If you want to play booming economy, Black teenage unemployment in 1930, not a booming economy, was lower than white teenage unemployment. So the racists established a minimum wage to keep black workers out.

And Brovo's argument still covered this...
African American's on average are still in less well off cultures and more likely to held up in things like gangs.
And people in those situations regardless of race are less likely to be hired than say people who are in an area that provides a good education and gives people more time to practice hobbies, interest and studying rather than say having to sign up to a gang.

And this is not a case of "minimum wage made to keep out black workers" at all. We've already established the effects of on average less education, worse communities and increases gang activities. All of which make hurt someone's ability/value as a worker. In a time where say minimum wage didn't exist people could get paid for pitiful amounts. On average black people were valued for less, both out of racism and for increased probability of being exposed to things that reduce ones ability to work well. Any smart business person would hire more black people simply because they were cheaper, it makes more economic sense like how MDK highlighted as well.

Once a minimum wage was set though you couldn't do that, you had to pay at least a set amount for the worker so naturally the conditions/requirements went higher. Now instead of paying say 3$ an hour you now have to pay 9$ an hour or something. This would make people act/think along the lines of "Now... if I have to pay a whole 9$ an hour for a worker now... I don't want it spent on someone whose in gangs and has no education, I want it on someone who can focus on the work and have a decent understanding of it", and since do to cultural situations white people on average are better educated/suited than black people it makes sense the employment rate changes by race.

If you go into the black dominant communities though and improve it, give better education, get rid of gang activity etc. Then you'll eventually see them all on an equal playing field, and only then can racism be claimed to be going on if the number's don't match.

[So Boerd]

Numbers source forthcoming. They are from Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, the former a professor at George Mason, the latter an economist. When I first cited Prof Williams I was unaware of his libettarian bent so I will find a more neutral source to back it up.

In the meanwhild, Gwazi proved the point I was making about the racists and the minimum wage. The racists, particularly outside the south, could not get business to ban black labor. So instead they stole the only means the black people had to compete with a unionized and much larger white workforce by creating a minimum wage to prevent the blacks from undercutting them. It was only a trivial step to negotiate closed shop with management. Since blacks were banned from many unions, the unions had succeded in keeping blacks down.

The overtly racist union is a thing of the past, but their policies are still around, still oppressing the black man. Denis Kearney is a perfect example of the racist union leader. Google him and have your minds blown.

So the party which was instrumental in defending slavery, which had a KKK member very high in its ranks up until the early 2000s, which tried to filibuster Civil Rights is still doing its darndest to keep blacks down. Minimum wage prevents young blacks who cannot get good educations, particularly as the war on Charter Schools continued, from getting work experience and thus ever moving up. It does not end the cycle of poverty, it perpetuates it.

Nobody finds it the least bit connected that the minimum wage corresponds with an enormous migration of blacks from the south?

[Dervish]

Turtlicious said
If Gwazi, Brovo, and I all agree on something, (with our wildly different ideologies, and our massive hateboners,) it's probably because that thing is true.

I have it on good authority that when that happens, you can all combine into a single Megazord.

[Gat]

Nobody finds it the least bit connected that the minimum wage corresponds with an enormous migration of blacks from the south?

You know minimum wages exists in more countries than just america right? Im also pretty certain americans were not the first to come up with it >.>