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Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

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Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

I have asked a legitimate, serious question of many people in many places and have yet to receive a straight answer. Typically the response is either invective or a deflection.

How does an increase in the minimum wage help a person who wants a job get a job?
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

FreshFish said:
I have asked a legitimate, serious question of many people in many places and have yet to receive a straight answer. Typically the response is either invective or a deflection.

How does an increase in the minimum wage help a person who wants a job get a job?
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The only potential answer I could see is if the minimum wage threshold eclipses the welfare threshold, plus any taxes that would otherwise be paid on that money.

Even then, you'd probably still see "Now Hiring" signs in the windows of establishments because some people have been brainwashed to believe they are above flipping burgers.
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

FlagDUDE08 said:
Secondly, they think that certain loopholes only apply to certain people. Not true; they apply to everyone.
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"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

FreshFish said:
I have asked a legitimate, serious question of many people in many places and have yet to receive a straight answer. Typically the response is either invective or a deflection.

How does an increase in the minimum wage help a person who wants a job get a job?
Click to expand...

It probably wouldn't help with that particular problem. It also wouldn't help defeat ISIS.
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

GrinCDXX said:
It probably wouldn't help with that particular problem. It also wouldn't help defeat ISIS.
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That's a really horrible deflection. At least put your back into it.
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

Though he's on Ignore, you folks insist on quoting him to argue with him, so I'll end the suspense. The answer is it doesn't, it helps a person with a minimum wage job pay their bills. But the question is like asking "how does penicillin lower the unemployment rate"? I'm sure there's a Latin name for it, but it's a logical fallacy to attempt to discredit something by altering its scope and then finding it deficient. How does quitting smoking help you memorize Hamlet?

Grin's joke wasn't a deflection, it was pointing out the game inherent in the question, to engage with which concedes the ground to the questioner. It's a classic rhetorical dirty trick, and rather transparent.

Well, I'd say it was obvious, but at least 2 people fell for it. Well played, Grin, for gutting it. :)

How does lowering taxes save the environment. It doesn't? Well then clearly the thing to do is raise taxes.
 
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Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

Kep, I'd argue that people throw out a blanket statement that raising the minimum wage helps the poor. What they neglect to address, how does raising the labor floor costs improve conditions who weren't able to get a job at the old level? How does it help those who are marginally employed? Those people are either going to have their hours cut or be released outright. We've seen that in the fast food industry. In order to avoid higher labor costs, the restaurant owners have reduced their burger flippers' hours to just under the Obamacare hours floor for insurance coverage. Restauarant owners are acting as a sort of informal cabal, if Susie works 15 hours at Wendy's, then the Burger King down the street will take her on for another 15 hours, and if Susie is lucky, she'll get another 10-20 hours at Arby's, and so on. Laborers are directly impacted by having to find more jobs to get in enough hours to pay the bills while labor costs rise for employers because the hiring and training process isn't cheap. So now you have the best of the low-skilled laborers taking more positions, and the lower end of those same low-skilled workers find fewer and fewer opportunities. Minimum wage acts much the same as what we've seen with the Obamacare, except that the total hours available are simply diminished and not split between more people. What FF asked is directly connected, not an obfuscation of the argument.
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

Kepler said:
Though he's on Ignore, you folks insist on quoting him to argue with him, so I'll end the suspense. The answer is it doesn't, it helps a person with a minimum wage job pay their bills. But the question is like asking "how does penicillin lower the unemployment rate"? I'm sure there's a Latin name for it, but it's a logical fallacy to attempt to discredit something by altering its scope and then finding it deficient. How does quitting smoking help you memorize Hamlet?
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The point that is trying to be made, and has been made many times, is that labour is a cost for businesses, and if you increase the cost of something, entities are less likely to purchase it, the rate of which is dependent on its elasticity. Jobs are getting cut left and right in Seattle because of the $15/hr minimum wage there.
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

FlagDUDE08 said:
The point that is trying to be made, and has been made many times, is that labour is a cost for businesses, and if you increase the cost of something, entities are less likely to purchase it, the rate of which is dependent on its elasticity. Jobs are getting cut left and right in Seattle because of the $15/hr minimum wage there.
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What you fail to acknowledge is that labor is not as important to the ruling class as money. If Labor were taxed at the same rate as money we'd be swimming in middle class taxpayers.
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

St. Clown said:
Kep, I'd argue that people throw out a blanket statement that raising the minimum wage helps the poor. (lotsa stuff I know snipped)
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I've read Henry Hazlitt's explanation of how minimum wage laws decrease employment, believe me. There's something to be said for his argument. However, if we want to be technical the minimum wage in the context of a welfare state actually is an unconditional help to the poor, since those who retain their jobs are in a better position while those who lose their jobs drop from low income employment to state support.

I suspect that all gutting minimum wage does in the real world is make the expected value function for crime more attractive. If a job is not in itself sufficient to live on, your time is better spent planning a heist. Not that I think popular opposition to welfare policies is driven by analysis. It relies on the emotional appeal to the idea of the poor as unfit, unworthy, and deserving of their fate.
 
Kepler said:
Though he's on Ignore, you folks insist on quoting him to argue with him, so I'll end the suspense. The answer is it doesn't, it helps a person with a minimum wage job pay their bills. But the question is like asking "how does penicillin lower the unemployment rate"? I'm sure there's a Latin name for it, but it's a logical fallacy to attempt to discredit something by altering its scope and then finding it deficient. How does quitting smoking help you memorize Hamlet?

Grin's joke wasn't a deflection, it was pointing out the game inherent in the question, to engage with which concedes the ground to the questioner. It's a classic rhetorical dirty trick, and rather transparent.

Well, I'd say it was obvious, but at least 2 people fell for it. Well played, Grin, for gutting it. :)

How does lowering taxes save the environment. It doesn't? Well then clearly the thing to do is raise taxes.
Click to expand...

So you put fishy on ignore but still respond to flaggy's shiat?

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
 
Kepler said:
I've read Henry Hazlitt's explanation of how minimum wage laws decrease employment, believe me. There's something to be said for his argument. However, if we want to be technical the minimum wage in the context of a welfare state actually is an unconditional help to the poor, since those who retain their jobs are in a better position while those who lose their jobs drop from low income employment to state support.

I suspect that all gutting minimum wage does in the real world is make the expected value function for crime more attractive. If a job is not in itself sufficient to live on, your time is better spent planning a heist. Not that I think popular opposition to welfare policies is driven by analysis. It relies on the emotional appeal to the idea of the poor as unfit, unworthy, and deserving of their fate.
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The elephant in the room is that every single economic decision made by anyone ever has its winners and losers. Did you eat breakfast at home today? You just took a dollar out of the local coffee shop and now they have to raise prices by .0000001% to compensate. Walk to work today? You just took money from the oil companies.

You can concern troll any decision because of that, and if that's what floats your boat, well fark off and let the adults handle things.

You can take any government decision involving economics and find people who will be hurt by it. The question that needs to be answered is whether it's better in the aggregate based on society's needs and desires. Yes, raising the minimum wage will cause some people somewhere to either lose their job ornot be hired in the first place. It will also cause someone somewhere to pay an extra quarter for their big Mac. But it will also help many other people and provide some stability in their lives. I happen to think the latter would outweigh the former, especially since the federal minimum wage is near historic lows on a real (inflation adjusted) basis.
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

unofan said:
So you put fishy on ignore but still respond to flaggy's shiat?
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Flag is crazy, but his craziness is interesting and partly original. The other guy is just regurgitating whatever glop Redstate ladled into his bowl that morning, either consciously, which makes him a shill, or unconsciously, which makes him a fool.
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

unofan said:
The elephant in the room is that every single economic decision made by anyone ever has its winners and losers.
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This is certainly true, and why it's to laugh (or cry) whenever a pol or pundit sagely intones "government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers." That's all policy choices are. What they mean when they say that is they favor certain ways of picking winners and losers, because those give the "correct" results. :D
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

Kepler said:
I've read Henry Hazlitt's explanation of how minimum wage laws decrease employment, believe me. There's something to be said for his argument. However, if we want to be technical the minimum wage in the context of a welfare state actually is an unconditional help to the poor, since those who retain their jobs are in a better position while those who lose their jobs drop from low income employment to state support.
Click to expand...

Pretty much the honest answer I'd expect: we don't really care whether the minimum wage suppresses employment or not, because on our scale of priorities, employment doesn't rank very high on the list.

I do appreciate the candor, and that is pretty much how I'd answer the question were I pressed to answer it fairly from the perspective of someone who supports it: while raising the minimum wage does suppress employment opportunities, we have to establish our priorities, and raising wages for people who already have jobs is a higher priority FOR SOME than helping people who want jobs to find work.

Now, if I were the person looking for a job, I might have a different answer......or if I were looking to hire a probationary employee on a six-month tryout first, before deciding whether to make him/her permanent, I might also have a different answer.....


Left unsaid in your answer, of course, is that as more and more people are added to the unemployment list, and fewer and fewer people have "well-paying" jobs, how does money that comes from fewer working people support more and more people who are out of work??
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

FreshFish said:
Left unsaid in your answer, of course, is that as more and more people are added to the unemployment list, and fewer and fewer people have "well-paying" jobs, how does money that comes from fewer working people support more and more people who are out of work??
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Yes, if we find ourselves in a permanent death spiral of ever increasing unemployment, the country will be in trouble. Excellent observation.
 
Re: Weaving the Strands: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 2.0

GrinCDXX said:
Yes, if we find ourselves in a permanent death spiral of ever increasing unemployment, the country will be in trouble. Excellent observation.
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Actually, there is an elegant and pleasing way out: people who do have jobs report that they are working longer and are under more stress than ever before. Meanwhile, qualified people who could do those jobs can't get hired anywhere.

We'd have to re-adjust our attitude toward material consumption substantially, but I myself would prefer a society that is less materialistic and derived more enjoyment from hobbies and avocational interests and volunteer activities: in other words, those that have jobs share them with those that don't have them but easily could do them. We all work a bit less, but reduce spending by even more than we reduce working, and so everyone's quality of life improves.

There is something a bit barren about working so long and so hard that one cannot enjoy spending what one earns on those things that bring the most pleasure.

The fundamental problem of course is that those things that bring the most pleasure cannot be traded in the marketplace, and so capitalism has no use for them and actually "campaigns" against them so to speak.
 
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