A thread about healthcare and debt and stuff

That is the federal minimum, states that have none do, it is the federal amount. States can have higher than the fed level, but not less.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

Oh ok. There're also some extra caveats for small businesses, etc. to have less, but that's fine, I guess.

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

D'oh, was answering the minimum wage question but PN beat me to it.

Re: Will's comment about inflation. Whether or not it has kept up with inflation depends on when you start measuring. It was $4.25 in 1994 (I know, because I was getting it at the time), and that'd be $6.45 in today's money. So it's risen faster than the rate of inflation over the last 17 years. But regardless:

1) Accounting for inflation means it wildly goes up sometimes, too. It was over $10 in "real" terms in the late 60s because of deflation.

2) Whatever the effects of inflation, the minimum wage is an incredibly misguided idea. It violates basic economic freedoms and hurts the people it's intended to help.

There are lots of terrible ideas that not many people believe. And there are lots of pretty bad ideas that a lot of people believe. But I can't think of an economic issue that has a larger gap between the quality of the idea and how widely it is supported.

Does anyone really think 7.25 keeps up with inflation?

No worries. I'm a little perturbed, but not offended. I'll take a little more time than usual to respond to it, partially because I promised Courtney we'd go for a walk in a minute, partially because I have a few things to do this evening, and partially because you gave me a lot to respond to, consider, and unravel.

It will not surprise you to learn that I do not think Christianity to be as nihilistic as you do. Hopefully I'll be able to explain why adequately.

I don't understand this question. If you're asking if $7.25 will buy as much in 20 years as it does now, then no. But that also doesn't mean they're not going to raise the minimum wage again.

If you're asking whether or not $7.25 represents a keeping-up-with-inflation total, then you need to provide a baseline. As I pointed out, it MORE than keeps up with inflation if you go back to 1994. If you go back some other amount of time, it may or may not depending on exactly where you draw the line.

It was 3.35 in 1981, so during a decade of high inflation, the minimum wage only went up a dollar, hardly during that period keeping up with the rate of inflation.

Don't be mad, but i believe the minimum wage in manitoba is $10/hr.

I don't imagine many people outside of highschool kids folden clothes at the Gap work for $7.25 though.

Let us remember until the bank crisis unemployment was historically low with some retailers unable to attract workers at the minimum wage so the notion the minimum wage has anything to do with the unemployment rate is absurd.

Right. Didn't during that period, and it more than did recently. It also more than kept up with inflation over the last 60-70 years. As inflation has increased more reliably recently, so to have we see, more regular increases in the minimum wage.

It's all academic, though, because it's not a good idea regardless of how well it keeps up with inflation.

This is simply a non-sequitur. The fact that there was a specific period in time where the job market was so healthy that people had to offer more than the minimum wage to attract workers does not in any way suggest that there is no correlation, or even that it doesn't negatively impact unemployment. It only means that, within that time frame, whatever impact it may have had was easily mitigated by other factors. What you're saying is the equivalent of "it can't be hot out because my air conditioned room is way too cold." In reality, it'd just be even colder if it weren't so hot out.

It should be obvious that the minimum wage impacts unemployment to some degree. If the minimum wage were $100, fewer people would be hired. Ditto for $50 an hour, or $20. As long as there are any tasks that are worth less than the minimum wage to any employer, the minimum wage will cause more unemployment than there otherwise would be. And this is without even getting into the other costs associated with hiring and firing, such as the time, effort, training, and even unemployment insurance, which means the real baseline on the employer side is even higher than that.

wouldnt they just raise their prices to adjust to the market?

$20 an hour minimum would produce a booming economy.

Which would accomplish what, exactly? If we all make twice as much, and everything costs twice as much, we're exactly where we started.

How would it do that? It wouldn't make it easier to distribute things or build new technologies, or do any of the things that actually increase our standard of living. Paper money is a means to that end; it isn't wealth in and of itself. If we all wrote one extra "0" on the end of our bills tomorrow, we wouldn't be any richer.

Heck, if massive growth could be accomplished by simply raising the minimum wage, why shouldn't it be $50 an hour? $100? $5,000?

Well that largely would depend on what you spent your new found dough on. Many would buy cars. I buy real estate.

I don't see what's so wrong with a minimum wage as minimum or minimum health care as minimum.

If people want it raised, just don't. What's the problem here? Don't raise it until inflation and such dictates, at which point you wouldn't have even raised it.

The idea of a minimum is so no one walks around the streets begging for money. It's a right because -- to bring it back to abortion a bit -- the human is special, and we should treat the human with dignity and respect. Letting any human crawl around on the street like a dog is not good.

Unless you're a Brahmin.

It is a minimum wage, not a maximum wage. Obviously the idea is to provide a mimimum standard, not a comfortable level of living. You make it too high you trigger inflation.

Yeah, I agree. I don't know why things have to raise. I know people would naturally want it raised, but the government can just simply say know, because that defeats the purpose of the wage.

It's not supposed to be a broken window. It's supposed to be a minimal ethical standard regardless of the economy. Now, if it starts damaging the economy (which at this point it's so freaking low, it's has no chance of doing) maybe we should look into it.

I just don't get why it's claim to be a slippery slope to "maximum wage".

Well, that's certainly the way to go relative to car-buying, but the point is that if everyone added a "0" to the end of their bills, everyone would add a "0" to the price, too.

Raising the minimum wage to increase economic growth is like me saying I'm taller when I list my height in centimeters.

Yeah. I think I now agree with stuff like this. I mean, I was never a Keynesian, but I definitely will never be now.

But it's like abortion in that it's not a purely pragmatic scenario. There are ethics involved. We don't want wage slavery.

You guys ever hear the phrase "not right, not even wrong"? It refers to a question whose suppositions are off to the point at which you can't even say the statement is wrong. As in, it's not even asking the right question or operating under the same assumptions. That's how I feel about the minimum wage discussion at the moment.

I'll whip something up tomorrow explaining why the minimum wage is ridiculous. And no, it's not based on the idea that it will lead to a "maximum wage." That isn't even my phrase.

Actually looking forward to it believe it or not.