Better habituate yourself to squalor... it's our future
Posted on 06/12/2015 7:09:42 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I’ve been trying to think through a way of really getting across the point that a $15 an hour minimum wage for the US is really just too high. And I may have found it: a $15 per hour minimum wage would put all workers in the US into the global 1% by income. Well, all those workers in the US who managed to keep their jobs when there’s a $15 an hour minimum wage at least. Given that the US labour force is rather larger than merely 1% of the global labour force this isn’t really going to work, is it?
The point to understand is quite how high US wages already are compared to the rest of the world. We hear about “global poverty” but tend not to really understand what this means. The international definition of absolute poverty is $1.25 a day. And that’s not just for food or anything like that. That’s for everything: shelter, heating, clothes, food, education and so on. There’s some 500 million people who currently live below this line. That’s also after we take account of different prices around the world.
So we’re not saying that because rice is 2 cents a tonne in those poor places then they’re doing OK. We really do mean $1.25 a day at what that will buy you in the US. Walk into a Walmart, buck and two bits in hand, and supply yourself with everything you need for a day. That’s absolute poverty.
OK, so, the US doesn’t have any poverty by that definition and hasn’t for decades upon decades. And the US is a rich country, so everyone should righteously be doing better than that. However, how much better should everyone in the US be doing?
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
ANY minimum is too high. The minimum wage should be abolished.
Outstanding point!
Our poor are already infinitely wealthy by global standards. Does not seem to cut down on the whining any.
Fixed it.
...at which point the “Occupy Wall Street” people will themselves become the 1% and have to stage protests and sit-ins against themselves.
There are many manufacturing jobs that pay more than minimum wage but less than $15/hr. And many of those places have thin profit margins. Raise the minimum wage to $15/hr and their profit margin vanishes. When that happens, they move the jobs overseas where they can pay far less. So now you have an unemployed worker who can’t find a job.
By the time the ones that are still working pay the taxes required to maintain unemployment / welfare benefits for the ones that will lose their jobs, will they still be in that "global 1%", or is that calculated before taxes?
Yep.
Michael Medved finally lost me back in 2012 with his mindless shilling for Romney, but it still cracked me up yesterday when I said that $15 was stupid but it should be raised. Always being the master of “compromise”, he addressed the wrong question.
The question is not, “what should we raise the minimum wage to?” The question is, “Should the federal government be implementing fascism by telling employers what their ‘one size fits all’ minimum wage should be?”
The answer to the latter, of course, is “no”.
Well, they all got participation trophies in middle school...so why not? :)
Isn’t this what the TTP is all about...moving jobs to other counties for ‘slave labor’ and we have nothing here for our people to live on?
I wasn’t making an honest $15 an hour when I retired from my skilled trades job. They want to make $15/hr. as minimum wage?? This is nuts!
“So now you have an unemployed worker who can’t find a job.”
The problem is all those employed workers tend to want smaller government and policies that promote growth and prosperity.
Raise the minimum wage and you get lots of unemployed government-dependent Democrat voters, along with a nice raise for all your union pals who will kick back some of the wealth.
With any luck you might also be able to convince some of the other guys who still have jobs that they owe their higher wages to the Democrats.
When was that?
I want a minimum wage of a gabazillion dollars. I could buy anything then.
Better habituate yourself to squalor... it's our future
Doing that just causes welfare and food stamps and other benefit spending to go up. If they are crazy enough to raise min to 15 then they need to put in protective tariffs. If you are going to go radical and cause inflation at least FedGov should do it "right". Half a screw job is worse than a complete screw job in this case.
If you work hard, keep your nose to the grind stone and generate a very high credit score, you can buy most anything
Minimum wage can be as high as one wants. Just create more and more money out of thin air like Zimbabwe.
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