The minimum wage machine

[DmonSlyr]

"Live well" is not required. "Live" is. If you want more get a better job or get two jobs. Better yet get two jobs and spend what little free time you have left studying.

But if a person has to get 2 jobs. Doesn't that limit the jobs from other people? Thus keeping the unemployment rate from decreasing?

[MiloMorai]

This is a very tough debate. Now we have Walmart coming out saying how they lost profits because of the raises they recently gave. However, that excuses the fact that they could have cut officer commissions by 2%, but gee golly, it would be such a shame if they made 45bil instead of 50 Bil each this year. Sigh.

In the graphic I posted, the average wage increased $0.10 in the last 32 years but in the same time period CEOs went from $490.31 to $5,419.97.

[PR3D4TOR]

The economy today is significantly bigger than 30 years ago, but again, the market value of labor (happy now Pembquist? ) is not directly influenced by it.

[Triton28]

I'm curious how some of you justify essentially telling other people what to do with the money they've made. 

[PR3D4TOR]

You had better be more specific about whom you're referring to. If you want a reply that is...

[MiloMorai]

[Triton28]

You had better be more specific about whom you're referring to. If you want a reply that is...

You mean like quoting the specific person with whom I was questioning?  What if there seems to be a group of like minded people I have a question for?  Couldn't I just use a phrase like, "some of you"?  And yes, I want a reply, but I understand I might not get one for a while until someone can work out the gymnastics involved in bending around the S word. 

[PR3D4TOR]

(Image removed from quote.)

Yes exactly. GDP depends on wealth creation. Median income depends on labor market price. They are not directly connected. An increase in a company's profitability does not directly affect the wages of those working there.

[zack1234]

Only country with  "real" market economy is Britain.

The rest including Germany are play acting.

Paying their people stupid high wages

The Greece are even better, getting payed to do kak all

[FBKampfer]

Predator, you keep talking about human time and effort as a commodity to be bought and sold, and traded. I suspect you have never once stopped, and genuinely thought about whether it should represented as such.

Also, who gives a rat's arse about economic growth if the people don't see any benefit from it? You keep espousing the virtues of free enterprise and unbridled capitalism, and how we're all stupid for looking at data that contradicts you, but you have yet to make a single coherent argument as to why the common man would want it.

[pembquist]

So you're saying business is beyond morality; that it cannot be moral or immoral? Don't think I can agree to that either.

I think what I would say is that the mechanism of capitalism is amoral, a force unto itself it is neither good nor bad. Human agents who work within capitalism can do good or bad, they are the moral creatures who are encumbered with making value judgements and acting with or against their own desires. As a crude analogy, (which is doubtless contestable but, hey!) a machine gun is the tip of an elaborate system for turning people into corpses but is entirely indifferent to what is done with it. We would be fools if we tried to take moral lessons from the Maxim Gun. It might reveal buckets about human behavior and the construction of morality but it in itself serves villains and saints without prejudice. I think capitalism is an analytic phenomena not a rulebook.

The thing I find occasionally titillating but inevitably tiresome about discussions about political economy is the tendency towards reductio ad absurdum and the indulging of fundamentalist posture. It's as bad as religion when it comes to self righteous motivation for hacking up other people. I think the perfect torture device would be a pair of headphones with one ear playing some laissez faire Freidman doggerel and the other a diatribe from a Young Sparticist. Your brain would be crushed by the bloviation.

[PR3D4TOR]

FBKampfer, if you don't want it, don't work for someone else. Work for yourself. I do.

This is my definition of "fair" and "right": I keep what I make. You keep what you make. If you don't agree then please tell me how much of what I make should go to you and why.

[PR3D4TOR]

Pembquist, that I can agree on. Thank you for clarifying.

[PR3D4TOR]

A thought experiment about morality:

[FBKampfer]

So nothing to say on the first part? Figures.


And if work for you, enough to sustain a healthy life (and of course transport myself to and from your business) isn't unreasonable. Or if it is, the problem is simply that you're not offering adequate work.

And the amount you should pay in taxes is dependent on what you make. I'm in favor of a cap at 50% taxation. Or if you don't like taxes, I'll come tear up you water lines, sewage system, your roadway, of course if you live near a coast, no more federally subsidised flood insurance. Oh, no more USPS, police, armed forces, basically no non-private infrastructure. Wouldn't want you leeching off the government, now would we?

But don't worry, if you work hard enough, you can learn to build your own power plant, and water pump, etc.

Interesting fact, did you know scientists estimate that hunter gatherers only had to work about 6.5hrs per day? Of course there wasn't much surplus, and so basically said everyone had to work, and there wasn't much time to contribute to the collective knowledge. But then we figured out farming, and productivity skyrocketed, and the standard of living increased immensely for all. And of course we had surplus to fund scientists, and mathematicians, and philosophers....


Of course all this is based on the obsolete "every man for himself" mindset. But worry not, your generation will die off soon enough.