Democrats Turn to Minimum Wage as 2014 Strategy

[parocks]

Yes of course. That picture sums up the minimum wage fight perfectly.

BS.

The minimum wage was 25 cents in 1938.

The minimum wage has gone up dozens of times.

Please, show the articles about the economic catastrophe that was caused by these periodic hikes.

We have serious sht we're dealing with. FedGov seems to want to take our money and give it to people who don't shop in the same stores as I do. They shop in Washington, DC stores. And quite a while ago, everything new they did stopped being useful. So, they take my money away from me, away from my community, that has workers ready to take my money, which I don't have, because FedGov is giving it to people to spy on me.

Yes, no doubt, if you took away all social safety nets, and the FedGov took away half your money, and the minimum wage was gone, we would learn how little a person would need to keep from starving. I don't want to live there.

If FedGov stopped building drones, and let me keep my money, I could spend it in a local store. Everybody else would have much more money to spend in local stores, and those people sitting on the sidelines would be needed, and the best ones would prove to be so valuable that they'd make more than the minimum wage. No minimum wage laws would be necessary, because the free market economy where people get to keep their money would be working. But it isn't working.

So much is fkd up. The minimum wage and periodic raises in it after a debate, that works pretty well.

 

[Keith and stuff]

Unemployment is at 25% right now. What could possibly be more useful to solve this problem than to increase the min. wage to $100 an hour? That's right, nothing. Go big or go home.

 

[WM_in_MO]

Pandering to the lowest common denominator...

Oh you don't want $15/hr minimum wage?

Y U HATE POOR PEOPLE!?

It's so stupid it's genius, by controlling the schools they have made most people LITERALLY TOO IGNORANT TO ARGUE BACK EFFECTIVELY.

 

[parocks]

And raising the minimum wage hurts the young the most. They are the ones least likely to get jobs if minimum wage is raised. You talk about the fast food workers benefiting by getting raises but you ignore those who would be unable to find a job because of the minimum wage. If minimum wage is $10/hr and a kid out of high school can't get a job but is willing to work for $8/hr, how does the minimum wage benefit him?

Yes. If there was no minimum wage, everyone could be wiping old peoples asses for a $1 a day. That's the future.

We have a minimum wage now. There are people working at those jobs. There are young people working at those jobs. The minimum wage has been in place since 1938 and it's been raised dozens of times. Yet, still lots of young people in minimum wage jobs.

The total amount of money in young peoples pockets will go up. Everyone gets a 10% raise. 10% more money. But some will be fired or lose hours. But not 10%, much less than that. Just keep doing what we've been doing. Periodic raises keeping pace with inflation.

 

[enhanced_deficit]

Why, "Minimum age for drone victims" signature strikes was not deemed an appealing issue for Drone King supporters?

"You can keep your current Wage if you like it".

 

[parocks]

Pandering to the lowest common denominator...

Oh you don't want $15/hr minimum wage?

Y U HATE POOR PEOPLE!?

It's so stupid it's genius, by controlling the schools they have made most people LITERALLY TOO IGNORANT TO ARGUE BACK EFFECTIVELY.

No, it's just that the Minimum Wage has been in place since 1938, and periodically, it goes up to keep pace with inflation. Unless you think that the minimum wage is the one thing that is keeping us from the beautiful free market paradise, this is really not something to fight about.

3/4s of Americans would like to give the minimum wage workers a raise now, even if it might mean a tiny tiny bump in inflation and unemployment.

Focus on things that we hate, that other people hate too. The crazy new stuff like NSA and drones. Not the single thing that the poorest folks have relied upon since 1938.

When "better" people are working for the government, spying, building drones, I'm much much more in favor of people who are not considered "better", people who live near me, people who work for minimum wage, doing sht I want done in the stores that I want to go to. I'd like to give them a raise, and 75% people of Americans do to.

 

[parocks]

Unemployment is at 25% right now. What could possibly be more useful to solve this problem than to increase the min. wage to $100 an hour? That's right, nothing. Go big or go home.

But no one is talking about raising the minimum wage to $100. Just the same ol same ol. The problem with the economy is the government takes our money. We don't have it to spend in the stores. If we had more money to spend in stores, the stores would hire more people to hand me my fast food through the window or scan my food.

 

[MRK]

Raise it high enough to eliminate ALL WELFARE... then lets see how the moocher class feels when they have to spend their own money to live, on top of being pushed into the higher tax brackets and not receiving all the discounts for government stolen money. How will Marxists, Fascists, and Communists in government, survive... how will they then, buy votes with crumbs?

This is possibly one of the best ideas I've ever heard.

Raise the minimum wage high enough to overshadow welfare recipients.

And I think we should use the bar as 20 hours worked per week, not 40 hours, because let's face it, many of the low-income earners are working less than 40 hours a week (not all of course).

So based on some napkin math, it looks like we'll have to push the minimum wage to $60/hour to make sure the 20-hour-per-week people take home $60,000 pretaxes and earn too much to draw from any of the welfare programs detailed above.

 

[Keith and stuff]

So based on some napkin math, it looks like we'll have to push the minimum wage to $60/hour to make sure the 20-hour-per-week people take home $60,000 pretaxes and earn too much to draw from any of the welfare programs detailed above.

The only problem is that it makes the upper middle class disappear. I don't have a million in savings so it might not destroy my life. But it would ruin things for lawyers, doctors, politicians and so on.

 

[Cutlerzzz]

If only I had any idea how to post images on my Ipad I would post a supply curve.

 

[Rocco]

You've never run a business, have you? McDonalds is an oligopoly BECAUSE of policies like the minimum wage. The average profit margin for a fast food restaurant is 2.4%. With every minimum wage increase the market consolidated to the mega corporations who can afford the increase, and this is why Walmart has supported EVERY SINGLE federal minimum wage increase that has passed. It is a way to use government to push their competitors out of the market, the minimum wage has ELIMINATED small grocery stores, small gas stations, small fast food restaurants and many low profit margin industries which have been completely taken over by chains. There is literally no policy that helps McDonalds or Tops keep their oligopolies more. Raising the minimum wage is economically ignorant.

Apparently no one here understands that the Federal Minimum Wage started in 1938, and it was a quarter an hour. It goes up all the time and it doesn't actually effect the overall economy very much.

The people who benefit from keeping the minimum wage low support the Romney's and not the Paul's. But the Romney supporters are plenty happy to have Ron Paul supporters taking the "screw the poor people who actually work" side of the issue.

We don't live in a free market. McDonald's has a dollar value menu. Prices of the inputs change all the time, yet McDonalds is able to keep the prices the same.

We don't want to be fighting this battle.

Until the Government stops taking so much of our money, we don't live in a free market. So, put away your charts and graphs. McDonalds is an oligopoly, Supermarkets are oligopolies, the Government takes half our money to spy on us, squeezing the nuts of the poorest folks doesn't make us any friends.

 

[Rocco]

I can prove to you using math that the minimum wage creates unemployment and underemployment:

Company A has a work force that is exclusively minimum wage workers, and has $2,000 set aside for payroll every week with an $8 an hour minimum wage. They can afford 250 hours worth of labor, or 9 workers at 28 hours a week each. The government now raises the minimum wage to $10 an hour. The company now can afford 200 hours of labor with those same $2,000. They now must either cut everyone from 28 hours to 22 hours a week to keep everybody employed, or they must cut back from 9 to 7 workers to maintain everybody's hours. Liberals have this fantasy where the owner takes *just a little bit* out of their profit margin to up the payroll, but that will NEVER happen because most minimum wage labor industries make very small margins.

 

[Keith and stuff]

You've never run a business, have you? McDonalds is an oligopoly BECAUSE of policies like the minimum wage.

I like most of your comment but McDonald's is in no way anything close to an oligopoly. There are well over 100 restaurants in the county I live in and 2 of them are McDonald's.

 

[Rocco]

There are no fast food restaurants that are not major chains, at least not anywhere I have ever lived or been.

I like most of your comment but McDonald's is in no way anything close to an oligopoly. There are well over 100 restaurants in the county I live in and 2 of them are McDonald's.

 

[parocks]

We need to fight this battle. Minimum wage is economics 101. If someone can learn to understand the harmful effects of minimum wage, then they should be able to understand most economic concepts.

Econ 101 describes conditions of free markets. Free markets work great. We don't live in a free market. At all.

1) The Fed Gov takes our money. The lack of my money in my pocket means I can't give it to my neighbor. Free market broken.

2) Fast food restaurants, supermarkets, are oligopolies. Their prices are determined differently. W/ perfect competition, prices = the cost. W/ oligopolies, the prices
= total amount of money. A McChicken is a $1 because McDonalds determined that they'd make the most money if the McChicken was a dollar. Companies who can just make up their prices don't need to respond to labor cost rises if they don't want to. KFC was running a special for at least a month. 10 pieces of chicken, $10. We aren't talking about a situation where there are hundreds of sellers of undifferentiated wheat. We don't live there any more. And 75% know this. And 25% seem to think that arguing over whether the minimum wage should be $7.25 or $9 or $10 is something you should do in public.

Listen, when 75% of the people want to give the poor working folks the periodic raise they have been getting since 1938, it's not time to argue with them. I don't like reading in the newspaper that social conservatives want to give the poor folks their raise, or that tea partiers want to give the poor folks their raise, but libertarians don't want to give the poor folks the raise that they've been getting since 1938.

It make libertarians just look like dicks. Yeah, we get it, there might be a little bit of inflation, or a tiny bit of unemployment. But every single time the hikes took place, since 1938, there hasn't been any problems that can be clearly pointed to.

You really want the libertarians to be known as the people who want to fight to keep the poor people from getting their raises? Liberty? Screw that. $7.25 for the poor people, not $10.

It's almost as if you don't understand that we do have a minimum wage. And that minimum wage has been going up dozens of times. The same amount of Liberty is there when the minimum wage is $7.25 or $10. Just arguing about numbers. The idea behind the minimum wage is that it's supposed to keep pace with inflation.

Social security has an automatic COLA.
Fed Government employees have an automatic COLA.

Minimum wage hikes require a debate and a vote.

 

[parocks]

I can prove to you using math that the minimum wage creates unemployment and underemployment:

Company A has a work force that is exclusively minimum wage workers, and has $2,000 set aside for payroll every week with an $8 an hour minimum wage. They can afford 250 hours worth of labor, or 9 workers at 28 hours a week each. The government now raises the minimum wage to $10 an hour. The company now can afford 200 hours of labor with those same $2,000. They now must either cut everyone from 28 hours to 22 hours a week to keep everybody employed, or they must cut back from 9 to 7 workers to maintain everybody's hours. Liberals have this fantasy where the owner takes *just a little bit* out of their profit margin to up the payroll, but that will NEVER happen because most minimum wage labor industries make very small margins.

Is anyone arguing that a hike in the minimum wage doesn't create unemployment, underemployment or inflation?

No. We get it.

But 75% of the people believe that the tiny tiny amounts are outweighed by the benefits of the raise.

There are so very many many many things that cause unemployment and inflation.

This particular one has a benefit. That's why 75% of the people support it.

The government taking so much of our money and spending on sht we don't want is the biggest problem.

 

[torchbearer]

Is anyone arguing that a hike in the minimum wage doesn't create unemployment, underemployment or inflation?

No. We get it.

But 75% of the people believe that the tiny tiny amounts are outweighed by the benefits of the raise.

There are so very many many many things that cause unemployment and inflation.

This particular one has a benefit. That's why 75% of the people support it.

The government taking so much of our money and spending on sht we don't want is the biggest problem.

give the rubes all the coercion they can stand. eventually that gun will be pointed at them too.
higher gross equals more income for uncle same.

 

[CaptUSA]

It's funny that they get you guys arguing over the efficacy of such programs. The article, itself, told you what this was about. It's about a power play. It has nothing to do with whether changing a wage would do anything. This is about motivating a specialized constituency over a broad one.

Everyone has an interest in ending the minimum wage, but it is a small interest since most of us don't make it anyway. But there is a constituency that has an intense interest in expanding the minimum wage whatever the consequences. When you have that dynamic, it makes it easy to drive certain voters to the polls to get you the power you are really after.

 

[otherone]

This particular one has a benefit. That's why 75% of the people support it.

The government taking so much of our money and spending on sht we don't want is the biggest problem.

75% of people support a lot of stupid shit.
The biggest problem we have is an authoritarian regime that is supported by the 75% that EXPECTS the federal gov to be involved in every aspect of their lives. 7.25 spends a LOT different in New Jersey than in Tennessee. Let each state decide.

 

[Keith and stuff]

75% of people support a lot of stupid shit.
The biggest problem we have is an authoritarian regime that is supported by the 75% that EXPECTS the federal gov to be involved in every aspect of their lives. 7.25 spends a LOT different in New Jersey than in Tennessee. Let each state decide.

Yup. I guess 75% of people support auto insurance and adult seat belts being required. Democracy = lack of freedom. People supporting something has zero relation to if it is good or not.