Who does a $15 an hour minimum wage help?

Then you agree we should drive out all the illegal aliens, and use whatever force necessary to stop them at the border. 22-40 million illegals drive our wages down on the lower class in this country, thus the move to $15 an hour. This wage would already be there and even a lot larger if we shittcan the illegals and drive them out. A big shortage of labor will then happen, and wages according to the basic law of supply and demand will probably go up to 25-30 dollar an hour range.

I just cannot reconcile a "law" to $15 an hour, and yet sanctuary cities that want to keep the lower class broke. Tell me how that can be reconciled.

 

No, taxation is the rent or fees we pay to live in this society. E.g. if I live in an apartment complex, then I pay a certain fee for rent and other fees to maintain the pool. The pool maintenance fee doesn't have to be voluntary. To live in the US and take advantage of our society you have to pay the taxes that make our society the way it is. If you don't like it, then live somewhere else.

 

Actually many companies have raise charts that barely keep up or are below inflation. This is very common. This is borne out by the fact that even with our booming economy, wage growth is only 3.1%, and only .8% when we factor for inflation. During the Bush boom it was 3.5% and under Clinton it was 4.5%. Employers will give out raises, but usually sometimes when they think the employee is about to leave. If they give everyone big raises to stay, then they will end up paying their staff more than their competitors, and most companies don't have a good way of determining which employees are high performers and which are not, so they usually give raises conservatively to save money. Companies are putting up with higher turnover and we can see that because average time people stay at their job is now very small. Today with a booming economy and 3.7% unemployment, 58% of workers are getting a raise and 24% of companies are giving a bump of 5% or more. When it takes crazy low unemployment for this to happen we are in real trouble. When we had unemployment in the 4% range and above salary increases were only in the 2% range which barely keeps up with inflation.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/03/its-a-great-time-to-look-for-a-new-job.html

 

So if I understand your post, raises should be given regardless of productivity? Sort of like Union mandatory raises, I guess.

Not the way it should be, that is for sure. Doing that supports mediocre productivity, low quality workers. Meritorious raises promotes productivity. You increase the company's bottom line, the company increases your bottom line. It's been that way for decades and then some.

I don't know what industry you are in that can't determine who is productive and who isn't. For most, it is obvious.

And why is inflation as high as it is? Do you understand QE, and it's residual effects?

 

Let’s try an analogy. Apiarists have a saying that goes something like this: “colonies survive in spite of our attempts to help them”.


A colony utilizes supply and demand based on realities such as the season, floral diversity and health, location, disease, quality of leadership, and predation to produce numerous products. Left to their own devices they will produce the correct product at the correct price to the colony.


As apiarists we exert unnatural pressure on the individual colony to achieve financial outcomes we desire. We may introduce queen excluders, pollen traps, undrawn foundation, or we may depopulate to form new colonies. We can look at our (the apiarists) economic situation as being static or improving by implementing these unnatural devices. However, there is always a detriment to the individual colony.


In short it’s easy to say manipulation of the colony results in no change to the apiarists. But the change can be burdensome or catastrophic to the individual colony who’s natural ability to balance supply and demand has been thwarted. In the end, the colony is usually able to survive in spite of our manipulation, but it has cannibalized itself in the process.


This is how I see imposing wage floors on business. Manipulation to change outcomes always harms someone at the individual level. It’s easy to ignore if it isn’t you being harmed or you can spread the negative effect over a large enough population or time period to make it invisible.


Collectivists and wealth redistributionists are fine with manipulation of markets. I’d rather have merit based pay in all circumstances. Increased compensation must be earned.

 

The minimum wage's popularity was never about redistribution (except in terms of redistributing inefficient rent from employer to employee). Indeed, we know that it is both an inefficient and ineffective poverty alleviation device. The minimum wage's role, given supply and demand, is actually focused on economic efficiency. As it is a reaction to monopsonistic power, it actually increases overall economic activity. This is ably illustrated by two sets of 'real world' empirical evidence: evidence that the minimum wage increases productivity; evidence that the minimum wage increases employment.

 

Making it illegal to hire low wage employees seems hurtful to those who are most vulnerable.

 

$15 minimum wage helps but is not near enough to equalize the cost of living with wages wages able to pay pay for those costs for full-time workers. As a small business owner with college grads of my own, I can tell you that the majority of these graduates so not earn enough to pay for housing, transportation, food, utilities gas, and car, housing and health insurance. Minimum wage should not be the same for all areas of the country because the cost of living is drasticly different.

That is why health care providers are paid based on where they practice and why car and homeowners/renter insurance is based on city, state and county.

It should be the States determine these costs with guidance and regulation of the fed gov. We have far more control over our local county and state governments than we do congress.

 

Well regulated slavery would increase productivity and employment.

Since you don’t give sources for your empirical evidence (and that doesn’t bother me I hate the idea subjects can’t be discussed without dueling links) I took the liberty of checking out the research.

Not to my surprise, a generic google search supports your claim. However, if one searches with more specificity it becomes clear there is no consensus on this issue among economists.

Studies on Seattle’s recent wage increase have been split on the issue. Longer term studies of other regions often have diametrically opposing conclusions.

It’s clear there is no good way to apply the scientific method to this research. It’s nearly impossible to create a control and isolation of economic factors is difficult.

In conclusion, although this theory (and all economists refer to it as such) is interesting I’m going with logic and real world experience on this one. As someone who has been (very, like half minimum wage) low on the totem of the labor side and also relatively high on the capital totem, I can’t think of a single time an increase (or mere existence of) minimum wage would have benefited me long term.

 

Two diddy issues with that. First, it's wrong. Productivity isn't higher under slavery. Instead any limit on rent seeking- itself automatically economic inefficient- is removed. Second, we are referring to supply and demand here. It is necessarily focused on mutually beneficial exchange.

You're again inaccurate. I have already referred directly to the empirical evidence. Rather than Googling and the inherent problems that creates for objective literature review methods, I referred to the latest meta-analysis....

"For example, try Doucouliagos and Stanley (2009, Publication Selection Bias in Minimum Wage Research? A Meta-Regression Analysis, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 406-428 ). This includes over 1000 employment elasticity estimates and concludes the results "corroborate [Card and Krueger's] overall finding of an insignificant employment effect". Also try the latest review by Wolfson and Belman. This finds that, if only latter studies are used (27 studies since 2000), positive employment effects are found."