About Socialism

We know there isn't a market wage. We also know that firms have monopsonistic power. We also know that the minimum wage can actually increase wage and employment levels.

Your understanding isn't economics based.

 

you are the one that doesn't understand anything... and because you let your emotional brain kick in and don't use reason and logic.

reminds me when i was a young lad, straight out of college. I had no money and used to get a bit angry when i saw bankers working next to me who were making 800k, 1mm+.. I was like 'these f guys, i'm doing all the grunt work and they just make all this $$!.. tax the he ll out of them!'

then it dawned on me, well, why don't i just get one of those jobs they have? what is stopping me? I went to college, i made good grades, i considered myself smart. Instead of complaining, why don't i just get one of those jobs? Guess what, wasn't easy... it required a lot of knowledge, it's stressful job, requires long hours and requires innate talent (mathematical and sales skills). The fact that they are in those roles doesn't make them bad people, they just had the initiative drive, talent and work ETHIC to get in those seats, i didn't at the time... so I DID NOT DESERVE WHAT THEY WERE MAKING.

This is pretty much summation of the fraud the left wants to perpetrate on society... Bill Gates? Steve Jobs? punish them! yet, all of us had the same opportunity to do what they did, didn't they both even drop out of college? so we can't use a college degree as an excuse 'oh, we never could get a college degree'.. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs became what they became through working extremely hard (on weekends, all night), perseverance, talent, taking many risks, making many sacrifices which is what 99.9999% of the leftist failures couldn't do, or match... and they think they deserve more.. NO...

 

You have no understanding of economics. Raising the minimum wage prices the lowest wage workers out of the market. I read years ago that the unemployment rate among black teen males was lower than that of white teen males before the minimum wage law was passed. After the law was passed, black teen male unemployment shot up to 50% and has stayed there ever since. Minimum wage laws reduce employment levels.

Another study a few years ago showed that unions increase wages for union workers, but the wages for everyone else get depressed as a result, showing no net gain for workers in general.

 

You've gone on a bit, but there isn't much content. My approach is based purely on economic efficiency. It just happens that ensuring workers receive the value of their labour is both equitable and efficient.

 

Monopsonistic power is delivered by multiple mechanisms, all of which are the norm: e.g. job search frictions; heterogeneous worker preferences. You therefore have to accept that firms has wage making power. There is no debate in it.

And empirical evidence? 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.

 

Then they should sell their worth directly and cut the employer out of the chain. Keep all their worth.

 

https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-l...es-15-hour-would-eliminate-seven-million-jobs

https://www.thenewamerican.com/econ...ising-the-minimum-wage-increases-unemployment

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/uw-study-finds-seattles-minimum-wage-is-costing-jobs/

High Minimum Wage Equals High Unemployment https://www.epionline.org/oped/o76/

"Indeed, even the Congressional Budget Office estimates that increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour will cost 500,000 jobs."

https://mises.org/library/yes-minimum-wages-still-increase-unemployment

Interesting. The Mises Institute article suggests that the studies you are referring to have been cherry-picking their data, by limiting it to restaurants only and to neighboring counties rather than all counties. In Seattle, the above study found that in some cases, people weren't being fired but their hours were being cut drastically, in some cases to less than the costs under the previous price level.



http://www.aei.org/publication/lets...s-when-it-increased-41-between-2007-and-2009/

 

Heh, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams say the minimum wage is racist.

"When Apartheid was collapsing in South Africa, the economist Walter Williams did a study of South African labor markets and found that many white unions were seeking to increase the minimum wage. He quotes one such union leader as saying “… I support the rate for the job (minimum wages) as the second best way of protecting white artisans.” By pricing out less educated black laborers with a minimum wage, white unions were able to insulate themselves from competition.

Indeed, the Davis-Bacon Act, which demands that private employers pay “prevailing wages” for any government contracts, was explicitly passed as a Jim Crow law in order to protect white jobs from cheaper black competitors. And while the minimum wage is supported with much more pleasant rhetoric these days, the effects on black employment, particularly black teenage employment, have been devastating. As Thomas Sowell observes,

'In 1948 … the unemployment rate among black 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds was 9.4 percent, slightly lower than that for white kids the same ages, which was 10.2 percent. Over the decades since then, we have gotten used to unemployment rates among black teenagers being over 30 percent, 40 percent or in some years even 50 percent.'

It’s hard to imagine that black unemployment was actually less than that of whites. But that is the effect minimum wage laws can have."

https://mises.org/library/yes-minimum-wages-still-increase-unemployment

 

Notice the difference. I refer to meta-analysis reviews of the econometric evidence. You refer to shoddy comment from biased site that presents zero application of econometric methodology.

You got the theory wrong. At least you've been consistent and also got the empirical approach wrong.

 

Meta-analysis of bad studies gives bad results. Garbage in, garbage out. The links I gave you were all studies. The Seattle one includes a greater range of businesses than restaurants and points out that they can duplicate the results of the other studies by limiting it to restaurants but that restaurants are not representative. That's a major failing of all the other studies.

I'd like to see what theory it is that supports the idea that raising the cost of something raises the demand for it.

 

Bingo!

 

They describe the nature of the literature. They also allow for an understanding of how things change as econometric methods improve. We know, for example, that the classic research by Brown, Gilroy and Kohen reflects empirical bias. The latest research confirms the theoretical analysis: from monopsony to efficiency wage productivity effects.

You have drivel that hasn't gone through peer review and also hadn't provided any econometric approach capable of isolating minimum wage effects.

Sounds like you need to read up on monopsony. The classic argument is that it only applies to the 'company town'. Job search analysis shows otherwise. Burdett and Mortensen show that the exact same result is predicted: minimum wages reduce underpayment and equilibrium unemployment.

 

I always found it deliciously ironic that meta-analysis of study bias that was peer reviewed by the very peers whose studies showed bias in the meta-analysis was for some magical reason not considered to have bias of it's own.

Like you said: garbage in, garbage out. It is simply another trash method used to deceive the ignorant (like most of Congress) to rectify socialism with supply and demand, and it fails miserably in the eyes of the knowledgeable.

@Reiver lives in a biased world whose economics have a pre-determined agenda, whose "peer reviews empirical evidence" (phrases he often abuses) exists in an echo chamber. It kind of sad, really

 

It is a cost of living adjustment for Labor. We know capitalism has a natural rate of unemployment. The short term equilibrium is all the right wing focuses on. In the long run, higher paid labor pays more in taxes and creates more in demand.

 

Mass raised it to $12 with no effect. Nobody even pays $12.00 The cheapest I seen was Dunkin and cumberland Farms at $14.25 after 30 days. I can't see how a $15.00 min wage in 2023 is going to disrupt anything. And this isn't in boston, I bet in Boston it is already a couple of dollars higher

 

That isn't surprising. If the legally mandated minimum is less than the market mandated minimum you won't see a significant effect. The primary impact of raising minimum wage happens when the legal minimum is higher than the market minimum. The same thing will happen with any commodity. If a car is worth 15K but the government sets a legal minimum price for cars of 20K, cars worth 15K won't sell. If the car is worth 15K and the government sets a legal minimum of 12K, the 15K car sales won't change*.

*The effect of the price control on cars might skew the behavior of buyers in the market, causing an indirect change in the sales of the 15K cars.

 

This is repetition of a misunderstanding of supply and demand. You're referring to a situation where perfect competition holds. That delivers the argument that a binding minimum wage must generate disemployment. As soon as you acknowledge imperfect competition (ie wage making power), there is no market wage. There is a distribution in the extent of underpayment.

Also weird to refer to cars. You actually then have the market for lemons and a different understanding of the impact of asymmetric information.

 

Very nice. Complex graphs, theories and meta-meta-analysis. This is the problem, opposing sides come up with complex, contradicting theories backed up by supposedly great minds, a lot of it abstract and skewed, cleverly crafted to suit narratives. It all gets lost in a continuum of gibberish which most americans cannot begin to make sense of.

At the end of the day, this is mindnumbingly simple. Government has no idea what a worker is worth so setting an artificial price based on ‘what seems fair’ creates issues which cannot be solved without sacrificing productivity.

 

There is actually nothing particularly complex about it. Its just supply and demand after all. If a firm faces an upward sloping labour supply then a minimum wage can increase both wage and employment.

 

So a higher price for something increases demand?

You're an economist?

 

Socialism is workers owning means of production not government. What you ate describing is state capitalism.

Originally the term was meant to describe the transition phase from capitalism to communism but it has changed and evolved so their are many different interpretations

Right wingers generally sweep anything left of Reagan into one big category so they can demonize the lot.

 

If what you're saying is true, then why would anyone object to socialism. A worker-owned company is nothing strange. There are many of them.

So you're in favor of workers forming companies? Is that all?

 

Yes, worker co-ops are a workable model.

My position is that democratic social policies can work within the capitalist system to mitigate some of the inherent excesses and contradictions of capitalism.

Some people want to throw out capitalism altogether but I don't believe that is workable because private property in some form is inevitable.

 

So you're starting up a worker-owned company? And then you'll be satisfied?

 

Naw.....won't be satisfied till I've given everyone free stuff and brought tyranny to the US by turning it into Venezuala and making myself Pol Pot.

Seriously though, I'm semi-retired though I am helping a friend put in a grow local greenhouse system.

My little part.......