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[Mr. Strange]

I have noticed that there is a tendency for politicians who support big global companies to also want to increase immigration, while cutting founding for their support and integration into society (things like teaching local labor laws etc.). Makes sense, I mean who CEO of multi billion £/$/€ company wouldn't want cheap source of labor that doesn't complain when you cut some corners when writing their paychecks...

[Andrew425]

I feel like I should rephrase a bit. Uneducated people with little work skills I believe to be a net drain on economy. Sure import as many doctors, engineers and plumbers as you can get but try to restrict those who would come and compete with the most vulnerable of our nations workforce.

As long as their are more people the jobs their is going to be a negative impact to wages. If you can inceease the job supply in line with immigration then the problem can be mitigated almost entirely

[Frumple]

... do you not realize that the vast majority of the US's low-skill workforce is native?

[SalmonGod]

Pretty much every argument against raising minimum wage can be summarized as "but the 1% will adjust other factors so that the amount they're fucking everyone else over for their own benefit stays the same". 

Root of the issue:  the 1% fucking everyone over.  This is what must be addressed.  Force them to pay a livable wage, without adjusting other factors to compensate.  Profits must be sacrificed.  Period.  Wealth re-distribution.  I'll be repeating it until it fucking kills me.  The broad scale trend of unlivable wages is a casualty of the pursuit of endlessly growing profit, which long ago reached a point where it could only continue by funneling wealth up from the bottom. 

This isn't about navigating forces of nature.  This is about people making decisions that they can be held accountable for.  So instead of thinking "but prices will go up and nothing will change", we need to start thinking "and they'll try to raise prices so they're making the same amount of profit as before, and we will just have to threaten a furious mega-storm of hellfire as consequence to keep them in line".  Unrealistic?  It's more realistic than waiting for some magical reality hack to come along that will somehow make it so the 1% can continue to increase the amount they take from everyone else forever, without ever resulting in reduced quality of life for others.  No amount of spin will ever make 1-1=2.

[wierd]

Pretty much every argument against raising minimum wage can be summarized as "but the 1% will adjust other factors so that the amount they're fucking everyone else over for their own benefit stays the same". 

Root of the issue:  the 1% fucking everyone over.  This is what must be addressed.  Force them to pay a livable wage, without adjusting other factors to compensate.  Profits must be sacrificed.  Period.  Wealth re-distribution.  I'll be repeating it until it fucking kills me.  The broad scale trend of unlivable wages is a casualty of the pursuit of endlessly growing profit, which long ago reached a point where it could only continue by funneling wealth up from the bottom. 

This isn't about navigating forces of nature.  This is about people making decisions that they can be held accountable for.  So instead of thinking "but prices will go up and nothing will change", we need to start thinking "and they'll try to raise prices so they're making the same amount of profit as before, and we will just have to threaten a furious mega-storm of hellfire as consequence to keep them in line".  Unrealistic?  It's more realistic than waiting for some magical reality hack to come along that will somehow make it so the 1% can continue to increase the amount they take from everyone else forever, without ever resulting in reduced quality of life for others.  No amount of spin will ever make 1-1=2.

By golly, somebody gets it.

[WillowLuman]

Yes but until then raising the minimum wage would be nice.

[wierd]

The enemy of the ideal, is the "Good enough."

I suppose having what remains of the middle class collide ass-first with the impoverished due to a combination of min wage hikes and refusals by corporate america to raise wages in step with inflation would spurr the more radical changes that are desperately needed though.

at least eventually.

(Imagine what happens when the minimum wage is equal to, or higher than, what corporate america is paying for skilled labor...)

[WillowLuman]

But nothing gets done if people demand all or nothing on reform. You've got to take steps.

[Frumple]

The enemy of the ideal, is the "Good enough."

And perfect is the enemy of good. Good enough is a hell of a let better than bad, even if it means the ideal is deferred or unobtainable.

You get done what you can, when you can, because the whole hog isn't going to happen in one go. Betterment is a path of many steps, not one great leap.

[wierd]

Except that raising the minimum wage, for the reasons cited, has been done more than 3 times in the past 5 decades.  Things have not really improved. All you are doing is perpetuating a local maxima.

There's even some nice data on the topic.

The effective buying power of the minimum wage has actually been tanking slowly for years.  As a strategy to combat systemic poverty, this is historically proven to simply not work.

In other words, if this is incremental progress, it is progress in the WRONG direction.

[Graknorke]

-snip-

By golly, somebody gets it.

Someone who supports a minimum of a living wage gets that there shouldn't be an increase in the minimum wage?

[10ebbor10]

Pretty much every argument against raising minimum wage can be summarized as "but the 1% will adjust other factors so that the amount they're fucking everyone else over for their own benefit stays the same". 

Root of the issue:  the 1% fucking everyone over.  This is what must be addressed.  Force them to pay a livable wage, without adjusting other factors to compensate.  Profits must be sacrificed.  Period.  Wealth re-distribution.  I'll be repeating it until it fucking kills me.  The broad scale trend of unlivable wages is a casualty of the pursuit of endlessly growing profit, which long ago reached a point where it could only continue by funneling wealth up from the bottom. 

This isn't about navigating forces of nature.  This is about people making decisions that they can be held accountable for.  So instead of thinking "but prices will go up and nothing will change", we need to start thinking "and they'll try to raise prices so they're making the same amount of profit as before, and we will just have to threaten a furious mega-storm of hellfire as consequence to keep them in line".  Unrealistic?  It's more realistic than waiting for some magical reality hack to come along that will somehow make it so the 1% can continue to increase the amount they take from everyone else forever, without ever resulting in reduced quality of life for others.  No amount of spin will ever make 1-1=2.

By golly, somebody gets it.

Belgium has a system that avoids this, by tying minimum wage to inflation. As is everything else. Many other European countries have similair systems.

[Bohandas]

Raising the minimum wage could work if it was accompanied by some kind of legislation to freeze prices for a while, but even that would have side-effects of the promoting outsourcing variety

[10ebbor10]

Raising wages and enforcing price limits seems like a bad scenario for the economy. Likely resulting in large lay-off's to preserve profit margins.

[MaximumZero]

Well, we could take it from the other side. If we limit the amount of markup that can be placed on goods and services, it will revalue the dollar and the minimum wage would be livable. We're paying over 1000% markup on some items in grocery stores. I mean, the price of some luxuries may actually go up (electronics and computers are extremely cutthroat,) but those $550 Nike shoes cost less than $20 to make. If we force companies to bring prices down to reasonable levels based on their cost to produce (and prevent corrupt price fixing first thing,) they still make a profit and the little guy wins a little too.