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[Nikov]

My company had a round of layoffs when federal minimum wage hiked about a dollar last year. Thanks for the help, Washington!

[Eugenitor]

Okay, so we abolish the minimum wage and Dagger McWorkingPoor makes four dollars an hour selling Chinese goods at Squalor*Mart. With that four bucks an hour (~$640 a month, unless you toss aside the 40 hour work week.. and who ever needed *that*, anyway? That's just something the unions made up, get rid of it!) he has to pay for rent, food, clothes, electricity, and transportation- basic cable is a luxury for him. Better hope he doesn't have a family! And if he gets sick? Oh yeah, he's fucked.

Don't try to sweep this guy's existence under the rug- revel in his plight! Do the math yourself and laugh as this sorry destitute bastard tries to make ends meet by racking up debts he'll never be able to pay off! And then lean back with in your Aeron chair, resting your $800 Gucci loafers on your handmade hardwood desk, and feel proud of yourself; if it wasn't for your magnanimous fiscal policy, he wouldn't even have the job you so generously provided.

[fqllve]

That seems like a slight exaggeration, doesn't it? Unless all the businesses in the world got together around a giant cauldron of evil and plotted to lower all wages everywhere the actual average wage probably wouldn't go down that much. People just aren't gonna take a job that pays four dollars an hour these days. Not without tips, and not unless it involves playing video games or getting drunk.

Speaking of tips, does anyone else feel that waitresses get fucked by minimum wage law? What do they make $2.50/hr?

[Muz]

Minimum wage is not bad if done right. In Malaysia, you get about $0.60 a day working at Baskin Robbins, very high workload (because nobody else wants to work there), and it's barely enough to buy lunch or even pay for your transportation there. A lot of people realize that it's stupid to even work when you're literally losing money by working, but for some reason, they don't have a shortage of workers. And since asking about your wage loses you the job in the interview, they get a nice supply of voluntary slave labor.

But yeah, setting it too high creates more unemployment and outsourcing. You want to pay your employees as high as possible, it makes them far more motivated. But not be forced to pay them a minimum that companies can't afford. Australia has a minimum wage policy and I know a lot of small business openers who work around it by not registering their employees. Employment becomes low enough that desperate people would be willing to work illegally and underpaid for any job.

Speaking of tips, does anyone else feel that waitresses get fucked by minimum wage law? What do they make $2.50/hr?

The American culture of tips revolves around the idea that your food is cheaper with tipping and lower salaries. They expect to make much more than minimum wage.

[Majestic7]

This is incredibly false, at least when speaking about America.

Prove me wrong. If they haven't inherited them directly, they at least had a starting position with some wealth. Good examples are the Bush dynasty, the Koch brothers, Waltons, Cox Chambers, Paulson, Bren, Knight, Perelman, Mars family,Kaiser, Simons, Murdoch...just a name a few people. There are few cases here and there who are entirely self-made, sure, but they are exception ot the rule, not the most usual thing. I said "most" not "all". Just go through Forbes list, check the biography - most of them have wealth behind them from the beginning. Sure, most have increased that wealth, but that is the point. Resources create resources. Those who have no resources have nothing to play the game with and thus stay poor.The computer generation billionares all were in the right place at the rich time to make their money - and come from upper middle class families which provided them with the education they needed. For example, Bill Gates comes from a wealthy family - he certainly didn't inhereit his wealth, but he had a great starting point to make it. So your claim of falsity... is false.

Further, when we talk about wealth, not just about being super-rich, the difference is even more obvious. When we look at statistics on social mobility, the chances of making money are just so much greater if you are from an upper-income family than from other background. Resources attract resources it is simple as that and once enough pool together, those people control the whole society and make the rules so they won't lose their lot. The most important duty of the state should be to prevent that from happening. It doesn't matter whether they are Communist party insiders or Wall Street investors or hereditary nobility - if a small group of people can run a country, it will run it for its own interest and fuck up the rest of it. Pleeeenty of historical proof about that.

 

[Eugenitor]

My company had a round of layoffs when federal minimum wage hiked about a dollar last year. Thanks for the help, Washington!

Just two questions, and I don't mean to pry...

1. How many people does your company have who make more than, oh, eight times the minimum wage? Or thirty times, or fifty?

2. Assuming that the grand total of total company wages goes unchanged (including executive compensation and bonuses), by what percentage would their pay need to decrease to maintain the same level of employment with the new minimum?

Speaking of tips, does anyone else feel that waitresses get fucked by minimum wage law? What do they make $2.50/hr?

They do. Gratuities should be gratuities, not what they rely on to live. The restauranteurs found a good way to lower wages and they took it. Do you think that all the other businesses somehow won't?

[Dwarf]

I believe in communism, but not socialism. Socialism is the transition between a capitalist state and true communism in which there is no state; instead a "dictatorship of the proletariat" takes power; essentially, marxism, leninism and related beliefs believe in this transitionary state. As an anarcho-communist however, I believe that authority in itself is bad and must be abolished, as soon as possible. Instead of any state or nation, society would be organised in federations of increasingly small units; the smallest unit being a commune. Contrary to popular belief, freedom is the highest-held idea of (anarcho-)communism.

[Majestic7]

Okay, so we abolish the minimum wage and Dagger McWorkingPoor makes four dollars an hour selling Chinese goods at Squalor*Mart. With that four bucks an hour (~$640 a month, unless you toss aside the 40 hour work week.. and who ever needed *that*, anyway? That's just something the unions made up, get rid of it!) he has to pay for rent, food, clothes, electricity, and transportation- basic cable is a luxury for him. Better hope he doesn't have a family! And if he gets sick? Oh yeah, he's fucked.

Poverty is actually good business to some people - companies who offer small loans to people struggling to pay for their daily bills... and actually, in a system like that, things would likely bounce back to indentured servitude. You know, the good old days, when the worker lived in barracks owned by the company and all the living costs were deducted from the wages and so forth... Throw in corporate schools and presto, people jump in the wheel owning money to a corporation for their education and have to work it off.... 

[fqllve]

They do. Gratuities should be gratuities, not what they rely on to live. The restauranteurs found a good way to lower wages and they took it. Do you think that all the other businesses somehow won't?

I'd like to have more faith in the worker than that. If it wasn't state sanctioned I'd hope no one would take a job that pays that low.

The American culture of tips revolves around the idea that your food is cheaper with tipping and lower salaries. They expect to make much more than minimum wage.

Of course they expect to, and they do. But there are some real assholes and it would be nice if someone didn't have to rely on their kindness to make ends meet. Besides, aren't Americans notoriously bad tippers?

[Eugenitor]

Poverty is actually good business to some people - companies who offer small loans to people struggling to pay for their daily bills... and actually, in a system like that, things would likely bounce back to indentured servitude. You know, the good old days, when the worker lived in barracks owned by the company and all the living costs were deducted from the wages and so forth... Throw in corporate schools and presto, people jump in the wheel owning money to a corporation for their education and have to work it off.... 

I can make this even more awesome. Offer the drone a plausibly low interest rate on the loans you give him, with the caveat that they all come due if he ever leaves the company. Dazzle him with a projected-raise graph in which you show him that his wages in the future will be more than enough to pay off his debt.

Then every year, tell him that the economy's bad, times are tough, and that raise? Just not going to happen this year, we're very sorry...

Bonus points if you do it yourself instead of having a middle manager do it, while getting a pedicure and sipping Chardonnay! Nyahahaha!

Besides, aren't Americans notoriously bad tippers?

I leave the table bare of nothing but crumpled napkins and unwashed dishes, and if one of those lackeys has the temerity to ask where their tip is, I say "Here's a tip: Find a better job!"

[Eagle_eye]

It's really too bad I can't cite bay12 as as a source for my paper. 

Both socialism and communism are good under the right circumstances. Socialism only works when the government is democratic and often replaced, or else corruption sets in, and it just becomes feudalism under a different name. Communism only works in very small groups, as someone else stated earlier in the thread, and its perfect within those groups. it's when it becomes difficult to have every member of the community speak that the problems begin to arise. Once you get past the population where direct democracy is no longer practical, the possibilities for corruption in communism become almost infinite. A group that large won't be able to share information completely, so the rulers will always be able to hide things from the people, and as a result will be able to fool them and exploit them. Capitalism is a step up from feudalism, but it still locks the majority of the population in place. Scholarships only apply to the very brightest, whereas the most mediocre member of a rich family could probably get in on connections alone. The culture in America certainly contributes to that- these people feel entitled to their extreme wealth, or at least do an excellent job of seeming like it. Do they really need those millions to be happy? no. Could they put them to a better use to improve the lives of others? yes. Are there people out there who deserve greater wealth but don't have it? yes. Admittedly, there will always be lazy people who just sit around and only work when forced to, but its better for them to get a free ride than for deserving, hardworking people to live in poverty simply because they can't afford the education necessary to get a decent job.

[Phmcw]

I'm a bit annoyed at the prevalence of the socialist and communist ideology in the public mind when it come to directed economy.
Both have been written in the 1800's and fail obviously to take into account recent phenomenon (digital economy, drastic improvement of production power,...).
When you speak about socialist policies in northern Europe, you are pretty far from the Marxist theory, and the most relevant similarity is care for the less wealthy. But that is a quite common concern, and Sharia, for instance already put a tax for the rich to help the poor.

Now on the matter of "don't you dare to spend my money for me", that "money" is not the direct product of your labor, and the economical system is not a god-given perfect meritocracy.
Law of offer and demand hardly make everything fair, and you may indeed have to correct some inequalities that may arise.
The most easy example is Nikov's minimum wage : working in a capitalist system naturally lead to a compression of the workforce's salary. You have to put a stop at it if you don't want to have a significant part of your population living in misery.

There is different reason for that : being a decent human being is one, but no the only one. Very poor poeple are more likely to commit crime, and that is costly, are less educated, and therefore cripple democracy, as showed in the US by the teaparty (kudo for having a candidate to the presidency in a tele-reality emission, your politic have now sunk to a new low).

The last argument is actually freedom and the right to quest for happiness : you are not free when you are dirt poor.

[Nikov]

I'd say legislating wage creep, outsourcing to countries with lower minimum wage, loss of competitiveness internationally, pushing economic sectors to rely on illegal immigrants and the resulting unemployment of citizens to be "living in misery". And as for freedom, telling people they can't work unless they're worth $8.50 an hour isn't my definition of it. I hate to repeat the phrase, but the minimum wage and other bits of legislative do-gooding trades freedom for security and gives the poor neither.

[Shades]

I'd like to have more faith in the worker than that. If it wasn't state sanctioned I'd hope no one would take a job that pays that low.

Unfortunately your faith is misplaced, for some reason a large majority of the workforce feel they are greatful for a job at all and unless enough refused to accept it until it caused a problem for the companies paying such terrible wages then the situation continues. The downsides of a minimum wage are many and well documented, the downsides of not having one are still worse.

I'd say legislating wage creep, outsourcing to countries with lower minimum wage, loss of competitiveness internationally, pushing economic sectors to rely on illegal immigrants and the resulting unemployment of citizens to be "living in misery". And as for freedom, telling people they can't work unless they're worth $8.50 an hour isn't my definition of it. I hate to repeat the phrase, but the minimum wage and other bits of legislative do-gooding trades freedom for security and gives the poor neither.

Time and time again it's been shown enough companies will exploit people as much as possible that oversight is required unless we end up with an effect slave labour workforce. (ignoring the fact that we have more slavery now anyway than we had in any other point in history). And while I agree with you there is a large minority of the lowest paid who do suffer employment problems because it's cheaper to outsource the solution is not a removal of minimum wages.

[Tsarwash]

8.50 is not that high a level for a minimum wage. I have no idea what you earn, but i'd like to see you try to pay the mortgage and feed the family on that wage. In this country, that would not pay for a two bedroom flat in itself. Both parents would have to work, and then they would have to pay for childcare, which costs a bomb. Going to Uni to get a better wage is getting to be out of the option.

I don't know the economy or how much things cost over there, but you think it's right to pay people less than eight dollars an hour ? You measure the wealth of a country by how much the poorest people earn, not the richest.