Minimum Wage Increase (again)

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AMaster, I think you misunderstand me. I am arguing in favor of an increase in the minimum wage. It seems like you took a lot of what I was saying out of context. For example, when I said:

You seem to think this meant that I wanted to maintain as many low wage positions as possible, and that all low wage position were absolutely necessary, by your reply:

When I wrote that, I was specifically referring to DW's comments that said that everyone could go to community college, get an education, and get a middle income job. I was saying it is just not possible for everyone to do that, because a lot of low income jobs are in fact necessary. It is not necessary for them to be such a low income, but there is a societal need to have these jobs performed. While I agree with you about fast food, I did not use that as an example. I used janitorial services and a person stocking the shelves at a food market. Janitorial services are required for simple sanitation, and while fast food isn't necessary, having food available is, so I do want someone working in the supermarket stocking the shelves. These jobs, while necessary, don't require much in the way of skills which is why I said:

I think your view is even more utopian that DW's based on your response of:

You think the guy who stocks shelves in the grocery store should receive the median income? In other words, that he will be exactly in the middle of wage earners, with just as many earning more than him that earn less than him. You think that's fair?

I do agree that he should be compensated more than the current minimum wage of $5.25 per hour of work, and would have no problem raising his wage to somewhere around $7 per hour. However, if he were earning $44K per year, that more like $22 per hour. My wife is an elementary school teacher and she doesn't make $44K per year. I'd like to think that her job requires more training and schooling than that of a guy stocking shelves. If everyone made that kind of money, what would be the incentive to invest tens of thousands of dollars in educational expenses when you could get a job that paid that much without going to a college or university?

Besides, most companies do offer some sort of group health plan for their employees, so if the guy works at a supermarket, he probably does have health care. Most people who are unisured are also unemployed.

Finally:

I've already covered this point at length in a previous post, so there's no real need to rehash it again. Besides, I agree with you. However, that is so far off base of what I was saying, I can't even understand why you brought it up.

 

I think you're right

Agreed.

I expressed myself poorly. I think the median income ought to be higher than $44k. Janitors earning $44k stems from that.

That's not an impossible goal--if the top percentile earned significantly less, it'd be perfectly feasible. It is, I'll grant, extraordinarily unlikely.

There are 46 million uninsured Americans.

 

I tend to agree with Milton Friedman (nobel prize for economics) who basically said that the minimum wage is a racist policy.

This makes sense to me.

 

I tend to agree with Joseph E. Stiglitz (Nobel Prize in Economics) who said

But I guess that's racist.

 

I didn't look it up, but assuming that number is true, it means that approximately 15% of the population is uninsured. As of December 2006 (the last month for which statisics are available) there were 13.5 million unemployed Americans, or 4.5%. It's a pretty safe bet that the vast majoirty of those 13.5 million aren't insured. Another factor that people do not bring up is that half the people who suffer from unemployment (and the poverty and lack of medical insurance that comes with it) are not old enough to work. Unemployed people still have kids (I don't know why), so that's another 13 million or so who are uninsured. I imagine that the remainder of the uninsured are non-unionized people who work for relatively small companies that simply cannot afford a company health plan.

To go back to the guy stocking shelves, if he works for a major grocery chain (Food Lion is a big one in the US) then chances are he's in a union and has a health plan. However, the guy that stocks the shelves at a local mom and pop's grocery store certainly isn't in a union. Mom and pop only employ six or seven people, so a group health plan is cost prohibitive. So I must admit that there are people who are employed and uninsured, but not many.

My reason for staying there aren't many is this: I don't think the 46 million uninsured Americans you sited includes the retired population using Medicare. As of the 2000 Census (which is the most recent) there were 35 million people on Medicare, so they can't possibly be included in the total. I found a statistic that 60% of the total population has health insurance that is employer-based. So if 60% have insurance from their employer, 15% don't have insurance at all, and 12% have government-provided insurance, there's still 13% that is unaccounted for. My guess is that those 13% must have health care that is non-employer bassed. They are either privately employed, or pay for their own in some other way.

That's a very good point. Even if it is true that raising the minimum wage does more good than harm, it doesn't do you any good if you are among the minority that are harmed.

I do not think that raising the minimum wage is racist at all. It implies that employers are less likely to hire someone who is black. The fact that a young black male is 10 times more likely than the general population to be unemployed probably has more to do with social constructs than racism. Where are the greatest number of poverty stricken people located? Inner cities. Where does a very large percentage of the black population live? Inner cities. However, regardless of what race you are, you're more likely to be poor and unemployed if you live in the inner city. The question that really needs to be asked here, if we want to play the race card, is why are there so many more blacks living in inner cities than whites?

 

I am not speaking of hope...I am speaking of reality. Reality is that life isn't fair, and that if we don't hold people responsible for their choices then we have anarchy. I am sorry if someone's social background is such that it makes it difficult to make decisions that will better them...however pretending that they can't make those decisions and have the ability to work their way out of that environment only leads to more dispair, false dispair in my opinion.

Oh, this is a slippery slope if there ever was one. Who determines what you do and do not deserve? Where do we draw the line? Is $1M a year ok, bot $1M+1 cent too much? Can we start applying this to other items as well, such as life, healthcare, retirement, food, cars, homes, leisure time, and number of children?

Another slippery slope. So does drinking, staying up late, playing video games, smoking, eating steak, not exercising and statistically even most sports. Are we prepared to champion all these causes as well...maybe we are, dodge ball is already gone from gym class.

On the "scale" in which it presently exists? Scale indicates that you are comparing, in the case the US to other nations. If you want to start a list of nations with inequality by severity you have a whole lot in front of the USA (like 99% of the world's nations) to go champion for. There are many nations where the majority of the people are worried about finding their next meal while their leaders live in palaces. In the US the number of people who do not know where their next meal is coming from is measured in decimal places under 1%. The majority of the "poor" in America own a vehicle, tv, microwave, cell phone, computer and a Playstation 2 or Xbox (if not both systems with a GameCube thrown in). Seriously, if the "inequality" in the US was so bad people would be crossing the boarder into Canada in droves.

Honestly, I admire the idealism...but at some point realism has to kick in.

 

I support the increase in minimum wage. I also think the 'invisible hand' is given a bit too much credit these days as a just arbiter the value of work. Another Nobel-prize winning economist (and AI pioneer) Herbert Simon once commented that 90% of the wealth of the very, very rich could be attributed to the stability of the social systems in which their businesses operate. Without a stable social system, which relies on people working jobs that won't make them rich (teachers, police, yada yada yada), your massively profitable hedge fund just isn't going to work.

 

Umm... no. Given the parameters stated by DW, all those people would be in community college, earning their degrees, to get better paying jobs when they got out. But I think we are in basic agreement here. We're basically stating the same thing from two different viewpoints. While it is reasonable to say that anyone can go to a community college in an effort to better their employment opportunities, it is quite another thing to expand this arguement to say that everyone can do so. My basic point is that since we don't see this happen very often, it implies that there's a lot more to it than just wanting to do it and making good decisions. If it were as simple as that, I think we'd see more success stories.

I'd also like to point out that I would love to see more people do as DW advises. If there were fewer people looking to get into these jobs, then market forces dictate that a lower supply of such workers would increase the wage they can expect to earn.

 

Aldeth

You're mistaken. According to the census bureau's page, which was where I acquired the number (for the year 2005), insurance includes both government coverage (Medicare/aid are both explicitly mentioned) and private coverage. Uninsured means "not covered by any type of health insurance at any time in that year".

DW,

Assuming that there's nothing that could--or should--be done to alter the circumstances that 'make it difficult to make decisions that will better them' is both incorrect and immoral.

reductio ad absurdium.

Indeed. However, none of these things are remotely comparable to being unable to afford healthcare.

More artificially restricted choices: commenting on poverty and ineqaulity in America does not preclude me from commenting on poverty and inequality in, say, Palestine.

Nor is 'other people are worse' a sound defense for one's own shortcomings.

That's an interesting number. According to the USDA, in 2005, 11% of American households suffered 'food insecurity' and an additional 3% had 'very low food security' (gotta love bureaucratese, eh?).

 

Oh really?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-hunger16nov16,1,1803133.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

 

Well, we are talking about Home Depot here, and as such, one of the darlings of Wall Street. Unfortunately for me, I own several hundred shares of their sorry stock, which has gone nowhere for several years. I keep telling myself that I will sell it, but my broker keeps telling me what a great company it is, despite its poor stock performance, and that it is so much better than Lowes.

I'm one of those angry shareholders, along with many others, but the board of directors has obviously sold us out. And so all that talk about how the shareholders matter, doesn't mean a whole lot to me. Those guys who can leverage millions of shares are probably the only ones who get any attention and matter to these large companies. BTW, they are hard at work buying up those little companies that are so talked about by those "free enterprisers." It's kind of like Napoleon once said, "God is on the side of the big battalions." He may have been speaking of corporate America.

 

I am not going to start quoting specific types of fallacious arguments here as this just leads to a debate becoming invalidated by everyone just trying to show how smart they are using Latin terms and debate lingo and losing sight of the objective (aka a pissing contest). The implication you make is that there is nothing done to help the poor in America and that I do not want anything to go done to give people a chance to help themselves, both implications being incorrect. There is a lot that is done, and much of it has been mentioned in this thread...welfare, government support of community and public colleges and universities, government subsidized day care...the list goes on and on. But let me ask you this, if we gave every person in Compton age 18 to 24 a $100k a year salary for 6 years so that they could get an education, how many of them would end up back in the exact same spot they were in 6 years later after the funds were cut off? It would be the VAST majority of them.

No, actually its not. There have been many cases of stepping on the slippery slope leading to all kinds of absurdities, besides the fact absurdity is a moral value...I think it is absurd that people get all worked up over how much other people make when they aren't even maximizing their own potential.

What level of health care are you speaking of? There are organizations out there that provide basic health care for the poor for free or at greatly reduced rates. Sorry, I know it isn't PC to say but lets get real: any adult who doesn't have basic health care coverage in America is there because of the choices they made (irregardless of social factors, they still made the choices). The items I listed that poor people all seem to have would pay for a lot of health care, yet I know 4 welfare moms who have all of these things and all 4 complain about the cost of their ADHD meds for their kids...which Medicare is paying most of anyway. Of course they never complain about the cost of wine or their birth control pills, but hey, you have to set priorities.

You are not addressing what I said in relation to your own comments. You said on the "scale of". By definition that means that you are placing the US on a scale...so what are you comparing us to? On the scale of all nations we are a long way from the bottom...but your argument makes it sound like we are one of the worst offenders. Is there inequality in the US...sure, there is everywhere...how much should we do to combat it...there is the rub as you quickly run into the law of diminishing returns. At what point does your fight to end inequality start to become a determent to a greater number of people that it is benefiting?

As far as the food argument goes you are overlooking important facts that are not factored into your statistics (...lies, damn lies and statistics, Mark Twain). There are government programs (WIC and Food Stamps), plus in every decent sized town in America there are food banks and places that will feed hungry people. Other than freak accidents like where people get lost in the woods or storms strand them in their homes there is no logical reason that anyone in America goes hungry. I probably miss more meals from skipped lunches because of having too much work than your average American poor person misses for lack of availability of food.

I know that it is not politically correct today to believe that any organization, be it a corporation or the government is doing the best it is capable of, but there will always be people who fall through the cracks, and if we try to catch as support every one of them we will all end up needing help and there will be no one to help us as we will break the economy trying to do the impossible. No, we cannot always do more, at some point you reach the maximum. It is hard for us as compassionate human beings to watch others suffer, as it should be, but we can't save everyone.

Edit to ask Chandos:

Aren't "those guys" also interested in making a profit off the shares they control?

 

You wouldn't know it from the way things are run....

 

@AMaster:

Agreed. However, doing things that provide only short term relief and do little if anything to fix the root cause of a problem - or, potentially make it worse - is equally incorrect and immoral. It can be argued that hikes in the minimum wage fall into the latter category.

 

How am I mistaken if it appears we are saying the same thing? Read what I wrote again, because maybe I'm the one who is missing something here, but I don't think so. Here's the quote of interest:

To paraphrase that statement, I said that retired Americans were not included because they have Medicare. In other words, those 46 million uninsured people are not, for the most part, retired Americans. That was the point I was trying to make from the start. If you're retired, then chances are you qualify for Medicare. If you qualify for Medicare, then you have medical insurance. Therefore you are insured, and by extention, you are not part of the 46 million uninsured Americans.

Further down in my previous post I even gave you the breakdown: 60% have employer-based insurance, 15% don't have any insurance at all, and 12% have government subsidized insurance (that's the 35 million using Medicare/Medicaid). I then used higher math skills to deduce that since the previous 3 figures add up to 87% of the population, that the other 13% must fall into a group that was not listed, and I guessed that these are people who are insured, but do not have insurance through their employer.

That's why I was stressing how important it was to find a job where one of the benefits is that the employer picks up a portion of the health care costs. The amount I pay out of pocket for health care is about 1/4 as much as I would be paying if I attempeted to purchase the same insurance independently of my company.

Onto Darkwolf:

So don't fight harder, fight smarter. I think the point that AMaster was trying to make is that we may not be using the resources we are expending in the best way possible. There are already some safeguards in place. In referencing the welfare moms you spoke of, AFAIK, you can't use food stamps to purchase things like cigarettes or alcoholic beverages. In regards to birth control pills, if they cannot adequately provide for the children they already have, the government subsidizing them $25 per month (the cost of a typical pack of birth control pills) through Medicaid so they don't end up having even more children seems like a sound investment. I don't have any children yet (though Mini-Fop is on the way), but I'm guessing the kid is going to cost a heck of a lot more than $25 per month.

 

I am on board with both of these statements...I have voted for every candidate that I can find that says they want to reform welfare...unfortunately that is a very short list. Welfare reform just isn't an issue that will get you elected, and is usually used as a bludgeon over the head of anyone who mentions it, just like social security reform, tax reform, tort reform, and just about any other kind of reform that anyone mentions. Mention any of these and immediately the opposition starts making statements like "My opponent wants to take away your social security", or "My opponent wants to give rich people a tax break", etc.

As I said earlier in this post, lets scrap the meaningless increase in minimum wage and look at ideas that will really accomplish something.

 

That is the last thing the establishment and the authority mongers would want: the politicians hate it, because people will vote for change (which will make them unemployed); the billionaires who run corporate Amercia hate it as well, because it results in only greater reform (progressive movements within society) and general unemployment means that people spend less (less money for them). Even people who are not unemployed spend less because they tend to be fearful that they may be next.

The results of the last historical high unemplyment in America - the Great Depression of the 1930s - resulted in only greater loss of corporate power and greater governmental control and reform (the New Deal).

Once the American people are put under this type of stress they tend to react very negatively towards those in authority. Since they have a large heritage of democratic revolution to draw upon, they tend to see themselves less as a manipulated "peasantry," as you suggest, but rather as independent citizens, who have access to the levers of government and the legal system (although the establishment has been attempting to limit their access). Nevertheless, ultimate power still resides with the people.

 

DW,

I misintepreted your response to what I wrote; my mistake.

You're probably right about fallacies leading to pissing contests and so on, so I'll leave that sort of thing alone.

Erm. I may well be misinterpreting again, but isn't that implicitly conceding the point that environment--how one is raised, by whom, where one is educated, the peers one is surrounded by, rolemodels, etc, etc.--has a major impact on one's chance of 'success'? Yeah, it's possible to overcome being raised by a single mother who encourages one enter the drug 'business' to make money, but it ain't likely.

Strawman, then?

But, the simplest answer is: I don't know. I don't know where or how to draw the line, and I take it from your question that neither do you. That doesn't mean a line shouldn't be drawn. It does mean I shouldn't be the one to draw it.

Health insurance.

So what? We live in the richest country in human history. It is well within our capacity to provide health insurance for all our citizens. It is well within our capacity to provide food for all our citizens.

Point being, those 'social factors' need to be addressed; as you yourself acknowledged earlier in your post, they have a major influence.

Perhaps. Not knowing any details other than 'they have these things', I can't say one way or the other.

Aside from that, however: "The plural of anecdote is not data". Show me some actual studies that come to the same conclusion you do, and I'll take your claim more seriously.

Semantics. What other nations are or aren't doing isn't relevant to what we are or aren't doing. Being 'better' is not the same as being 'good'; Dhamer was 'better' than Hitler (and no, I'm not calling saying America = Hitler).

The only scale that matters is what we're capable of. We're capable of a lower level of inequality than exists--we've had it in the past, after all. We're capable of a lower level of povery than exists, for the same reason.

They're not my statistics, they're the Bush admin's.

Can you demonstrate that the amount of food available via food stamps, food banks, soup kitchens, etc., is enough to feed the people suffering 'food insecurity'? Can you further demonstrate that more than simply being available somewhere, this food is available where it is needed (i.e., LA having a surplus of charitable food available doesn't help someone in San Diego)?

If not, you're relying on 'common sense', which is emphatically not reliable.

I want to make sure I'm understanding your argument before I respond to it: are you arguing that we literally cannot provide adequate food and healthcare for our citizens? That we cannot provide more/better food and healthcare for our citizens? That the present system is as good as it can be, and is the best of all possible systems?

If not, please clarify/restate/rephrase.

Rally,

No disagreement here. I view the minimum wage as rather like affirmative action; necessary, but necessary as part of a greater plan of action. Unfortunately, the 'greater plan' doesn't seem to exist in either case, and when not part of a 'greater plan', it's treating the symptoms, not the problem.

At risk of oversimplification (actually, I'm almost certainly oversimplifying), the overriding problem in both cases is education.

Aldeth,

You need to stop being correct every time we disagree, or my self-esteem will be hurt, and that will make me very cross.

Can't you, like, say something stupid to make me feel smart?

EDIT: jebus, I'm becoming Rags. That post was way too long.