Minimum Wage

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by Otto9210, Mar 20, 2011.

  1. keith1 Guest

    You may get to find out, if the first bailout just goes down a rat-hole, without marked result or solution.
     
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  3. Villiam Registered Member

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    My point of view minimum wage of the worker is not less than 500-1000 Doller. In this wage the basic needs is not fulfill.
     
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  5. YoYoPapaya Trump/Norris - 2012 Registered Senior Member

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    Where I live, no working adult gets less than $2500/month before taxes. Income tax is approximately 50% but we get free healthcare, education and social security benefits in return. Many american right wingers would describe this as horrible socialism. We don't care though because we are the happiest country on earth.
     
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  7. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Yes...some people hear the word "socialism," they think "The Russians coming to take away our freedoms!" or something.

    I think...hot Swedish woman...giving my aching back a government-sponsored massage...aaaahhh...
    Hey, if I could get fully-paid good healthcare, paid college, and paid retirement-that is worth half my pay!
    People don't think: hey, I cough up this money...and that means...I never have to worry about going bankrupt from having cancer. I never have to worry about ending up under a bridge or living in a box. I don't have to worry about dying because I can't afford medication. I can get my freaking teeth cleaned every six months. (I dunno about you, but the last time I had that done was 1999, when I was insured. Gotta find somebody who will for under $100 before they all fall out.)
    I never have to worry my insurance won't cover enough if I get in a car wreck. I never have to worry getting sick will mean being homeless too. I never have to live in my car.

    I worry about all the above...all the time...mostly the slow-death-from-asthma bit, but the homeless part too.
    If I get cancer the county will likely screw my care up and kill me anyway so I won't have to worry.
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2011
  8. YoYoPapaya Trump/Norris - 2012 Registered Senior Member

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    Alas dentist visits aren't covered... I wish they were...
     
  9. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    We (UK) get some dental covered, but working adults don't get much discount at NHS Dentists compared to private ones, although serious problems (overbites and reconstruction) would be taken care of by a Hospital and not a dentist, and get done for free that way.

    We also get a lot of free education, and healthcare, and social security. I love living in a socialist nightmare.

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  10. kororoti Registered Senior Member

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    It's a misconception that prices are tied to wages. They're tied to energy costs just as much. How much electricity do you think it costs to keep that grill hot at McDonalds?

    It's even more extreme when you look at truck driver wages. Most Semi Trucks get 6-8 miles to the gallon when carrying a load. With gas prices at 3 bucks a gallon, that means the fuel costs 37.5 cents per mile. (Assuming the larger figure of 8 miles to the gallon). And 36 to 38 cents per mile is also, interestingly enough.... an average wage for truck drivers. That's means the split is 50/50 between the driver and the fuel.

    http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_miles_per_gallon_do_semi-trucks_

    http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071115140036AAZWcyL

    If you raise wages, all you're doing is adjusting the split. I'd like to see the human part get higher than 50%.
     
  11. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Although it's true that energy prices ARE a major part of operating costs, your very first statement is outright false.

    While many businesses have become less employment-intensive due to things like automation (think automobile assembly lines), you are ignoring the fact that the U.S. is rapidly replacing it's industrial-based economy with a service-based one. And guess what that means? People, lots of people being employed. And along with that comes wages. And while benefits are declining, wages plus benefits STILL represents about 30% of the cost of a company's cost of doing business. So any increase in wages is *rapidity* reflected in prices of goods and services.
     
  12. kororoti Registered Senior Member

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    A "service based" economy is a myth. There is no such thing, and never will be. All economies are based on actual production of tangible goods, specifically food.

    If you try to build an economy that is not based on that, and only that, then you will invariably end up having to support it through inflationary spending, because people buy food and gas before they buy services. (Not saying it can't include services, but services can't be its foundation.)

    The United Arab Emirates isn't going to accept a bunch of back rubs or tax consultations in exchange for its oil. So if most of the value of the USD is represented in services, then we'll have to perpetually inflate it bigger and bigger in order to buy the same number of barrels every year.



    They're getting employed by way of spreading the spare change around thinner and thinner.
     
  13. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    I always had a hunch all economies were, strictly speaking, barter...and that paper money just covers that up.

    I thought showing why that was true would be way more complex than this...this is simple.

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  14. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Very sorry to have to point this out but this post of yours shows a total ignorance of economics - past AND current. The service sector is THE fastest growing part of the economy today - and the largest subset of that is in medical care. And the largest subset of that is "elder care" due to our rapid increase in the number of people now living beyond 60 years of age.

    I suggest that if you wish to keep posting in this thread that you go and get a decent education first so you can stop embarrassing yourself so badly.
     
  15. kororoti Registered Senior Member

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    Lol. The fact it's the fastest growing at the same time in history as our country undergoes an economic recession doesn't make any correlations for you?

    We could also hire everyone to go do jumping jacks all day in the park. That would give a lot of people jobs also. It doesn't mean we're building a viable economy that way.

    Where do you think the money for elder care and medical care come from? Most of it comes straight out of the US treasury. The same government treasury that keeps raising its own debt limit in order to borrow more money and expand the deficit. Recently the Federal Reserve has needed to start buying treasury bonds because private investors are losing faith in them, and nobody wants to see a "no sell". How much more of that kind of "growth" do you think our country can stand?
     
  16. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Right. In order to build wealth, I've held for a while that countries have to trade tangible goods for tangible goods. All real international trade is actually barter.

    The thing is, regular economic educations have turned out a bunch of economists whose advice has run our economy into the ground.
    This indicates clearly that there's something wrong with the established doctrine.

    The question is, what thing or things does it have wrong?
     
  17. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Not only do you fail to keep up with news as it happens - the medical industry was already the fastest growing segment BEFORE the economic meltdown! - the majority of the payment to that sector comes from taxes and is paid out through Medicare/Medicade AND private insurance policies.

    As I keep pointing out, your knowledge of U.S. economics is horrible!! You present nothing more than opinions derived from a narrow and uneducated viewpoint - mostly just wild guesses and disinformation. :bugeye:
     
  18. kororoti Registered Senior Member

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    I think the problem is our understanding of global inflation vs. local inflation. Local inflation is that sense in which goods are really being bartered, and sometimes the value of one good, relative to another, changes. IE. suppose the price of potatoes goes up, and the price of apples goes down. In a barter economy that would mean that apple traders were demanding more potatoes per apple.

    If the price of something produce-able such as TV sets goes up, then the supply will also go up. More workers will be hired to produce more cars. On the other hand, if the price of land or gold goes up, there's no course of action associated with that. You can't hire more workers to go out and produce more real estate or gold.

    It gets kind of dicey to pick it apart, because sometimes a purchase involves more than one thing. If you buy jewelry, you're buying both the gold itself, and the work a jeweler did to make it beautiful. If you buy a home, you're buying both the land, and the work the carpenters did to build a house on it. But,,,, in a recession, investors don't invest in the house. They only invest in the land, because only the land is expected to hold its value. We need to steer investment back towards things a worker can create.
     
  19. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

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    See post 2 at http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=2633701 and follow the links. There were some often quoted studies looking at the actual results of New Jersey and Washington State raising minimum wage. The prediction that business would leave the Washington state side of the Washington Idaho border region for the for Idaho's lower minimum wage did not turn out to be true.
     
  20. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    As I said before, your ignorance of economics in the U.S. is appalling. And I pointed out that you clearly underestimate the role the service sector plays in it.

    For your education and enlightenment, I'd like to point you to a current news article I just came across and suggest you read it: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4289756...omy/t/sharp-slowdown-vast-us-services-sector/

    And In case you fail to notice it, I'd like to point out one sentence: "The services sector makes up about 80 percent of the U.S. economy."

    If you fail to understand the importance of about 80% of the total economy then there's no hope for you. :shrug:
     
  21. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

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    Kororot's basic point is correct. I would feel better about the service economy if the USA was exporting more services.

    Part of the expansion of services n the USA is the result of working women hiring people to do the work that housewives used to do for free without that work counting as part of the GDP.

    The increase in financial, legal and marketing services mostly is zero sum economic activity that adds nothing to the wealth of the nation and yet still is counted as a economic activity by the GDP.
     
  22. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    No, his basic point is totally incorrect, sorry. The thrust of his position is that wages/salaries have no effect on the cost of goods/services. But the truth is they represent about 30% of the cost of doing business - and that's passed along directly to the consumer.

    And I also pointed out to him that THE greatest growth within the service sector is medically related goods and services - and that's due in large part to our rapidly aging population.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Low wages.

    Non unionized. No benefits, lower levels of work rule protections, etc. Temporary and contract employment. Servility to the whims of the rich.

    Hence the importance of a minimum wage. In an industrial society in which the wealthy don't even recognize their disproportionate benefits from roads, schools, and police (see the ignorance paraded above), nothing in their own comprehension or reason prevents them from destroying the base of the economic pyramid they (or more likely their relatives) climbed. They will try to create a world of barons and servants, because the alternative is them paying higher taxes and higher wages - and they are incapable of seeing that as a better world.

    If we could count on the rich people's "free market" setting honest wages, the only people who could afford servants and "service" would be those whose time and attention was actually that much more valuable and productive than the time and attention of the people they employed.
     

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