And I can appreciate that. But what myself and many other posters have been saying is that the current government's stance that "nothing bad will happen" is false and that this isn't the way to help these people.
This policy will do far more harm than good not only to small businesses but also to the people we're all trying to help.
The last sentence is where I strongly disagree. The point I made earlier about the 2008 recession south of the border really in my opinion debunks this myth that no matter what it will be bad. If you look at the timelines, the raise in minimum wage by the full 41% was finalized at the exact time when the economy began to rebound. If what you are saying were a fact this would not have happened. I hope people can at the very least acknowledge that.
What I've learned from the last few pages is how important it will be to go out and vote in 2019. And also to have a strong right wing party that the majority of Albertans will support. Whether it's the Wild Rose or the PCs ( even the Alberta Party for that matter ) who pull ahead of the other by a wide margin or some kind of merger between them , because knowing there is a small section of people out there sharing the views of iggy_oi and from what I've seen from the NDP government so far another 4 years of them sounds just awful and not the kind of place I want to live it. I'd hate a vote split to result in this happening.
I hate to break this to you but I don't believe it's a small number of people who share my views. Also be careful what you wish for, voting with the mandate of anyone but party X is exactly what got the NDP in power in the first place. Same goes with the liberals at the federal level. Now that's not to criticize either party, but maybe people should go into an election campaign with an open mind and actually listen to what platforms each of the parties are planning on implementing so they can make and informed decision instead of just going in with this narrow minded approach.
I think those that take issue with iggy_oi's defence of raising minimum wage is, first, it seems grounded in an assumption that there is something about corporations that causes them to be evil or somewhat untrustworthy, and second, that he has yet to acknowledge the role of supply/demand in any of his equation.
There are ways to defend a minimum wage increase, but it does not start with the argument corporations are bad and that increasing the minimum wage will reduce poverty.
Even the NDP doesn't argue support of the increase in that way.
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I think those that take issue with iggy_oi's defence of raising minimum wage is, first, it seems grounded in an assumption that there is something about corporations that causes them to be evil or somewhat untrustworthy, and second, that he has yet to acknowledge the role of supply/demand in any of his equation.
There are ways to defend a minimum wage increase, but it does not start with the argument corporations are bad and that increasing the minimum wage will reduce poverty.
Even the NDP doesn't argue support of the increase in that way.
I'm pretty sure I've acknowledged supply and demand. It's a pretty simple concept. Corporations are what they are, evil? That's a little dramatic. Untrustworthy? Innocent until proven guilty in all cases, but that doesn't mean we have to naively believe everything they do is in our best interest.
Since everyone who used supply and demand as an argument for why minimum wage shouldn't be raised didn't respond to my questions about whether or not we should eliminate or reduce minimum wage and whether or not that could help lower prices, I'm guessing they may have realized how supply and demand and the invisible hand doesn't always work to keep an economy going. At least not on its own.
There is a large numbered of unskilled workers available, and there is a low demand. By your logic unskilled labour jobs should be paid less because of this. Now what happens when you lower people's wages? They have less they can spend. Now when businesses start to lose customers they can try and lower their prices to bring in more business, but it won't grow their business, just maintain it. Supply and demand would suggest that a business will continue to drop prices when a product or service is not in demand. But here's the catch, those businesses have costs to provide those services, they can't continually lower their prices because their suppliers may not be dropping their prices at the same rate.
We live in an age where we are importing products from all over the world, so when our economy is in recession it doesn't mean the rest of the world's is. One way minimum wage regulates the economy is be ensuring that enough dollars are being reinvested into our economy. If we just let the invisible hand and supply and demand dictate everything there would be no minimum wage right now and workers would be getting paid peanuts because there is such a big supply of workers that companies would lower their wages because they know people will take what they can get. But while their business might be profiting from it, other businesses would lose consumers eventually because there is only so far that a business can drop their price, and then those employers would need to lower their employees wages, and the downward spiral would continue. But the problem is there is a limit to how much a business will be able to decrease their costs.
Using a grocery store for example, they can reduce their employees pay, but that will reduce their employees spending which which will hurt other businesses, so those businesses will start to look for ways to cut costs, they can reduce their employees wages, so that'll take away customers from that grocery store. Ok now let's say the grocery store decides to lower prices to get more customers because they can't cut wages anymore for whatever reason, that might help bring in more business, but again it's not growth because their costs didn't go down. Speaking of those costs, what happens when supplier prices go up because the geographic region your business operates in isn't their only customer? You've already reduced wages to the point where people can't survive on that wage, you can't lower your prices to increase business because you'll become unprofitable, and you can't raise your prices because the demand isn't there. The invisible hand really worked there didn't it?
Economies need regulation, so saying that supply and demand and the invisible hand should dictate everything as an argument for not increasing the minimum wage seems fairly ignorant to the implications of doing so.
I'm pretty sure I've acknowledged supply and demand. It's a pretty simple concept.
It is a pretty simple concept, but not all get it, including you if you consider some of your posts. For example, this was what you said in post 3434 in this thread, responding to someone who commented that minimum wage jobs suck because they require the least skilled:
Some people don't have other options and who really gets to judge which jobs make what?
The answer is, nobody gets "to judge", to use your words. The market does. Its millions of people making decisions, you get a supply curve, and you then get a demand curve. The market resolves itself.
You demonstrated a further lack of understanding of supply and demand in your post 3467, when you commented as follows:
Do you both feel that someone is making more of a contribution to society by being unemployed or on welfare than they would by being a tax paying worker?
I just can't wrap my head around how you continually attack people working these jobs as somehow less important than others making the same contribution to the workforce.
The point being, first, some of those who have only the skill to do those jobs are going to have no job at all, and second, wages are not measured by contribution to society.
Some of those who do "those jobs" as you call them, are going to hit the welfare line.
A social justice argument is a much different argument than supply and demand, separate them.
This was just a five minute exercise of reviewing some of your posts, there are others where you do make the claim of corporations being inherently unfair, "will do anything" to make a profit and the like, I can bring those up to this part of the thread if you don't recall them.
Last edited by Kjesse; 10-02-2016 at 09:59 PM.
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It is a pretty simple concept, but not all get it, including you if you consider some of your posts. For example, this was what you said in post 3434 in this thread, responding to someone who commented that minimum wage jobs suck because they require the least skilled:
Some people don't have other options and who really gets to judge which jobs make what?
The answer is, nobody gets "to judge", to use your words. The market does. Its millions of people making decisions, you get a supply curve, and you then get a demand curve. The market resolves itself.
You demonstrated a further lack of understanding of supply and demand in your post 3467, when you commented as follows:
Do you both feel that someone is making more of a contribution to society by being unemployed or on welfare than they would by being a tax paying worker?
I just can't wrap my head around how you continually attack people working these jobs as somehow less important than others making the same contribution to the workforce.
The point being, first, some of those who have only the skill to do those jobs are going to have no job at all, and second, wages are not measured by contribution to society.
Some of those who do "those jobs" as you call them, are going to hit the welfare line.
A social justice argument is a much different argument than supply and demand, separate them.
This was just a five minute exercise of reviewing some of your posts, there are others where you do make the claim of corporations being inherently unfair, "will do anything" to make a profit and the like, I can bring those up to this part of the thread if you don't recall them.
You are really oversimplifying how economies work, we don't live in a 100% capitalist economy so supply and demand does is not regulate our entire economy. If nobody ever got to judge how much an employee makes there wouldn't be a minimum wage. When I asked why someone felt entitled to judge an employee's worth I was referring to the poster who I was replying to who was stating that certain jobs should earn minimum wage while arguing against raising it because that's what they deserve, at that point he is not opposing raising minimum wage for economic reasons, he's opposing it because he feels as though they are making enough, truth be told if there was no minimum wage those workers would potentially earn less.
No wages alone do not gauge how good or bad of a contribution to the economy a person makes, for many of the same reasons the number of employees an employer has does not gauge theirs. Someone making minimum wage could potentially make just as much or more of a contribution than someone making 3 times the amount, I've already made that point fairly clear in response to jacks post about the number of people he keeps employed. That being said, it'd have to be some pretty rare circumstances for a person to be making less of an economic contribution while being a tax paying employee than if they were on welfare which seems to be what you're suggesting.
I truly love the certainty of self central to most of these augments against raising the minimum wage. It's almost like iggy oi is arguing against the second law of thermodynamics to some of you.
Except the scholarship on the impact of the minimum wage is anything but. Any self professed economist would begin by acknowledging that the research is very open to interpretation.
A cup of humility and greater inquiry for some of you would do this conversation well.
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I am seriously beginning to worry that people who think like iggy_oi are spread throughout the Alberta NDP.
These people have convinced themselves, through a feat of cognitive dissonance, that these sort of measures (minimum wage hike, carbon tax, tax hikes) happen in a vacuum and have no impact on the economy... No impact other than of course, these evil corporations taking it out on poor Joe Blow for raising takes and firing him in a fit of revenge, apparently.
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I truly love the certainty of self central to most of these augments against raising the minimum wage. It's almost like iggy oi is arguing against the second law of thermodynamics to some of you.
Except the scholarship on the impact of the minimum wage is anything but. Any self professed economist would begin by acknowledging that the research is very open to interpretation.
A cup of humility and greater inquiry for some of you would do this conversation well.
Certainty of self is central to most of the the arguments in this thread against raising minimum wage? Are you able to explain that? I'll brush off my Rene Descartes materials if need be.
I am seriously beginning to worry that people who think like iggy_oi are spread throughout the Alberta NDP.
These people have convinced themselves, through a feat of cognitive dissonance, that these sort of measures (minimum wage hike, carbon tax, tax hikes) happen in a vacuum and have no impact on the economy... No impact other than of course, these evil corporations taking it out on poor Joe Blow for raising takes and firing him in a fit of revenge, apparently.
I'm sorry you're worried people who think are spread across the province.
I'm also sorry that you clearly won't even bother to read my posts in which I've gone over many points that discuss how intertwined many factors that play into our economic health are. Instead you choose to go on sarcastically about how by disagreeing with your position there must be something wrong with myself or others who share my position and your best way to get your point across is to resort to the tactic of attempting to pass off your theories on what someone is basing their position on as fact
iggy_oi is hardly the only one. There's a lot of people here who seem to have glommed on to ideologies without understanding not only their basic tenets, but the fundamentals of the systems they supposedly hate. There's very little willingness to learn, preferring strength in ignorance.
I'd say that strengthens Tinordi's point pretty well. What a terrible post.
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I truly love the certainty of self central to most of these augments against raising the minimum wage. It's almost like iggy oi is arguing against the second law of thermodynamics to some of you.
Except the scholarship on the impact of the minimum wage is anything but. Any self professed economist would begin by acknowledging that the research is very open to interpretation.
A cup of humility and greater inquiry for some of you would do this conversation well.
Sure. Except...the NDP have, without equivocation or exception, indicated that the minimum wage hike will have 'no effect on Alberta's economy.'
Now, thats strong terminology. You can look that up in your Dictionary. It means 'Nothing is going to happen."
Now, if that were the case whats the point in doing it? No one does a thing for no reason. Well...I'm sure Flash will inform us that raising minimum wage will generate 'Political Capital' which is more than all the Capital any of us will ever need.
Anyways, If they meant 'no adverse effect on Alberta's economy' then that would be a statement worth noting, but it also means something. If the economy tanks they can still point to poor oil prices but now they've done just one more of their litany of actions to make things worse.
But they assured us it would have no effect. It was just going to make things better by literally not changing anything. It was going to make things better by...well...magic apparently.
Before you return your thesaurus for a full refund (which you wont get now that its been used, presumably in a bookstore bathroom) I recommend you do some reading.
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Sure. Except...the NDP have, without equivocation or exception, indicated that the minimum wage hike will have 'no effect on Alberta's economy.'
Now, thats strong terminology. You can look that up in your Dictionary. It means 'Nothing is going to happen."
Now, if that were the case whats the point in doing it? No one does a thing for no reason. Well...I'm sure Flash will inform us that raising minimum wage will generate 'Political Capital' which is more than all the Capital any of us will ever need.
Anyways, If they meant 'no adverse effect on Alberta's economy' then that would be a statement worth noting, but it also means something. If the economy tanks they can still point to poor oil prices but now they've done just one more of their litany of actions to make things worse.
But they assured us it would have no effect. It was just going to make things better by literally not changing anything. It was going to make things better by...well...magic apparently.
Before you return your thesaurus for a full refund (which you wont get now that its been used, presumably in a bookstore bathroom) I recommend you do some reading.
Thanks for the agreement with my post and the 13 sentences of non-sequiturs, unhinged ranting and ad hominem attack.
It? I get your opinions, I just don't agree with them. If you're set in your views and aren't open to hearing any others, why even bother following a thread discussing it?
How many time do you whack your head on the door frame until you start ducking? 10, 20, 30 ? never?
Come back when you've got something intelligent to add. Just showing up and driving by has gotten old.
It's Tinordi. This is all he's got. Let him have it.
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