American Politics 3.0 - Back to Brunch

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by ResAlien

This is a good start

https://twitter.com/user/status/1354119715849981953

Next abolish ICE.

Be nicer if it included immigration detention centres and I don't quite understand why it couldn't have. Maybe someone can educate me.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1354124288782024704

https://twitter.com/user/status/1354124551987154945

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by ResAlien

Again if the economic model is that exploiting labour enables your business to thrive it is a bad model. The answer is not to keep the same exploitative model in place because it might hurt the exploiters. This is hard to grasp huh?

Why is $15 a magic number that is the difference between exploiting or not? And do you really think that number is universal across the continent? You seem to be the one having difficulty grasping anything other other than throwing out overly simplistic platitudes.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by tripin_billie

I agree that the Federal rate going to $15 would be tough, and that states could do this on their own. The problem is that there are some predictable states that won't. The quality of life disparaties between states is getting obscene.

I just think it should have a geographic cost of living adjustment. I feel like someone making $11/hour in some areas has a better quality of life than someone making $15 in some urban areas.

[tripin_billie]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Why is $15 a magic number that is the difference between exploiting or not? And do you really think that number is universal across the continent? You seem to be the one having difficulty grasping anything other other than throwing out overly simplistic platitudes.

$15 isn't magic, but it's certainly closer to what it needs to be than the current $7.25...

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

I just think it should have a geographic cost of living adjustment. I feel like someone making $11/hour in some areas has a better quality of life than someone making $15 in some urban areas.

It's hard to tell if you're arguing against $15 because it's too high in some places, or too low in others.

Why not $20 then? and states significantly above that can have higher minimum wages?

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

The problem I have is why is $15 this magic number that is the right number for the whole country? $15 is nothing in NYC, while it let you live very comfortably in Iowa.

If a small town economy is set up so that rent is cheap, food and other goods are inexpensive, then a big boost in min wage is going to disrupt that whole local economy.

Calgary has a $15 min wage, and when I go back there I am shocked at how expensive everything is. There are a lot of places in the US that $7-8/hour will go a whole lot further than $15 would in Calgary.

It's not a magic number, but it's a reasonable start. It's one of those don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good situations. If $15 is nothing in NYC, then maybe the market will mandate a higher wage there, but you still need a floor. $2 is obviously not a good floor. $4 isn't, either, but we're getting warmer. You can kind of do that all the way up to a certain point, and it looks like $15 has been deemed to be that point.

A move like this can also serve to educate people that they are exploiting others. When Alberta announced they were going up to $15, I supported it and bumped all my affected staff up to higher salaries to make sure they were being compensated fairly relative to minimum wage. I did have some at $15 when I think MW was $12 or whatever it was. I put them up to $18 upon the announcement of the new wage and just bumped up my prices accordingly. Profit margin didn't change and my customers paid the increase (as they should).

Businesses are just going to have to adjust what they charge. It shouldn't be hard, either, as they do it all the time. Prices on raw materials, rent, utilities, insurance, etc. are always in a state of flux and businesses adjust to react. Labour is no different - you'll hear a lot of prick business owners bellyaching about it, but really all they have to do is adjust their prices and that'll be that. All their competitors will be doing the same so they lose nothing with respect to a competitive advantage they may have had if they exploited worse than their peers.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Sliver

It's not a magic number, but it's a reasonable start. It's one of those don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good situations. If $15 is nothing in NYC, then maybe the market will mandate a higher wage there, but you still need a floor. $2 is obviously not a good floor. $4 isn't, either, but we're getting warmer. You can kind of do that all the way up to a certain point, and it looks like $15 has been deemed to be that point.

A move like this can also serve to educate people that they are exploiting others. When Alberta announced they were going up to $15, I supported it and bumped all my affected staff up to higher salaries to make sure they were being compensated fairly relative to minimum wage. I did have some at $15 when I think MW was $12 or whatever it was. I put them up to $18 upon the announcement of the new wage and just bumped up my prices accordingly. Profit margin didn't change and my customers paid the increase (as they should).

Businesses are just going to have to adjust what they charge. It shouldn't be hard, either, as they do it all the time. Prices on raw materials, rent, utilities, insurance, etc. are always in a state of flux and businesses adjust to react. Labour is no different - you'll hear a lot of prick business owners bellyaching about it, but really all they have to do is adjust their prices and that'll be that. All their competitors will be doing the same so they lose nothing with respect to a competitive advantage they may have had if they exploited worse than their peers.

I think $15 is the number that a lot of people on both coasts see as a reasonable floor. There's a whole swath of country in between that will not absorb that easily. There is some level you can raise min wage to that will close businesses and put people out of work. I think $15 is above that threshold in parts of the country. Then what, they should all just move to the coasts?

[GGG]

https://worldpopulationreview.com/st...index-by-state

The above is a link for a few metrics.

The lower costs states are about 80% of average with the higher cost states being about 30% more.

So a 10-18 dollar scaled wage would likely make more sense than a flat $15

[PsYcNeT]

I still maintain that if your business model is predicated on underpaying your labor, and would "go under" because of a minimum wage increase, you are bad at business.

In reality, most owners just don't want to take the haircut, not because they can't afford it. People vastly overestimate the level of altruism that exists among small business owners. The biggest lie ever told is "If I could afford to pay them more, I would!"

[tripin_billie]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

I just think it should have a geographic cost of living adjustment. I feel like someone making $11/hour in some areas has a better quality of life than someone making $15 in some urban areas.

That's a way of doing it, but I could see locality changes becoming hyper-partisan. It's like pay for Federal jobs, there are a bunch of localities and then rest of country. Getting a new locality created is a challenge in itself. Then, because of where Feds are, the localities that have a lot of Feds have artificially low rates compared to what they really likely should be. For example, the locality pay is essentially the same between Detroit and DC, and I can assure you DC is way more expensive to live in than Detroit...

TL;DR it would just open another front in the forever war of partisanship

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

I still maintain that if your business model is predicated on underpaying your labor, and would "go under" because of a minimum wage increase, you are bad at business.

In reality, most owners just don't want to take the haircut, not because they can't afford it. People vastly overestimate the level of altruism that exists among small business owners. The biggest lie ever told is "If I could afford to pay them more, I would!"

Yeah, and what's so bad about businesses going under, anyway? If you can't sell your goods and services for a price that people are willing to pay and that will cover your costs, then you don't have a good business.

Poor people should not have to subsidize businesses with their labour. That's exploitation.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Yeah, and what's so bad about businesses going under, anyway? If you can't sell your goods and services for a price that people are willing to pay and that will cover your costs, then you don't have a good business.

Poor people should not have to subsidize businesses with their labour. That's exploitation.

I guess if you think someone working in a small town in the midwest is being exploited by making less than $15/hour, where rent is $400, and a dinner at the local diner is $4, then I would say paying someone less than $30/hour in Calgary is exploitative.

You don't want to shut down all the businesses in a local economy that is built around cheap land, cheap rent, cheap labor, and cheap goods and services and turn a perfectly happy small town into a ghost town, do you?

I don't think $15 min brute force min wage will clear congress for these reasons. I don't think that it is good for the democratic party if they implemented something that shuts down a lot of business and puts people out of work in many areas across the country.

[ResAlien]

So you dislike the federal minimum wage. More of a states rights kind of guy who would prefer if they made their own choices on what to pay or not pay people in their states?

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by ResAlien

So you dislike the federal minimum wage. More of a states rights kind of guy who would prefer if they made their own choices on what to pay or not pay people in their states?

Do you have anything intelligent to offer?

[calf]

Paying people more means there will be more people with more money to spend at these businesses too. That might help them be able to pay their people more.

[ResAlien]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Do you have anything intelligent to offer?

I’ll take that as a yes. It was a simple question. As you’ve presented it you don’t like the federal minimum wage and would like states to be able to dictate what their own minimum wage is according to the $4 dinner plan. It’s not for me but states rights are quite popular with a lot of people.

[Derek Sutton]

Originally Posted by ResAlien

I’ll take that as a yes. It was a simple question. As you’ve presented it you don’t like the federal minimum wage and would like states to be able to dictate what their own minimum wage is according to the $4 dinner plan. It’s not for me but states rights are quite popular with a lot of people.

Yah, the USA is so large, there are so many factors. $15/ hour in NYC won't go quite as far as it does in Havre MT. State legislated minimum wages makes more sense doesn't it? Please enlighten me as to why it doesn't.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Derek Sutton

Yah, the USA is so large, there are so many factors. $15/ hour in NYC won't go quite as far as it does in Havre MT. State legislated minimum wages makes more sense doesn't it? Please enlighten me as to why it doesn't.

Because Republicans and their supports are either a-holes or morons and won't voluntarily pay fair wages unless they're forced to do so.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by calf

Paying people more means there will be more people with more money to spend at these businesses too. That might help them be able to pay their people more.

There is some level of increase where that is true. But in areas where min wage doubles or triples, the local economy is not going to absorb that increase, and people will be put out of work.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

It's hard to tell if you're arguing against $15 because it's too high in some places, or too low in others.

Why not $20 then? and states significantly above that can have higher minimum wages?

Tying salary to where a person lives versus where they work seems to be asking for new problems.