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2015-04-11 Economy
Feeling the pain of a $12.25 minimum wage
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Posted by Fred 2015-04-11 00:00|| || Front Page|| [8 views ]  Top

#1 Just wait until it hits $15/h. All your Starbucks will go out of business. Or get robots.

Either way... the people that actually need the minimum wage jobs are fucked.

Enjoy your progressive paradise!!
Posted by DarthVader 2015-04-11 01:18||   2015-04-11 01:18|| Front Page Top

#2 All your Starbucks will go out of business. Or get robots.

Discussing race relations with a robot might actually be an improvement.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2015-04-11 05:23||   2015-04-11 05:23|| Front Page Top

#3 All your Starbucks will go out of business. Or get robots.


$5.00 coffee is not for me. I go to 'Quick Trip' or buy online and save !
Posted by Besoeker 2015-04-11 05:42||   2015-04-11 05:42|| Front Page Top

#4 Hell raise it to 25 dollars an hour. Central Planning(tm) should work at least once through sheer chance. <- Left Right over there in the .0005% of probability ->
Posted by Procopius2k 2015-04-11 09:22||   2015-04-11 09:22|| Front Page Top

#5 Central planning has zero chance of working.

Why?

You can only plan yourself.
Posted by Bright Pebbles 2015-04-11 09:45||   2015-04-11 09:45|| Front Page Top

#6 BP! To the re-education fun camp wih you!
sined:
Hysterical Prog
Posted by AlmostAnonymous5839 2015-04-11 09:53||   2015-04-11 09:53|| Front Page Top

#7 Oh! The government will always just print more money! That's how economics works.
Posted by AlmostAnonymous5839 2015-04-11 09:55||   2015-04-11 09:55|| Front Page Top

#8 Raising minimum wage also raises all the other wages between the old and new minima. Further, I understand a lot of union contracts have minimum wage multipliers embedded in them. Eventually the whole manpower cost structure shifts upward. Prices go up.
Workers have more money to spend though, so once everything shakes out, we might be back where we started (as long as government outlaws automation.) There is one big exception to that - since income taxes are 'progressive', inflation of the wage structure increases government tax revenues by MORE than the wage increase.
Posted by Glenmore 2015-04-11 10:26||   2015-04-11 10:26|| Front Page Top

#9 It's called Supply and Demand. Flood the labor market and you drive down wages. Minimum wage is just a patch to cover the damage caused by that act. H/T Powerline -

The first “great wave” of U.S. immigration took place from roughly 1880 to 1930. During this time, according to the Census Bureau, the foreign-born population doubled from about 6.7 million to 14.2 million people. Changes were then made to immigration law to reduce admissions, decreasing the foreign-born population until it fell to about 9.6 million by 1970. Meanwhile, during this low-immigration period, real median compensation for U.S. workers surged, increasing more than 90 percent from 1948 to 1973….

In the 1960s, Congress lifted immigration caps and ushered in a “second great wave.” The foreign-born population more than quadrupled, to more than 40 million today.

This ongoing wave coincides with a period of middle-class contraction. The Pew Research Center reports: “The share of adults who live in middle-income households has eroded over time, from 61% in 1970 to 51% in 2013.” Harvard economist George Borjas has estimated that high immigration from 1980 to 2000 reduced the wages of lower-skilled U.S. workers by 7.4 percent — a stunning drop — with particularly painful reductions for African American workers. Weekly earnings today are lower than they were in 1973.
Posted by Procopius2k 2015-04-11 10:42||   2015-04-11 10:42|| Front Page Top

#10 Further, I understand a lot of union contracts have minimum wage multipliers embedded in them.

My Dad the Teamster Terminator used this a lot. My understanding is that such clauses are exceedingly rare and a minimum wage raised is just that. Now, however it does lead to wage compression which is either

A. Good
B. Bad

So pay more for the same shit, but maybe the guy across the counter buys another carton of Winstons per year, all the while the junior assistant night manager watches and considers stuff.
Posted by Shipman 2015-04-11 14:26||   2015-04-11 14:26|| Front Page Top

#11 Why not index the Federal minimum wage to annual inflation. Should basically zero out.
Posted by Vernal Spavins7649 2015-04-11 16:38||   2015-04-11 16:38|| Front Page Top

#12 ...the real rate of inflation or the fake one the Feds use to keep their 'inflation adjusted' pensions from expanding like a exploding nova?
Posted by Procopius2k 2015-04-11 18:53||   2015-04-11 18:53|| Front Page Top

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