My point is, don't blame the company for not paying a "living wage" for these positions. They were never intended to provide a career or a sustainable income.


And my point is their 'intent' is either irrelevant if Trail is correct, or non-existent from my POV in regards to the suitability as a career for the position. I think they neither know nor care who takes the position or why.

And the point of people in favor of a minimum wage is that we aren't blaming them. But we are requiring them to pay a minimum amount.

I don't know if you are against any minimum or not. And I am not saying the minimum should be set at a 'living wage' for 30 or even 40 hours. I'm fine with determining what a 'living annual income' is and setting it based on 50 hours/week. I'm pretty certain that will fall below 15/hr, and not sure how much above the 7/1/2018 amount of 10.10/hr.

The biggest change I would make though is tying it to an index so it doesn't stay unchanged for 10 or more years.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I'm really not sure how you are missing this. Employers don't care who takes the position or why. But, the position was never created to be a career and was never intended to pay enough to be a career. The expectation is these positions will be filled by a certain demographic. If they are not, the employer does not care, so long as the position in filled. But, to then berate the employer for not providing a "living wage" to a person trying to support a family on the pay from that position is irrational and ridiculous.


I agree with this. Perhaps we are talking past one another regarding the earlier point. My comments on that point are more geared towards those in this thread who assert minimum wage should be set at a level that provides a "living wage" at 40 hours/week. According to this website, in San Francisco, a "living wage" for 1 adult and 1 child is $32.18. You are not going to see fast food cashiers making $32.18/hr because that position was never intended to provide enough to sustain a family.

http://livingwage.mit.edu/

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Fucking lawyers anyway. Now who do I bill for this conversation?

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I've been billing Dan for adding so much content to his website.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

https://www.wsj.com/...imum-wage-1498692030
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"The labor unions underwriting the Fight for $15 campaign have activated the phone trees to impugn the study’s credibility. Proponents of the increase point to a report released last week from the University of California-Berkeley that purported to find no adverse effects from Seattle’s move. Yet the Washington study relied on sophisticated and detailed data about hours and earning, while Berkeley deployed the restaurant industry as a proxy.
One political subplot: Last week wage and employment expert Michael Saltsman wondered why Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s office was pumping the Berkeley report when the city had commissioned its own studies from the Washington researchers. According to reporting in the Seattle Weekly, the mayor’s office knew the damning report was coming. Berkeley scholars were offered an advance copy to rebut the claims. This looks more like coordinating press releases than honestly addressing the Seattle evidence."
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This piece kind of sums up where we are. Seattle mayor eschews the more comprehensive (and bi-partisan) study they set up as part of the plan, in favor of a more narrow one that says more what he wants to hear. Seattle mayor is willing to continue on a road that actually hurts those he originally claimed to want to help. The whole thing reminds me of Obama saying to raise capital gains tax, even if it garners less revenue, because it's more "fair". In Seattle, is this just a liberal position protection thing, acquiescence to unions, or what?

You should be more careful who you cite as supporting your view:

http://civicskunkworks.com/tag/michael-saltsman/


Wage and employment expert: ha. Paid shill is more like it.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Does civicskunkworks just support your own worldview? Here's the bio of the leader of Civic Ventures, which runs that blog:
http://www.nickhanauer.com/philanthropy

I'm curious to see what his take is on the independent Washington study of the most recent wage hike.
https://www.facebook.com/...sts/1594841647254948

Whoops I guess we won't be getting that, just biased bullshit from an ideological shill. Oh and this is fucking RICH:
Though Civic Ventures promotes many progressive concepts, it is not beholden to the traditional political framework of liberal versus conservative; an idea’s value and utility should be more important than its origin.

Is what they said about Saltsman true or not?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Yeah sure, Saltsman is clearly a conservative lobbyist shill. Will you admit that your source to expose that is a progressive shill himself?
https://www.forbes.com/...speech/#68a38ea81bee

Everyone has their own biases...good thing we have firm data from a non-partisan research group in Washington to examine the real figures, unlike the partisan, biased Berkeley study that both Seattle's mayor and Nick Hanauer hang their hat on. It's curious, these folks are doing all they can to help the poor...except when the data doesn't support their worldview they ignore reality in the name of ideology.

The Washington study is going to be extremely hard for the hard left economists (of which the NY Times used exclusively) to repudiate. May I suggest you read the actual study instead of just reading the NY Times, very biased article. The study in Washington was not done by a conservative think tank. It was completed on behalf of the City of Seattle (not a conservative city), and it was done with REAL data. Seems as if the only one reporting anything because it fits their world view, is you.

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Saltsman is just a guy they referenced as pointing out something, not a support for anything I've said. If you go back to the Bloomberg article I cited earlier, you find a link to the study that Seattle set up, and the authors are listed there. If Megan Mcardle (whom I do like) is correct, they made a point of having folks from various political persuasions work on the study.
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"In the summer of 2014, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a bill increasing the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. “No city or state has gone this far. We go into uncharted territory,” said council member Sally Clark. The City of Seattle, to its credit, actually made some effort to chart the waters as they went, funding an ideologically diverse research team at the University of Washington whose members range from Jacob Vigdor, who is a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, to Hillary Wething, a graduate student who used to be a fellow at the left-wing Economic Policy Institute."
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https://www.bloomberg.com/...to-a-15-minimum-wage
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http://www.nber.org/papers/w23532.pdf

The NYTimes article gave both studies, and criticisms of both studies. Imagine that, coming from the very biased NYTimes.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

This is what kills me...having kids is among the worst choices a person can make financially. The whole living wage for these types of discussions should be based on an individual sharing an apartment with 2-3 similar individuals, think permanent college living.

Related to the discussions about employer intentions, I think you both were missing the crux of it. An employee needs to provide more value to an employer than they cost the employer (understand cost centers, attorneys, etc, have to minimize their impact). Artificial, arbitrary minimum wages negatively impact the value/cost balance - does a fast food cashier who jumps from $9/hr to $15/hr provide more than an additional $6/hr in value to their employer.

Damn....

Most of my guys are $10-$13 and I'm billing them at $40 and hr and trying to push to $50 an hr when I can. It seems like there should be "so much profit", but it's always something. Broken truck, broken equipment, blah blah.

Raise your rates man.

Where are you?


I honestly should charge more. I make more on carpenters (pay $25, charge $50) then my cheap labour, and the way things are booming right now it's as good a time as any. But $50/hr is up there with what competitors charge. There are some outliers, but those are the guys that wont survive the bust after this boom.

I hear what you mean. People think you're just racking in the cash but it's always going towards something.

Now, electrical contractors and plumbers have it made. A friend of mine pays his journeymen $27/hr and charges them out at $85. Mind you they have more overhead (each guy has a work van full of tools, etc) but he also just did a million dollar reno to his house and installed a large putting green in the yard so I figure he's doing ok :-).

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Long Chile was a silly place.

That's true. It violates the natural equilibrium of the value of labor. Creates headaches in maintaining differentiation between more skilled workers whose labor is really valued at $15 (say, a low-level manager). Makes it harder to differentiate menu prices from "fast casual" restaurants whose slightly higher-skilled employees may really be worth $15 as well.

On the other hand, this is really about the larger context of income inequality. The premise is through the bulk of U.S. history, if you were a low-skilled worker who just worked really hard, you could earn a respectable living. Own a small apartment, drive a car. But over the past few decades the lower-to-lower-middle class has slipped. Prices have been driven higher by the large growth in spending power of the upper-middle-to-1%. While those lower classes haven't gained any spending power.

The causes are probably another thread (which we've had before). Personally, I don't think they're predominantly ideological in cause (e.g. I don't think they're caused either by excessively low taxes on the rich, nor by erosion of motivation/skill of the lower classes due to left-wing social policy)...

But the question is what to do about it? One answer is, "Nothing. The market forces are market forces and we must not risk upsetting market efficiency by interfering with it." But that may lead to an American that's kind of dystopian, characterized by an almost caste-like split between rich and poor vs. the historical, idealized egalitarian vision of America. And the "invisible hand" doesn't give a shit. I think there's a myth that maximum efficiency produced that idealized vision. But it did so under the global economic conditions of the time. The hand doesn't care if the 1% dominate from now on, as long as its the most efficient.

Another answer is subsidizing the poor. The science fiction concept of "Basic." Which we already do to some extent. But the counter-argument is that that erodes dignity and work ethic. Which I think are valid concerns when the subsidy is massively and blindly applied to a large population.

There's little more to do in terms of taxing the poor less. Since they're already largely relieved of a lot of tax burden.

So we're talking about the half-assed, messy tactic of subsidizing payroll, where at least people work for their subsidy, and the subsidy at least doesn't directly flow through government coffers.

I honestly don't know the answer. But I hope someone comes up with a good one. The pressure is building. Both Trump and Bernie used the tactic of blaming the mysterious global economic forces that I think are largely the cause, stoking discontent for political gain. But Trump is only fiddling symbolically and ineffectually at the levers of globalism (surprise). And I think Bernie wouldn't have been able to do much more.

I don't know the answer, but I don't think it's isolationism (either Trump-style or Bernie-style), but rather American best using global labor markets and resources to her own advantage.

An $8 an hour employee needs to provide $8+ an hour worth of value, but that value can be anywhere from $8.01/hr to much much more than that. Labor laws, though they should be concerned with the efficiency of a business, do not exist to make businesses efficient. They exist to protect the worker.


"Artificial, arbitrary minimum wages negatively impact the value/cost balance...."

And positively impact the well being of the employee, as intended.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

The world has changed. Automation has displaced workers and left them nowhere to go - frequently not qualified for more technical and not paid enough for basic labor. You're right, the topic of what to do about it is really messy. In the U.S. there are a lot more people than there are jobs many of the "net takers" are capable of doing or for those who have been displaced. Do we enforce population control with means testing to allow full term gestation? Should the poor be forcibly relocated to perform work where jobs are needed (farms in WI, CA, etc)? Note I'm not advocating for either.

And companies and the positions they hire for do not exist to give people jobs, they exist to earn a return for their owners. Having employees is a necessary evil. The whole bit companies and politicians use about job growth is a political red herring to gain good PR.

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Vegetarian: An old Aboriginal American word for "Bad Hunter."

The fight over minimum wage is an outdated and meaningless fight. The greatest truth is employing people is a "necessary evil." Labor cuts so deep into the profit margin that tons of money is being spent on developing automation so proficient less employees with be needed. More people, less work for people. I don't see this going anywhere good. All we can do is adapt the Libertarian denial of future actions and just say, "All the automation will require more workers so there will be plenty of jobs." We are a dump species.

I didn't think that part was in question.

I'm not sure where you are going. I just saw your one post and it seemed like you were missing the employee side of the equation. I can say that this is your position, but often time people argue purely from the business perspective. ie "But if I have to pay more for an employee, then I will make less."


Businesses exist to make money, and given our competitive market system, if unregulated, the most unscrupulous businesses will be the only ones to succeed. This is why labor laws exist; for the benefit of everyone except the business.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

BarryP wrote:

benefit of everyone except the business.

Part of the issue is a discussion of equal agency. In pure market theory, employers and employees are supposed to have equal agency. They're supposed to enter into a labor contract with equal information and equal negotiating skills. But in reality it's probably not equal agency. On one side you have one of the least-educated, least-skilled sectors of labor. On the other side you have large franchised corporations driven by efficiency experts and highly educated MBA-types, etc. Knife to a gun fight, even within the bounds of labor law.

As a side note, NPR's Scott Simon just interviewed Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash) on this issue and DAMN, Simon leveled a boom on the guy. He went pure Lavender Room. So much for the friendly confines of liberal radio:

I remember making a similar argument to a college kid once who believed that lending agencies should be completely unregulated and any problems that the borrower has would be the borrower's fault because "he should have known better."

I'm not even an expert at my job, and I went to school for it and have been working it 2000 hours a year for over a decade. How am I supposed to outsmart a think tank in the banking industry?

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485