America's greatness is its working classes not "wealth" creators

[AvgGuyIA]

Do any hater dupes have anything but idiotic talking points and stupid insults? I didn't think so....

Pot meet kettle.

 

[Chris]

The business journal Bloomberg Businessweek points out that the country of Denmark has a minimum pay rate of the equivalent of about $20 an hour, but its business climate is sufficiently healthy for the World Bank to ranked it as the easiest place in Europe to do business in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Denmark is also "among the leading countries in income equality and national happiness." Denmark also had a lower unemployment rate (6.8%) and higher labor participation rate (64.4%) than the United States (7.4%, 63.6% as of September 2013) where the minimum wage is far lower ($7.25).

 

[Chris]

As a 1995 paper in the Journal of Economics Literature put it, “There is a long history of empirical studies attempting to pin down the effects of minimum wages, with limited success.” No one found significant employment losses when President Truman raised the minimum wage by 87% in 1950. When Congress raised the minimum wage by 28% in two steps in 1967, businesses predicted large employment losses and price increases. As the Wall Street Journal reported six months later, “Employment and prices show little effect from $1.40-an-hour guarantee.”

Economic research supports raising the minimum wage Economic Policy Institute

 

[Rikurzhen]

The business journal Bloomberg Businessweek points out that the country of Denmark has a minimum pay rate of the equivalent of about $20 an hour, but its business climate is sufficiently healthy for the World Bank to ranked it as the easiest place in Europe to do business in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Denmark is also "among the leading countries in income equality and national happiness." Denmark also had a lower unemployment rate (6.8%) and higher labor participation rate (64.4%) than the United States (7.4%, 63.6% as of September 2013) where the minimum wage is far lower ($7.25).

Yeah, and they also have a different population. Of Denmark's 5,580,516 population only 390,000 are non-Western immigrants.

Make you a deal - you transform American society to that ratio and I'll sing the praises of Danish policies being implemented here. Shake?

 

[Chris]

The business journal Bloomberg Businessweek points out that the country of Denmark has a minimum pay rate of the equivalent of about $20 an hour, but its business climate is sufficiently healthy for the World Bank to ranked it as the easiest place in Europe to do business in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Denmark is also "among the leading countries in income equality and national happiness." Denmark also had a lower unemployment rate (6.8%) and higher labor participation rate (64.4%) than the United States (7.4%, 63.6% as of September 2013) where the minimum wage is far lower ($7.25).

Yeah, and they also have a different population. Of Denmark's 5,580,516 population only 390,000 are non-Western immigrants.

Make you a deal - you transform American society to that ratio and I'll sing the praises of Danish policies being implemented here. Shake?

Bigotry is the republican core value.

 

[Rikurzhen]

The business journal Bloomberg Businessweek points out that the country of Denmark has a minimum pay rate of the equivalent of about $20 an hour, but its business climate is sufficiently healthy for the World Bank to ranked it as the easiest place in Europe to do business in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Denmark is also "among the leading countries in income equality and national happiness." Denmark also had a lower unemployment rate (6.8%) and higher labor participation rate (64.4%) than the United States (7.4%, 63.6% as of September 2013) where the minimum wage is far lower ($7.25).

Yeah, and they also have a different population. Of Denmark's 5,580,516 population only 390,000 are non-Western immigrants.

Make you a deal - you transform American society to that ratio and I'll sing the praises of Danish policies being implemented here. Shake?

Bigotry is the republican core value.

Delusion is a liberal core value.

 

[Chris]

As a 1995 paper in the Journal of Economics Literature put it, “There is a long history of empirical studies attempting to pin down the effects of minimum wages, with limited success.” No one found significant employment losses when President Truman raised the minimum wage by 87% in 1950. When Congress raised the minimum wage by 28% in two steps in 1967, businesses predicted large employment losses and price increases. As the Wall Street Journal reported six months later, “Employment and prices show little effect from $1.40-an-hour guarantee.”

Economic research supports raising the minimum wage Economic Policy Institute

.

 

[Chris]

From 1941 to the 1960's we had high taxes on the rich and high wages. The taxes were invested in education and infrastructure, and the high wages created consumer demand.
Now we have low taxes for the rich and low wages, and 23% of total income goes to the top 1%.
70% of our economy is consumer demand, so too much money in too few hands is starving our economy of demand. We need to raise the minimum wage and tax capital gains as income.

 

[Rikurzhen]

From 1941 to the 1960's we had high taxes on the rich and high wages. The taxes were invested in education and infrastructure, and the high wages created consumer demand.
Now we have low taxes for the rich and low wages, and 23% of total income goes to the top 1%.
70% of our economy is consumer demand, so too much money in too few hands is starving our economy of demand. We need to raise the minimum wage and tax capital gains as income.

You mean these taxes?

 

[Darkwind]

You mean these taxes?

That chart would be very interesting if they also managed to graph the federal spending along side.

 

[Mac1958]

.

The OP is essentially the "bottom up" approach favored by the social Democrats, and it doesn't work in a dynamic economy with global competition that depends on efficient deployment of capital.

And, as always, this conversation has been binary all the way through. One or the other. It can't work that way, gang, an equilibrium must be found. Neither "bottom up" nor "top down".

Good grief.

Politicize something and you dumb it down, faster than shit through a goose.

.

 

[Youch]

Dems to Pubs, Libertarians to our one anarcho-commie: the daily American is our success and guarantee, not our politicians and wealth abusers.

View attachment 31487

Notice the anti-American fascist business owner working with Communist China.

View attachment 31488

Telling the truth about ourselves is our second greatest strength.

Have a great day.

Dude who forms his opinions from liberal cartoons,

Not that you care, but "vacation" is a tricky term, as the vast majority of Obama's historically high multitudes of golf outings were not technically while on vacation. Long weekends, fundraising trips, etc.., all allow a President to take time away from damaging the country to play golf, for example. Parsing this issue is unpleasant, just as is posting contrarian internet citations that disprove your cartoonish assertions. Libs will eagerly agree with you, as tarnishing the mantle of the worst President in history is something they still can't swallow.

 

[Youch]

Dems to Pubs, Libertarians to our one anarcho-commie: the daily American is our success and guarantee, not our politicians and wealth abusers.

View attachment 31487

Notice the anti-American fascist business owner working with Communist China.

View attachment 31488

Telling the truth about ourselves is our second greatest strength.

Have a great day.

How many people do you know are employed by poor people as compared to those employed by "rich" people? And of those (who don't really exist) are as secure in their job as those employed by the "rich?"

Liberal logic is so illogical. Res Ipsa Loquitur.

 

[AvgGuyIA]

Eisenhower was a Republican, and talked much like Starkey. When the GOP turned in it's conservative credentials for the southern religious racist vote, they turned their backs on the working American. The new GOP seems to operate only for the benefit of the wealthy 1%. And the Teabaggers are so ideologically driven, that they will damage the nation before they compromise on anything.

Hilarious. Republicans don't believe that ever happened. Their rewrite of history is so confusing, I suspect many think Lincoln was a confederate. I've asked that question many times and I have never seen a real answer.

They know that Confederates are represented by today's Republicans. They believe it was conservative Republicans who freed the slaves. They think it was Liberals who owned the slaves. But the liberals were in the Union Army and that was up North. So that means it was the Southern Conservatives who freed the slaves therefore, Lincoln must have been a "Confederate" therefore, history has a few mistakes.

You are confused. Slave owners were democrats. Jim Crowe was because of democrats. Today's democrats are no different in their treatment of blacks, just your methods have changed.

 

[usmcstinger]

Do you understand how supply/demand work in markets? I'm not trying to be rude or condescending, I just don't know how familiar you are with economics.

Yes, I am somewhat familiar with the theory of supply and demand.

Price is part of Supply and Demand.

 

[martybegan]

Why are conservatives so happy that the US is a nation in decline?

Why is your party enjoying taking such an active part in making the decline reality?

It's not liberals who want bust unions, send jobs overseas, level the playing field between third world and American labor,

is it?

No its progressives passing regulations for regulation sake, taxing things to death, and inflating government, and thus overhead to the point of fiscal insolvency.

That and taking up all our time with your "war on women" "war on workers" war on hipster douchebags" claptrap.

 

[pinqy]

By the way your $699 tv in 1961, in today's dollars that TV would cost $5400 . Which tells you that electronics prices have fell through the floor compared to the sixties making them a piss poor product to use for this type of discussion, which I fully think you knew.

Actually, in today's dollars a $699 tv in 1961 would cost about $22 now.

Now, I'm sure you can do a little math and figure out that $7.25 is 67% of $10.95. which of course mean that since 1968 the minimum wage has lost 1/3 of it's purchasing power.

CPI Inflation Calculator

Tell me you honestly believe that that is corporate america playing fair with the average worker. It isn't. Plain and simple.

That bolded statement is good as far as it goes, but it doesn't really go all that far. There are two side to this equation - how much money you earn = what you need to spend to live.

There are no two sides

Of FFS, the minimum wage in 1961 was $1.15 per hour. It would take 500 hours of labor to buy this TV set.

The minimum wage in 2014 is $7.25 per hour. It takes 93.5 hours of labor to buy this TV set.

That is no basis for comparison and you know it.

Electronics in general cost pennies on the dollar compared to what they cost in the 60s.

So?
The inflation rate is an average of all price changes of consumer goods. Some things have gone up, so the situation is worse, and some have gone down.

In 1961 a McD cheeseburger was twenty cents. Meaning a person could buy almost 6 of them for an hours wages (pretax of course) today a cheeseburger is $1.25 meaning a person can buy 5 of them. Meaning of course that a person has lost 1/6th of their buying power at McDonalds.

That is one valid way of looking at price changes.

Or if you REALLY wanna go big. Let's look at a Corvette.

In 1961 a Corvette cost $5700 (give or take) or 4.957 hours @ minimum wage

Today a Corvette costs $45,000 (again give or take base model) or 6,207 hours @ minimum wage

Ah, but now you're off. A cheeseburger now is about the same as a cheeseburger in 1961. But a 1961 Corvette is not the same as a 2014 Corvette. Adjusting for quality change, a $5,700 car in 1961 would cost about $16,000 now. And that $575 tv would cost about $17.

My point is that ANY application of the average change to an individual item will be inaccurate. TVs have gone down. Cars have not gone up as much as overall inflation. College tuition has gone up a lot more than overall inflation.

Balancing everything out, to buy the same goods now as in 1961 would cost about 700% more.

 

[EconChick]

But I'm sure you know the saying that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Play with assumptions and you have an entirely different set of data.

That's not fact .....that's saying stats are a moving target. Economic stats these days are distorted compared to the past 20 years. They're a mess. They can't be trusted. I've been looking at stats for the min wage question for a very long time. I'm saying I don't agree with your stats.

Of course stats can say whatever America s greatness is its working classes not wealth creators Page 13 US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum person writing those stats would like them to say. But if you compare year to year data in respect to minimum wage and unemployment since 1964 you will see that the minimum wage has had minimal effect on the unemployment rate

I won't bore you with EVERY increase here, just a few highlights

In 1968 the minimum wage increased from $1.40 to $1.60. In Dec,1967 unemployment rate was 3,8% . In Dec, 1968 it was 3.4% so the minimum wage went up that year and the unemployment rate actually dropped.


In 1974 the minimum wage increased from $1.60 to $2. Dec 1973 unemployment was 4.9%. Dec, 1975. 8.2% big difference.

In 1981 minimum wage went from $3.10 to $3.35. Dec, 1980 UE was 7.2%. Dec 1981. 8.5%

In 1996 minimum wage went from $4.25 to $4.75. Dec 1995 UE wa4 5.6%. Dec 1996. 5.4%.

In 2007 the minimum wage went from $5.15 to $5.85. Dec 2006 EU was 4.4%. Dec 2007.5%

U.S. Department of Labor - Wage and Hour Division WHD - Minimum Wage
Historical Unemployment Rates in the United States

okay I lied I did bore you . LOL sorry about that. Anyway, other than one grossly bad year out of the samples you can see that unemployment stayed relatively close to where it was the year prior.

Just for fun, I decided to look and see where minimum wage would have been in each of my sample years if it had merely kept up with inflation

1968 - $1.60
1974 - $2.27
1981 - $4.18
1996 - $7.21
2007 - $9.53
2014 - 10.95

Now, I'm sure you can do a little math and figure out that $7.25 is 67% of $10.95. which of course mean that since 1968 the minimum wage has lost 1/3 of it's purchasing power.

CPI Inflation Calculator

Tell me you honestly believe that that is corporate america playing fair with the average worker. It isn't. Plain and simple.

Math doesn't lie. The minimum wage MUST be raised , else we risk losing our middle class completely.

With all due respect my friend, and I do like how you post, there are so many variables that affect the unemployment rate that for you to draw cause and effect between just min wage and unemploy is completely incorrect.

You'd have to look at a lot more variables than you have.

Just for one of hundreds of variables, the timing impact of min wage doesn't even show up immediately as you've suggested in your numbers.

But basically you've not looked at the long list of other variables.

 

[EconChick]

Republicans are against unions and the minimum wage.Republicans hate the working man.

When the min wage goes up, the business owner has to lay others off.

It sounds good on the surface but in the macro it's actually worse for middle class.

A minimal raise in the minimum wage has a temporary effect of raising unemployment by .3%, this usually self corrects within a year.

I posted these stats in another thread yesterday, with links

I have to respectfully disagree. I've been looking at this particular stat for almost 20 years.

One of the problems is that stats and data are extremely distorted these days compared to when they were more trustworthy.

I actually have to wonder about something else to. How many people are working two jobs because one doesn't pay enough?

Let me bounce off what you've written with this observation of what's happened in Alberta:

Ms. Carvey found refuge from that panic in the manner of any driven Type-A professional: She made a list of the pros and cons of staying home. The pros won out, and she became part of an enigmatic exodus in Alberta.

The working women of the province are disappearing, just as the province's superheated economy is becoming increasingly short-handed. Unemployment has fallen to unimaginably low levels, and help-wanted signs plaster the windows of retail businesses throughout the province. Businesses are scouring Alberta, indeed the entire country, for workers, going so far as to launch recruiting drives in prisons.

And while that desperate search goes on, women such as Ms. Carvey are turning away from work to become not-so-desperate housewives. Ten years ago, Alberta had nearly the highest proportion of working women (or women looking for work) with daycare-age children and a spouse, second only to Prince Edward Island.

In the ensuing decade, those numbers changed dramatically as large numbers of working mothers moved into the work force. Quebec, close to the bottom of the pack, rose to near the top, a change largely coinciding with its introduction of inexpensive and near-universal daycare. But the change was not limited to Quebec: Every Canadian province saw substantial increases in the number of working women with children under 6.

In every province, that is, except Alberta, where that number has been declining steadily this decade. Ten years ago, nearly seven in 10 women in this group were working, or looking for work -- above the national average. Now, it's closer to six in 10, and well below the nationwide average. Statistics Canada has documented this decline, but doesn't have a definitive explanation for it. Differences in daycare -- Alberta has among the lowest public funding in the country -- are likely part of the explanation. The introduction of a flat tax rate and a doubling of spousal deductions in 2001 certainly eased the financial burden on single-income families.

And some researchers believe that conservative social attitudes, and the resulting workplace expectations for women, are to blame.

…

Prosperity has, at a minimum, arrived at the same time as working mothers were dropping out of the work force. Statscan analyst Vincent Ferrao said it is possible that it might be more than mere coincidence: The rising wealth of Alberta could be enabling some women to stay at home without undue financial hardship. "Wages have been increasing quite rapidly," he said. "Is it possible you only need one person working?"

That hypothesis certainly lines up with Ms. Carvey's experience. Ms. Carvey and her husband, Darby Parker, had the relatively unusual luxury of being free from the financial worries of moving to a single income. Her salary of $70,000, while substantial, was lower than the six-figure compensation her spouse brought home from his oil-patch job. With a small mortgage, a modest home and a six-year-old car, the couple had avoided an overhang of debt.

…

And here emerges another paradox: Alberta's prosperity might have given some families the means to live on a single income. But the fact that they are doing so is dampening future growth, as the province's businesses run short of workers. If Alberta women (again those with children under 6) were working at the same rate as their Quebec counterparts, there would be close to another 17,000 female employees on the market -- a godsend in a province running short of everything from oil-patch executives to coffee-house clerks.

…

If the future prosperity of Canada hinges on convincing women like Ms. Carvey to stay in the work force, or at least to return quickly, it might just be time to start sweating. The proud mother of Cadence, now 15 months old, says she might not ever go back to work. "That career used to define me. Now, I'm not so sure."​

I don't mean to sound sexist, but women entering the workforce en masse in the 70s is absolutely what drove down wages.

I agree it was one of many reasons. It is not THE reason.

 

[EconChick]

Now, I'm sure you can do a little math and figure out that $7.25 is 67% of $10.95. which of course mean that since 1968 the minimum wage has lost 1/3 of it's purchasing power.

CPI Inflation Calculator

Tell me you honestly believe that that is corporate america playing fair with the average worker. It isn't. Plain and simple.

That bolded statement is good as far as it goes, but it doesn't really go all that far. There are two side to this equation - how much money you earn = what you need to spend to live.

There are no two sides

Of FFS, the minimum wage in 1961 was $1.15 per hour. It would take 500 hours of labor to buy this TV set.

The minimum wage in 2014 is $7.25 per hour. It takes 93.5 hours of labor to buy this TV set.

That is no basis for comparison and you know it.

Electronics in general cost pennies on the dollar compared to what they cost in the 60s.

How about using a company that paid minimum wage then and now and look at their products

In 1961 a McD cheeseburger was twenty cents. Meaning a person could buy almost 6 of them for an hours wages (pretax of course) today a cheeseburger is $1.25 meaning a person can buy 5 of them. Meaning of course that a person has lost 1/6th of their buying power at McDonalds.

Or if you REALLY wanna go big. Let's look at a Corvette.

In 1961 a Corvette cost $5700 (give or take) or 4.957 hours @ minimum wage

Today a Corvette costs $45,000 (again give or take base model) or 6,207 hours @ minimum wage

Please stop playing games or I'll just drop out of the thread, I HATE dishonest posting. The minimum wage absolutely has lost 1/3 of its value since the 60s. PERIOD

You think that you're gracing people with your presence in this thread? Deflate that ego buddy.

Income alone doesn't tell you jack about living standards. The other side of the equation has to be considered - what will that income BUY. You don't know what you're talking about when you assert that "There are no two sides." Drop out you ignoramus and save people the grief of having to tutor you on the basics of economic analysis.

we're not talking about livign standards, were talking about the minim wage.


You sir are a dishonest person and poster. I don't have the time nor the desire to deal with you any longer. Good evening.

I hated to see you go, Smarter, because you were walking people through the kind of thinking normal people walk through to try to understand this very complex subject.

But Rik was correctly pointing out that you weren't looking at all the variables before coming to conclusions. I don't always agree with Rik, and you'll rarely find 2 people who completely agree on this subject, but he was definitely correct to say there's more to the formula.

And sometimes the problem is just semantics which need to first be better defined.