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As I have said repeatedly, the real solution is to cut social programs and not increase the minimum wage. All social programs do for the working is give them a reason to earn less. If somebody is getting government aid working 40 hours a week, and minimum wage increases, then they will work 30 hours a week or less to keep their benefits. I work in industry and hear stories about this all the time.
True experience: about two years ago I had to evict a family that was renting an apartment from me. When I seen trouble, I called them over to discuss the problem. This was an unmarried couple with two children: one a teen and the other about 3 years old. She supposedly stayed home to home-school her daughter and to bring up the younger. He worked full-time, but not one hour past 40. He didn't make a good wage to begin with.
So I made a suggestion. Since he wouldn't work on the weekends, perhaps he could watch the kids during that time and she could get a part-time job to get caught up and stay current with their rent. She didn't even consider it. Why? Because she was getting $210.00 a month in food stamps, and any income on her part (since she was not technically married) would cut into her benefits.
So now he has an evection on record which any landlord can dig up if he applies for other apartments. People gave up on home ownership so a good apartment is difficult to get. All for what? Food stamps.
"If you pay people not to work, don't be too surprised when they don't!"
Rush Limbaugh
The problem is not solved by cutting benefits. The problem would have been solved if this mother would not have lost her benefits. She would have gotten the part time job. But who can blame her for not taking it. I am pretty sure you would not have.
Now, if they were not married, the children were hers, and she didn't work at all, you could have explained how the EITC could easily offset the loss in food stamps. But that is just in that case.
The real truth, that conservatives don't understand, is that individuals in family with incomes low enough to qualify for the EITC and food stamps face a massive marginal tax rate. Hell, conservatives complain about 39%. I mean a corporate CEO with a million dollar salary only gets to keep sixty cents of every one of his dollars after the federal government gets done with him. But the single mother making minimum wage---she takes on additional income she could pay a marginal tax rate of twice that 39%. Income tax, payroll tax, lost EITC, lost food stamps,---they end up with maybe, maybe, a damn quarter out of every additional dollar they make. That is the problem. That is what has to be fixed. And there is an easy fix. But I swear I ain't even going to mention it because it sends conservatives into convulsions.
Correct, who can blame her for not taking on a job? That was my point all along. If she did take a job, much of that labor would be almost like working for free.
Now if she was not receiving food stamps, she may have taken up on my idea, kept their home, and not have a court record of eviction. It also reflects on my earlier point that increasing minimum wage will not have that much of an effect on those receiving public assistance. All it would do is give them the opportunity to work less hours. They are not going to give up those goodies unless those goodies were never there to begin with.
And no, nobody working just above minimum wage is going to pay almost 80% in taxes I don't care what you include in that. Lose benefits? Yes. But that's why they shouldn't receive benefits in the first place.
But my former tenant is an anomaly. Most people working minimum wage are kids in school, college students, stay-at-home mothers looking to bring in an extra few bucks to the household income, retired people looking for something to do. Minimum wage workers in the US are about 4% of our workforce.
Yes, they can face a marginal tax rate of 90%. Hell sometimes it is more than a hundred percent. You really ought to look in to it.
Americans' 90% tax rate - CNN.com
And cutting out social programs is not an answer. Remember when I said pay them to stay out of the way? No social programs and they are still in the way. They are begging in the street, or looting, still in the freaking way. Consider it a cost of doing business. If you can't make x amount of dollars, then we will pay you y amount of dollars to stay home. AND OUT OF THE DAMN WAY. It is a simple choice for them and an easy cutoff for us. Plus, with a new "minimum" floor for labor that actually reflects a realistic minimum value we will be back on the way to a productive economy producing growth for everyone, not just the privileged few.
Again, not considering social programs (which should be cut) nobody is paying anywhere near 80%. What this article does is add in benefits equal to pay. Welfare is not pay, welfare is money taken from other people.
It's not a tax if benefits are cut off. Taxes are money taken from the pay you earn. Nobody earns welfare, Obama phones or food stamps.
In context however, it does point out to something that was studied, and that is people using all welfare available to them make as much as middle-class people who are actually working and paying taxes. With the exception of unemployment, government benefits are not taxed.
As Limbaugh said, if you pay people not to work, they won't work. And if liberals ever get a hold of government to increase government dependency, then most everybody will want to stay home instead of working. Hell, I would do it myself. Pay me the same income as I make working, and I'll be glad to get out of your way; most people would.
This is the Republican cart theory: If the townspeople pull an empty cart, if flies down the road effortlessly. As people grow tired of pulling the cart and jump inside the cart instead, and the cart moves slower and slower. When half of the people jump in the cart instead of pulling the cart, the cart stops. This is where we are at in America today.
Over one-third of our working age population are not working nor looking to work. What are they doing to survive? This is on top of the 4.5% that are unemployed and looking for work. The cart has stopped, and I don't see any advantage in putting more townspeople into that cart.
You can't claim those low income are not paying 90% by simply changing the definition. The bottom line is still the same, they only get to keep ten cents on the dollar.
And should not a single mother get every dime of public assistance she is entitled too? Does she not have the same obligation to her family as the CEO of a company does to his shareholders? Because he is suppose to take advantage of every tax break. There is not a difference.
And I am willing to run with your cart analogy. For one thing, no way in hell even half the people need to be pushing the cart to make it go forward if we are on level ground. Now if we are on a hill most the people are going to have to be pushing. And if it is going downhill, well we all can jump in the damn thing and still be going forward. But best of all, we can slap a damn machine on that bitch and all of us ride in the car all the time. And guess what, the damn thing is still GOING FORWARD.
The moral is you need to quit worrying about everyone else. You need to quit belly aching about the taxes you pay and instead be grateful you have the opportunity to pay them. I take a great deal of pride in stroking my quarterly check. Instead, focus on what can keep the economy going forward and everyone happily traveling together in the cart, some pushing, some riding. I mean damn, do you think them cowboys bitched about the women riding in the damn wagon? Come on, be a cowboy.
Jobs Americans wont do. Um, what a pathetic lie. WHO USED TO DO THOSE SAME JOBS? Wasn't "The grapes of wrath" based on itinerant American migrant labor? And those people are being displaced by Illegal aliens that won't acclimate, why is recognizing that BAD? Something is broken here.
In reading this thread, I now know that the reason that kids can not get jobs taking groceries out to customer's cars, like I did in 1961, is undoubtedly the fault of the Left. I guess that we are just too greedy to do that anymore, like I did, for $1.25 per hour.
According to the National Restaurant Association [NRA], a $15.00 minimum wage equates a 4.3% increase in cost to a Big Mac.
Hmmm....How could the NRA know that? Is that figure just an estimate on their part and that is extrapolated (by the NRA or by you) from some sort of industry wide data? The COGs for a Big Mac is a very specific thing and a data point that would be proprietary to McDonald's. ("Cost" and "price" are not the same things. They may and can be to you as a consumer, but to a business, they are not. I wouldn't raise that point were it you sharing your own ideas for I'd presume you mean "price" not "cost," but you are ostensibly sharing an financial measurement data point calculated by an industry organization; therefore the distinction becomes relevant.)
I found a similar assertion to yours, but it's not at all the same assertion. What I found is, "Raising wages to $15 an hour for limited-service restaurant employees would lead to an estimated 4.3 percent increase in prices at those restaurants, according to a recent study." A 4.3% price increase is something that applies across the board -- all producers and their offerings throughout the industry -- but the specific impact will be less at companies that are less dependent on labor and more at companies that rely more heavily on labor.
What's the real impact of that? That's not easy to say outside of at very high levels and withing an economics context. Why? Well, take a look at the various dimensions at which restaurant labor compensated. Here are some considerations:
Those are just two examples, but if you read the content at the links, you'll surely see the complexity of the matter as well as the insufficiency of concluding based on one metric.
- In the presence of an increased minimum wage whereby all employees were paid below $15/hour, will all workers be content with their statutorily granted raise or will more skilled/senior workers demand relatively higher wages than lower skilled workers, even though both just received a decent pay increase? I don't know.
- In locales where the monopsony effect will occur, the mandated wage increase is a better thing than a worse thing. Thus, small-enough town America stands to benefit greatly from minimum wage increases, whereas larger cities, and definitely big ones, will benefit differently. We can talk about those different types of benefits if you want, but the short of it is that the big city benefit is a better quality of life due to lower crime rates. That's actually better for city dwellers as well as visitors.
One other thing:
- That 4.3% price increase is wide open to question. I can't say what yielded the 4.3% figure (assuming it comes from Ma & Ghiselli's study that I earlier referred to), and it may well be that there are contextual limitations omitted from the article I read about the study. It could also be that you and I are referring to different studies.
I don't eat at McDonald's because I can't eat chemically laden food, but if I did, paying $0.17 more for a Big Mac isn't going to break me, especially if my income tax bill is reduced by several hundred dollars for doing so.
Having taxpayers support low wage workers through EIC's and food stamps so that prices won't rise by a small percentage, is a lot more fiscally sound that having every taxpaying American sudsidize Walmart to the tune of $2,500 per year.
Assuming the $0.17 is correct (see discussion above), McDonald's is thrilled about your expressed relatively price inelastic stance; moreover they are counting on that being so for millions of other people. (McD's knows the demand for their produces is relatively inelastic.) They are because that seventeen cents to McDonald's is some ~$93M.
The problem is not solved by cutting benefits. The problem would have been solved if this mother would not have lost her benefits. She would have gotten the part time job. But who can blame her for not taking it. I am pretty sure you would not have.
Now, if they were not married, the children were hers, and she didn't work at all, you could have explained how the EITC could easily offset the loss in food stamps. But that is just in that case.
The real truth, that conservatives don't understand, is that individuals in family with incomes low enough to qualify for the EITC and food stamps face a massive marginal tax rate. Hell, conservatives complain about 39%. I mean a corporate CEO with a million dollar salary only gets to keep sixty cents of every one of his dollars after the federal government gets done with him. But the single mother making minimum wage---she takes on additional income she could pay a marginal tax rate of twice that 39%. Income tax, payroll tax, lost EITC, lost food stamps,---they end up with maybe, maybe, a damn quarter out of every additional dollar they make. That is the problem. That is what has to be fixed. And there is an easy fix. But I swear I ain't even going to mention it because it sends conservatives into convulsions.
Correct, who can blame her for not taking on a job? That was my point all along. If she did take a job, much of that labor would be almost like working for free.
Now if she was not receiving food stamps, she may have taken up on my idea, kept their home, and not have a court record of eviction. It also reflects on my earlier point that increasing minimum wage will not have that much of an effect on those receiving public assistance. All it would do is give them the opportunity to work less hours. They are not going to give up those goodies unless those goodies were never there to begin with.
And no, nobody working just above minimum wage is going to pay almost 80% in taxes I don't care what you include in that. Lose benefits? Yes. But that's why they shouldn't receive benefits in the first place.
But my former tenant is an anomaly. Most people working minimum wage are kids in school, college students, stay-at-home mothers looking to bring in an extra few bucks to the household income, retired people looking for something to do. Minimum wage workers in the US are about 4% of our workforce.
Yes, they can face a marginal tax rate of 90%. Hell sometimes it is more than a hundred percent. You really ought to look in to it.
Americans' 90% tax rate - CNN.com
And cutting out social programs is not an answer. Remember when I said pay them to stay out of the way? No social programs and they are still in the way. They are begging in the street, or looting, still in the freaking way. Consider it a cost of doing business. If you can't make x amount of dollars, then we will pay you y amount of dollars to stay home. AND OUT OF THE DAMN WAY. It is a simple choice for them and an easy cutoff for us. Plus, with a new "minimum" floor for labor that actually reflects a realistic minimum value we will be back on the way to a productive economy producing growth for everyone, not just the privileged few.
Again, not considering social programs (which should be cut) nobody is paying anywhere near 80%. What this article does is add in benefits equal to pay. Welfare is not pay, welfare is money taken from other people.
It's not a tax if benefits are cut off. Taxes are money taken from the pay you earn. Nobody earns welfare, Obama phones or food stamps.
In context however, it does point out to something that was studied, and that is people using all welfare available to them make as much as middle-class people who are actually working and paying taxes. With the exception of unemployment, government benefits are not taxed.
As Limbaugh said, if you pay people not to work, they won't work. And if liberals ever get a hold of government to increase government dependency, then most everybody will want to stay home instead of working. Hell, I would do it myself. Pay me the same income as I make working, and I'll be glad to get out of your way; most people would.
This is the Republican cart theory: If the townspeople pull an empty cart, if flies down the road effortlessly. As people grow tired of pulling the cart and jump inside the cart instead, and the cart moves slower and slower. When half of the people jump in the cart instead of pulling the cart, the cart stops. This is where we are at in America today.
Over one-third of our working age population are not working nor looking to work. What are they doing to survive? This is on top of the 4.5% that are unemployed and looking for work. The cart has stopped, and I don't see any advantage in putting more townspeople into that cart.
You can't claim those low income are not paying 90% by simply changing the definition. The bottom line is still the same, they only get to keep ten cents on the dollar.
And should not a single mother get every dime of public assistance she is entitled too? Does she not have the same obligation to her family as the CEO of a company does to his shareholders? Because he is suppose to take advantage of every tax break. There is not a difference.
And I am willing to run with your cart analogy. For one thing, no way in hell even half the people need to be pushing the cart to make it go forward if we are on level ground. Now if we are on a hill most the people are going to have to be pushing. And if it is going downhill, well we all can jump in the damn thing and still be going forward. But best of all, we can slap a damn machine on that bitch and all of us ride in the car all the time. And guess what, the damn thing is still GOING FORWARD.
The moral is you need to quit worrying about everyone else. You need to quit belly aching about the taxes you pay and instead be grateful you have the opportunity to pay them. I take a great deal of pride in stroking my quarterly check. Instead, focus on what can keep the economy going forward and everyone happily traveling together in the cart, some pushing, some riding. I mean damn, do you think them cowboys bitched about the women riding in the damn wagon? Come on, be a cowboy.
Being a cowboy does not mean pulling the wagon for people that are perfectly capable of working that just want a free ride, or people that constantly make irresponsible decisions because there will always be somebody forced to pull the wagon for them.
There is a huge difference between a CEO and a welfare queen, the CEO is creating money whereas the welfare queen is taking the money he created. If it were up to me, nobody would get a dime of public assistance until they were fixed first. Some women have kids for the purpose of getting more government benefits. The more kids they have, the bigger HUD house in the suburb, the larger the welfare check, the more food stamps and so on.
I have a slight problem with the taxes I pay, but a much larger problem with how they are spent. If I have to get up for work in the morning, every able bodied person should have to get up for work in the morning. There is nothing just about me going to work while others are sitting home living off of the money we create.
If we can ever get a "work or starve" society back, you'd see how fast people would jump out of the cart to help pull it instead.
Almost all investment carried out by firms is financed by retained earnings, Montier points out, so the diversion of cash flow to stock buybacks has inevitably resulted in lower rates of business investment. Defenders of SVM argue that investors efficiently reallocate the profits they reap from repurchased shares by investing the proceeds into more promising enterprises. But Montier shows that since the 1980s, public corporations have actually bought back more equity than they’ve issued, representing a net negative equity flow. Shareholders aren’t providing capital to the corporate sector, they’re extracting it.
Stock Buybacks Are Killing the American Economy
Look. You don't seem to understand. Mostly because you can't stop worrying about those other people in the cart. Again, who is pushing, who is pulling, and who is riding is secondary to where the cart is going.
But more importantly, you are missing two critical realities. First, there is not that much difference between the CEO and the welfare queen. Just like the welfare queen, the CEO could be DESTROYING value and hurting the economy. Worse, the CEO can do it to the tune of millions of dollars a year. Even the biggest welfare queen is only going to cost thousands of dollars a year, not millions.
Put the bong down, you're sounding more bizarre than normal.not true at all. price inflation for fuel was swallowed by the right wing, with relative ease.That is very, very likely to become true. No matter where you set the MW, within a remarkably short period of time inflation devours any advantage it gave.I'm calling bullshit.
They would have done the kiosk thing anyway.
How long does it take to design and develop the kiosks and computer programs? How long to install them nationwide?
This has been in the works longer than the call for wage increases.
How do you know? A kid making $8.00 an hour might be cheaper than the infrastructure costs needed to keep kiosks running. What we do know is that companies always look ahead for things (at least the successful ones do) and their concern might be that $15 an hour STILL won't placate the union idiots, and then they want $20 an hour.
According to the National Restaurant Association [NRA], a $15.00 minimum wage equates a 4.3% increase in cost to a Big Mac.
Hmmm....How could the NRA know that? Is that figure just an estimate on their part and that is extrapolated (by the NRA or by you) from some sort of industry wide data? The COGs for a Big Mac is a very specific thing and a data point that would be proprietary to McDonald's. ("Cost" and "price" are not the same things. They may and can be to you as a consumer, but to a business, they are not. I wouldn't raise that point were it you sharing your own ideas for I'd presume you mean "price" not "cost," but you are ostensibly sharing an financial measurement data point calculated by an industry organization; therefore the distinction becomes relevant.)
I found a similar assertion to yours, but it's not at all the same assertion. What I found is, "Raising wages to $15 an hour for limited-service restaurant employees would lead to an estimated 4.3 percent increase in prices at those restaurants, according to a recent study." A 4.3% price increase is something that applies across the board -- all producers and their offerings throughout the industry -- but the specific impact will be less at companies that are less dependent on labor and more at companies that rely more heavily on labor.
What's the real impact of that? That's not easy to say outside of at very high levels and withing an economics context. Why? Well, take a look at the various dimensions at which restaurant labor compensated. Here are some considerations:
Those are just two examples, but if you read the content at the links, you'll surely see the complexity of the matter as well as the insufficiency of concluding based on one metric.
- In the presence of an increased minimum wage whereby all employees were paid below $15/hour, will all workers be content with their statutorily granted raise or will more skilled/senior workers demand relatively higher wages than lower skilled workers, even though both just received a decent pay increase? I don't know.
- In locales where the monopsony effect will occur, the mandated wage increase is a better thing than a worse thing. Thus, small-enough town America stands to benefit greatly from minimum wage increases, whereas larger cities, and definitely big ones, will benefit differently. We can talk about those different types of benefits if you want, but the short of it is that the big city benefit is a better quality of life due to lower crime rates. That's actually better for city dwellers as well as visitors.
One other thing:
- That 4.3% price increase is wide open to question. I can't say what yielded the 4.3% figure (assuming it comes from Ma & Ghiselli's study that I earlier referred to), and it may well be that there are contextual limitations omitted from the article I read about the study. It could also be that you and I are referring to different studies.
I don't eat at McDonald's because I can't eat chemically laden food, but if I did, paying $0.17 more for a Big Mac isn't going to break me, especially if my income tax bill is reduced by several hundred dollars for doing so.
Having taxpayers support low wage workers through EIC's and food stamps so that prices won't rise by a small percentage, is a lot more fiscally sound that having every taxpaying American sudsidize Walmart to the tune of $2,500 per year.
Assuming the $0.17 is correct (see discussion above), McDonald's is thrilled about your expressed relatively price inelastic stance; moreover they are counting on that being so for millions of other people. (McD's knows the demand for their produces is relatively inelastic.) They are because that seventeen cents to McDonald's is some ~$93M.
It is still not the right wing fantasy the right tries to pass as the "gospel Truth" regarding price inflation.
If society determines that no one should get less than $15/hr whether they earn it or not, society should step up to the plate and make it happen through welfare. Don't turn businesses into welfare distribution centers.GOP-We only support welfare for corporations!Thanks to the left, now even high school kids can't get jobs.
Thanks To 'Fight For $15' Minimum Wage, McDonald's Unveils Job-Replacing Self-Service Kiosks Nationwide
GOP-Too stupid to realize underpaid workers=workers getting welfare!
there is not that much difference between the CEO and the welfare queen.
That would merely steer all the talent away from the top. Large, well run companies would, as a result, crash and burn. I saw first hand what happens to a large corporation when the leadership at the top changes for the worse. Think Circuit City.Smart for McDolands.
This is why any humans that work for them need a law limiting how much they give the ceo and demand that the workers get that money instead.
If society determines that no one should get less than $15/hr whether they earn it or not, society should step up to the plate and make it happen through welfare. Don't turn businesses into welfare distribution centers.GOP-We only support welfare for corporations!Thanks to the left, now even high school kids can't get jobs.
Thanks To 'Fight For $15' Minimum Wage, McDonald's Unveils Job-Replacing Self-Service Kiosks Nationwide
GOP-Too stupid to realize underpaid workers=workers getting welfare!
Don't forget you're also going to have automated burger ovens. There is very little that happens in a McDonald's kitchen that cannot be highly automated.Thanks to the left, now even high school kids can't get jobs.
Thanks To 'Fight For $15' Minimum Wage, McDonald's Unveils Job-Replacing Self-Service Kiosks Nationwide
I also call bullshit. The same person that takes your order brings you your food. How would an automated order system reduce staff?
Look. You don't seem to understand. Mostly because you can't stop worrying about those other people in the cart. Again, who is pushing, who is pulling, and who is riding is secondary to where the cart is going.
But more importantly, you are missing two critical realities. First, there is not that much difference between the CEO and the welfare queen. Just like the welfare queen, the CEO could be DESTROYING value and hurting the economy. Worse, the CEO can do it to the tune of millions of dollars a year. Even the biggest welfare queen is only going to cost thousands of dollars a year, not millions.
Yes, I do worry about those other people in the cart because my country is quickly approaching 20 trillion dollars in debt and it's my money they are living on in that cart. They should be out working and creating tax dollars instead of sucking them up. These people are not real Americans as they don't give a damn about the future of this country.
If a CEO does a crummy job, that's between him and his company. It has nothing to do with taxpayers and he will lose value in employment if he allows his company to take a dive. Unlike the welfare queen, he is flying around all over the country and perhaps out of the country. He wakes up and goes to work every morning. He has a huge responsibility on his hands.
there is not that much difference between the CEO and the welfare queen.
Yes there is. The CEO can position himself to get millions in taxpayer money. No "welfare queen" can do that.
