ray

. My comment was to disagree with your notion that raising the minimum wage is an efficient way to target money to poor families because many low income workers happen to be in non-low income families. I was saying there is a difference between those 2 things. You said there was no difference between a low income worker and a low income family.

I don't think that raising the minimum wage has JUST the effect of helping low income people.ANd thats why your complaint that some of the people working at Walmart aren't in net low income families is besides the point,
The point in the article I originally posted, and which I am making is that raising the minimum wage would raise all boats. The higher incomes would contribute to a better consumer economy. The economy that drives the US...
And the higher mw would allow the elimination or at least reduction of a lot of government programs targeted at helping families and individuals who can't support themselves without help. I don't like government interventions to help able bodied people doing a full time job. Ideologicaly i don't see why a business should be able to draw from a labour pool that they know is going to require government help even after working full time for the company...
And I don't see why the aim of reducing government size shouldn't focus on the simplest easiest way to ensure that these people won't require help outside their working income.

What is lost by people who fight against raising the minimum wage is that it actualy helps most people. It forces up wages for everyone. One of the problems with periods of high unemployment is that wages stagnate. The reason for the shrinking middle class is partly that, even though productivity has increased greatly, pay has not kept pace. Labour is being devalued. For everyone.
And as everyone's labour value, except for CEO's has tended to shrink the pressure on the consumer market increases.
Its a self perpetuating cycle. Unless the value of labour is increased in some way, the average standard of living will continue to slide. Goodbye to a middle class economy and hello to a walmart economy. A higher minimum wage sets a higher floor from which everyone then benefits.
Except I guess for CEOs and the top 1%.
But when the Walton family has as much money as it does.....i don't know why anyone should be concerned. They'll get by.

rickyp wrote:bbauska

[Are you saying the purpose of our policies should be to bring happiness to people?/quote]

As opposed to what ?
Shouldn't a representative democracy respond to the wishes of the electorate. And surely the electorate want to be happy.
The whole reason mankind banded together in villages, towns and cities was to provide for services that increased security, and enhanced the amenities that make life more enjoyable, including making commerce and education more easily achievable. Its the whole point of government.

I didn't give an opposing view. I asked if that was what was believed. It was for the purpose of finding out more about others. Fell free to answer if you choose.

bb

Fell free to answer if you choose.

I think I did.
For whatever reason you asked the question, it still indicates that you think that there is an alternative
to "policies bringing happiness to people".
What would they be?
I ask this for the purpose of finding out more about your ideas..

rickyp wrote:bb

Fell free to answer if you choose.

I think I did.
For whatever reason you asked the question, it still indicates that you think that there is an alternative
to "policies bringing happiness to people".
What would they be?
I ask this for the purpose of finding out more about your ideas..

No. You did not. You side stepped.

Policies CAN bring happiness to people, but that is not the purpose.

A policy should be in place to ensure that the rules are EQUALLY enforced among all people; NOT that all people have the same opportunity.

This time try to say what YOU think policy is supposed to do for people.

(side question for you... Do you want Walmart to cease existence?)

Ricky:

ANd thats why your complaint that some of the people working at Walmart aren't in net low income families is besides the point,

I still cannot tell if you are obtuse or dishonest. I wasn't complaining. I was saying that it is not nearly as efficient as you had said.

ray

I still cannot tell if you are obtuse or dishonest. I wasn't complaining. I was saying that it is not nearly as efficient as you had said.

I know what you;re saying. Your're saying that there are more efficent ways to ensure people who work for low wages (current minimum wage or close to) then actually raising the minimum wage.
And your arguement is that many of the people working for minimum wage are in families where the toal income means they don't need help.
Bully. hardly a mitigation for
I'm not just interested in ensuring that people working full time don't require governemtn assistacne to get by. Yes it should be an aim, because govnerment assistance shouldn't be required if someone is working full time.
But as I've stressed, the economy needs a higher minimum wage in order to drive up the value of labour. In order to generate disposable income for working class and middle class families.
Do you have anything to say about that specific arguement?
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... 8rd-_ldX4Z

As the biullionare in the article I'm quoting says...

But please, please stop insisting that if we pay low-wage workers more, unemployment will skyrocket and it will destroy the economy. It’s utter nonsense. The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics isn’t believing that if the rich get richer, it’s good for the economy. It’s believing that if the poor get richer, it’s bad for the economy.

bbauska

side question for you... Do you want Walmart to cease existence?

)

No. But they still exist, indeed thrive in places where they have to pay a much higher wage because the minimum wage is higher.
There's absolutely no danger they'll be unable to compete if they have to pay higher wages.

However, if they do, their employees are far less likely to require expensive government programs in order to subsist...
And don't you think thats a good thing?

bbauska

This time try to say what YOU think policy is supposed to do for people

Oh for crying out loud.
For this specific policy, minimum wage I've made a comprehensive case. It would make ME happy if I were a tax payer who had to pay higher taxes because low wage employers weren't paying their employees so little they needed public asssitance.
And it would make me happy as a taxpayer and a business man to know that the working class and middle calss were able to receive a larger share of the welath created every day. Mostly because it would make every body happir, and would help create the more vibrant economy that exisited in the past.

bbauska

A policy should be in place to ensure that the rules are EQUALLY enforced among all people; NOT that all people have the same opportunity

You have such a fetish for whats fair, I'm surprised you aren't a liberal. The progressive tax system contributed mightily to the development of the American middle class. In fact the middle class properity grew fastest in high tax periods, when the beenfits of taxes acrrrued to everyone. (investment in infrastructure, education and research). Moving away from that since the early 80"s has occurred mostly because the system is gamed against most people. (Taxing different income differently, for instance. )
If the Walton familiy (6 of them) has as much wealth today as the bottom 30% of all Americans, don't you think that they could withstand paying enough to all of their employees that taxpayers don't have to back stop them? Wouldn't that be fair and make you happy?

In thinking about minimum wages I think we have to look at fundamental values. And the place to start is history. Hominids lived in small tribes of typically 30-50 people for several million years until Homo sapiens invented agriculture and domesticated animals about 10,000 years. Did it make sense in small bands for a few people to take most of the food collected? No, maybe some got preferences because they were a leader, or a good hunter or a shaman--but they did not take most of it. People had to work together to barely survive. So for most of human history we did not practice a winner take-all philosophy.
Once agriculture was invented, there were surpluses created and now a ruling class (kings, military leaders, priests, merchants, some craftsman), maybe 10-20% of the population lived off the surplus created by the rest of the population which produced the food.
This really did not change until 1500s when the Renaissance and Reformation. The Reformation made every man have the right to read the Bible without a priestly class interceding for him (this clearly undercut the hierarchical structure of society. The Renaissance was an intellectual rebirth that eventually led to two things: (1) economic development that resulted in the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s in England, (2) political ideas about the rights of ALL men that eventually led to American and French Revolutions in the late 1700s.
The 1800s saw labor strife as workers rebelled against poor working conditions. This culminated in World War I that once and for all ended the that aristocracy should rule because they inherently superior. From 1918-1990 There was a struggle between Communism and Capitalism (and to a lesser extent Fascism) for the successor to the rule of a few and Capitalism won. During this time period the average worker saw an enormous improvement in his working conditions, his pay, his benefits, his retirement and (dare we say it) happiness.
Since 1990 (actually 1980) there has a move back towards the wealthy getting a lion share's of a country's wealth, as fears of a worker's revolt have pretty much ceased.
Obviously, this is an incredibly sketchy history, but I think we need some sense of the past in analyzing the present.
To recap, since agriculture was invented a small percentage of society has lived off of the toil of the many. This basically changed in the 20th Century due to things like unions, government regulations of working conditions, anti-trust laws, etc. We now appear in a retrenchment period, with elites justifying their increasing share of the wealth because our society is a meritocracy.
I wanted to explore two metaphors on how wealth gets allocated in a society (by the way a period does not have wealth outside of society and the government seizes it--a person in the United States owns his house, his money, all of his assets because the United Governments recognizes and protects his wealth. Imagine a plague hit the US and the government ceased to exist--what would pieces of paper with ink on them mean, then?
The first metaphor is that US economy is like a poker game. Those who already have a lot of poker chips have an advantage in gaining more chips, those who have a better start in life have a better shot, and of course those with better natural intelligence and ability have a better shot. You can win as many chips as you can, without there being any relationship between wealth created for the society, work performed, or any other contribution made to the society. Once you get the chips you can use the chips to purchase and asset or work performed by a member of society.
The second metaphor is that a country's wealth is a pie. And as a person contributes to the pie (through work, invention, knowledge created, etc) they get to make withdrawals from the pie. Obviously, the withdrawals from the pie are less than the deposits.
I believe the poker chip society is not fundamentally fair. Saying a person has earned the wealth is a tautology. A hedge fund manager has earned his billion dollars. His contribution to the wealth of society is equal to that made by 20,000 teachers (making $50,000 a year)?
Coming up with ways to assess a person's contribution to the wealth of a society is difficult if not impossible, and we cannot micro-manage, but this metaphor should be in the back of our mind in assessing things like tax policy, unions and, yes, minimum wage laws.
Let's look at the person working 2,000 hours a year. Would we say he has overdrawn his contribution to the wealth if a society if he makes the poverty level cut-off? I don't think so. I believe that would about $24,000 (so 2,000 hours at $12 an hour.)

Ricky:

But as I've stressed, the economy needs a higher minimum wage in order to drive up the value of labour. In order to generate disposable income for working class and middle class families.
Do you have anything to say about that specific arguement?

There's no free lunch. I posted the CBO study.

Fairness is not just a liberal idiom, I am all for a person having the same opportunity, just not for the government providing that opportunity. It is up to the person themselves to make that.

I look at it this way. I grew up very poor. My parents divorced before I started school. We had NOTHING. We were on welfare, and worked hard to get OFF of it. I have never said that there was not a need for welfare. I have said that the benefits should not be long term.

Freeman,
Regarding the pie; Is someone who does not provide to the "pie" eligible for a slice?

Pretty much, Brad (unless they are so mentally or physically disabled that they cannot work--but most people who are disabled can perform some work). Now, we have social welfare programs to help people with economic forces beyond their control (unemployment) or for times when we think people should not be working (pregnancy, retirement, childhood), but otherwise people should make a contribution to get their share of the pie.

freeman3 wrote:Pretty much, Brad (unless they are so mentally or physically disabled that they cannot work--but most people who are disabled can perform some work). Now, we have social welfare programs to help people with economic forces beyond their control (unemployment) or for times when we think people should not be working (pregnancy, retirement, childhood), but otherwise people should make a contribution to get their share of the pie.

I agree that we need short term welfare, but perhaps two years total for the lifetime would be a guidepost?

How long was your family on welfare when you were growing up, Brad?

danivon wrote:How long was your family on welfare when you were growing up, Brad?

1 year 8 months

ray

There's no free lunch. I posted the CBO study

yes you did.Who's focus you also quoted.

CBO

Just 19 percent of the $31 billion would accrue to families with earnings below the poverty threshold, whereas 29 percent would accrue to families earning more than three times the poverty threshold, CBO estimates

So what? The point I'm making,is that a minimum wage would raie all boats. Which the CBO seems to strengthen. There would be more money in not just poor, but working class and even middle class families. This money would enrich the consumer marketplace, and drive the economy.
The minimum wage hasn't been raised in years. Inflation has been increasing, on some items (healthcare and education) greatly. When the minimum wage doesn't move, higher paid positions have less upward pressure...
As a result over the last three decades the working poor and middle class have seen their stanard of living go down.
As for the free lunch?
Apply it to the tax breaks that go to corporations or the wealthy. Suppossedly those tax breaks were supposed to create jobs.... That didn't happen. But those who giot the break, got their free lunch.

But please, please stop insisting that if we pay low-wage workers more, unemployment will skyrocket and it will destroy the economy. It’s utter nonsense. The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics isn’t believing that if the rich get richer, it’s good for the economy. It’s believing that if the poor get richer, it’s bad for the economy.