Fast Food and Minimum Wage

(CNSNews.com) – The unemployment rate for young people, ages 16 to 19, went down slightly between October and November, from 22.2% to 20.8%, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), but it is still nearly three times greater than the national unemployment rate of 7%....

The numbers for youth unemployed do not include those who have dropped out of the job market and are no longer looking for work and those working only part-time.

- See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/youth-unemployment-208#sthash.8Po3p2X6.dpuf
 
Lucrum said -"The chart you provided compares the min wage to CPI, NOT productivity NOT welfare rolls. You claimed an increase in min wage is 1) beneficial economically 2) reduces welfare rolls 3) is necessary to compensate productivity of today's worker.

Unless I missed something your chart along with this commentary proves only that the min wage is relatively low due to inflation.(Inflation BTW your fellow liberals claim is non-existent.) I don't see how your assumptions prove anything about a productivity/pay discrepancy.
One may exist, but you have not proven it."
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Exactly.

Could we at least agree Piezoe -- big crony govt and the devaluation of the dollar - as well as massive illegal immigration is causing the need to raise the minimum wage.

On a side note... wages and standard of living always make me want to say what the hell has happened.

We have had 700 percent inflation in 50 years.

The govt has been borrowing the money... not making new money until recently (Q.E.) So why did we have such massive inflation prior to 2008. Especially with such worldwide demand for the dollar. With world demand for dollars the way it was our dollar should been massively strong. Can we all see the incredible theft that has gone on?

Why the hell does the minimum wage have to change so much.
How did this massive inflation get here.

I know the answer ... but can those in favor of big crony govt figure it out.
 
Yes we can agree. Inflation. Up until '71 (was it?) we were still on gold at $35/oz. As long as we could control the price of gold we had relatively little inflation! But we had two irresolvable problems as long as we stayed on gold. One was that since the dollar was the reserve currency more dollars were needed then we could supply and still hold gold at $35. The other problem was that since the dollar was required for world commerce, our account balances became more and more out of whack. This is precisely the problem that Keynes foresaw at Bretton Words. That's why he wanted the Bancor instead of dollars as the reserve currency. When gold was selling on the international market at $45 we could no longer maintain the price at $35 and we were forced to go off the gold standard. It's been inflation ever since. The primary driving forces being untenable military and medical spending. Neither respond to ordinary market forces. U.S. medicine is a cartel so we have lost control of costs. Military spending is driven by the Military industrial complex. the financial power of both the Military industrial complex and the medical cartel is such that Congress does their bidding and no longer represents what's in the best interests of the American people at large. A crisis is coming. When it hits full bore something will give.

I'm not sure what the net effect of immigration has been, but it definitely has a distorting effect on labor markets as you point out. A boost in the minimum wage should help there too. But we must get a sensible immigration policy in place.
 
Quote from piezoe:


Compare the real cost of minimum wage labor in 1968 to the real cost in 2012. Take the difference between those real costs and the actual hourly wages in nominal dollars in 1968 and 2012. Which year has the biggest gap between hourly wage and real labor cost. ,

More...
From a businessman perspective, did the labor have anything to do with productivity gains? Why should I pay more for a worker to stand by and watch a machine work.
I have made large investments in sophisticated machinery, money that would have gone to the worker if the worker was as productive as my new machine.
The demands on my worker have probably gone down from what he was doing several years ago.
 
Quote from Mercor:

From a businessman perspective, did the labor have anything to do with productivity gains? Why should I pay more for a worker to stand by and watch a machine work.
I have made large investments in sophisticated machinery, money that would have gone to the worker if the worker was as productive as my new machine.
The demands on my worker have probably gone down from what he was doing several years ago.
More...
Yes, naturally from the businessman's perspective cheap labor is ideal. The business man's job is to obtain labor at the lowest possible cost. From their perspective, the lower labor costs go, the greater is their productivity, and hence greater profits can be extracted. Government's proper role is to serve as a referee and see to it that labor costs are not allowed to get so out of whack relative to productivity such that the entire economy begins to reflect that of an emerging nation. It's a balancing act. Sometimes the government plays it well, and other times not so well.

Even if you could hire someone for 7$ an hour to watch your machines work, it may not be in your best long term interests to do that. That is, assuming you will need a customer for the widgets your machines turn out. The government may give you the option of moving your machines to Bangladesh, and it may even be in your best personal interests to do so. But at the same time, the government may be acting irresponsibly, considering that government is supposed to represent the people as a priority over representing the interests of an individual businessman. Ideally the government will find a way to protect both the interests of the businessman and the people. Whenever these two interests are in conflict however, the government is supposed to come down on the side of the people. That principle is embodied in democratic rule. If you contribute enough to political campaigns, you may succeed if getting the government to shirk its responsibility to the people. You can always try.
 
Quote from piezoe:

Yes, naturally from the businessman's perspective cheap labor is ideal. The business man's job is to obtain labor at the lowest possible cost. From their perspective, the lower labor costs go, the greater is their productivity, and hence greater profits can be extracted. Government's proper role is to serve as a referee and see to it that labor costs are not allowed to get so out of whack relative to productivity that the entire economy begins to reflect that of an emerging nation. It's a balancing act. Sometimes the government plays it well, and other times not so well.
More...
Government should never work against productivity.
Productivity helps millions of people buy better products at a lower price. Productivity is a check and balance on inflation.
We don't want the government to referee private deals between business and workers. ( aside from regulating dangerous conditions.)
The businessman's goal is to get the lowest cost labor and materials and produce the best product for its customers.
Remember businessmen only get rich when a consumer is willing to exchange money for goods. This condition does not always result in the lowest wages, in fact puts greater value on workers who have talent. It can drive salaries up.
Government only gets rich by forcing citizens to pay under criminal threat. This constrict is unhealthy.
 
1. You may wish to try this again... you gave the text book answer but the books were written by big govt cronies. It is completely backward.

Think about this before you respond...worldwide demand for the dollar would cause the price of the dollar to rise... thereby the price of things priced in dollars would go down. Really think before you answer. Think about the expanding world economy and the demand for our dollar. If the supply of dollars were fixed. The price of a dollar would have soared.

Even gold would have gone down relative to the dollar.

It would take more and more gold to get a dollar. Dollars were demanded by the expanding worldwide economy. Had the supply of dollar remained static the wealth of americans, our savings and our income would have skyrocketed.

Yet somehow dollars got all over the world and demand was satisfied. How did that happen? There is one obvious answer.

However the answer you always hear and read is... govt overspending. Which is wrong.

1. 5

if we were borrowing the money from the japanese and others to finance our gov overspending... there would be no net devaluation of the dollar because we got the yen for pieces of paper and we would later return the yen or more IOUs.

It would not have turned inflationary until 2008 when the Fed had to start buying our debt itself.



Quote from piezoe:

Yes we can agree. Inflation. Up until '71 (was it?) we were still on gold at $35/oz. As long as we could control the price of gold we had relatively little inflation! But we had two irresolvable problems as long as we stayed on gold. One was that since the dollar was the reserve currency more dollars were needed then we could supply and still hold gold at $35. The other problem was that since the dollar was required for world commerce, our account balances became more and more out of whack. This is precisely the problem that Keynes foresaw at Bretton Words. That's why he wanted the Bancor instead of dollars as the reserve currency. When gold was selling on the international market at $45 we could no longer maintain the price at $35 and we were forced to go off the gold standard. It's been inflation ever since. The primary driving forces being untenable military and medical spending. Neither respond to ordinary market forces. U.S. medicine is a cartel so we have lost control of costs. Military spending is driven by the Military industrial complex. the financial power of both the Military industrial complex and the medical cartel is such that Congress does their bidding and no longer represents what's in the best interests of the American people at large. A crisis is coming. When it hits full bore something will give.

I'm not sure what the net effect of immigration has been, but it definitely has a distorting effect on labor markets as you point out. A boost in the minimum wage should help there too. But we must get a sensible immigration policy in place.
More...
 
Quote from Mercor:

Government should never work against productivity.
Productivity helps millions of people buy better products at a lower price. Productivity is a check and balance on inflation.
We don't want the government to referee private deals between business and workers. ( aside from regulating dangerous conditions.)
The businessman's goal is to get the lowest cost labor and materials and produce the best product for its customers.
Remember businessmen only get rich when a consumer is willing to exchange money for goods. This condition does not always result in the lowest wages, in fact puts greater value on workers who have talent. It can drive salaries up.
Government only gets rich by forcing citizens to pay under criminal threat. This constrict is unhealthy.
More...
I'm not sure you understood my post. There is more than one way to look at productivity. The correct way is to use the real cost of labor. As a businessman you will want to use taxpayer subsidized labor to get your businesses labor cost down as low as possible. This will increase increase productivity, from your prospective only, and you will be able to extract more profits. In actual fact, however, you have not increased productivity at all to the extent that you have shifted part of your labor cost onto the taxpayer or another entity. The only way to really know if you have actually increased productivity is to measure your productivity relative to the real cost of labor.
 
I actually think burger flippers are underpaid. It's not fun work, but somebody has to do it. Lets be honest, for some of them it's the best that they can do in life. I'm ok with them raising the minimum wage to $15/hour, but then everybody should pay the same tax rate, no exceptions. Right now the tax payers are paying for a good chunk of these burger flipper's salaries. If we put in a minimum standard so people aren't living on slave wages they're paid now and relying on the government we could have an across the board flat tax on all income, no loopholes, no handouts. No corporate tax either, since that's simply double taxing everybody.
 
Quote from Mercor:


The businessman's goal is to get the lowest cost labor and materials and produce the best product for its customers.
Remember businessmen only get rich when a consumer is willing to exchange money for goods. This condition does not always result in the lowest wages, in fact puts greater value on workers who have talent.
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Really no I do not see this. I see USA have very low pay to the workers in the Walmarts, McDonalds, landscaping, constructions worker, retail sale, cook, bank service representative, housekeeper, and so many more. All of these is keep the "product" for sale attractive. No business can have profit without these people.
More...
 
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