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The Truth About Net Neutrality Job Loss
snydeq writes "Robert X. Cringely investigates recent claims that passing net neutrality regulations will result in nearly 1.5 million lost jobs by 2020, finding the report at the center of these claims suspect. The report, put forward by The Brattle Group, conjectures that net neutrality adoption would curtail broadband growth by 16 percent, costing 342,065 jobs in that sector alone. The 'total economy-wide impact,' however, of such a policy would result in five times as many job losses by 2020, they say. The study is the latest of several weighing the economic impact of net neutrality, including those by law schools (PDF) and free-market think tanks alike. The Brattle Group report (PDF), however, should be met with skepticism, Cringely argues, in large part because the lobbying firm who paid for the report, Mobile Future, is anchored most notably by AT&T. Moreover, the report is 'based entirely on a single assumption: Regulating US telecoms in the late 1990s and early 2000s hurt them to the tune of about 15 percent per quarter, relative to the cable companies.' Yet, as he points out, regulation was not alone in causing this sector shrinkage. In fact, the Baby Bells' own bureaucratic intransigence was much to blame."
after fifty years of being the boss hog. They just had to slim down like the rest of the companies in around that time. Oh yeah, and there was some real big booms and busts around that time. But surely gubment regulation was to blame; it sure does correlate!
So how exactly would passing a law that basically codifies current practices cause job loss?
I have yet to hear of any ISP charging Youtube extortion money. My files are still downloading at 2MB/s. Net neutrality legislation would just prevent future abuses by ISPs.
Outlawing all forms of traffic shaping technology, sure, I can see how that might cause a hit to ISP's profits, but the majority of proposed net neutrality legislation allows for some traffic shaping, it just prevents "pay up or else we'll make sure no one can access your website" levels of manipulation.
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are promoting an approach that sustains oligarchies.
At least 1,499,999 of them being lobbyists.
How strange that the study paid for by AT&T et al. is a complete 180 from the study mentioned in the article that is NOT paid for my any carrier: http://policyintegrity.org/documents/Free_to_Invest.pdf Of course there's something "suspect" about the study claiming that net neutrality will cost the carriers billions - especially when it's PAID FOR by the groups it claims are going to be hurt.
People learning more than one language in school cause job loss in the translating field. People learning how to cook cause job loss in restaurants. Free trade costs a lot of jobs at the customs. I mean, I can create a shitload amount of jobs by having people work on many stupid things. It doesn't make those things worth working on.
Despite hating that whole net-netrual thing this is just plain silly. It would create a lot of jobs. Millions and millions to be precise. Someone has to do the police-work you know... Neh, this is just silly.
Report by a lobbyist outfit is suspect? GTFO! Why are you even mentioning the "paper" not worthy of toilette duty?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Wow, I suppose you can fund a report and create whatever information you want.... if Tim Berners-Lee is for network neutrality, so be it as far as I am concerned.
50 trillion people will lose their jobs if Jessica Biel doesn't go out with me on Saturday... study says. There, it's true now and no one can deny it!
A telecom lobbying firm called Mobile Future, which sports a weird hodgepodge of member organizations, including Alligator Planet, Climate Cartoons, Goomzee, and the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Here's my audition:
If net neutrality goes through, this country would face a disaster of biblical proportions.
Riots in the streets, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
There will toads from the sky, blood flowing in rivers, first born children dieing, etc.. etc...
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Nothing like the sweet plastic smell of newly manufactured, made to order mind-share.
It costs them jobs the same way minimum wage, hours regulations, vacation time, health insurance, OSHA, and all of the other restrictions on whatever the hell you want to do business do. Just because its true doesn't mean its the right answer.
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
Maybe they can take those people and switch them away from throttling people's bandwidth, and put them on the job of installing new fiber. It's a win-win situation. No jobs are lost, fiber is installed. Unless somehow these people aren't actually going to lose their jobs......
Qxe4
didnt it just come out that private ranking organizations collaborated with wall street to show otherwise worthless and risky investments as A grade and helped them peddle these and SCAM the entire world. entire effin world ?
and now, a private company puts out a report saying 'regulating this is bad', which is funded by a subsidiary of a big corporation JUST like the bastards in wall street.
i cant even begin to tell how shitty and stupid this is. private corporations vouching for private corporations, and people trusting them. yea.
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But your ISP needs to hire people to enforce their abuse and create more abusive practices; those are the lost jobs.
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
So how exactly would passing a law that basically codifies current practices cause job loss?
Not to mention that it isn't even job loss that they're talking about. They're merely speculating that growth will be 15% less than without regulation - and somehow, that translates into 300000 jobs that will not be created.
Can we please, please stop talking about not getting what you think you should get as being the same as a loss or theft? Because if we're going to go down that route, I'm gonna argue that a lack of net neutrality regulation will cost me 2.74 gazillion dollars, and sue the Federal Government for that amount.
Then again, we're talking about lobbyists here. If the money is right, they'll argue that cigarette smoke freshens your breath and turns babies into geniuses.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Your realism is most refreshing. I can't mod you up for "+1 SomebodyFuckingUnderstandsTheRealWorld" so "+1 Insightful" will have to do.
The status quo is NOT "net neutrality" in any way.
Cable companies are allowed to reserve frequencies on their wire for phone usage only where Internet traffic can't go... and competing VoIP products have to contend with the other Internet traffic on the wire.
Some ISPs pay Disney for the right to show ESPN3.com and ABC News Now content that other ISPs don't get. MTV has threatened to make it's website pay-by-ISP in the past, but has been convinced that'd leave MTV.com with no audience.
Projections of future events are always "suspect".
If the government would mind it's own business instead of trying to meddle in ISP network management, we can be pretty sure that non-action would cause no extra loss in jobs. Not forcing people at ISPs to do business against their will is probably a good policy.
I'm a big fan of the government not forcing people to do things against their will.
I'm gonna argue that a lack of net neutrality regulation will cost me 2.74 gazillion dollars, and sue the Federal Government for that amount.
That's a nice thought, but a real number would be more effective.
<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
but the obvious solution is kill the monopolies. Go with municipal/state/national infrastructure, and lease it to competing service providers. Doesn't exactly pander to the big boys, but it would work pretty well for the rest of us.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
China has 800,000+ internet police, if they op for net neutrality (meaning all contents available for the rest of the world should be available in china) then 800k people will loose their jobs. Is that a bad thing? hell no. It is somewhat similar to the Broken window fallacy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
So in other words, it does not cost jobs.
Remember, all those laws and benefits were in effect during a time when we had 4% unemployment (aka "full employment").
Minimum wage does not cost jobs. Vacation time, benefits, OSHA, etc do NOT cost jobs. In fact, after OSHA went into effect, total employment in the US went up for decades. Vacation time and health insurance started showing up in benefits packages after the big war, and the most prosperous decades for the US and for the middle and working-classes generally were yet to come.
Maybe it sounds "truthy" to you to say those things, CyprusBlue113, but that doesn't make it so.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And then it will be George Bush's fault.
Like maybe the government should have just "stayed out of it" and allowed the ATT monopoly to continue...
I mean 14kB modems, paying a lot of money for ISDN (128kB), or a whole ton of money for T-1 (1.44MB), that was just AWESOME, and GOD DAMN those pushy gov'ment types for breakin up ATT and lettin them nastly little cable, dsl and bandwidth providers go and provide dramatically increased bandwidth for less and less money.
The free market is great, until it reaches equilibrium. At that point you just have a few winners looking to expand their profit margins.
A decent 'free' market, like a nice sauce, needs to be stirred every now and then to keep it from getting clumped up. As far as I know, the government has the only spoon big enough to deal with multi-national companies.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
It's called a "talking point", Neutron, and in the new post-media-consolidation world, they don't have to be anything like true.
All net neutrality does is keep a small handful of companies from turning the Internet into TV. But TV was a big moneymaker for years and years, and it's now the most effective way to get out pro-corporatist agenda messages, so big business and corporatists politicians want to turn the Internet into TV. It's the answer to their prayers.
And anti-government dopes are doing the work of the corporatists for them. "Keep the government out of my Internet". Can you imagine anything so stupid? Without the US federal government, there would never have been an Internet. But that's something you won't read about in any Texas history textbook.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's right. 16 billion.
All jobs involved in expansive bandwidth usage will be controlled by the owners of the pipes, period.
They will rule the net, preventing end-users from accessing servers that can serve vast amounts of data.
And that will stifle growth. Forever.
So when I say 16 billion, I'm not only mimicking their act of pulling a number out of one's ass, I'm inverting their overestimate by vastly underestimating.
I haven't done a study but this seems backwards to me.
I mean don't they shape traffic to save money? You can appear to have more bandwidth than you do if you shape it, but you don't have to pay keep growing you network ie. jobs.
If they are not able to shape traffic then they need to spend money expanding their network, which would mean MORE jobs not less.
Minimum wage does not cost jobs.
umm yes it does.
It's an increase in cost that has to be paid. whether that's not hiring an additional worker, firing a current one, increasing prices to customers or whatever. it certainly does cost jobs.
Preventing needless labor strengthens the economy. If you outlaw the breaking of other peoples' windows, and that causes job loss among the window-makers, you've done a good thing. I know with politicians saying "jobs, jobs" we like to pretend that creating jobs is good and losing jobs is bad, but we need to always remember that we really are just pretending. Telling the lie is ok, but for fuck's sake, don't start believing it.
funny enough - hours regulations created more jobs in the factory sector. 40 hour work weeks meant that instead of having 2 workers per day for 7 days a week, they now had to have at least 3 workers per day for 5 days, plus extras to cover the hours on the 2 remaining days. So by my quick look - that was an extra 3 people employed, or 150% addition.
Did it put a crimp in the employer? I'm sure it did. But so does having to pay their employees anything.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
This is "costing jobs" in the same way a tax cut "costs money", if anything at all. That is, they're claiming it will prevent them from expanding - thus prevent those jobs from being created.
How many jobs will get lost because folks get pissed off and use the internet less when they're confronted with bizarre throttling behaviors, and strangely blocked content? How many baby Google's will get squished by thuggish slow moving oligopolies like the telcoms decide to hold them hostage due to excess BW usage (i.e. excess in their 1980's mindset).
Because clearly all regulation is precisely the same in both magnitude and direction. I'm surprised these kinds of blatant bullshit get any recognition outside the echo chamber in which they're conceived.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
So how exactly would passing a law that basically codifies current practices cause job loss?
1. The legislation passes
2. People get angry at their ISP and set their HQ on fire
3. The ISPs build bigger meaner bunk^H^H^H^H HQs which requires manpower
=> more jobs
1. The legislation passes
2. The ISP demands their protection money
3. The CEOs and other members of the boards become richer
4. They buy bigger houses
5. They requires more maids and gardeners
=> more jobs
1. The legislation passes
2. The ISP demands their protection money
3. The customers become poorer and can't pay their bills
4. The customers are evicted
5. The customers now homeless lose their jobs
=> more jobs (for the others)
6. The customers get depressed and kill themselves
7. They are buried or cremated
8. Graveyards and crematoriums flourish
=> more jobs
All net neutrality does is keep a small handful of companies from turning the Internet into TV.
Unfortunately, I share your position on this. It is exactly why I love net neutrality, and why the telecoms sponsoring these white papers hate it. I am convinced that the best years of the Internet are behind it... I'd love to be wrong on that, but somehow doubt it.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Money, money, money, mo money.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
That is like saying
"By not legalizing roving death squads, you are costing us jobs!"
Because hey, roving death squads obviously have employees!
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Is that 15% really an amount of "jobs"? Perhaps what is actually being measured is how much less growth the telcos will experience if they can't swindle us all with their graduated cable-like "value-add" drek. If it's the latter then the "jobs" will simply emerge independently of the major telcos as non-vertical solutions are created.
I live where no major telco saw fit to invest in residential broadband until around 2005. Despite that I've had adaquate broadband since 1997. It was neither easy nor cheap. Several small ISPs thrived because of people like me. They've all been bought up or merged into increasingly larger outfits, but they're still about and to this day I've never directly paid Comcast or Qwest a dime for my broadband.
Had some large fraction of our fabulous citizenry done similar we'd have a diverse and competitive market. What we'll do instead is ensconce a handful of politically favored telcos into unassailable quasi-government monopolies.
So fuck you people and your selective outrage. I'll manage to keep mine as long as I need it, one way or another. Go beg your government masters for relief. Those are the wages of coercing individuals and businesses instead of using the freedom you have to participate in the market.
Where have we all heard this before?
Oh yeah... from the MAFIAA...
Jack Valenti: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
That's a nice thought, but a real number would be more effective.
How about "1.21 jigadollars"?
That is not the main debate surrounding net neutrality. The primary concern of net neutrality is an ISP charging websites money in order for the website to be able to get through to the ISP's users, or an ISP not allowing video streaming protocols unless users "pay up" extra money.
What you are describing is premium content. Hell I am all in favor of that. If an ISP wants to gain a competitive advantage by working in conjunction with some media provider who has a desired resource, then that is just called good business all around. Users can, if they so wish, choose an ISP which has a partnering agreement with some desired media partner, and that media partner has a revenue stream which allows them to offer services which they may not otherwise be able to profitably offer.
Not everything can be supported by Adwords. :P I have no issue with people paying for premium content, I do have issue with ISPs holding content that is on the public internet hostage unless users or website operators pay up an additional fee.
Hey so the free market does work now and then. :)
The status quo is de facto net neutrality. Comcast pushes the boundaries now and again, but consumer backlash has so far been sufficient to halt further encroachments. Unfortunately smaller ISPs do not get the massive negative press that large ISPs such as Comcast receive, thus allowing the smaller ISPs to at times get away with BS that larger ISPs would get publicly chastised for.
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May cost actually jobs but ends in a net increase of jobs.
Follow along, you might learn something.
Thought experiment:
Assume that we got rid of min wage, and according to your argument instead of hiring one person at min wage the business could get away at hiring 2 people at half minimum wage (it would never happen in the real world. ITRW a business would just cut wages and keep the employment the same; keeping the resultant increase in efficiency for themselves but whatever) Those two people would be earning much less and could only realistically afford to live in shanty-towns with barely enough money left over to feed themselves, much less add any utility to the greater economy. Hence, the money doesn't move around the economy. Hence, no multiplier; no extra goods bought and sold and importantly no jobs created upstream of the way-less-than-poverty wages.
It might even be argued that wages below a certain level have a negative utility to the economy. The externalities not picked up by the slave-wage employer are passed on to society as a whole contribute to a net-loss of real jobs. Obviously this kind of thing can snowball and pick off previously higher paid jobs as it goes, pushing wages further down as unemployment rises. Creating a real world with haves and have-nots without a buffering middle-class.
Keep believing that the free market fairy will come and magically make things right; leaving goodies under your pillow as you sleep.
cat sig >
Shut down Facebook, Wikipedia, and YouTube, and you don't have much of an internet left.
Large corporate sites have never been all that popular. Turns out most people would rather read about each others dinner on twitter than visit the GOP or DNC homepage. Imagine that! :P
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but has been convinced that'd leave MTV.com with no audience.
It has one now?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Regulating the phone company's tariffs cost the phone company 15% in potential revenues, therefore regulating how traffic is treated by cable companies will cost the cable companies 15% of their revenue? WTF?!?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
No, it means that the business will have the same 5 workers at $7.50 instead of $0.03 per hour. Would you really want to have companies with the ability to keep pay rates the same for 60 years with nobody forcing them to pace with inflation?
"There's lots more to say on this topic, but I've exhausted this space for now."
Hahahahaha. This guy is a big idiot.
You hit the nail on the head. It is now common business practice that if we don't always grow grow grow then for some reason it is horrible. If your company is making 50+ million net profit, you do not need to require +20% next quarter! Sustain what you have and refine practices and efficiency, fuck I hate lobbyists. I think they are one of the single most responsible entities for the current corruption of our governmental system, but I see no solutions that would be met with any kind of seriousness due to the lobbyist foothold with congress.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
Assume that we got rid of min wage, and according to your argument instead of hiring one person at min wage the business could get away at hiring 2 people at half minimum wage (it would never happen in the real world. ITRW a business would just cut wages and keep the employment the same; keeping the resultant increase in efficiency for themselves but whatever)
You're saying that if a buisness could cut the wages of employees, keep the employees, it would then keep the money for itself, and all that would happen is the buisness would make more money? You're making a lot of huge assumptions there, that ITRW, would not happen.
Those two people would be earning much less and could only realistically afford to live in shanty-towns with barely enough money left over to feed themselves, much less add any utility to the greater economy.
And unless economic conditions were horrible, they would leave, or their production would fall. Or you truly believe you can get something for nothing, so easily? Hey why don't you start a buisness, you can hire only women as they only make 2/3s of what men make, you can make a killing and become rich. That obviously will not work, just like your situation.
Keep believing that the free market fairy will come and magically make things right; leaving goodies under your pillow as you sleep.
no need for any fairies. I'll type this on my computer that goes through the internet, then i'll leave work, drive in my car, to my apartment, eat some nice food, ect ect. Why? because of the market. Not because of some stupid belief that we can regulate success and a better life. Free markets are not perfect, but they are far better than anything else we've tried.
No, it means that the business will have the same 5 workers at $7.50 instead of $0.03 per hour. Would you really want to have companies with the ability to keep pay rates the same for 60 years with nobody forcing them to pace with inflation?
Well gee, i can imagine all the employees you'll have offering 3 cents an hour! lol. Of course, if you offered other benefits(such as the case of an internship), you might get some. But then the pay wouldn't really just be 3 cents an hour.
That's a nice thought, but a real number would be more effective.
Lobbyists and politicians simply won't know any better. They just won't know that it's not a real number while the lawyers will look at it as a new definition to be used for billing their clients even moar.
All the while, people on Slashdot will be complaining that it's not really a real number while they are working 9am to 7pm in their little cubicles with their shitty red staplers just like the good little sheeple they are...
No, it doesn't. And I wish that people would quit claiming that it does. The minimum wage laws have little if any effect on the number of jobs or the standard of living.
In the US, the minimum wage is set so incredibly low that it's more or less below the cost of living in many areas. Around here, I'm making nearly $13 an hour and I have a hard time finding a place to live that doesn't eat up half my take home. Here in WA, we've got the highest minimum wage in the nation, and it's still below the cost of living in parts of the state.
What does have an effect on jobs though are things like work place safety standards and currency manipulation.
Money, money, mo money...
Banana, fanna, fo funny...
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
So, what do you call the thing I'm on during the 98% of the time that I'm not on any of those sites? I spend maybe a half hour there a week, if not less. I don't even have a Facebook account for reasons related to privacy.
From where I stand, there's a huge internet that's formed outside those 3 sites.
OK you can just increase the costs of business, and there are no side effects!
Minimum wage does not cost jobs.
umm yes it does.
It's an increase in cost that has to be paid. whether that's not hiring an additional worker, firing a current one, increasing prices to customers or whatever. it certainly does cost jobs.
That's what you think it does. But do you have any hard evidence to this effect? GPP provided actual data; you're providing a model. If there's a conflict between model and data, then it's probably not the data that's wrong.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
yes it does
No it doesn't.
Minimum wage doesn't cost jobs, it just makes those governed by minimum wage ineligible for employment below that wage. The sub-minimum wage jobs still exist, just not where the minimum wage applies.
Minimum wage doesn't cost jobs in the same way that environmental regulation doesn't cost jobs; the jobs still exist, just not anywhere near the regulations.
Now you understand why China's GDP grows by 10% a year.
Minimum wage doesn't cost jobs, it just makes those governed by minimum wage ineligible for employment below that wage. The sub-minimum wage jobs still exist, just not where the minimum wage applies.
OK it took me a few times, but I think i finally understand what you're saying, which is that basically the jobs don't disappear they go overseas.
But it's still costing us jobs, since we live where the min wage rules apply (well I do, and i'm assuming you do).
Well said, friend.
I only wish I could have made the point so clearly and convincingly.
Conservatives just don't want to admit that the years of greatest growth and economic strength across class lines occurred in the US after some of the strictest regulations, most socialistic programs, and widest influence of organized labor were in effect. Social safety nets, strong regulation, public works and collective bargaining make for a better, more equitable society, but they also make for a more dynamic and successful private sector.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'll type this on my computer that goes through the internet, then i'll leave work, drive in my car, to my apartment, eat some nice food, ect ect. Why? because of the market. Not because of some stupid belief that we can regulate success and a better life.
Oh, this is fun! Let's take this piece by piece:
my computer
... based on technologies developed for government contracts ...
that goes through the internet
... that used be called ARPAnet ...
then i'll leave work
... at a company that relies on the courts to enforce its contracts ...
drive in my car
... in a car that probably won't kill you because of DOT safety regulations, on roads built with public funds ...
to my apartment
... that would be an unsafe rat-trap if not for housing regulations, and where you have a reasonable assurance that you'll be able to continue living because the government won't let your landlord throw you out on the street any time he feels like it ...
eat some nice food
... that's been certified by the FDA ...
ect ect.
... well, okay, clearly there are some failings in your education, but that's probably your fault, not the fault of the underpaid and overworked public school teachers who tried to drum some knowledge into your thick skull. The rest of it, you enjoy courtesy of your local, state, and federal government whether you are capable of understanding this or not.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
That's what you think it does. But do you have any hard evidence to this effect? GPP provided actual data; you're providing a model. If there's a conflict between model and data, then it's probably not the data that's wrong.
where did GPP provide data?
So feel free to provide some. Of course the problem is, these sorts of things are always really murky. And there are plenty of other external factors potentially in play.
here's an opinion expressed far better than i can http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca8Z__o52sk
Small business would have to start paying to play on the internet. This would cost small businesses a lot of money to pay for internet tolls. That's money that could be creating jobs if there were net neutrality. Forcing telecoms to build out their infrastructure would actually create jobs. It wasn't until the net neutrality contractual obligation of a large telecom merger ran out that they stopped building infrastructure and fired the masses of people working on the build out.
Also crazy is the cost of anti-competitive behavior, the cost of innovative ideas being squashed because they didn't fit the business model of the telecoms, and enabling corporations to be the enforcers of freedom of speech is just plain unconstitutional and is just an abrogation of the responsibility of Congress and Whitehouse.
I'd rather pay slightly higher prices to enable innovation, freedom of speech, equality of information, and decrease the power of the oligopolies.
Call me crazy but the intangibles tip that balance for me. There is more to life than money like freedom and liberty.
Of course this report isn't going to discuss these things... it was funded by large corporations. They don't value anything but money.
Why should one follow your thought experiments when there is whole body of research done on the topic of minimum wage? Economists don't necessarily agree on this 100% but the lion share of the researchers in the field would agree that a minimum wage above the market price for labor increases unemployment (especially for low-skilled workers). You can look up the work of David Neumark for example who has done much research in that field.
Having said that. I think the argument that net neutrality would cost that many jobs is bogus.
Follow along with this thought experiment.
Lets say that minimum wage is $7 even. Joe is earning $7.50. Minimum wage is raised to $7.50. Joe probably isn't going to be getting a raise. But now prices have gone up a little to pay for the increase to the minimum wage earners who got a legislated raise. So Joe is poorer than he was before. And so is every one else who wasn't earning minimum wage, but you probably have more empathy for somebody earning on the low-but-not-minimum part of the pay scale.
Minimum wage might be economically neutral (that is to say, gains by the minimum wage earners would be offset by losses to everybody not a minimum wage earner) if all work was entirely necessary. But minimum wage work probably isn't absolutely necessary. So if unskilled work that isn't necessary to a business is worth some flat amount of money, when minimum wage is raised, they'll respond by dropping a position to pay the remaining positions the new minimum. Or by keeping the staff, but telling them to knock off earlier. Any unfinished work, say sweeping the floors, is a non-monetary cost passed on to consumers.
Actually, there are lots of ways to pass on the costs of minimum wage. As mentioned, dropping a position and having your current staff work a little less. Employers could also respond, instead of dropping minimum wage positions, by extending the period between renovation/redecoration. Such a response causes the job losses to be felt in construction and associated industry. There is also inflation, which obviously not controllable by the employer, but is a natural artifact of the prices of goods and services going up when no actual additional value has been contributed.
Keep kidding yourself that legislating a raise in cost for anything, doesn't lead to less of something complementary in response. Minimum wage legislation can't make workers more efficient or more resources available. It could, but doesn't, mandate the number of positions or the hours those positions must work.
the tl;dr of it: If workers don't become more efficient, or more resources (not money) are not available, legislation that raises the cost of labor will result in less labor. Either through fewer hires or fewer hours.
I don't expect morality, equality, consistency, or justice from the law. I expect only legality.
You're saying that if a buisness could cut the wages of employees, keep the employees, it would then keep the money for itself, and all that would happen is the buisness would make more money? You're making a lot of huge assumptions there, that ITRW, would not happen.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. What a clown...
But... the future refused to change.
Good we don't need any more lawyers. They have just about ruined the country already
You never worked for fast food. Entry level shit job managers care about nothing but the bottom line knowing if, you don't like what they make you do for how much they want to pay you there are 100s of applications waiting in there office with the numbers of desperate unemployed people willing to do your shit job for less (at least for awhile before the cycle starts again)
They don't want it, so they find any old reason they can tie to it (however remotely) to say it shouldn't be implemented. I bet if they could say net neutrality causes paedophiles, they would.
What would Brian Boitano do?
actually there was someone modding this down as flamebait. get a load of that.
Read radical news here
No, it doesn't. And I wish that people would quit claiming that it does. The minimum wage laws have little if any effect on the number of jobs or the standard of living.
Cool. So increase the minimum wage to $100 an hour and everyone will be rich.
The only time that the minimum wage has no impact on jobs is when people are already paid that much or more... in which case it's useless. Any time it pushes wages above market rates, is merely insures that people whose labour isn't worth that much will be unemployed all their life... in which case it's evil.
You never worked for fast food. Entry level shit job managers care about nothing but the bottom line knowing if, you don't like what they make you do for how much they want to pay you there are 100s of applications waiting in there office with the numbers of desperate unemployed people willing to do your shit job for less (at least for awhile before the cycle starts again)
So you're not willing to do a job for a certain amount of money, so you leave. There's something wrong with this? The people working these jobs are making a trade. I've never personally worked fast food, But many people have, the majority of people i've met, don't speak so negatively about it. Some who had shitty managers do.
The fact that no one would return to a grocery story that consistently served spoiled food, keeps that from happening. The fact that no one wants to live in a horrible apartment, keeps the apartments nice.
Unless, of course, you were working at Walmart in Mexico prior to 2008, or in mining and logging towns in the 19th century. You might want to look up the concepts of company towns and scrip.
Obviously, I bow down to your superior intellect.
I don't know about your intellect, but your knowledge seems to be a bit lacking.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Except that there is no abuse nor violence in offering a service, one that you voluntarily engage with a contract.
If you want to find a true gang, look at the government. Everything it does, it does by force.
It is no issue for me identifying who's wrong. The shoe-seller, or the mob?
Oh, this is fun! Let's take this piece by piece:
Yes! Let's!
my computer
... based on technologies developed for government contracts ...
that goes through the internet
... that used be called ARPAnet ...
then i'll leave work
... at a company that relies on the courts to enforce its contracts ...
drive in my car
... in a car that probably won't kill you because of DOT safety regulations, on roads built with public funds ...
(note: the existence of "safety regulations" has very little indeed to do with whether or not your car will "kill you", a fallacious trope anyway if ever I've heard one)
to my apartment
... that would be an unsafe rat-trap if not for housing regulations, and where you have a reasonable assurance that you'll be able to continue living because the government won't let your landlord throw you out on the street any time he feels like it ...
Oh, and: ... even though the "free-market" instrument that prevents the landlord from throwing you out is called a "lease"...
eat some nice food
... that's been certified by the FDA ...
ect ect.
... well, okay, clearly there are some failings in your education, but that's probably your fault, not the fault of the underpaid and overworked public school teachers who tried to drum some knowledge into your thick skull. The rest of it, you enjoy courtesy of your local, state, and federal government whether you are capable of understanding this or not.
Clearly there are many failings in your education; instead of learning how things really work and how all of the above are produced by individual people working for their own benefit, you believe in a world of lemonade rivers and lollipop trees, where government makes good things come about just because it says so. I will gently suggest that this is a ludicrous belief-system on its face.
Here's a hint: People buy what they *want*, given the resources available to them at the time. This, and nothing else, is the definition of the "free market". All of the regulations you cite have the side-effect of removing choices from those with fewer resources; your wishing that everybody could afford goods of the same quality does not make it true. Men without cars make a choice to drive unsafe automobiles all the time, because the alternative, "not having a car", doesn't work. Men who live in "rat-traps" do so because it is preferable to living in the street. Denying people things because it offends your sense of "social justice" that those things are not of the best possible quality is wickedly unfair to *everybody* concerned.
I do give you points for being able to parrot the anticapitalist talking-points verbatim. Clearly you spent plenty of time listening in *those* lessons.
Even if we presume everything you say is true, I would much rather live in the situation you describe than that of sweatshops paying a few cents an hour. This, too, would have negative ripple effects. By failing to set a "floor" on what a wage is, you lower the wages of higher wage workers as well. If fast food is paying fifty cents an hour, a buck an hour for management is a nice raise. It also limits the ability of corporations to "externalize" the cost of not paying a living wage to social welfare systems funded by the public, while enjoying all the benefits of cheap labor.
At least with a minimum wage, it matters if you get hired or not. I'll gladly trade a slightly lower chance of getting hired for a better wage once I do. And if my hours are fewer, is that really a loss either? Am I better off working sixty hours a week at fifty cents an hour (with no overtime regulations), or forty hours a week at $7 an hour (with overtime if I'm periodically needed more)? Which would you choose, given the option?
Reality isn't economic theory. The people being hired are human beings. Given that, there are interests of human dignity and basic needs, not just the "optimal economic outcome". If the "optimal" outcome crushes a bunch of people under its wheels, it isn't the optimal outcome. As it stands, until the economy hit the crapper, most people were able to find work just fine, minimum wage notwithstanding.
The same is true of many other regulations. I'm very happy to take higher prices in exchange for safety in both products and the workplace. Lower prices don't do me a whole lot of good dead, and they certainly don't do me much good if I've got to regularly pay massive hospital bills to recover from illnesses and injuries caused from unsafe work environments and products and don't have a mechanism to recover damages from those responsible.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Has humanity also thrived due to slavery for a portion of time?
Who are you to say in history, that the forceful actions of a mob was good or bad for a collection of individuals?It certainly wasn't good for the slaves. And it certainly isn't good for the taxpayer. For the slave would rather be free, and the taxpayer would rather not pay taxes.
How is it that the collectivist cannot allow its neighbors to run a business in peace, but then insist that those same ignoramuses should participate in much more influential politics? Which is it, are people free to do as they may or not? Are we all so dumb that we need overlords, yet smart enough to vote the right ones in?
Sorry for going offtopic.
I wish I said that. It's truth at so many levels. There is a cost to civilization. For most of us, it's a tax. For others, it's a cost of opportunity.
I think that hours regulations and vacation time are pretty key aspects of keeping a workforce healthy and a population sustainable. Just look at Japan. They work like no one else on the planet works. Overtime is the social norm. No one has time for families and relationships. Their population is on the decline so much so that the government is paying couples to have children and they are desperately trying to build robots to take care of the elderly which even now outnumbers the younger. They are working themselves into extinction.
But also, we know what not having a minimum wage leads to... what not having safety regulations lead to.
We most certainly need limits to the harm we can do to one another ... and we need limits to the harm we can do to ourselves as well. Without those limits civilization will only be available to a fortunate few.
And in your brilliant comment have you thought that history shows this to be the natural way of a free market? 19th century America is full of lessons you seem to have manage to not learn. Do you think history wouldn't repeat itself by doing the exact same thing?
The problem with your thought process is that it wouldn't be one company suddenly paying $0.03 per hour it would be the majority that currently pay minimum wage. In every country where no minimum wage exists even today you wind up with company owned towns and basically sweatshop labor.
Don't expect companies to display behavior that is good for society as a whole, they will show you again and again that they have their own interests first and that's exactly what we expect.
Strong regulation still allows companies to compete so it doesn't degrade the idea of a free market because as we know, nothing is ever free. What good is a free market when the natural progression is for one company to own everything? Then it ceases to be a free market. Do you see the catch there?
... how they are capable of taking numbers out of their asses with bogus researches...
Maybe, if they try harder, they can take new business models, honest ways to do business and such from the same asses...
--- Illogical Spock
I should also add that government can never produce anything to raise the standards of living. It can only shuffle resources around trying to look good, but even on a collectivist standpoint, its just a zero-sum intervention.
Only people freely being able to transact and produce can increase a society's "value", if such a thing were to exist externally at all (does not).
Only individuals can decide what's best for themselves. An involuntary collective certainly cannot.
Perhaps you didn't notice, but I made no ethical judgements in what I said. Zero. But this odd belief that somehow government intervention frees us from the problems of resource allocation does not serve us well.
Not all "lost jobs" are necessarily bad. But a failure to acknowledge the losses tends to lead to overapplication of the protocol generating the losses. That can be bad.
I don't expect morality, equality, consistency, or justice from the law. I expect only legality.
I seriously don't understand how people don't realize that government regulation and intervention is the only thing preventing one corporation from, quite literally, owning everything from government to housing to your time and your mind. This is why government needs to be separated from corporate influence in the strongest ways possible, and government needs to promote unbiased policies regardless as to the "goal" of the legislation. Environmental and national security policy need to be just as unbiased as economic policy, and there needs to be a fairly clear indication of when corporations have gotten too big and need to be broken up. We have quite a few companies that are somewhere in the area of that borderline; they may be just under or over it, but we can't hesitate to act.
that's just greedy company's not wanting to spend money.. traffic shaping lets them make big promises on bandwidth without actually delivering. if there forced to expand there network that would make jobs not lose them. but this bill would not even be needed if they force cable company and tel co to open there lines for more company's to compete so if you where with unhappy with one companys policy you could just go to a competer. in my area im lucky to have 3 isp providers and i go with the best one that has no such shady policy's.
I see you failed macro econ. Watch this vid maybe you will learn something.
Not a very good video but does explain it (at least better than some on youtube).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6wJVCnRP8s&feature=related
Set that 'bar' too high and you can create a large 'shortage' of jobs. As at a fixed price there will only be so many jobs that will be created. There is a 'demand' curve associated with it.
Now the government has set the bar 'high' as to try encourage inflationary growth thru social engineering (making bonds and such worth less to the holders and shrinking the government debt). But they can not jack it up too high as it *WILL* create a large unemployment bubble. After every single increase in min wage there has been some sort of increase in unemployment. That is tractable in the graphs. Go look it up. It is usually acceptable when the economy is growing. But when it shrinks like it did last year it can create problems and make things worse. The amplification effect you are talking about works both ways.
Take our latest unemployment spike. One part of two whole markets evaporating (building houses/cars). Plus on top of that a min wage increase kicking in (nearly 20%). So a nice triple whammy of unemployment.
I told people 3 years ago when this happened it (min wage increase) will create unemployment. I got many arguments such as the one you state and people said I was crazy. I saw it was too much too fast. I am all for some regulation. But too much and you smother the very thing you are trying to save. Too little and someone else will strangle it.
It usually takes at least 3-4 years before the economy can absorb the changes in and re-balance the equilibrium. So we will see double digit unemployment until probably at least the middle of 2012.
Keep believing the government fairy will take care of you and you will wake up in the projects. Living with people who have nothing to loose. The government is using social engineering to lower its debt while looking like 'they are doing a good thing'. Around here the 'free market' that you disparage had already taken care of min wage jobs. It was anywhere from 50 cents to 2 dollars over min wage (depending on how hard you wanted to work). When the min wage went up I saw many 'mom and pop' shops close up. Then the other econ crises hit and made it much worse. Lets say you have 10 employees and your 'borderline in the red'. A 2 dollar increase in min wage is nearly 65,000 (the wage plus taxes) per year increase in pay. A small 'mom and pop shop' probably couldnt afford that. But they *NEED* 10 people to run their shop. So they probably would have to lay off 4 people to make up the increase. But since they need 10 all 10 are out of a job now because they can not run the business with 6 people.
Im sorry did you want to talk macro/micro economics or were you just spouting off some plan you have for other peoples money?
who doesn't want to bother with another intrusive, need-to-keep-track-of-a-password-for website...
this is the whole game, folks - who profits. it's not about "what's acceptible" on any particular nation's net - that's all crutches for the big game. WHO - PROFITS... by getting to price for "better net." whatever =they= define it as.
=GEEKS - BE POLITICALLY ACTIVE.= if you think you're "smarter than the system" simply by not voting for either side, whenver you can, you're simply masturbating. if you aren't voting, you aren't worth shit.
end of line.
what inspired my rant was reading earlier via other sites that, thanks to windpower, something like the average price of electricity in europe has dropped 25%.
and that means, =revenues= for electric co.s has dropped 25%. and this was worded in a pissed-off report by these energy co.s.
oh, boo-hoo... advancement means "cheaper, more accessible." and they don't want to give up their extra profit margin, at the expense of the fucking environment... do not think that they will spend one second considering human rights or freedoms any better than their own bottom line. they can only be =forced= to the point of decision.
to protect all those jobs.
BROKEN WINDOW FALLACY!
I do think the data and the conclusions of this study are about as suspect as the studies conducted by the toothpaste manufacturers about dental care. But, even if it were true, there's lots of things that we don't want that create jobs: auto accidents create jobs, crime creates jobs, cancer creates jobs, etc.,... creating jobs is not the highest good. Sometimes we want to avoid creating some kinds of jobs... like prostitution and illegal drug selling (both lucrative careers).
Eliminating net neutrality just puts our intellectual development and creativity on the same commodity basis as frozen OJ - it will stifle both by forcing development and creative energies in specific avenues of profit. Surely in our consumer oriented society we have enough pressure to cannibalize our brains for profit. We don't need to place our nation at a disadvantage to other nations by handing the keys to the net in the US to people who do not understand it and do not care about it.
More likely you'd get 6 at $6.5 or 7 at $5.5 or something similar, producing more goods and reducing unemployment. Demand for those who are making minimum wage drops at that price level, but those whose skill level is unemployable at that wage level at least would have a shot at SOME job - if you think general unemployment rates are bad, take a look at teen or black teen and 20-something rates. 4% is viewed as full employment when taking into account the structural costs regulation and other inefficiencies impose. Historical definitions of full employment have changed over time, usually acceptable unemployment is revised upwards as safety nets expand.
The Big ISP argument is probably that they can't expand into rural areas unless they can throttle/control bandwidth either through rate limits or charging by use, because to do so profitably(or equally profitably) would mean to offset the greater cost of connecting rural populations they'd need to reduce costs on routers and other backend hardware to service the same number of users, with means throttling by either policy or cost incentives.
That said, I think that case is BS. Companies in all sectors will take on unprofitable business for a minority of the market if it means stopping that share from going to the rivals or being a source of startup revenue for new entrants into their established market. After all, if the DSL and Cable companies leave rural areas alone long enough, it will only allow WiMax providers and other innovators to gain share through these customers to the point where they can become powerful enough to be a threat on the home urban turn of the bigger players. That is why this just isn't true, and the established companies will continue growing their networks no matter what, as soon as they can afford it again.
When we say "most people" are we going by number of people, or by square miles? Rural areas, sure, crap choices. Even in the outskirts of suburbia, sure. Urban areas? Well darnit, to think that I only have only 3 choices of high speed ISP.
The advantage of ISP level agreements is that they, potentially, allow for placing the data on or near the ISP's premises, thereby reducing costs for everyone. Though I do not know if this is the case for ESPN3, it is something I have seen references to in the past.
And all of this is moot since none of it is really about. Lack of broadband competition in some marketplaces is a separate problem. With a good competitive landscape some ISPs will subscribe to bundled services such as ESPN3 while others will choose to be lower cost providers and as such will not include such services. Create a competitive landscape and this problem (to whatever extent is is a problem) will solve itself.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I don't see how codifying current practice is the same as setting a minimum wage. Could you please explain?
The thought experiment is great as far as kindergarten economics go, but it misses a number of key points.
First, in a free economy, everything, including your services, is worth what whomever is willing to pay for it. So while employer 1 is only going to pay slave wages for your services, that doesn't mean that all employers will. Short term cash flow is not the only way to value a business. Long term growth typically requires the one to employ quality staff (which can charge a premium for their services).
As a case in point, look at the retail market. Walmart sells primarily low cost products, and there is a market for those products, but not everyone shops at Walmart. Other retailers sell substantially the same products (I contend that boxers are boxers regardless of the letters on the waist) for substantially more. In some cases you are paying more for a better product, in some cases you're paying solely for prestige.
Second, not all employers are soulless. Small businesses are almost always run by real people. However, regulation nearly always harms small businesses far more than big corporations (which typically are as soulless as your average government). In most cases, corporations are willing to pay the premium for a government enforced competitive advantage since in the long run it will force out the small businesses for whom a 10% reduction in profits means that they cannot put food on their family's table. Not the sole cause, but a significant contributing factor to the rise of the box-store and the demise of the family farm.
Third, government regulation, as other commenters have noted, increases the cost of doing business. If it is reduced, then you have more businesses who want to be in that business. If the number of businesses who want your services increases, that will increase the value of your services and thus your wages.
That's not to say that there does not need to be some regulation, only that we should seek the minimum regulation necessary for society to function.
I don't think it is a problem. Who will believe the Prattle Group anyway?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
So, they are saying because of regulation of the phone companies back in the 80's & 90's or whatnot, that because the phone companies earned 15% less then cable companies, that by leveling the playfield today (or keeping it level), they are going to lose jobs and crap?
So, for 2 decades the phone companies didn't make any money, while the cable companies raked in mass profit?
um, no.
Just because you don't make as much profit as you did before, doesn't mean you need to fire your employees to make the money difference for your stockholders.
Maybe if all corporation realized that by fireing employees, they are just making it harder for them (the corps) to make future profits?
If not as many people are working, then not as many people are going to be able to afford your product.
Be seeing you...
"The minimum wage laws have little if any effect on the number of jobs or the standard of living."
So then why not just make the minimum wage 30$ an hour? After all, if min wage has little, if any effect on the number of jobs then it should just work right?
Heck, lets make it 100$ an hour.
1000$
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Um, no. We're saying that if we got rid of minimum wage, our country would be full of jobs that no longer exist here. Like, you know, manufacturing anything smaller than a car?
The rampant out of control consolidation of the ISP industry is causing more Job loss in the service provider industry than anything else. Eventually if this continues it will cost consumers as they have less choices and competition as the comcasts of the world feel free to take whatever actions make their shareholders happy.
If you want to create jobs open up the last cable/fiber mile to competition. It is not fair Telco based DSL services are required by law to do so while cable companies offering the very same services get a pass.
Bastards want to charge me a - get this - $450 NONREFUNDABLE "credit fee" for my new Uverse service because I'm a bad credit risk!
Well, guess what, AT&T! You can cancel my new service installation. I'll get a new phone line from you (with a $50 prepay ALSO because of being a "credit risk"), then I'll get Earthlink or DSLExtreme or whoever presumably won't be trying to extort another $450 from me.
AT&T - still the most corrupt corporation in the universe (next to Microsoft, of course).
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I know this is hard to believe but sometimes you don't have a choice!
When I was straight out of college I didn't have mommy and daddy to pay for everything until I found a $70k/year job so I took a job where I was working part-time (everyone but management was part-time, best to keep the slaves hungry and scared), after taxes I was making ~$950/month and every day was filled with examples of the employer abusing the employees while mostly not breaking the law (thankfully the union was pretty aggressive so when they tried to make people work insane shifts or fire someone for doing what they were told the union got involved and threatened with legal action).
So does that mean I'm an underqualified idiot? Well, no. These days I'm a software developer, but it took me two years of working shitty corporate troglodyte jobs with near-constant abuse before I found this job (it would have been slightly faster had I moved somewhere else but I didn't have the money for that since I was straight out of college and working jobs that barely paid food and rent (no, employers around here don't help pay for your move or help you find an apartment)).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
HIghways, public health expenditures/disease eradication, public education, basic science research all seem to be investments that ultimately raise our standard of living (better transit, healthier, better educated workforce, etc...). That's not even getting into that whole "system of laws" thing, which is the foundation upon which most of the rest of it rests. Your comment sounds quite like the "the government never created a job" sort of talk, which is similarly silly.
Actually HONEST studies, including your own eyes, show that raising the minimum wage doesn't cost jobs. And every time it is raised there is a bit of an increase in economic growth.
Also OBVIOUSLY moving to a 40-hour workweek created more jobs.
A consumer economy does better when more regular people have more to spend. Passing everything up to the rich is what we did leading up to 1929, and then again leading up to this recent economic crash.
Business doing whatever it wants to do makes everyone poor. Ultimate unfettered capitalism necessarily leads to a very few owning everything.
Circulating money increases jobs.
A business doesn't lay of someone because of a small increase in wage costs. Businesses employ the RIGHT NUMBER of people to meet the demand from customers. Increasing the minimum wage increases that demand.
but increases the standard of living amongst those who have to work at that level.
if the minimum wage had not increased, many people right now would be homeless as the cost of living has risen dramatically
(it was rising past sustainablity long before the minimum wage increase from before)
"The minimum wage laws have little if any effect on the number of jobs or the standard of living."
So then why not just make the minimum wage 30$ an hour? After all, if min wage has little, if any effect on the number of jobs then it should just work right?
Heck, lets make it 100$ an hour.
1000$
Because that would be stupid?
Given the realistic levels of minimum wage that anyone is speaking of, employment effects are indeed minimal (It's been studied in states when there was an increase, and no notable impact on employment was noted). In terms of the standard of living, for the person going from $5->$7 an hour, it'd be a significant improvement. As most people don't make the minimum wage or close enough to be an issue, inflation from it is similarly minimal. So, the person pulling in $50k a year might notice an extra dime on their big mac, but it's not like that'd be a significant hardship.
I guess that might match some minimum wage manufacturing jobs, if those even exist any more, but given that most minimum wage jobs are service sector, I don't think that outsourcing is so much an issue. It's not like they'd ship my burger patty off to India to be flipped or anything; there are many jobs that are essentially inherently local.
Net Neutrality creates the level playing field that fosters competition. That's how jobs, and new industries, are created. A robust, dynamic net ecosystem helps all of us. The telcos just want to set themselves up to extort a portion of the profits from successful net companies ("that's a nice search engine that you have there, it'd be a shame if no one could get to it...") and control who and how you're able to interact.
Homo oeconomicus doesn't exist. The models used to defend or criticize free market, minimum wage, healthcare, etc... are over-simplified and often in a biased way. They often consider profit as the only drive for human action. That is why so many people rely on the historical examples. These examples show that minimum wage and healthcare did not cause crisis. From there, one can try to find a reason as to why, but pretending to be able to predict what will happen after the introduction of this or that measure is just preposterous.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
This fact is never mentioned nor alluded to in year after year of articles on this entity, brand, nom de plume. Feed a brother a clue.
It is posts like this that make me wish I had mod points. +insightful to you sir!
In every country where no minimum wage exists even today you wind up with company owned towns and basically sweatshop labor.
Germany is basically a big sweat-shop, who knew?
That's the most concise summary of network neutrality for the layman that I've ever seen.
Ok lets assume this is the case, then on the other hand people not getting sued all the time have more money to spend, which results in more jobs anyway, isp who need to spend less money in preventing getting sued are now able to provider cheaper internet connections which in the end makes internet connections cheaper and people again will have more money to spend and because of that higher demand in other sectors make more jobs so it's a bit a ridicules statement if you ask me. Money will be spend only it's going to be in a different place, .. which will allow other sectors to grow in the end it will provide job increase.
> But minimum wage work probably isn't absolutely necessary.
Have you ever worked in a factory? They pretty much define the case where you have a ton of minimum wage earners and yet you need them if you want to get any production done. And no, you can't run a factory with no laborers, even if they are unskilled.
I think that if you look around at minimum wage jobs, you'll find many that can be replaced by machines and many more than cannot (and believe me, we're trying... everywhere from clerks at checkout lines to assorted factory workers).
Minimum wage is not a job killer nor is it useful. Over the very short term business lose profit which might slow growth but it does not cost jobs just fails to create new ones. Over a slightly longer term they as you say fire an employee, institute a more permenant slower hireing policy or find ways to pass costs on; or get more output from the current labor pool.
Over the long term those costs do get passed on or the government prints some money to give aways as handouts to displaced works. Its inflationary and that $8.25 only buys what the $5.25 of yesteryears minimum wage bought.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
How does limiting employment opportunities and competition not cost jobs?
Minimum wages are by their nature a way to limit jobs to those worth $X/hour or more. You raise the cost without changing the supply. Demand drops.
The fact that no one wants to live in a horrible apartment, keeps the apartments nice. But hey, i did sign a lease, and breaking of a contract, would be a place for government to get involved.
Had me somewhat agreeing until you blew it with this. People NEED to live. People WANT to live well. You will do what you can to ensure the needs are met, but wants can be (And often times are) priced out of a person's market. It all depends on the individual and not everyone is capable of the same types of work.
I'm not against regulation, although it does set the bare minimum standard - and just because a standard is set, it doesn't mean there's going to be 100% compliance to it. (And in some cases, even in reported cases nothing gets done.)
You're saying that if a buisness could cut the wages of employees, keep the employees, it would then keep the money for itself, and all that would happen is the buisness would make more money? You're making a lot of huge assumptions there, that ITRW, would not happen.
Wow, your glasses must be a real special tint of rose.
Look in any big city. One thing you'll find is plenty of immigrants who cannot work legally, or can but don't know their legal rights. And the employers will f*** with them as much as they can get away with. Not all employers, mind you, but enough to be substantial.
When I lived in Toronto (Ontario, Canada), my ex - who was a legal immigrant - had tons of job offers that were degradingly low for her skill level, and often illegally so. Heck, she had a lawyer offer her a job for a "daily rate" which was less than the legal minimum. Within the Asian/Indian community I found that there was tons of job-fraud going on. Companies that paid below minimum wage (and pocketed the difference), had illegal hours, required employees pay for all their work-required supplies/equipment (against the local laws), etc etc.
There will *always* be people in vulnerable situations that can be taken advantage of. Often enough these are immigrants (and not necessarily illegal ones), because they're unaware of the laws, or because they're willing to spend years in near-squalor locally to send what is decent-money in the homeland back to support their families. Companies do cheap out and cut wages when they can manage to avoid being caught because when one people finally gets fed up, there's another desperate person to fill his/her place. Eventually that deck of cards may fall, but in the meantime you're reporting that profits are up, the shareholders are happy, and you eventually get to float away on a golden parachute or quit before the sh*t hits the fan and leave it to the next sucker to deal with.
He wasn't saying regulations are bad, you idiot. Try developing some reading comprehension and quit attributing made-up strawman positions to people just because you need to invent enemies to rail against.
The truth, apparently.
And unless economic conditions were horrible, they would leave
So you've never heard of someone staying in an absolute shit job, even though, according to you, its so easy to just leave if they don't like it? You've never heard of a father working a shitty manual labor job to provide for his family, or a single mother going into prostitution/stripping just to get food for her kid? Without minimum wage laws, these people probably could not afford to provide for their families, and even with them, still barely do. Making sure that jobs pay a wage that one can actually kind of live on, albeit barely, is a good thing.
Minimum wage is just a form of price control. It makes it illegal for labor to be sold at a price lower than some set amount per hour. If this price control is beneficial, then why wouldn't a similar price control at the grocery store be beneficial? Make it illegal for any food item to be sold for less than $10. Clearly this wouldn't cause the elimination of lots of food items, it would just mean that everyone happily pays $10 for oranges, etc.
Even if the article claims jobs lost the jobs wont be missed. They were your average peeps trying to police/control the Internet, and those trying to take your rights away. Add to the mix those trying to tier the Internet and those would of been the jobs lost. Who cares?
Libertarian dogma that ignores the advances brought by collective solutions like interpersonal trade and even cities. Do you selfish apes never tire of using the safeties and niceties of the modern civilization to pine for the self-sufficiency of the stone age?
Read some Adam Smith instead of Ayn "Freaky" Rand - or even Aleister Crowley.
They often consider profit as the only drive for human action.
If you mean profit as solely increase in money, then no, that's not what I'm arguing.
These examples show that minimum wage and healthcare did not cause crisis.
I never said it caused a crisis. It probably would if we raised the min. wage to 50 dollars an hour tho. What I am saying, is it doesn't achieve the desired goals.
Healthcare, as in what we are going towards in the US does cause a crisis. Canada and the UK have many problems. they will get worse, and eventually become extremely problematic. But in the US things have been getting more expensive for the last 50 or so years, thanks to government trying to look out for me.
but pretending to be able to predict what will happen after the introduction of this or that measure is just preposterous.
Can i predict exactly what will happen and when? no.
But my basic point is you can't arbitrarily alter the pay of millions of employees without negative side effects. That's hardly getting out a crystal ball, any more than saying when i throw a ball up into the air it will come down.
I know this is hard to believe but sometimes you don't have a choice!
This is what people always say, and it's almost always wrong. I mean, especially in the case of fast food it's so wrong it's unbelievable. I just went on a 5000 mile road trip last year, damn near every little small city/town had atleast a mcdonalds and some other major fast food joint. Not all of course, but if you're working near a college, i really doubt you don't have other options.
When I was straight out of college I didn't have mommy and daddy to pay for everything until I found a $70k/year job so I took a job where I was working part-time (everyone but management was part-time, best to keep the slaves hungry and scared), after taxes I was making ~$950/month and every day was filled with examples of the employer abusing the employees while mostly not breaking the law (thankfully the union was pretty aggressive so when they tried to make people work insane shifts or fire someone for doing what they were told the union got involved and threatened with legal action).
And where did you not have a choice? there was no other place you could work? You chose to go to college. You chose to work where you did. You chose your own path, and it seemed to have worked out.
Way to totally miss his point.
The homo oeconomicus model doesn't see profit as the only drive for human action but "rational self-interest" which ironically can also include some kinds of altruistic action. There are also efforts to expand the model to include results from research in behaviorial economics for example.
The perception of the model in public opinion is pretty skewed.
Talk about disingenuous. Germany has social welfare providing a minimum wage for people who are either under employed or not employed. It's a different way of accomplishing the same thing.
What I find hysterical is the bullshit advertising the large ISPs do to promote their crippled Internet. The local incumbent cable company where I live is offering a 50Mb/s service!!!! It even brags that you can download a 700MB movie in 2 minutes! Whatever kind of movie do they mean? 700MB, yeah, that's going to be a torrent since I can't think of a lot of HTTP sites that are able or willing let users download files at 6250kB/s. So you look at the fine print, and they plainly state that they throttle all p2p down to 80kB/s at all times. With that kind of service why would you even bother with anything more than a 1Mb/s connection?
Bibo Ergo Sum.
I know this is hard to believe but sometimes you don't have a choice!
This is what people always say, and it's almost always wrong. I mean, especially in the case of fast food it's so wrong it's unbelievable. I just went on a 5000 mile road trip last year, damn near every little small city/town had atleast a mcdonalds and some other major fast food joint. Not all of course, but if you're working near a college, i really doubt you don't have other options.
Exactly even though everyplace has one they all also have a high school and where do you think every high school kid applies multiply that many applicants by 10 if you also have a college. You mean nothing to them you are 100% replaceable and without minimum wage and other things to keep corps from completely raping you not only would you be making slave wages but also have no hope of workmans comp and other such things to make sure you stay safe.
"Has humanity also thrived due to slavery for a portion of time?"
No. Unless you want do define 'humanity' as 'a very thin layer of slaveowners'. Never mind slaves or poor (free) people who couldn't afford them.
where did GPP provide data?
GPP:
Remember, all those laws and benefits were in effect during a time when we had 4% unemployment (aka "full employment").
Game over loser.
So,you're equating social security with slavery? Do you work for the Heritage Foundation?
You understand that collective bargaining and the union movement were the opposite of slavery, right?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Along the same lines, I propose an actual experiment where anybody that decides they don't want social services for themselves or the poor gives up their rights to a minimum wage. All you need to do is notify your employer and your wage will be cut immediately to reflect the change. To keep the profits from going to the greedy, the company is required to send all of the excess from the cuts to a fund that then distributes it to the appropriate agencies (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid support, Transportation funding, etc.).
If you don't want to "pay for those services" then you won't and your compensation will be changed to reflect it (we'll call it being adjusted to market value). If you need help because you no longer have a "good" income well tough noogies. You have to give to receive.
I'd love to see how long before everybody want's to change their minds.
In discussions about the question if the German labor market needs a minimum wage I like to point out what you pointed out. But then suddenly people don't accept the analogy.