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Los Angeles Raises Minimum Wage To $15 an Hour
HughPickens.com writes: Jennifer Medina reports at the NY Times that the council of the nation's second-largest city voted by a 14-1 margin to increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020. Los Angeles and its almost 4 million residents represent one of the biggest victories yet for those pushing wage increases across the country. Proponents hope it will start to reverse the earning gap in the city, where the top 7% of households earn more than the bottom 67%.
Detractors point out the direct cost increase to businesses, which could total as much as a billion dollars per year. If a business can't handle the increased cost, the employees this measure was designed to help will lose their jobs when it folds. An editorial from the LA Times says it's vital for other cities nearby to increase their minimum wage, too, else businesses will gradually migrate to cheaper locations. They add, "While the minimum wage hike will certainly help the lowest-wage workers in the city, it should not be seen as the centerpiece of a meaningful jobs creation strategy. The fact is that far too many jobs in the city are low-wage jobs — some 37% of workers currently earn less than $13.25 an hour, according to the mayor's estimates — and even after the proposed increase, they would still be living on the edge of poverty."
Detractors point out the direct cost increase to businesses, which could total as much as a billion dollars per year. If a business can't handle the increased cost, the employees this measure was designed to help will lose their jobs when it folds. An editorial from the LA Times says it's vital for other cities nearby to increase their minimum wage, too, else businesses will gradually migrate to cheaper locations. They add, "While the minimum wage hike will certainly help the lowest-wage workers in the city, it should not be seen as the centerpiece of a meaningful jobs creation strategy. The fact is that far too many jobs in the city are low-wage jobs — some 37% of workers currently earn less than $13.25 an hour, according to the mayor's estimates — and even after the proposed increase, they would still be living on the edge of poverty."
Except that there's other factors in play as well. A minimum wage increase will give the bottom 60+% of workers more spending power, this increased spending will boost the income of local shops which will help to improve the local economy.
This is economics 101, for an economy to work people have to spend money, the more money that people spend the better the economy works. Increasing the spending power of the vast majority of local residents is a very good thing for the local economy.
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
And the poor are more likely to put pretty much all their income back into the economy in their day-to-day living, whereas the rich don't.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The real minimum wage is always 0. I work in Seattle, where they recently did this. Entry level places where I live (not in Seattle), where the minimum wage is $10/hour, all have help wanted signs out. In downtown Seattle, however there was a wave of restaurant closings, and I don't see help wanted signs anywhere. Could be other causes for the difference, of course, maybe it's something else - but it's not a promising sign for teens looking for that first job.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
...why not raise it to $500/hour?
Fundamentally, an economy can only consume as much as it produces. And people are happiest when they all consume equally: a country where everyone is secure and comfortable with the basic necessities will be happier than a country where a small handful of rich people live lives of frivolous excess while everyone else is living in desperate poverty. So, ideally, the minimum wage would be just below the per-capita GDP - which in the USA is about $50,000/year or $25/hour.
people need a minimum amount of money to live. if they are paid less, then they need public assistance. for example walmart employees who qualify for food stamps.
lower wages mean that employees will need more and more public assistance to feed and house their families.
you are a socialist if you don't believe in minimum wage, because you want the government to fund worker's pay.
It can be, but it doesn't necessarily have to. Probably the key aspect is whether it's merely a supplement, or something that is enough to live on by itself. As things currently are, people need to work to survive (at least in the USA). For the sake of argument, let's say there was a program that gave everyone enough to pay for essentials (basic food, basic housing, minor entertainment) - in that scenario, no one has to work, so they can easily tell businesses that don't want to pay them enough for their time to shove it. In such a scenario, you could freely do away with minimum wage laws, because everyone would be free to set the value of their time, in ways they can't possibly do now.
There have historically been two problems for achieving this, that are somewhat intertwined. One, where does the money come from, and two, what happens if too many people decide not to work. As technology advances though, both of these are going to become increasingly solvable as we replace human labor with automation/robotics as the primary source of production. Put another way, if robots do all the work, we're not worried that any number of humans aren't working, because the small number we need will be easily found in those who find it rewarding. As for how you pay for it, you take a portion of the money that each robot's activity earns, and use that to pay everyone, since we'll need people who can buy what the robots make. Market economies require demand as well as supply, after all.
True.
But you also have a entry level wage for teenagers do you not. IIRC, this is about 10-12$/hr.
Additionally, you also have some of the strictest immigration policies in the world. You can afford 17/hr when you don't have to worry about millions of people coming over your southern border who don't have much of an education and skills. (along with the government on your southern border is encouraging them to migrate so they don't have to take care of them).
In order to pay the McDonald's worker $15.00 an hour, they will have to basically double all of their prices.
hilarious
" In general, McDonald’s franchisees pay about 20 percent in labor costs, according to Richard Adams, a consultant out of San Diego who works with McDonald’s operators."
"Thus, doubling those salaries would push that Big Mac cost up 80 cents."
You know, when that story aired on Fox News, some people have actually went and asked the owners of those closing restaurants whether it's due to the minimum wage. And they have only found one place where that was a factor - and even that one has, ironically, not been in the original report.
At the same time, several new restaurants have opened, or are still planning to open, in the same timeframe.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ri...
raising the minimum wage increases the amount of money flowing in the economy. everyone will have more money to spend. businesses will expand because people will have money to spend. there will be fewer jobless.
No, it doesn't raise the amount of money in the system unless more money is printed, and then that money will be worth less. The only way to increase the amount of money is by the economy expanding, not by artificially declaring the worth of a commodity. I minimum wage is raised, then stuff will cost more. Some slight benefit might be had for some of the poor, and a decreased standard of living will be incurred for the middle class.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
their customers will have more money so they will be able to afford the price increases.
I disagree. Say someone earns someone earns $60 per day before the wage increase and $120 per day afterward. A product costs $60 before the price increase and $120 afterward. What can the customer afford in each case?
Are you willing to prove your point by taking a pay cut to 3 dollars per hour?
Probably not. The minimum wage will kill us is just as valid as trickle down economics, and job creator theory. As in not at all.
Very seldom is prosperity achieved through poverty. Do you have any examples?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If you're flipping burgers in high school, or even while you're in your 20s going to college, you're doing the right thing. Just about every successful person I know started out doing menial jobs at a young age. Bonus points if you pay extra attention to how your boss does his/her job while you're doing yours.
You're starting to get it. It isn't whether poor people or rich people get more money - that's a fantasy concocted by people to justify their biases (whether it be dislike of rich people or dislike of poor people). What matters is the usefulness of the things they spend it on. For the money to improve the economy, it has to increase overall productivity. A rich guy spending money on gold-plated toilet seats doesn't increase productivity. A poor guy spending it on meth doesn't increase productivity. A rich guy spending it on a new computer which helps him organize his work and thus get more work done increases productivity. A poor guy spending it on food so his teenage daughter can stay home studying for high school instead of working so the family can eat increases productivity.
Kicking it up an abstraction level, the true currency is productivity. Money is just a (loosely tied) representation of productivity, distorted by inflation, inequality in negotiating leverage, corruption, etc. Things which increase people's productivity are good for the economy. Things which don't increase productivity or decrease it are bad for the economy. Whether raising the minimum wage helps or hurts the economy depends entirely on how it affects productivity.
Rich people are richer because they on average tend to spend their money more on things which increase their or others' productivity. Poor people are poorer because on average they tend to spend money more on things which don't improve their or other people's productivity as much. Are you angry and ready to hit reply because you think I'm saying poor people make stupid spending decisions and deserve to be poor? Then you need to re-read the previous paragraph. What I'm saying is if you guide and teach poor people how to spend their money more productively, they will become rich people. This isn't a zero-sum game - everyone can become rich if everyone makes good decisions. That is much more important than raising the minimum wage.
So the mistake your side makes is misunderstanding that at every incremental raise of the min wage, jobs are lost. It doesn't matter that workers have more money to spend, unless that increase in volume leads to inflation of prices, this resulting in Sally's output being worth $14+ from inflation. But your side insists min wage increases do not cause inflation and only lead to higher demand (volume). If volume demanded increases without inflation, that actually has no impact because Sally's company will not produce more units at negative margin. In fact Sally's company will produce less than before the increase in demand.
And if it does lead to inflation, Sally may not get canned, but that is a regressive cost that will hurt many lower wage workers and definitely the unemployed, whose benefits are not indexed to local inflation.
http://www.seattletimes.com/se...
http://www.cepr.net/blogs/cepr...
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
the government collects 30 times as much in taxes in CONSTANT DOLLARS as they did in 1940
Bullshit the inflation from 1940 is already ~15 times. In fact looking at your next sentences:
Now, they ran a deficit in 1940 as well, but let's think about this for a minute. If $135 Billion in 1940 would have been enough to make ends meet, then how come with three times the population now, it takes $3.2 trillion?
Because 135 billion alone in 1940 is 2.2 trillion to 2.3 trillion of today in constant dollar. Any CPI calculator will confirm that baring a few % +/-. The delta of 900 million is from federal programs which did NOT exists in 1940. From environmental protection, drug enforcement, NASA, EPA, etc...etc...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
The ignorance of this one is strong.
Sorry bud, but the Unions had literally zero to do with Hostess problems.
1) Hostess had been on the verge of bankruptcy multiple times prior to them going under.
2) More importantly, the Unions had already taken multiple paycuts to keep the company afloat.
It wasn't till the management asked for another paycut and got it only to vote themselves a 300% pay RAISE that the Unions refused another paycut as the management had shown their hand and their intentions of just bleeding the company dry instead of working to keep it going.
Hostess Unions actually helped that company, it was systemic failure of management over the course of years over years that killed Hostess.
I hear Somalia is very nice this time of year.
I always find it interesting that the government demands money at the point of a gun and with little to no choice, while a corporation asks for money by providing goods or services that you desire. Yet the corporations are the evil ones???
Well I find it interesting that for health care I had to pay private insurance companies $6,000 a year in premiums, while people getting government insurance in Canada pay an average of about half as much in taxes (scaled to their income), for the same quality and the same service.
I compared the private health insurance in the free market to get the best deal, and guess what? They're all the same. I have no choice. The Canadians have more of a choice than I do.
There are some things that the government can provide far more efficiently than the free market, if the free market can provide it at all. Health care is one of them. Education is another. Transportation is another. Low-income housing is another. Even Social Security is more secure than private retirement pensions.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/...
The Plot Against Trains
By Adam Gopnik
May 15, 2015
“The reason we don’t have beautiful new airports and efficient bullet trains is not that we have inadvertently stumbled upon stumbling blocks; it’s that there are considerable numbers of Americans for whom these things are simply symbols of a feared central government, and who would, when they travel, rather sweat in squalor than surrender the money to build a better terminal.” The ideological rigor of this idea, as absolute in its way as the ancient Soviet conviction that any entering wedge of free enterprise would lead to the destruction of the Soviet state, is as instructive as it is astonishing. And it is part of the folly of American “centrism” not to recognize that the failure to run trains where we need them is made from conviction, not from ignorance.
What we have, uniquely in America, is a political class, and an entire political party, devoted to the idea that any money spent on public goods is money misplaced, not because the state goods might not be good but because they would distract us from the larger principle that no ultimate good can be found in the state.
Canada pay an average of about half as much in taxes (scaled to their income), for the same quality and the same service.
From what I've heard about medicine in Canada from locals, this is laughably untrue. Only someone who has never had more than a minor boo-boo could claim the service is the same.
Canada pay an average of about half as much in taxes (scaled to their income), for the same quality and the same service.
From what I've heard about medicine in Canada from locals, this is laughably untrue. Only someone who has never had more than a minor boo-boo could claim the service is the same.
You are completely wrong.
I've talked to doctors and patients who have experienced both the Canadian and US systems, and I've read the literature comparing outcomes for different procedures in the two systems. http://www.openmedicine.ca/art... I read Canadian medical studies every week or two.
If I had a heart attack in front of the University of Toronto medical school, I would be confident that my survival and other outcomes would be just as good as they would be in front of the New York University medical center in New York. At one time, the breast cancer outcomes were slightly better in the US than in Canada, because the US was aggressively diagnosing and treating (sometimes overdiagnosing and overtreating) breast cancer, but by now the Canadians have adopted everything useful that the US was doing. OTOH, the Canadian outcomes for childhood leukemia were slightly better. The Canadian outcomes for diabetes were much better, with better control, fewer amputations, etc.
Gordon Guyatt, a professor at McMaster University, basically invented evidence-based medicine, which is the practice of making medical decisions based on the statistically valid scientific evidence, rather than prescribing drugs because the drug companies are giving you a free trip to Hawaii if you meet their quota.
It is true that American doctors are more aggressive about treatment, and will give you a quick appointment if they have slots available and you have good insurance. OTOH American doctors are more likely to treat patients unnecessarily. An American pulmonologist is more likely to see a spot on your x-ray and give you a lung biopsy. Lung biopsies have a fatality rate of about 1/1,000, and most of them are unnecessary. But in Canada, when you have a life-threatening condition and need a CAT scan immediately, they put you on top of the list and give you a CAT scan the same day.
OTOH if you don't have health insurance in the US, your access to health care in many states is nonexistent, and hospitals in Texas for example will kick cancer patients out in the street if they can't pay. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... There were several studies published in American medical journals in which researchers called doctors' offices, described the symptoms of a life-threatening condition, told them that they were on Medicare or Medicaid, and asked for an appointment. Depending on the studies, about half the doctors refused Medicare and three-quarters refused Medicaid.
The evidence is overwhelming that Canadian health care equals the US system in quality and service, and costs about half as much. Of course if you decide things on the basis of ideology http://www.newyorker.com/news/... rather than evidence you may not be convinced.