Your minimum wage customers now have more disposable income so they're willing to splurge on a hotdog more often,
People making minimum wage aren't splurging on pretzel-wrapped hot dogs that are horribly overpriced compared to what they can make for themselves. If you think "minimum wage" means "disposable income", then you're not really talking about a minimum wage, you're talking about a wage well above that.
And sales don't go up when the prices have to go up to pay for the employee labor behind it.
so you invest in a more modern, higher capacity, more efficient oven
No, if I'm going to invest to keep from losing money, I'm going to make an investment in automation and centralized processing, where a machine rolls the dogs in dough and freezes them, and probably puts them on the tray so all the employee at the store as to do is put the tray in the oven and take it out. Less labor, fewer employees.
and that supports your one
Yep, one instead of two or more. Half the people have jobs. You've proven a lot of my point for me.
to do business of 36 units per hour
Ahh, if only I could get a mandate that more people buy my more expensive product like the mandate that I pay my employees more...
It's a win for the employee,
For one of them. I notice you used the singular so you recognize that it will be one winner, many losers. At every site I run where I currently have four employees (two per shift, two shifts a day) I can now cut back to two employees. The two who still have jobs -- golden. The two who don't -- not so much.
but the capital has to up the ante from time to time too, not just sit back and expect the return to be infinite
And here we're back to the complete crap assumption that companies are just raking in huge profits all the time. Rose colored glasses, or are your glasses really the shit colored ones?
In fact Henry Ford's entire business model depended on his employees being paid enough to buy his own products... And that worked out fantastically for him
He didn't raise the minimum wage, so it's not a good analogy. Actually, it didn't work out so much for everyone else until the labor organized to get themselves a pay rate VERY MUCH ABOVE what he wanted to pay them. Do you think his auto plants would have gone union had he been paying such wonderful wages all along?
He was creating a market by not just paying his workers, but by creating a manufacturing process that meant what he was building would cost less to build anyway. He wasn't doing it for HIS workers because he'd never survive in business that way. It was media hype produced to create an image. "Come buy cars from the guy who really cares about his employees." He was doing it to make money from free advertising.
Doubling the minimum wage so it becomes a "living wage" will INCREASE the costs for everything that involves minimum wage labor. This increase will impact EVERYONE who buys anything from those sources, which is pretty much everyone, even those who are getting by with their current $15/hr jobs. Your local grocery store will have to raise prices on everything, after dealing with the wholesale price increases from their suppliers who have to pay more to their labor. It's not just a one-step increase. And grocery stores are just the first example out of thousands.
Why do your favorite countries get away with paying so much already? Because they are already in a social welfare system that sucks a larger amount of taxes back out of the worker's pockets. It didn't come as a sudden disruption to their system.
So sorry, the crackpot economics is the nonsense that raising minimum wage will be a panacea to the homeless problem. If anything, it will make it worse as prices go up to pay more to people who aren't producing at that level.
And that worked out fantastically for him as compared to Uber... who are haemorrhaging cash.
Your comparison of Ford to Uber is quite interesting. It would appear that you think that Uber should pay their drivers enough so that their drivers could afford to use Uber -- like Ford employees buying Model T cars -- which is patent nonsense. Or that Uber paying their drivers a $15/hr minimum wage (the current "living wage" level being proposed) would mean Uber would be rolling in dough. Yes, surely, if you raise the costs for Uber and thus raise the prices so that fewer people would choose Uber over a regular taxi, Uber will certainly begin profiting like never before. And you call my economics "crackpot".
Either we as a society make employers pay a wage that people in that situation can live on or we accept having vast numbers of people on state aid. Whichever one we opt for, the public end up paying for it.
The difference being that increasing the minimum wage to make it a basic income means you give money to everyone who works minimum wage, and having assistance for those who need more than the current minimum wage means giving money only to some. Which costs less -- giving money to everyone or giving money only to those who need it? And what do you do for those that even a new minimum wage won't provide enough? You're still running welfare because of them, so you don't even get the savings from eliminating that program.
The second difference is that increasing minimum wage increases the cost of labor for almost every business, especially those dealing in food (grocery stores, burger joints, etc). Unlike the common opinion here, grocery stores are NOT companies that are just rolling in profit that can afford to pay everyone twice what they make today. Grocery stores who hire high school and college students part time to stock shelves and such will wind up paying them a lot more when they aren't even trying to live on that wage -- a cost without an associated benefit.
do you really think anyone would do the sort of work that pays the minimum wage by choice?
Yes. Now here's one for you: do you really think that the only people who work a minimum wage job are those who are trying to support a wife, three kids, and pay off a mortgage?
Being paid piecemeal is the exception, not the rule.
Piecemeal is not relevant to the issue of how much value your work has. If you produce $10/hour in value, then a sudden raise to $15/hr is ridiculous.
if a salaried or hourly paid employee doesn't pull their weight you warn them, give them a reasonable chance to improve and then sack them if they don't.
You just don't understand. They can 'pull their weight' if they are paid $8/hr. It's when they are paid $15/hr that they are no longer doing so. "Pulling their weight" is a balance between cost and benefit. Make the costs too high and they can't "pull their weight" simply because the job they are doing can't produce enough benefit. It has nothing to do with the employee or how hard they are working, it has everything to do with the job itself.
Let's pretend. You run a food service that sells hot dogs wrapped in pretzel dough. (Auntie Annie's, for example.) It costs 50 cents in hot dogs and dough and electricity for the oven per unit. You sell them for $3 each (two for $6, yum). You have an employee making $8/hr. Assume $16/hr for costs by the time you add all the extras in. He has to sell 16/2.5 dogs per hour to break even -- ignoring all the other costs of doing business. Your oven can keep up with that rate of production, and so can the employee. You actually sell 24/hr. You're ok.
Now double the minimum wage to $15/hr. That makes the employee costs $30/hr. Now you have to sell 30/2.5 dogs per hour to break even. But you're only selling 24 per hour, and that's all your oven can handle or the employee can prepare. The employee is "pulling his weight" at $8/hr wage; he's falling behind at $15/hr, and there's nothing you can do to fix it that doesn't cost you even more money. Your solution: "warn them, give them a reasonable chance to improve and then sack them". But there is no way they can improve. "The beatings will continue until the morale improves."
Oh, but you just raise the price to cover the difference. Now you sell fewer than 24 per hour and you're falling further behind. But you're a company that's rolling in profit, right, so you can absorb the costs. No problem.
There is a fact that you cannot get around: there are just some jobs that are worth the current minimum wage but not double that amount. (I use that number because minimum is abo
No. Any jobs worth $15 before a minimum wage hike will also increase in pay grade, because otherwise why would people bother when an ostensibly easier job pays the same?
No. Who said the lower wage job was easier? Dug any ditches recently? If the $15/hr job was only worth $15/hr before the minimum wage went up, it will still only be worth $15/hr after.
Prices go up, wages go up across the spectrum
You have a remarkably interesting view of how prices and wages interact. Prices going up does NOT mean wages go up. If only that were true, then the skyrocketing price of gas in the last decades would have meant Nirvana for all the employed folks whose wages went up with it.
Some jobs are also likely lost to automation because the cost-reward ratio changes,
Try "a lot of the entry level jobs" go away.
That's very clearly and obviously not how economics works,
Uhhh, right.
or there wouldn't be any people between minimum wage and $15/h in the first place.
Because clearly there are no jobs that are worth between "minumum wage" and "$15/hr" today, so clearly nobody pays anyone anything in between those two numbers. Except for all those jobs that are $10/hr, $12/hr, etc...
You missed option 4) Accept a slightly lower profit margin on the things you sell.
If I lose sales, I start operating at a loss. If I pay more for employees I start operating at a loss. That puts me back in the first three options, all of which means fewer jobs.
This ridiculous idea that every company is making huge profits and can afford to pay double for labor needs to stop.
No, not really. You can spend 80 hours per week doing a job that returns $1000 in value to the company you work for, but you can't expect them to just hand you $1500 for your time. You have to do something that results in the money you get paid, it truly does not grow on trees.
If it order to pay flip burgers a living wage they have to raise the price of the burgers then so be it.
And when do you expect to get the raise that will allow you go buy the now more expensive product? Someone making $15/hr already who gets no raise when the minimum goes to $15/hr will be in serious trouble as the prices for everything that come from current minimum wage workers goes up to cover your largesse. I'm glad you have lots of excess cash now that you can spend on the more expensive products, but most people do not.
Home repair is getting easier for untrained people, but the big money for building trades is in new housing and major remodels. The latter require building permits and code inspections, which will always remain the baliwick of the construction trades simply because housing codes won't allow amateurs to do major work.
When amateurs do undocumented major construction projects you wind up with issues like the homeowners who bought a property with a small cottage in the back yard who wanted to improve it. Turned out there were no permits and no code inspections, and the cottage was too close to the property line AND was build on top of the city sewer lines.
Poor people who believe they can make the same living as their parents and grandparents with the same skillset.
It's not even that. Children grow up today expecting the things they are used to having, ignoring the fact that their parents had to work a long time to get those things. They don't understand that their parents probably lived in an apartment, saving for the down payment on a house for years before the kids were born. And probably the kids being born was a driving factor in actually getting a house. The kids grow up, move out, and expect to be able to buy a house right away.
Some of that is due to the ridiculous notions of "a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage" and that owning a house is some natural right. This is what led to banking regulations that forced banks to make loans to people who had no way to pay them back, and we know how that turned out.
Let's consider this. I'm an employer who is making a product that is priced at a point where people actually buy it. If I raise prices, I lose sales.
Employees are a cost which is offset by the value they bring to the job. Unfortunately, the value they bring is, in this example, $12/hr. I pay them current minimum wage because by the time you include the other costs of that employee, you're up to $10/hr or more.
Now increase the minimum wage to, say, $15/hr. Their cost is now already $3/hr higher than their value to the company, and that's ignoring the increased employment taxes to go with the increased wage. I can't increase my prices to cover the increased cost, I'll lose sales. I have several options. 1) add more automation, cutting jobs. 2) use fewer employees to do the same jobs, cutting jobs but paying the lucky few who get overtime more. 3) go out of business (your obvious choice considering the next statement you make), costing a lot of jobs. Notice the common thread in those options: fewer jobs. In no case would the answer be "hire more of the more expensive employees, creating jobs."
If a company cannot afford to pay its employees a living wage with health care, then that company should not survive.
What an awfully naive view of the world. It is a fact that some jobs are just not worth $15/hr because they don't return $30/hr in value to the employer. Some jobs truly are "entry level" jobs, providing work experience to inexperienced and untrained entrants to the workforce.
We as a country need to stop accepting this BS situation where companies make huge profits
We as a country need to stop accepting this BS assumption that all corporations make huge profits.
If we raise the minimum wage, more US citizens will take those jobs that formerly didn't pay enough, so the undocumented workers will have trouble finding work and be less likely to come here.
If you are employing illegal aliens to work for you, then you are already breaking the law and most likely not paying minimum wage now. Why do you think that those employers will start paying minimum wage when minimum wage goes to ridiculous levels? In fact, jumping minimum wage to the point that employers cannot make any profit at all were they to pay it means there will be a higher demand for an undocumented workforce, not lower.
I honestly don't remember a promise of no commercials from Cable, only certain channels one could receive from cable.
That's because cable companies could not promise "no commercials" for any channel EVER*. Cable began as a way of retransmitting broadcast stations to people who could not put up their own antennas (CATV is "community antenna TV"), and broadcast stations have ALWAYS had ads.
It wasn't until cable had enough market saturation and satellite services matured to the point that satellite-delivered content networks like HBO became available, and it was HBO's promise of "no ads", not the cable TV company.
* with the exception of the PEG channels or other local origination services. Otherwise, cable is retransmission of other people's content, and those other people decide if there are ads or not.
I was, and the person I replied to was, and the comments I made were in the context of a municipal ISP. You're arguing about something completely different.
I can see you're ideologically opposed to municipal networks and I'm unlikely to change that so I'll quit trying.
So far, the only attempts you have made are trying to convince me that municipal infrastructure without municipal ISP service isn't bad, and I've not been talking about that. So yes, your arguments about a different situation are unlikely to change my mind about the actual topic of discussion. Hmmm.
You seem to have a very poor understanding of how democracies work.
My understanding is they are operating at break-even, so people that don't use it aren't really paying anything.
Except the backing of the general fund when there is a loss. And the loss of competition when a for-profit company cannot compete and pulls out.
In fact, it's saved the city government money that they were spending on very expensive commercial Internet access.
If the city government didn't have internet access written into the cable franchise then they are fools. In any case, to HAVE internet service, the city is paying someone for it, and it is now being funded by the taxpayers -- just like it was before the city became it's own ISP. Those taxpayers are either "customers" of the city ISP or just plain old taxpayers who don't care about internet access.
Yes, being able to sell cheap municipal bonds helps.
Interest from the bonds comes from taxes, and the principle is guaranteed by the taxpayers. If the city ISP fails after the city issues bonds to build it, guess who gets to pay back the bond holders?
After all, a tiny city government just kicked their asses because they thought their customers had no other options.
No, the city just kicked their asses because the city doesn't have to make a profit or break even on the deal, and doesn't have to live by any of the franchise agreements they make commercial vendors live by. It's amazing how much cheaper you can sell something if you don't have to make a profit and can rely on shareholders to cover any losses.
There's no reason why you couldn't structure the municipal broadband such that it has to break even over some suitable period.
There's no reason it couldn't be structured to require that the prices be higher than any competing commercial ISP, too. But if you think that any city would do that, or that the people who are pushing the city to provide cheap broadband would accept that, you're naive at best. The whole purpose of a municipal ISP is to have lower rates than the commercial providers.
No, any city agency that can charge low prices and hide the losses by dipping into the general fund will do so.
Where I live one of the main local telcos is owned by the province, and rather than being subsidized it consistently provides a profit back to the provincial government, while simultaneously being highly competitive with the big national telcos.
So you actually live someplace where there are multiple phone companies all serving the same area with multiple sets of wires? Fascinating. Otherwise, they can't be competitive with "big national telcos" if the big national telcos don't actually serve your area. And since any franchise fees are simply moved from one pocket to the other for the provincial telco and are a profit for the provincial government when paid by the "big national telcos", the provincial telco has a big step up on showing a profit.
No, the city only provides the pipe, an ISP provides the actual internet service.
The city IS the ISP. Lmgtfy: here: "SandyNet is the Internet Service Provider owned by the people of Sandy and operated as a public service by the City of Sandy." Now tell me again how the city only owns the pipes. Tell my how ANY municipal ISP service "only provides the pipes". If they only provide the pipes, they aren't an ISP -- BY DEFINITION.
There is a monopoly on the infrastructure. No other cable companies are allowed to run lines to each house, only the one that the government has selected.
First, there are other ways to get internet than "cable television wire". Second, the only reason the government has "selected" just one cable television company is because only one cable television company applied for a franchise.
If you are so against government, why do you support a government-enforced cable monopoly?
I don't, because there isn't.
No, they don't need to break even, but they can.
Whether they can or nor depends on how many subs paying how much money they can get. The NEED not to break even is a fact. That fact means they can, and probably will, operate at below true cost and create unfair competition with commercial suppliers that not only don't have the taxpayer general fund to dip into, have true shareholders that deserve a return on their investment.
They don't drive out competition, they encourage it.
Right. They encourage them to go bankrupt. You can't run a commercial ISP below cost, especially when part of your costs are paying a franchise fee to the city for access to the rights of way -- that the city doesn't have to pay, or pays to itself. YOU as an ISP give some percentage of your gross to the city, and the city, at worst, gives itself 5% of their gross. Where does your 5% wind up? Same pocket that the city's, and it isn't yours.
An open municipal network provides way more competition that currently exists because it lowers the barriers to entry for ISPs,
You have got to be joking. It increases the barriers to entry. If you know that you're going to have to charge a price for services that competes with a non-profit taxpayer backed service that can operate at a loss, you're not going to try. Your barrier is now the fight you'll have to make to get any subscribers, and a need to make a profit.
I'm not one of the people who rail against Walmart, they were able to put mom and pops out of business because mom and pops are mostly inefficient.
Good. You're consistent, at least. Now suppose that Walmart came into town and operated that new store at a huge loss just to force Mom and Pop out. They can do that for a bit of time, using profits from other places to shore up that operation. Would you be so forgiving of Walmart if they did that?
If you are in favor of healthy competition you should be in favor of municipal networks.
The world of 1984 and Ministry of Truth has arrived.
And when commercial services just have no interest in serving your community?
Start one. Or accept the fact that it is not cost-effective to provide service where you are. "I don't want to pay what it would cost" isn't a reason to force others to subsidize your internet.
So, you just do without?
I would love it were there a Golden Corral in my town. There isn't. I cannot force Golden Corral to come to town, so I should get the city to open up a buffet restaurant operated by taxpayer funds? I should not worry that such a "business" operated at cost or below might drive other for-profit restaurants already in town out of business? No, I just do without. Sigh.
So, you doom a community to having no new companies move in because you cant give them good internet service?
You seem to think that the only internet service available to anyone is cable or city internet. If there were such a demand for internet (to make it "doom" not to have any), someone would provide it. It is very unlikely that any company looking at coming to that community is going to base their decision only on cable or city internet service. A place without a demand for internet already isn't going to be a great place to operate a company from for other reasons.
So, we have a law banning local governments from providing this service to their citizens
Well, as I think the summary points out, there are exemptions for places where no commercial company wants to build on their own. So no, the ban is limited in scope.
because we want to be sure that corporate America won't lose a potential market
Because we don't want to create an unfair marketplace for existing companies who are already providing the service, just not as cheaply as some people think it ought to be. So we get a law that prevents municipal competition with existing companies -- just like this one does -- that doesn't prevent it entirely when there is proven to be no competition -- just like this law.
where government only needs to charge cost of doing business.
They don't even need to charge that much. They can operate at a loss because the "shareholders" will be forced by law to cover the losses. What other business do you know of where the shareholders cannot sell their stock at any price and must continue to invest more money in the company even when it is losing money?
There are tons of things that people pay taxes for where they don't receive a direct benefit.
Internet doesn't need to be yet another one, since there are companies already in existence that can provide the service to those who want it.
I choose my own ISP and can easily switch if they do something I don't like, which certainly can't be said of the cable company monopoly that exists in most places.
Uhh, you can chose not to use the municipal service, but you can't choose not to pay taxes. You CAN choose not to use Comcast and you won't pay Comcast a dime if you don't use them. You can switch just as easily if it is Comcast or Citycast.
And the alleged "cable monopoly" isn't really, since there is no monopoly for ISPs and never has been. The only monopoly that used to exist was for cable TV service, but "video content" no longer has any monopolies, and "Internet" has never had one.
As you observe above, the city can provide the service cheaper than a private company because they don't need to make a profit, they just need to break even.
As I also observe, they don't need to break even. They can operate at a loss to drive out the commercial competition -- something that the FTC would be investigating were it one commercial venture trying to bankrupt another by such means. People complain vociferously about Walmart coming to town and driving the local mom and pop stores out of business because they cut prices, but at least Walmart has to make a profit overall. City run internet services don't need to do even that much, so why is it ok for them to drive out competition when it's so evil if Walmart does it?
If the municipality owned and maintained the conduit as the grandparent poster suggested, what's the significant difference between owning and managing empty pipes compared to owning and managing water filled pipes?
Internet service isn't "empty pipes". Would you pay for a fiber connection that was empty?
I don't doubt it happens but does it happen as often as the regular internet outages I see from Comcast?
More often here. My last internet outage was when I swapped modems and they had a bit of difficulty setting it up.
Well no, I expect that the customers of the service (i.e. me) will pay for it through access fees charged to the ISP's.
Municipal internet is paid for partly through customer fees and partly through taxes on everyone. You will be paying only a part of the true cost of the connection and service, and your neighbors who don't want city-run internet will be paying the rest. Do you remember, you are comparing your water service to your internet service, not just "empty pipes".
whether the last mile is handled by an ISP or a group of individuals.
A group of people banding together to become an ISP _IS_ an ISP. And the law in question here doesn't stop that.
in which case no ISP would sell a group of people bandwidth to be sub-divided.
Upstream providers would be HAPPY to sell service to anyone they can. It's money in their pocket. Why wouldn't they? It won't be illegal for people to form an new ISP to take advantage of an underserved customer base. What other excuse would there be to not sell to them?
The people are subsidizing the costs, so why shouldn't the government be allowed to build and maintain a network for the benefit of the people which is paid for by the people? The answer of course is because the ISPs think they deserve everyone's money.
You have it 180 degrees backwards. When a commercial ISP serves a community it gets money from some of the people. When a government runs an ISP they get money from ALL of the people, even those who don't want the service. It's the governments who think they deserve everyone's money, and they regularly increase the amount of everyone's money they take by raising taxes.
Why shouldn't they do this for internet? Because it creates and unfair marketplace for existing commercial operations, and subsidizes the recipients of service by charging everyone. Anyone who complains about how unfair is it because Comcast has an economic monopoly in an area should be complaining just as loudly about this unfair competition practice.
And those who worry about NSA or FBI or other TLA monitoring of their communications should realize that federal law would make it acceptable for the government to inspect their communications if the government is providing the ISP service. Yes, keep in mind, there are exemptions to privacy that cover the ISP for actions taken to maintain or repair internet service. And it is much easier for such monitoring to take place in the first place when all the packets go through the government's routers. It's a government employee doing it.
Because a town getting together and deciding to fund and build their own network is a concrete example of introducing competition,
Not honest and fair competition, and because of that it isn't real competition. It's a veiled attempt at putting ALL of the incumbent ISPs out of business because they can NEVER compete against a service that doesn't have to worry about turning a profit or even breaking even. They cannot compete against a service where everyone in the coverage area is forced to either pay for and use the government service, or pay for the government service and pay extra to use the commercial service they prefer.
You might see the direct parallel between the antitrust actions against Microsoft for bundling IE as a browser, and the claims that by doing so they were hindering the third-party browser marketplace. How many web browsers do you see for sale today? How much larger a market share would Firefox or Opera have if the users had to pick one of IE/FF/Opera/other to install on their system instead of simply clicking on "The Internet" icon and getting IE (or now Edge)?
The correct answer to a problem where there are a large number of customers not being served by the existing commercial service is for another commercial service to come in and fill the need. It's not for the government to step in and take out the existing commercial services by selling below true cost and forcing them out of business. If the problem is "nobody can sell me service at a price that I like", then the answer is "too bad", not "make everyone else subsidize my service".
why not just run conduit for fiber as well, and then lease it out? I think the idea is genius.
I see nothing in this law that prevents such an operation, only the operation of an ISP service by the municipalities. In fact, I would bet that there are cities that do exactly this already, in places where there is sufficient population to justify the cost of the conduit.
My municipal water system is cheaper and far more reliable than my internet service.
I think there is a significant difference in the infrastructure between the two. You can't tell the difference between water molecules that come out your tap, but you desperately need the packet addressed to you to be the one coming out your internet tap, for one thing.
In the past 10 years, I can't remember a single unscheduled outage of water service,
Happens in my town on a semi-regular basis. Some nudge ran into a fire hydrant and cracked a pipe last week, taking out an entire block of water users, for example. Collapsed pipes that weren't maintained properly (because it was a government function to maintain them and they spent the money on less important, more visible things) several times last summer.
If that's the kind of service I can expect from government owned conduit, I say bring it on.
You will happily force others to pay for your happiness, it seems. The ends do not always justify the means.
Slashdot Mirror
Your minimum wage customers now have more disposable income so they're willing to splurge on a hotdog more often,
People making minimum wage aren't splurging on pretzel-wrapped hot dogs that are horribly overpriced compared to what they can make for themselves. If you think "minimum wage" means "disposable income", then you're not really talking about a minimum wage, you're talking about a wage well above that.
And sales don't go up when the prices have to go up to pay for the employee labor behind it.
so you invest in a more modern, higher capacity, more efficient oven
No, if I'm going to invest to keep from losing money, I'm going to make an investment in automation and centralized processing, where a machine rolls the dogs in dough and freezes them, and probably puts them on the tray so all the employee at the store as to do is put the tray in the oven and take it out. Less labor, fewer employees.
and that supports your one
Yep, one instead of two or more. Half the people have jobs. You've proven a lot of my point for me.
to do business of 36 units per hour
Ahh, if only I could get a mandate that more people buy my more expensive product like the mandate that I pay my employees more...
It's a win for the employee,
For one of them. I notice you used the singular so you recognize that it will be one winner, many losers. At every site I run where I currently have four employees (two per shift, two shifts a day) I can now cut back to two employees. The two who still have jobs -- golden. The two who don't -- not so much.
but the capital has to up the ante from time to time too, not just sit back and expect the return to be infinite
And here we're back to the complete crap assumption that companies are just raking in huge profits all the time. Rose colored glasses, or are your glasses really the shit colored ones?
In fact Henry Ford's entire business model depended on his employees being paid enough to buy his own products... And that worked out fantastically for him
He didn't raise the minimum wage, so it's not a good analogy. Actually, it didn't work out so much for everyone else until the labor organized to get themselves a pay rate VERY MUCH ABOVE what he wanted to pay them. Do you think his auto plants would have gone union had he been paying such wonderful wages all along?
He was creating a market by not just paying his workers, but by creating a manufacturing process that meant what he was building would cost less to build anyway. He wasn't doing it for HIS workers because he'd never survive in business that way. It was media hype produced to create an image. "Come buy cars from the guy who really cares about his employees." He was doing it to make money from free advertising.
Doubling the minimum wage so it becomes a "living wage" will INCREASE the costs for everything that involves minimum wage labor. This increase will impact EVERYONE who buys anything from those sources, which is pretty much everyone, even those who are getting by with their current $15/hr jobs. Your local grocery store will have to raise prices on everything, after dealing with the wholesale price increases from their suppliers who have to pay more to their labor. It's not just a one-step increase. And grocery stores are just the first example out of thousands.
Why do your favorite countries get away with paying so much already? Because they are already in a social welfare system that sucks a larger amount of taxes back out of the worker's pockets. It didn't come as a sudden disruption to their system.
So sorry, the crackpot economics is the nonsense that raising minimum wage will be a panacea to the homeless problem. If anything, it will make it worse as prices go up to pay more to people who aren't producing at that level.
And that worked out fantastically for him as compared to Uber... who are haemorrhaging cash.
Your comparison of Ford to Uber is quite interesting. It would appear that you think that Uber should pay their drivers enough so that their drivers could afford to use Uber -- like Ford employees buying Model T cars -- which is patent nonsense. Or that Uber paying their drivers a $15/hr minimum wage (the current "living wage" level being proposed) would mean Uber would be rolling in dough. Yes, surely, if you raise the costs for Uber and thus raise the prices so that fewer people would choose Uber over a regular taxi, Uber will certainly begin profiting like never before. And you call my economics "crackpot".
You're the one who claimed that any raise at all was going to ruin you
I made no such claim, and you truly are an idiot.
Pay $9.99 and all's well but pay $10 and you're bankrupt?
If you think the minimum wage debate is about paying $10/hr instead of $9.99/hr, then you are an idiot.
Either we as a society make employers pay a wage that people in that situation can live on or we accept having vast numbers of people on state aid. Whichever one we opt for, the public end up paying for it.
The difference being that increasing the minimum wage to make it a basic income means you give money to everyone who works minimum wage, and having assistance for those who need more than the current minimum wage means giving money only to some. Which costs less -- giving money to everyone or giving money only to those who need it? And what do you do for those that even a new minimum wage won't provide enough? You're still running welfare because of them, so you don't even get the savings from eliminating that program.
The second difference is that increasing minimum wage increases the cost of labor for almost every business, especially those dealing in food (grocery stores, burger joints, etc). Unlike the common opinion here, grocery stores are NOT companies that are just rolling in profit that can afford to pay everyone twice what they make today. Grocery stores who hire high school and college students part time to stock shelves and such will wind up paying them a lot more when they aren't even trying to live on that wage -- a cost without an associated benefit.
do you really think anyone would do the sort of work that pays the minimum wage by choice?
Yes. Now here's one for you: do you really think that the only people who work a minimum wage job are those who are trying to support a wife, three kids, and pay off a mortgage?
Being paid piecemeal is the exception, not the rule.
Piecemeal is not relevant to the issue of how much value your work has. If you produce $10/hour in value, then a sudden raise to $15/hr is ridiculous.
if a salaried or hourly paid employee doesn't pull their weight you warn them, give them a reasonable chance to improve and then sack them if they don't.
You just don't understand. They can 'pull their weight' if they are paid $8/hr. It's when they are paid $15/hr that they are no longer doing so. "Pulling their weight" is a balance between cost and benefit. Make the costs too high and they can't "pull their weight" simply because the job they are doing can't produce enough benefit. It has nothing to do with the employee or how hard they are working, it has everything to do with the job itself.
Let's pretend. You run a food service that sells hot dogs wrapped in pretzel dough. (Auntie Annie's, for example.) It costs 50 cents in hot dogs and dough and electricity for the oven per unit. You sell them for $3 each (two for $6, yum). You have an employee making $8/hr. Assume $16/hr for costs by the time you add all the extras in. He has to sell 16/2.5 dogs per hour to break even -- ignoring all the other costs of doing business. Your oven can keep up with that rate of production, and so can the employee. You actually sell 24/hr. You're ok.
Now double the minimum wage to $15/hr. That makes the employee costs $30/hr. Now you have to sell 30/2.5 dogs per hour to break even. But you're only selling 24 per hour, and that's all your oven can handle or the employee can prepare. The employee is "pulling his weight" at $8/hr wage; he's falling behind at $15/hr, and there's nothing you can do to fix it that doesn't cost you even more money. Your solution: "warn them, give them a reasonable chance to improve and then sack them". But there is no way they can improve. "The beatings will continue until the morale improves."
Oh, but you just raise the price to cover the difference. Now you sell fewer than 24 per hour and you're falling further behind. But you're a company that's rolling in profit, right, so you can absorb the costs. No problem.
There is a fact that you cannot get around: there are just some jobs that are worth the current minimum wage but not double that amount. (I use that number because minimum is abo
No. Any jobs worth $15 before a minimum wage hike will also increase in pay grade, because otherwise why would people bother when an ostensibly easier job pays the same?
No. Who said the lower wage job was easier? Dug any ditches recently? If the $15/hr job was only worth $15/hr before the minimum wage went up, it will still only be worth $15/hr after.
Prices go up, wages go up across the spectrum
You have a remarkably interesting view of how prices and wages interact. Prices going up does NOT mean wages go up. If only that were true, then the skyrocketing price of gas in the last decades would have meant Nirvana for all the employed folks whose wages went up with it.
Some jobs are also likely lost to automation because the cost-reward ratio changes,
Try "a lot of the entry level jobs" go away.
That's very clearly and obviously not how economics works,
Uhhh, right.
or there wouldn't be any people between minimum wage and $15/h in the first place.
Because clearly there are no jobs that are worth between "minumum wage" and "$15/hr" today, so clearly nobody pays anyone anything in between those two numbers. Except for all those jobs that are $10/hr, $12/hr, etc...
You missed option 4) Accept a slightly lower profit margin on the things you sell.
If I lose sales, I start operating at a loss. If I pay more for employees I start operating at a loss. That puts me back in the first three options, all of which means fewer jobs.
This ridiculous idea that every company is making huge profits and can afford to pay double for labor needs to stop.
Well, time matters, too.
No, not really. You can spend 80 hours per week doing a job that returns $1000 in value to the company you work for, but you can't expect them to just hand you $1500 for your time. You have to do something that results in the money you get paid, it truly does not grow on trees.
If it order to pay flip burgers a living wage they have to raise the price of the burgers then so be it.
And when do you expect to get the raise that will allow you go buy the now more expensive product? Someone making $15/hr already who gets no raise when the minimum goes to $15/hr will be in serious trouble as the prices for everything that come from current minimum wage workers goes up to cover your largesse. I'm glad you have lots of excess cash now that you can spend on the more expensive products, but most people do not.
"How many cabs do they own?" None.
Well, apparently they own at least one, because they're leasing it to this guy.
But the "ride-sharing" industry is still a scam, pure and simple.
Obviously, when you are leasing the car just so you can "share the ride" with someone.
When amateurs do undocumented major construction projects you wind up with issues like the homeowners who bought a property with a small cottage in the back yard who wanted to improve it. Turned out there were no permits and no code inspections, and the cottage was too close to the property line AND was build on top of the city sewer lines.
Poor people who believe they can make the same living as their parents and grandparents with the same skillset.
It's not even that. Children grow up today expecting the things they are used to having, ignoring the fact that their parents had to work a long time to get those things. They don't understand that their parents probably lived in an apartment, saving for the down payment on a house for years before the kids were born. And probably the kids being born was a driving factor in actually getting a house. The kids grow up, move out, and expect to be able to buy a house right away.
Some of that is due to the ridiculous notions of "a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage" and that owning a house is some natural right. This is what led to banking regulations that forced banks to make loans to people who had no way to pay them back, and we know how that turned out.
How does higher minimum wage make jobs disappear?
Let's consider this. I'm an employer who is making a product that is priced at a point where people actually buy it. If I raise prices, I lose sales.
Employees are a cost which is offset by the value they bring to the job. Unfortunately, the value they bring is, in this example, $12/hr. I pay them current minimum wage because by the time you include the other costs of that employee, you're up to $10/hr or more.
Now increase the minimum wage to, say, $15/hr. Their cost is now already $3/hr higher than their value to the company, and that's ignoring the increased employment taxes to go with the increased wage. I can't increase my prices to cover the increased cost, I'll lose sales. I have several options. 1) add more automation, cutting jobs. 2) use fewer employees to do the same jobs, cutting jobs but paying the lucky few who get overtime more. 3) go out of business (your obvious choice considering the next statement you make), costing a lot of jobs. Notice the common thread in those options: fewer jobs. In no case would the answer be "hire more of the more expensive employees, creating jobs."
If a company cannot afford to pay its employees a living wage with health care, then that company should not survive.
What an awfully naive view of the world. It is a fact that some jobs are just not worth $15/hr because they don't return $30/hr in value to the employer. Some jobs truly are "entry level" jobs, providing work experience to inexperienced and untrained entrants to the workforce.
We as a country need to stop accepting this BS situation where companies make huge profits
We as a country need to stop accepting this BS assumption that all corporations make huge profits.
If we raise the minimum wage, more US citizens will take those jobs that formerly didn't pay enough, so the undocumented workers will have trouble finding work and be less likely to come here.
If you are employing illegal aliens to work for you, then you are already breaking the law and most likely not paying minimum wage now. Why do you think that those employers will start paying minimum wage when minimum wage goes to ridiculous levels? In fact, jumping minimum wage to the point that employers cannot make any profit at all were they to pay it means there will be a higher demand for an undocumented workforce, not lower.
I honestly don't remember a promise of no commercials from Cable, only certain channels one could receive from cable.
That's because cable companies could not promise "no commercials" for any channel EVER*. Cable began as a way of retransmitting broadcast stations to people who could not put up their own antennas (CATV is "community antenna TV"), and broadcast stations have ALWAYS had ads.
It wasn't until cable had enough market saturation and satellite services matured to the point that satellite-delivered content networks like HBO became available, and it was HBO's promise of "no ads", not the cable TV company.
* with the exception of the PEG channels or other local origination services. Otherwise, cable is retransmission of other people's content, and those other people decide if there are ads or not.
How well maintained is the tubing running to the spray nozzles?
As well maintained as the tubing running to the faucets that you rinse your toothbrush with.
I wasn't talking about Sandy, OR,
I was, and the person I replied to was, and the comments I made were in the context of a municipal ISP. You're arguing about something completely different.
I can see you're ideologically opposed to municipal networks and I'm unlikely to change that so I'll quit trying.
So far, the only attempts you have made are trying to convince me that municipal infrastructure without municipal ISP service isn't bad, and I've not been talking about that. So yes, your arguments about a different situation are unlikely to change my mind about the actual topic of discussion. Hmmm.
You seem to have a very poor understanding of how democracies work. My understanding is they are operating at break-even, so people that don't use it aren't really paying anything.
Except the backing of the general fund when there is a loss. And the loss of competition when a for-profit company cannot compete and pulls out.
In fact, it's saved the city government money that they were spending on very expensive commercial Internet access.
If the city government didn't have internet access written into the cable franchise then they are fools. In any case, to HAVE internet service, the city is paying someone for it, and it is now being funded by the taxpayers -- just like it was before the city became it's own ISP. Those taxpayers are either "customers" of the city ISP or just plain old taxpayers who don't care about internet access.
Yes, being able to sell cheap municipal bonds helps.
Interest from the bonds comes from taxes, and the principle is guaranteed by the taxpayers. If the city ISP fails after the city issues bonds to build it, guess who gets to pay back the bond holders?
After all, a tiny city government just kicked their asses because they thought their customers had no other options.
No, the city just kicked their asses because the city doesn't have to make a profit or break even on the deal, and doesn't have to live by any of the franchise agreements they make commercial vendors live by. It's amazing how much cheaper you can sell something if you don't have to make a profit and can rely on shareholders to cover any losses.
There's no reason why you couldn't structure the municipal broadband such that it has to break even over some suitable period.
There's no reason it couldn't be structured to require that the prices be higher than any competing commercial ISP, too. But if you think that any city would do that, or that the people who are pushing the city to provide cheap broadband would accept that, you're naive at best. The whole purpose of a municipal ISP is to have lower rates than the commercial providers.
No, any city agency that can charge low prices and hide the losses by dipping into the general fund will do so.
Where I live one of the main local telcos is owned by the province, and rather than being subsidized it consistently provides a profit back to the provincial government, while simultaneously being highly competitive with the big national telcos.
So you actually live someplace where there are multiple phone companies all serving the same area with multiple sets of wires? Fascinating. Otherwise, they can't be competitive with "big national telcos" if the big national telcos don't actually serve your area. And since any franchise fees are simply moved from one pocket to the other for the provincial telco and are a profit for the provincial government when paid by the "big national telcos", the provincial telco has a big step up on showing a profit.
No, the city only provides the pipe, an ISP provides the actual internet service.
The city IS the ISP. Lmgtfy: here: "SandyNet is the Internet Service Provider owned by the people of Sandy and operated as a public service by the City of Sandy." Now tell me again how the city only owns the pipes. Tell my how ANY municipal ISP service "only provides the pipes". If they only provide the pipes, they aren't an ISP -- BY DEFINITION.
There is a monopoly on the infrastructure. No other cable companies are allowed to run lines to each house, only the one that the government has selected.
First, there are other ways to get internet than "cable television wire". Second, the only reason the government has "selected" just one cable television company is because only one cable television company applied for a franchise.
If you are so against government, why do you support a government-enforced cable monopoly?
I don't, because there isn't.
No, they don't need to break even, but they can.
Whether they can or nor depends on how many subs paying how much money they can get. The NEED not to break even is a fact. That fact means they can, and probably will, operate at below true cost and create unfair competition with commercial suppliers that not only don't have the taxpayer general fund to dip into, have true shareholders that deserve a return on their investment.
They don't drive out competition, they encourage it.
Right. They encourage them to go bankrupt. You can't run a commercial ISP below cost, especially when part of your costs are paying a franchise fee to the city for access to the rights of way -- that the city doesn't have to pay, or pays to itself. YOU as an ISP give some percentage of your gross to the city, and the city, at worst, gives itself 5% of their gross. Where does your 5% wind up? Same pocket that the city's, and it isn't yours.
An open municipal network provides way more competition that currently exists because it lowers the barriers to entry for ISPs,
You have got to be joking. It increases the barriers to entry. If you know that you're going to have to charge a price for services that competes with a non-profit taxpayer backed service that can operate at a loss, you're not going to try. Your barrier is now the fight you'll have to make to get any subscribers, and a need to make a profit.
I'm not one of the people who rail against Walmart, they were able to put mom and pops out of business because mom and pops are mostly inefficient.
Good. You're consistent, at least. Now suppose that Walmart came into town and operated that new store at a huge loss just to force Mom and Pop out. They can do that for a bit of time, using profits from other places to shore up that operation. Would you be so forgiving of Walmart if they did that?
If you are in favor of healthy competition you should be in favor of municipal networks.
The world of 1984 and Ministry of Truth has arrived.
And when commercial services just have no interest in serving your community?
Start one. Or accept the fact that it is not cost-effective to provide service where you are. "I don't want to pay what it would cost" isn't a reason to force others to subsidize your internet.
So, you just do without?
I would love it were there a Golden Corral in my town. There isn't. I cannot force Golden Corral to come to town, so I should get the city to open up a buffet restaurant operated by taxpayer funds? I should not worry that such a "business" operated at cost or below might drive other for-profit restaurants already in town out of business? No, I just do without. Sigh.
So, you doom a community to having no new companies move in because you cant give them good internet service?
You seem to think that the only internet service available to anyone is cable or city internet. If there were such a demand for internet (to make it "doom" not to have any), someone would provide it. It is very unlikely that any company looking at coming to that community is going to base their decision only on cable or city internet service. A place without a demand for internet already isn't going to be a great place to operate a company from for other reasons.
So, we have a law banning local governments from providing this service to their citizens
Well, as I think the summary points out, there are exemptions for places where no commercial company wants to build on their own. So no, the ban is limited in scope.
because we want to be sure that corporate America won't lose a potential market
Because we don't want to create an unfair marketplace for existing companies who are already providing the service, just not as cheaply as some people think it ought to be. So we get a law that prevents municipal competition with existing companies -- just like this one does -- that doesn't prevent it entirely when there is proven to be no competition -- just like this law.
where government only needs to charge cost of doing business.
They don't even need to charge that much. They can operate at a loss because the "shareholders" will be forced by law to cover the losses. What other business do you know of where the shareholders cannot sell their stock at any price and must continue to invest more money in the company even when it is losing money?
There are tons of things that people pay taxes for where they don't receive a direct benefit.
Internet doesn't need to be yet another one, since there are companies already in existence that can provide the service to those who want it.
I choose my own ISP and can easily switch if they do something I don't like, which certainly can't be said of the cable company monopoly that exists in most places.
Uhh, you can chose not to use the municipal service, but you can't choose not to pay taxes. You CAN choose not to use Comcast and you won't pay Comcast a dime if you don't use them. You can switch just as easily if it is Comcast or Citycast.
And the alleged "cable monopoly" isn't really, since there is no monopoly for ISPs and never has been. The only monopoly that used to exist was for cable TV service, but "video content" no longer has any monopolies, and "Internet" has never had one.
As you observe above, the city can provide the service cheaper than a private company because they don't need to make a profit, they just need to break even.
As I also observe, they don't need to break even. They can operate at a loss to drive out the commercial competition -- something that the FTC would be investigating were it one commercial venture trying to bankrupt another by such means. People complain vociferously about Walmart coming to town and driving the local mom and pop stores out of business because they cut prices, but at least Walmart has to make a profit overall. City run internet services don't need to do even that much, so why is it ok for them to drive out competition when it's so evil if Walmart does it?
If the municipality owned and maintained the conduit as the grandparent poster suggested, what's the significant difference between owning and managing empty pipes compared to owning and managing water filled pipes?
Internet service isn't "empty pipes". Would you pay for a fiber connection that was empty?
I don't doubt it happens but does it happen as often as the regular internet outages I see from Comcast?
More often here. My last internet outage was when I swapped modems and they had a bit of difficulty setting it up.
Well no, I expect that the customers of the service (i.e. me) will pay for it through access fees charged to the ISP's.
Municipal internet is paid for partly through customer fees and partly through taxes on everyone. You will be paying only a part of the true cost of the connection and service, and your neighbors who don't want city-run internet will be paying the rest. Do you remember, you are comparing your water service to your internet service, not just "empty pipes".
whether the last mile is handled by an ISP or a group of individuals.
A group of people banding together to become an ISP _IS_ an ISP. And the law in question here doesn't stop that.
in which case no ISP would sell a group of people bandwidth to be sub-divided.
Upstream providers would be HAPPY to sell service to anyone they can. It's money in their pocket. Why wouldn't they? It won't be illegal for people to form an new ISP to take advantage of an underserved customer base. What other excuse would there be to not sell to them?
The people are subsidizing the costs, so why shouldn't the government be allowed to build and maintain a network for the benefit of the people which is paid for by the people? The answer of course is because the ISPs think they deserve everyone's money.
You have it 180 degrees backwards. When a commercial ISP serves a community it gets money from some of the people. When a government runs an ISP they get money from ALL of the people, even those who don't want the service. It's the governments who think they deserve everyone's money, and they regularly increase the amount of everyone's money they take by raising taxes.
Why shouldn't they do this for internet? Because it creates and unfair marketplace for existing commercial operations, and subsidizes the recipients of service by charging everyone. Anyone who complains about how unfair is it because Comcast has an economic monopoly in an area should be complaining just as loudly about this unfair competition practice.
And those who worry about NSA or FBI or other TLA monitoring of their communications should realize that federal law would make it acceptable for the government to inspect their communications if the government is providing the ISP service. Yes, keep in mind, there are exemptions to privacy that cover the ISP for actions taken to maintain or repair internet service. And it is much easier for such monitoring to take place in the first place when all the packets go through the government's routers. It's a government employee doing it.
Because a town getting together and deciding to fund and build their own network is a concrete example of introducing competition,
Not honest and fair competition, and because of that it isn't real competition. It's a veiled attempt at putting ALL of the incumbent ISPs out of business because they can NEVER compete against a service that doesn't have to worry about turning a profit or even breaking even. They cannot compete against a service where everyone in the coverage area is forced to either pay for and use the government service, or pay for the government service and pay extra to use the commercial service they prefer.
You might see the direct parallel between the antitrust actions against Microsoft for bundling IE as a browser, and the claims that by doing so they were hindering the third-party browser marketplace. How many web browsers do you see for sale today? How much larger a market share would Firefox or Opera have if the users had to pick one of IE/FF/Opera/other to install on their system instead of simply clicking on "The Internet" icon and getting IE (or now Edge)?
The correct answer to a problem where there are a large number of customers not being served by the existing commercial service is for another commercial service to come in and fill the need. It's not for the government to step in and take out the existing commercial services by selling below true cost and forcing them out of business. If the problem is "nobody can sell me service at a price that I like", then the answer is "too bad", not "make everyone else subsidize my service".
why not just run conduit for fiber as well, and then lease it out? I think the idea is genius.
I see nothing in this law that prevents such an operation, only the operation of an ISP service by the municipalities. In fact, I would bet that there are cities that do exactly this already, in places where there is sufficient population to justify the cost of the conduit.
My municipal water system is cheaper and far more reliable than my internet service.
I think there is a significant difference in the infrastructure between the two. You can't tell the difference between water molecules that come out your tap, but you desperately need the packet addressed to you to be the one coming out your internet tap, for one thing.
In the past 10 years, I can't remember a single unscheduled outage of water service,
Happens in my town on a semi-regular basis. Some nudge ran into a fire hydrant and cracked a pipe last week, taking out an entire block of water users, for example. Collapsed pipes that weren't maintained properly (because it was a government function to maintain them and they spent the money on less important, more visible things) several times last summer.
If that's the kind of service I can expect from government owned conduit, I say bring it on.
You will happily force others to pay for your happiness, it seems. The ends do not always justify the means.