Raising the minimum wage due to income inequality

@KungfuKitten: @mattbbpl:I'm willing to cede the point to him a little depending on the industry. I couldn't cost my company millions unless I actively tried, and even then it would have to be so ludicrously destructive and intentional that I would probably go to jail for it. There's nothing I can do in my everyday job that will cost the company millions. But you're right, depending on the industry workers can potentially cost their company millions.

The point that I have the most problem with is the idea that salaries should be tied to how much damage the employee can potentially inflict on the company. I think, instead, we should start out saying that every able-bodied, working adult deserves dignity and a level of pay that reflects such dignity. How we get there is up to debate, but when the opening gambit is "they don't deserve dignity because they can't single-handedly destroy the company" the discussion is already off track.

You basically just described the U.S. That's pretty much exactly what's going on here, and yeah, it's not looking great. One of the problems, at least here, is that economics is becoming very dogmatic. At a lot of universities if you aren't parroting Friedman and Hayek then you aren't considered an economist. So right off the bat, if we left the problem of how to solve this up to economists a lot of them would say there's no problem at all. There are some prominent economists like Pikkety and Paul Krugman who oppose this sort of thinking, but to a lot of conservatives they may as well be Marx himself. Then you've got the issue that the left in general is becoming more and more distrustful of economists in general, seeing them at best as naïfs who only serve to advance a conservative agenda and at worst secretly complicit in advancing it. And honestly, I wouldn't take the opinion that economists hold all the answers to these problems. I do think that being stuck in a certain environment can give people, even smart ones, tunnel vision. Having critical voices from departments that intersect with, but do not exclusively study, economics can provide critical voices that lead to constructive solutions. That's probably my biggest regret about the Obama presidency, is that he actively cultivated such an environment and sought out specialists both in economics and tangential areas to create constructive discussion on such topics. And they passed exactly zero legislation on these matters because they had to face Republican obstructionism for 75% of his presidency.

@theone86: Man, you have me in an awkward position here as I want to both defend and condemn the economics field as it currently stands. On one hand, you are absolutely right that the profession is prone to both group think and politicization. However, there is movement in the field (albeit too slowly) and most of the people in true positions of power in the US have been astute and reactive (seriously, the US fed deserves kudos for it's swift and appropriate action during the recession when the fiscal powers were paralyzed).

While the profession has some issues, we shouldn't mistake the ideological nuts for the group as a whole. When push comes to shove, the quiet Keynesians/Monetarists outnumber the loud cranks.

@blaznwiipspman1: dude. You're living in a pipe dream if you ever think you can have an economy with no for of.government. they go hand in hand from day one of society. As soon as you have a group of people with resources they are going be an arrangement how to manage those resources made. That is a government. A government is just a way we manage resources as a group.

The only source I got atm is this article from two years ago.

@horgen: Ah, touche. I hadn't considered the thought that shorter investment hold times contributed to the distribution imbalance - I was stuck thinking in the opposite direction.

Good read, thanks.

@mattbbpl: Yeah, I think that's probably a paradox in a lot of professions is that the loudest voices are the ones that get the most exposure, but the most competent work in anonymity. I'd like to think that's a problem that can be solved, that the most reasonable people can both do a lot of good work and hold a prominent place in public discourse, but maybe it's one or the other. President Obama employed a lot of the workmen crafting good policy, but at the end of the day the public didn't really see the effects of their work and flocked to economic populism. I wonder if that's just the sort of fluctuation that needs to be accepted. Anyway, I'm not trying to smear the whole discipline, I'm more just trying to keep the doors open for interconnected debate between professions. My alarm bells start going off whenever someone says we should leave x policy decisions to y group of specialists. I certainly agree with giving a lot of respect to the voices of people who study a certain field, but not to the point where we're cutting everyone else out of the discussion.

Anyway, I stumbled on a good article today written by a non-economist which analyzes inequality in a way that an economist typically wouldn't,while also drawing on economic studies. I thought of this discussion because it touches on Pikkety's theories while suggesting that there's more to the analysis. There's also a small bit about patents for blaznwiipspman1.

https://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIw0bju9jo?oc=wa

@theone86: "I certainly agree with giving a lot of respect to the voices of people who study a certain field, but not to the point where we're cutting everyone else out of the discussion."

I agree with that.

I've already pocketted your article reading. I love the Atlantic.

@mattbbpl: It's a really long article. Wait until you have some time.

Should be raised to 50$/hr because we could essentially eliminate poverty.

Lord know that we can't do two things at once.

"Look, over there! Just kidding, we won't do that either."

@thegerg: I respectfully disagree. It hinders economic growth, sows social unrest/ills, decreases economic mobility, and undermines democracy. Left unchecked to continue to grow, and these effects increase with time.

How would you attack poverty if not by wages?

Subsidies.

Horgen: "How would you attack poverty if not by wages?"

Sonicare: "Subsidies."

@thegerg:

Do you propose increasing subsidies/transfer payments to the poor in order to fight poverty?

Subsiding what? Where would it help most?

@horgen: elimination of subsidies of all types would benefit the poor and middle class the most. Eliminating patents, IP, infinite trademarks would really increase competition to levels not seen in hundreds of years. There would be a hardcore labor shortage for many fields that benefit from strong government protections. Labor shortage equals higher wages for the poor.

Education.

Unless you can control cost, that would only increase cost of education.

Yeah, they're not mutually exclusive. In fact, they're extremely interconnected.

If I had to pick one issue I could snap my fingers and magically solve it would be education, so I agree in part. There's one big problem with your solution, though, where are you going to get the money for subsidies? Almost by definition, you're advocating for a redistribution of wealth via educational subsidies as the people who need educational subsidies can't already afford education. The people who are losing money in that redistribution, i.e. the wealthy, are most likely going to fight it. They have more money and spend more money on political activism, making it far more likely that they will be able to defeat such a measure through political spending. Should they not be able to defeat such a measure, they still have substantially more wealth meaning that even if access to education is increased, they can still spend more money to ensure that their families have access to elite institutions, which provide inroads to high-paying jobs at elite firms and businesses, which further concentrates wealth and segregates education. At every level of your fight to make education more open and accessible, wealth inequality is a persistent barrier.

Minimum wage should go up based on inflation, tax increases, and housing inequality.

Where I live you need to bring home at least $2000 a month to live on your own. Your own place, bills, car, insurance, leaves you with very little left over. How apartment complexes get away with raising rents so drastically year in and year out amazes me.

In my area in 2010 I was living in a 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment with washer and dryer in unit, and about 1100sq ft. I payed $740 a month for that place fare and worth it. I moved away and came back in 2015, liked the place, inquired about price and the same apartment was $1180, now they are a little over $1300. Nothing has changed with theses apartments, they offer the same amenities, same location, property taxes haven’t increased that drastically to justify.

Raising minimum wage is a bad idea, what should happen is let the market decide the value of specific labor. If McDonald workers want a higher salary then make a case for it, argue why your presence is valuable, as opposed to being automated, or replaced with illegal immigrants. Forcing companies to raise wages will result in LESS job slots, companies will fire employees and increase the work load on the few that remain, sorry but socialist capitalism doesn't work, it will inevitably lead to communism.