US out of Venezuela!

Recently down here in Oz the Federal government legislated to remove Sunday penalty rates.

Then the other day the Prime Minister said that the drop in penalty rates would increase profits for small businesses so they'd be able to pay their staff more whilst saying that a restoration of those penalty rates, also known as paying staff more, would be bad for the country.


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Joat42 wrote:You forgot to include the cost of living which shows if the real value of a wage has increased or decreased).

Oh, you want this report.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/realer.pdf

Edit: Caption "Chart 2: Over-the-month percentage change in real average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees, seasonally adjusted, February 2018 – February 2019"

From February 2018 to February 2019, real average hourly earnings increased 2.2 percent, seasonally adjusted. Combining the change in real average hourly earnings with a 0.6-percent decrease in the average workweek resulted in a 1.5-percent increase in real average weekly earnings over this period.

T2M

thinkstoomuch wrote:

Joat42 wrote:You forgot to include the cost of living which shows if the real value of a wage has increased or decreased).

Oh, you want this report.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/realer.pdf

Edit: Caption "Chart 2: Over-the-month percentage change in real average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees, seasonally adjusted, February 2018 – February 2019"

From February 2018 to February 2019, real average hourly earnings increased 2.2 percent, seasonally adjusted. Combining the change in real average hourly earnings with a 0.6-percent decrease in the average workweek resulted in a 1.5-percent increase in real average weekly earnings over this period.

T2M

Exactly, just looking at the dollar-amount would show a wage-increase of about 4% I think for the same period.

Joat42 wrote:



You seem to believe that it’s better to be unemployed than working for low pay. I disagree. A person working for low pay is still productive, still contributing to the economy. Sitting on his dead ass unemployed, or running around looking for a job, not so much. And that’s where he’s going to be if the government tries to force businesses to pay $15.00 an hour for a job that adds $5.00 an hour to the bottom line.

You are missing the socioeconomic effects of increasing the minimum wage. The effects vary though, from country to country depending on labor laws and poverty levels. In some instances it actually reduces poverty, in some it can depress the labor market.

From a general standpoint I'm for paying people a wage that they can live on, having people working triple jobs 16-18 hours a day just to survive is wrong.

Imaginos1892 wrote:No government can increase the value of unskilled labor, only raise the cost.

Yes they can, that's why some countries have a social security net that allows people to further their education from unskilled to skilled labor without the need to hold down 2 or 3 minimum wage jobs at the same time. The upfront cost for the education is defrayed by the prospective increased tax revenue of skilled laborers.

It's also why there are public schools, because everyone starts out as unskilled labor.[/quote]


Imposing a minimum wage to enable people to earn a decent living is futile if the same government imposes regulations that either prohibit the construction of new housing or massively increase the cost of new housing.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Imposing a minimum wage to enable people to earn a decent living is futile if the same government imposes regulations that either prohibit the construction of new housing or massively increase the cost of new housing.

TFLY is, shockingly, correct here. I fully agree with him that the economic interests of landlords and property developers should take a back seat to the needs of the populace.

The E wrote:
TFLY is, shockingly, correct here. I fully agree with him that the economic interests of landlords and property developers should take a back seat to the needs of the populace.

Well, even a broken clock show correct time twice per day...

Joat42 wrote:Exactly, just looking at the dollar-amount would show a wage-increase of about 4% I think for the same period.

The original quote I am replying to.

The E wrote:Are american workers getting a commensurate wage increase to cover the increased cost of living that having to buy american-made (and thus more expensive) products will lead to?

I'm guessing not.

With a link to a dated thoroughly inaccurate Bloomberg article.

Instead, according to this report, people are working less, earning more, and still more than doubling inflation rate(though I have issues with the Consumer Price Index(CPI) especially how it is calculated for the US, which probably had an impact in my mind.) The article says quite the opposite.

Wage growth for the period was 3.6%, CPI-U was 1.5%, IIRC. Good eye close enough for government work. Which resulted in real earnings increasing 2.2%. The math doesn't work exactly.

Probably makes the point about the original article better thank you for making me look other places and overcoming my prejudices(on data selection.)

Granted this smaller snapshot only relates to the last year. I just went to link the Bloomberg article used. Plus I dislike small snapshots and difficulties in finding the correct FRED Graph data.

T2M

The E wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Imposing a minimum wage to enable people to earn a decent living is futile if the same government imposes regulations that either prohibit the construction of new housing or massively increase the cost of new housing.

TFLY is, shockingly, correct here. I fully agree with him that the economic interests of landlords and property developers should take a back seat to the needs of the populace.

You misunderstand. Government efforts to prevent construction of new housing is intended to harm property developers by preventing them from building housing and/or enabling confiscation of their land for parks and schools. I actually was compelled to have the State legislature intervene to move a county boundary to overcome government intransigence. My reward was having THPRD officials and community activists conspire in an attempt to implicate me for a series of arson fires commited by a parks district security guard.

Landlords who own existing housing do benefit from obstruction of development (until rent controls are imposed) while landlords who wish to invest in new housing are confronted with rising cost in an price inelastic housing market.

The ultimate victims of obstruction of housing development are the working poor who end up living under bridges and may be even eating out of garbage cans.

The E wrote:I actually believe that a person's ability to live safe from dangers such as homelessness, hunger, or disease should not be contingent on whether or not they are employed, just to be clear on this.

And your proposed means of accomplishing that end is to have the government control everybody's lives. If everybody is provided with a comfortable lifestyle that is not 'contingent on whether or not they are employed', why would any of them work? You'd wind up like the inner-city areas of Chicago, Detroit and Baltimore where four generations of welfare has enabled a 'lifestyle' of indolence, drug addiction and senseless violence.

The E wrote:Furthermore, "contributing to the economy" shouldn't be the primary measure by which we sort jobs into desirable and undesirable.

Not undesirable, but if low-value jobs are paid more than what they contribute to the economy, that money has to be taken from other people.

The E wrote:No, it really isn't. It's a political decision to institute one and to raise or lower it.

No political decision can change the amount of value an unskilled job contributes to the economy.

The E wrote:Why do I get the feeling that you don't know as much about economics as you think you do?

I will admit to not understanding your fantasy economics, in which doubling the cost of labor has no effect on the economy.

The E wrote:The rise of the left amongst young people and adults under 40 reflects this

It reflects the fact that most people know better than to believe that bullshit by the time they've lived 40 years in the real world.

The E wrote:My actual next proposal is to raise the marginal tax rate to a level where excessive concentrations of wealth are impossible.

So, who gets to decide what is 'excessive'? You? The leftist elitists running the government, all of which have 'excessive concentrations of wealth' by any standard? The people that haven't bothered to learn enough to get better than an unskilled job?

My proposal is to eliminate individual income taxes for the bottom 80% of all taxpayers. If you were paid less than $100,000.00 — you don’t pay any tax, no tax is withheld, you don’t even have to LOOK at a tax form. The top 20% already pay almost 90% of the income tax, so set 120 million people FREE! Cutting the IRS down to about a quarter of its current size would make up most of the difference.

Then have the top 20% pay a flat tax on all earnings over $100,000.00 with no deductions, no exemptions, no loopholes. Effectively, everybody gets one fixed non-transferrable $100,000.00 tax deduction and THAT’S ALL. The standard tax form consists of one page with about a dozen lines, and anybody who paid attention in high school math class can fill it out in ten minutes.

While we’re at it, limit the business deduction for employee pay to that same $100,000.00 for each employee. They can still pay their fourteen Special Executive Vice Presidents $10 million a year, but they can’t shift the cost off to the rest of us. And if they pay somebody $40,000.00, they can’t deduct the other $60,000.00 for somebody else’s pay.
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You seem to believe that everybody should be able to buy a house, raise a family, and settle into a comfortable retirement without ever taking the trouble to learn anything more valuable than flipping burgers and salting fries. That does not make economic sense. There is not enough value in unskilled labor to support a career, and a middle-class family.

Maybe you were born with the knowledge and skills to qualify for a $20.00 an hour job. Most people are not so fortunate. Most people start out with no skills and no experience, and are incapable of doing anything that is worth $20.00 an hour TO THE ECONOMY. Because it’s not about The Horrible Evils Of Capitalism, it is about cost and value. If some people are to be paid far more than the value they produce, that deficit must be made up by taking value from other people. I consider taking value from people by force to be wrong.

Minimum wage is a STARTING POINT, not an ultimate goal. It’s the bottom rung of the career ladder. Jacking it up too high places it out of reach of those who need it most. If companies are forced to pay $20.00 an hour, they’re not going to hire somebody they don’t believe will be able to produce $20.00 of value. The kid just out of high school, or the one with a degree in Renaissance Poetry, is going to be shit-out-of-luck. Unless they really NEED an expert in Renaissance Poetry.

Hiring an employee is a risk. The business invests money, and time, for an uncertain return. The higher that risk is made, the less willing ANY business will be to take a chance on an unskilled, inexperienced, untried 18 year old.

So, start with a low minimum wage. A business hires a kid just out of high school, who gets the chance to prove that he (or she) can show up on time, every day, sober, and do a simple job successfully. You’d be surprised how many fail to meet those minimal requirements, and you want the business to pay them $20.00 an hour just to find that out? After six months or so, when the kid has demonstrated reliability, responsibility and competence, those will be qualifications for a raise, or a better job. If not, why should that slacker be paid more for being a slacker?

Those just starting out are living alone, or still with their parents. They’re not buying houses and raising families. That comes later, when they've gained the skills and experience to get better jobs. At that point, super-charging inflation by raising the minimum wage makes life harder for them, unless their wages are also raised, contributing to still more inflation.

gcomeau wrote:executive and management wages have increased at rediculous levels

I do believe you mean 'ridiculous levels' as in 'subject to ridicule'

Grossly overpaid executroids are a separate issue that can’t be corrected by making unskilled labor cost more than it’s worth. Unless you’re trying to dilute their pay with inflation? Won't work, they’ll just pay themselves more.
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Communists killed more of their own 'comrades' during the 20th century than all of the wars combined.

What will happen to the economy?

It will get a massive boost, giving greater profits admitadly at a lower profit margin, or the greedy pigs that run the companies will increase the price over and above the extra cost in wages and drive the economy backwards.

We all know it would be the latter.

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