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Post 20 Jan 2018, 2:57 pm

rickyp wrote:Fate
It takes money out of small business, skims off the top (taxes), and returns it to small business. Business costs go up; costs go up; the minimum wage increase has minimal real effect on net spending power


Please document some evidence for this assumption.
I think you will be unable to find any documented academic support.


No, because your position is idiotic.

You're a business owner. Your labor costs go up. What do you do? Eat it or raise prices--or lower labor costs by automating?

Duh.

Capitalism built this country. Setting unrealistic minimum wages will not help.

$15 for some teen to sling french fries? Not going to happen.

$15 for someone to work the Slurpee machine at the theater? Not going to happen.

$15 for someone to run the register at a department store already getting hammered by e-business? Not going to happen.
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Post 20 Jan 2018, 5:48 pm

Thought this survey of economists regarding Trump's tax plan from top universities was interesting.

http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/tax-reform-2
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Post 21 Jan 2018, 10:58 am

freeman3 wrote:Thought this survey of economists regarding Trump's tax plan from top universities was interesting.

http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/tax-reform-2


good stuff ... thanks
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Post 21 Jan 2018, 11:33 am

Fate
No, because your position is idiotic


Then it should be easy to prove with actual evidence.. But you have none. Either because you are too lazy to test your assumptions, or because you've looked and found not but shiboleths.

Here's what evidence looks like: (Specifically American experience because I know you think the US is so unique.)

In 1992 New Jersey raised its minimum wage from 4.25 an hour to 5.05 an hour, while neighboring Pennsylvania kept its minimum wage at 4.25. Economists David Card and Allan Krueger followed employment at 410 fast food restaurants near the border and found that employment rose slightly in New Jersey after the rise in minimum wage while employment actually fell in Pennsylvania over the same period, even though minimum wages remained constant.

http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf

So again what evidence do you have that supports your claims?

Fate
Capitalism built this country. Setting unrealistic minimum wages will not help

Capitalism also built most of the western world. Most have more livable minimum wages .

But What is an unrealistic minimum wage? What share of a business's income should be taken up with labor costs? (Fast food is about a quarter to a third, including managers salaries)
Yes, automation is a way of avoiding labor costs, but if a business could reliably replace people with automation.... the difference in a livable minimum wage and an exploitative labor rate won't be a trigger point .
A consumer market economy, which the US depends upon for 85% of GDP, is enhanced when consumers have more money to spend.
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Post 21 Jan 2018, 3:39 pm

rickyp wrote:Fate
No, because your position is idiotic


Then it should be easy to prove with actual evidence.. But you have none. Either because you are too lazy to test your assumptions, or because you've looked and found not but shiboleths.

Here's what evidence looks like: (Specifically American experience because I know you think the US is so unique.)

In 1992 New Jersey raised its minimum wage from 4.25 an hour to 5.05 an hour, while neighboring Pennsylvania kept its minimum wage at 4.25. Economists David Card and Allan Krueger followed employment at 410 fast food restaurants near the border and found that employment rose slightly in New Jersey after the rise in minimum wage while employment actually fell in Pennsylvania over the same period, even though minimum wages remained constant.

http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf

So again what evidence do you have that supports your claims?

Fate
Capitalism built this country. Setting unrealistic minimum wages will not help

Capitalism also built most of the western world. Most have more livable minimum wages .

But What is an unrealistic minimum wage? What share of a business's income should be taken up with labor costs? (Fast food is about a quarter to a third, including managers salaries)
Yes, automation is a way of avoiding labor costs, but if a business could reliably replace people with automation.... the difference in a livable minimum wage and an exploitative labor rate won't be a trigger point .
A consumer market economy, which the US depends upon for 85% of GDP, is enhanced when consumers have more money to spend.


Believe what you want to believe, but I don’t have to live like a refugee.

If you think the government can force business to eat the labor costs, you’re not thinking. When those costs are reflected in higher costs, the “raise” is dissipated or eliminated altogether. There is no such thing as a “free lunch” or a “free pay raise.”

I’m not going to waste one second of time trying to convince a socialist that socialist solutions don’t work.
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Post 22 Jan 2018, 7:54 pm

This article discusses in part the importance of growth in worker productivity as the key to increasing growth:

"Productivity increased at an average annual rate of 1.2 percent from 2007 to 2016, below its long-term rate of 2.1 percent from 1947 to 2016, indicating the economy’s potential growth rate has declined.

“To reattain 3 percent real GDP growth with the demographics the U.S. is facing, productivity growth will have to exceed its long-run average growth rate of 2.1 percent, and we are far short of attaining such a pace,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN1AP1FV
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Post 23 Jan 2018, 5:50 am

freeman3 wrote:This article discusses in part the importance of growth in worker productivity as the key to increasing growth:

"Productivity increased at an average annual rate of 1.2 percent from 2007 to 2016, below its long-term rate of 2.1 percent from 1947 to 2016, indicating the economy’s potential growth rate has declined.

“To reattain 3 percent real GDP growth with the demographics the U.S. is facing, productivity growth will have to exceed its long-run average growth rate of 2.1 percent, and we are far short of attaining such a pace,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN1AP1FV


So, let's import cheap labor!

I kid.

Let's have babies!
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Post 23 Jan 2018, 6:00 am

Let's see...we're in the midst of having a massive number of Baby Boomers retire. So let's start getting obsessed about young illegals coming into the country...

I mean...the one thing you can be fairly confident of is that an illegal alien has to work. And we're going to get to need a whole lot of workers given the retirement of the Baby Boomer Generation.

Brilliant!

We're going to need to tear down walls...not build them.
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Post 23 Jan 2018, 6:30 am

freeman3 wrote:Let's see...we're in the midst of having a massive number of Baby Boomers retire. So let's start getting obsessed about young illegals coming into the country...

I mean...the one thing you can be fairly confident of is that an illegal alien has to work. And we're going to get to need a whole lot of workers given the retirement of the Baby Boomer Generation.

Brilliant!

We're going to need to tear down walls...not build them.


Yes, let’s not even have a border!

Brilliant!

Illegal immigration is the solution to nothing.
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Post 23 Jan 2018, 7:05 am

And by the way with regard to the minimum wage...

(1) figuring out the effect of raising the minimum wage is difficult because the raise in business costs is largely off-set by increased demand for products and minimum wage workers are not likely to save much. And you have studies going both ways on this. We've been over this issue a number of times.

(2) It strikes that the starting point of where the minimum wage is important with regard to what effect it will have. In other words, if the minimum wage is "low" to where it should be given some objective standard (e.g., median wage rate), then you would probably expect that businesses have a better chance of absorbing the costs and/or passing in the costs on to consumers without too much of a problem. . The minimum wage probably needs to be around $9.00 just to be where it was in the 60s and 70s. That probably means you can safely raise it to $9 without a significant economic effect (I would rather see if go significant higher than that but getting it above historical lows would be nice).

(3) The situation we're having is that labor costs relative to capital is going down relative to GDP, not just in the US, but in OECD countries, generally. Whether that is due to globalization, decline in unions, the decline in communism meaning no competing ideology, more capital intensive industries--or, more likely, some combination of all of the above--this is has enormous ramifications. Ultimately, it means that those who have money to invest and those who manage that and large corporations will reap the wards of the reduction in labor's share of GDP. That's going to make a lot of people (workers) very unhappy unless those you have countervailing policies. (Hint: more trickle-down economics is not the answer.). You can't keep having more and more of societal wealth going to people who are not working while those that are working are under increasing strain. That is not good for social stability (nor is it fair) Clearly, workers do not have adequate bargaining power or else they would force employers to cut into their historically large profits, no? And unions are moribund. So the minimum wage is one tool Government can use. Another is enforcing anti-trust laws. And tax policies. Shouldn't we at least be at least thinking about this issue and what should be done about it?

https://www.oecd.org/g20/topics/employm ... nomies.pdf
https://www.oecd.org/g20/topics/employm ... nomies.pdf
http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/ch ... 1960-2011/
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Post 23 Jan 2018, 11:03 am

Freeman:
(2) It strikes that the starting point of where the minimum wage is important with regard to what effect it will have. In other words, if the minimum wage is "low" to where it should be given some objective standard (e.g., median wage rate), then you would probably expect that businesses have a better chance of absorbing the costs and/or passing in the costs on to consumers without too much of a problem. . The minimum wage probably needs to be around $9.00 just to be where it was in the 60s and 70s. That probably means you can safely raise it to $9 without a significant economic effect (I would rather see if go significant higher than that but getting it above historical lows would be nice).

Isn't this an argument to let the States decide the minimum wage, which they do now. In Mass. we are at $1l; other states and localities are even higher. Perhaps Mississippi should be at $7.65 given the local median wage rate. (Although frankly, $9 seems fine to me ... it's when proposals go above $10 that I foresee problems in some areas.)

But the real question is why does the federal government have to manage this? States are closer to their local economies and are democracies. Surely they should have some authority ...
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Post 23 Jan 2018, 11:05 am

Freeman:
And unions are moribund.


Not in the public sector where they are slowly winning a war of attrition against parents (as it relates to the schools).
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Post 23 Jan 2018, 11:44 am

Doctor Fate wrote:Nope, you increase the pie by creating more opportunity--more jobs, more companies, more innovations. You take the boot of government regulation off the neck of business.

We're watching it happen.


How does growth happen? There are two main ways: grow your labor force, and/or get more from your labor force. The first one is related to numbers, the second one is related to productivity. Reduce regulation, usually you increase productivity. More innovation usually means innovations that increase productivity. The last plan I've seen is a plan that would reduce legal immigration from about 1m a year to about 400,000 a year by ending "chain migration," which is now a majority of immigrants. That's 600,000 consumers and maybe 400,000 workers, every year, that the economy will be missing. Add that to a retiring baby boom, and personally, I get very concerned about longer-term growth.

Yes, you're right that innovation and opportunity can spur productivity, but that will only last so long, the nation is in a numbers game. We've been keeping our head above water economically because of international migration, not in spite of it. If you want to shift to skills based, fine, but I'm not sure the Club for Growth is thinking this one through.
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Post 23 Jan 2018, 2:00 pm

geojanes wrote: but I'm not sure the Club for Growth is thinking this one through.


Actually, from their website, the Club for Growth "does not take positions on social issues or on the immigration/borders debate." Perhaps they should . . .
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Post 23 Jan 2018, 2:44 pm

geojanes wrote:
Doctor Fate wrote:Nope, you increase the pie by creating more opportunity--more jobs, more companies, more innovations. You take the boot of government regulation off the neck of business.

We're watching it happen.


How does growth happen? There are two main ways: grow your labor force, and/or get more from your labor force. The first one is related to numbers, the second one is related to productivity. Reduce regulation, usually you increase productivity. More innovation usually means innovations that increase productivity. The last plan I've seen is a plan that would reduce legal immigration from about 1m a year to about 400,000 a year by ending "chain migration," which is now a majority of immigrants. That's 600,000 consumers and maybe 400,000 workers, every year, that the economy will be missing. Add that to a retiring baby boom, and personally, I get very concerned about longer-term growth.

Yes, you're right that innovation and opportunity can spur productivity, but that will only last so long, the nation is in a numbers game. We've been keeping our head above water economically because of international migration, not in spite of it. If you want to shift to skills based, fine, but I'm not sure the Club for Growth is thinking this one through.


Here's the thing: bringing in low-skill, low-wage workers puts downward pressure on wages. I think we have a large, untapped reserve of idiots sitting on couches in basements across the country, playing XBox.

I'm not for reducing legal migration. I don't think, ultimately, that will happen.

However, we do need to c-clamp illegal immigration. Once that is done, well, what a relief!

I just don't think it will happen. Corporate interests don't like the idea. One whole party would lose their favorite issue if it happened. (This is part of the burgeoning campaigns for Harris, Warren, Sanders, etc.)