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 cincydooley wrote:
Because they're entry level.

Honestly, I just want to hear someone tell me what this mythical "living wage" should include. How many people should it support. Etc.

Varies from state to state, but there is this thing called the "self-sustainability standard", which was hinted at in an article I posted earlier in the thread. For us in God's taint (i.e. Ohio) we have a state specific self-sustainability standard set every year. The Self-Sufficiency Standard for Ohio 2013 measures how much income a family of a certain composition in a given place must earn to meet their basic needs. Employers, advocates, and legislators can use it to evaluate wages, provide career counseling, and create programs that lead to economic self-sufficiency for working families. According to the pdf I linked, the self-sufficiency standard is a measure of income adequacy that is based on the costs of the basic needs for working families: housing, child care, food, health care, transportation, and miscellaneous items, as well as, the cost of taxes and the impact of tax credits. So I'm going to look at the information presented on page 8 since that has both Cuyahoga and Hamilton counties (our respective home counties).
The basic wages need for an adult in Cuyahoga to meet housing, food, health care, transportation, and miscellaneous items (doesn't say what this is), and taxes is $9.60 an hour, and that doubles as soon as you add in a preschool aged child to $18.58 (almost double). Compare that to Hamilton county, home of Cincinnati is $8.89 an hour for a single adult.

So in Cuyahoga you need almost 10 dollars an hour to be able to afford housing, food, health care, and transportation at least, whereas Hamilton needs almost 9 dollars an hour. So if we were to raise Ohio's minimum wage to 9 dollars an hour, a single adult in Hamilton would be sitting kinda pretty in regards that his minimum wage job could support his ability to live and support himself, wheres a single adult in Cuyahoga would have some issue living.

To be fair, I suggested something earlier in this thread when I said,

Alfndrate wrote:And by support themselves, I mean a decent (i.e. not hellhole) apartment (1 bed, 1 bath, kitchen/dining area), money for food and transportation (this doesn't mean car loan, this means you have money to support a level of transportation whether it's a bike, bus pass, subway, or gas if you have a car paid off already). Entertainment can be really cheap in today's world, and if you had some extra money for entertainment the fine, but you shouldn't be like, "oh god I have to work 80 hours just to have a roof over my head and food."

According to google that's £6.19, which is what minimum wage is in the UK. And that really is feth all.

 cincydooley wrote:
Because they're entry level.

Honestly, I just want to hear someone tell me what this mythical "living wage" should include. How many people should it support. Etc.

It should include 1 new IPAD a quarter, healthcare, steak, netflix, and tickets to broadway baby!

xruslanx wrote:
According to google that's £6.19, which is what minimum wage is in the UK. And that really is feth all.

 Grundz wrote:

xruslanx wrote:
According to google that's £6.19, which is what minimum wage is in the UK. And that really is feth all.

.. why is your chart different than mine?
maybe googles search AI decided you wanted the loller to apear stronger?

You fudged your numbers. Check again.

Its a penny people. Clearly there is some rounding going on. You aren't going to get a perfect comparison.

 cincydooley wrote:
Because they're entry level.

Yeah, so. Is there a defintional quality or fundamental law of the universe that means an anetry level job needs to be terrible?

Look, This isn't about taking away from people with special skills and working hard. I have no idea why that becomes the frame in a minimum wage discussion. People making minimum wage are not inherently lazy and stupid, but that seems to be the assumption when this issue comes up.

The people making minimum wage are working. This isn't welfare or living on the dole for cripe's sake.

Nice response alf, but I think I posed my question incorrectly.

My big question is how many people should a living wage serve to provide for? 1 adult and 1 kid? 2 kids? All of Shawn Kemps 13 kids? Where's the line?

xruslanx wrote:
You fudged your numbers. Check again.

you posted 6.19, thats what I put in
im looking at the info below not the header

I went to google just a second ago and got the same thing >.>

 Easy E wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Because they're entry level.

Yeah, so. Is there a defintional quality or fundamental law of the universe that means an anetry level job needs to be terrible?

Look, This isn't about taking away from people with special skills and working hard. I have no idea why that becomes the frame in a minimum wage discussion. People making minimum wage are not inherently lazy and stupid, but that seems to be the assumption when this issue comes up.

The people making minimum wage are working. This isn't welfare or living on the dole for cripe's sake.

Lots of entry level jobs are just fine. McDonalds jobs suck.

Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_ywk9-g5eQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY0t4Q-TyPI

 Frazzled wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Because they're entry level.

Yeah, so. Is there a defintional quality or fundamental law of the universe that means an anetry level job needs to be terrible?

Look, This isn't about taking away from people with special skills and working hard. I have no idea why that becomes the frame in a minimum wage discussion. People making minimum wage are not inherently lazy and stupid, but that seems to be the assumption when this issue comes up.

The people making minimum wage are working. This isn't welfare or living on the dole for cripe's sake.

Lots of entry level jobs are just fine. McDonalds jobs suck.

Sometimes, I think I make it too easy for you to troll me.

not trying to troll you. Thats a fair question you asked.

Of my entry jobs I'd say one in three sucked (both pre college and post college). one of three pre college sucked. One of three post undergrad sucked. Now by sucked all of them but one were probably decent compared to many many other jobs out there.

Fun tidbit: first job as a pseudo carnie at a crappy amusement park:
1. Its where I started making up horribly aggressive/black humor ditties to go along with popular Christmas carols playing on a loop over and over and over and over. I still do that and occasionally get a smack in the gut from wife/daughter when I hum one out loud to a new song of theirs.
2. You haven't lived until you you have this sense that something is amiss, and go over and see a toddler has accidently opened and engine compartment and is sitting IN THE GEARS of a machine...

Spartak wrote:
Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_ywk9-g5eQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY0t4Q-TyPI

Paul Krugman, also a Noble Prize winning economist...

So what should you know? First, as John Schmitt (pdf) documents at length, there just isn’t any evidence that raising the minimum wage near current levels would reduce employment. And this is a really solid result, because there have been a *lot* of studies. We can argue about exactly why the simple Econ 101 story doesn’t seem to work, but it clearly doesn’t — which means that the supposed cost in terms of employment from seeking to raise low-wage workers’ earnings is a myth.

Second — and this is news to me — the usual notion that minimum wages and the Earned Income Tax Credit are competing ways to help low-wage workers is wrong. On the contrary, raising the minimum wage is a way to make the EITC work better, ensuring that its benefits go to workers rather than getting shared with employers. This actually is Econ 101, but done right: given a second-best world in which you use imperfect tools to help deserving workers, two tools together can produce a better outcome than either one on its own.

So a minimum wage increase isn’t some kind of counsel-of-despair way to help workers a bit in a dysfunctional political scene (although there’s that too); it’s actually good policy.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/minimum-wage-economics/?_r=0

I guess we have a "Mexican" Economist Stand-off!

 cincydooley wrote:
Nice response alf, but I think I posed my question incorrectly.

My big question is how many people should a living wage serve to provide for? 1 adult and 1 kid? 2 kids? All of Shawn Kemps 13 kids? Where's the line?

The self-sustainability goes into that, it your family structure is x, then you need to make y to support x. The example I gave is based on a 1 person scenario. To support 1 adult and a child in Cuyahoga, y jumps to 18.58 an hour, when you have 2 adults and 2 children you need ~13.58 an hour from both adults to support that family structure. So the question you're asking, "how many people should a living wage serve to provide for" can't be pinned to a single number, thus why this self-sustainability standard exists. If you want to earn a living wage on a McJob then it should be equal to the self-sustainability standard equal to 1 adult. If you want to earn more, then you need to work harder to get that better job.

 ph34r wrote:
Yeah, feth those kids for having drastically underfunded education systems. Feth those kids for not having funded artistic programs that are statistically shown to keep kids in school and help with overall cognitive development that aids them in career making disciplines. Feth those kids for being packed into classrooms of 30+ because the ones making the decisions consistently decide that education can take the cuts first.

Feth those kids for being bombarded by the commercial media, being constantly told to buy their way to some arbitrary ideal. Feth those kids for shuffling along the path of least resistance as they drop out and eventually end up receiving government benefits because the USA's education an embarrassment to first world countries.

Feth the kids for making our banks fail and redistributing billions of dollars from the taxpayers pockets to those of banking industry CEOs getting big bonuses, and to their companies that have just posted record high profits in Q2 2013.

And feth Europe for not making all these dim-wited policy decisions and succeeding anyway!

I am not saying our education systems, both in canada, the states, and yes, even europe are perfect,

but the same system you describe above has some of the kids graduating and expecting more then minimum wage(or a higher minimum) from the easiest (not most pleasant mind you) jobs there are.

and the same system has some kids bettering their positions and getting ahead, so its not the "systems" fault, although it does need some more $ and reform.

Europe, in a lot of ways, but especially economically, is much worse off the the USA+canada, the whole EU experiment has not succeeded, and is likly going to fail catastrophically within the next decade if not sooner, so I wouldnt tout that as a "sucess"

we have a working system, if you are on the bottom rung, and cannot (for whatever reason) MOVE YOURSELF up the rungs, then you dont move up the rungs, simple as that.

why should those who cannot do for themselves, have it done for them by others?

why should the lowest job, be able to support a family of four?

which is what most "living" wages us as a starting point, they will point out how min wage is below the poverty rate, and compare it to the poverty rate as the SOLE income supporting a family of four generally. which indicates that the problem is not that min wage is so low, but that people are trying to support a family off of min wage.

"giving" someone more $ for minimum wage is not a solution, they need a better job, and they will never get that without better skills. The real debate should be on the availabilty of skills training, and what the publc education is giving to these people.

for instance, did that MC d's worker REALLY need to learn trigonometry, and basic chemistry/bio/ect?

or would they have been better served with a mechanics class, that would have gotten them into a trade and a better job straight out of high school, instead of them being forced into matriculation that is designed only for people who will be going into post secondary?

there needs to be REAL employable skills taught in high school again, as a choice of course, so that people on the bottom rung at least have access to trade school level jobs instead of minimum wage ones when they graduate.

 Easy E wrote:

Spartak wrote:
Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_ywk9-g5eQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY0t4Q-TyPI

Paul Krugman, also a Noble Prize winning economist...

So what should you know? First, as John Schmitt (pdf) documents at length, there just isn’t any evidence that raising the minimum wage near current levels would reduce employment. And this is a really solid result, because there have been a *lot* of studies. We can argue about exactly why the simple Econ 101 story doesn’t seem to work, but it clearly doesn’t — which means that the supposed cost in terms of employment from seeking to raise low-wage workers’ earnings is a myth.

Second — and this is news to me — the usual notion that minimum wages and the Earned Income Tax Credit are competing ways to help low-wage workers is wrong. On the contrary, raising the minimum wage is a way to make the EITC work better, ensuring that its benefits go to workers rather than getting shared with employers. This actually is Econ 101, but done right: given a second-best world in which you use imperfect tools to help deserving workers, two tools together can produce a better outcome than either one on its own.

So a minimum wage increase isn’t some kind of counsel-of-despair way to help workers a bit in a dysfunctional political scene (although there’s that too); it’s actually good policy.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/minimum-wage-economics/?_r=0

I guess we have a "Mexican" Economist Stand-off!

Krugman won his prize in 2008, at this point it's an achievement award for being a progressive. Friedman won his in 1976, you know, when it was awarded for actually doing things. To address your quote, its flat out wrong (IMO typical of liberal economists) Not only is there clear historical evidence of Min wage reducing employment, it’s a extremely common sense logical position to take.

Didn't Obama win his in 2008 too, before he was sworn in...

 Frazzled wrote:
Didn't Obama win his in 2008 too, before he was sworn in...

Yeah, he won his for being such a super guy!

Spartak wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

Spartak wrote:
Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_ywk9-g5eQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY0t4Q-TyPI

Paul Krugman, also a Noble Prize winning economist...

So what should you know? First, as John Schmitt (pdf) documents at length, there just isn’t any evidence that raising the minimum wage near current levels would reduce employment. And this is a really solid result, because there have been a *lot* of studies. We can argue about exactly why the simple Econ 101 story doesn’t seem to work, but it clearly doesn’t — which means that the supposed cost in terms of employment from seeking to raise low-wage workers’ earnings is a myth.

Second — and this is news to me — the usual notion that minimum wages and the Earned Income Tax Credit are competing ways to help low-wage workers is wrong. On the contrary, raising the minimum wage is a way to make the EITC work better, ensuring that its benefits go to workers rather than getting shared with employers. This actually is Econ 101, but done right: given a second-best world in which you use imperfect tools to help deserving workers, two tools together can produce a better outcome than either one on its own.

So a minimum wage increase isn’t some kind of counsel-of-despair way to help workers a bit in a dysfunctional political scene (although there’s that too); it’s actually good policy.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/minimum-wage-economics/?_r=0

I guess we have a "Mexican" Economist Stand-off!

Krugman won his prize in 2008, at this point it's an achievement award for being a progressive. Friedman won his in 1976, you know, when it was awarded for actually doing things. To address your quote, its flat out wrong (IMO typical of liberal economists) Not only is there clear historical evidence of Min wage reducing employment, it’s a extremely common sense logical position to take.

That is weak. Next time, if you got nothing don't bother joining in.

Check the paper that Krugman cites here by John Schmidtt: http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02.pdf

Here's the conclusion for you:

Conclusion
Economists have conducted hundreds of studies of the employment impact of the minimum wage. Summarizing those studies is a daunting task, but two recent meta-studies analyzing the research conducted since the early 1990s concludes that the minimum wage has little or no discernible effect on the employment prospects of low-wage workers.

The most likely reason for this outcome is that the cost shock of the minimum wage is small relative to most firms' overall costs and only modest relative to the wages paid to low-wage workers. In the traditional discussion of the minimum wage, economists have focused on how these costs affect employment outcomes, but employers have many other channels of adjustment. Employers can reduce hours, non-wage benefits, or training. Employers can also shift the composition toward higher skilled workers, cut pay to more highly paid workers, take action to increase worker productivity (from reorganizing production to increasing training), increase prices to consumers, or simply accept a smaller profit margin. Workers may also respond to the higher wage by working harder on the job.

But, probably the most important channel of adjustment is through reductions in labor turnover, which yield significant cost savings to employers.

Let me just repeat this part: The most important channel of adjustment is through reductions in labor turnover, which yield significant cost savings to employers. (Emphasis Added)

I guess your common sense approach does not equal reality.

 Easy E wrote:

Let me just repeat this part: The most important channel of adjustment is through reductions in labor turnover, which yield significant cost savings to employers. (Emphasis Added)

I guess your common sense approach does not equal reality.

Paying an army of HR people to constantly hire and fire minimum wage workers is a small price to pay for an army of drones.

 Easy E wrote:

Spartak wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

Spartak wrote:
Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_ywk9-g5eQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY0t4Q-TyPI

Paul Krugman, also a Noble Prize winning economist...

So what should you know? First, as John Schmitt (pdf) documents at length, there just isn’t any evidence that raising the minimum wage near current levels would reduce employment. And this is a really solid result, because there have been a *lot* of studies. We can argue about exactly why the simple Econ 101 story doesn’t seem to work, but it clearly doesn’t — which means that the supposed cost in terms of employment from seeking to raise low-wage workers’ earnings is a myth.

Second — and this is news to me — the usual notion that minimum wages and the Earned Income Tax Credit are competing ways to help low-wage workers is wrong. On the contrary, raising the minimum wage is a way to make the EITC work better, ensuring that its benefits go to workers rather than getting shared with employers. This actually is Econ 101, but done right: given a second-best world in which you use imperfect tools to help deserving workers, two tools together can produce a better outcome than either one on its own.

So a minimum wage increase isn’t some kind of counsel-of-despair way to help workers a bit in a dysfunctional political scene (although there’s that too); it’s actually good policy.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/minimum-wage-economics/?_r=0

I guess we have a "Mexican" Economist Stand-off!

Krugman won his prize in 2008, at this point it's an achievement award for being a progressive. Friedman won his in 1976, you know, when it was awarded for actually doing things. To address your quote, its flat out wrong (IMO typical of liberal economists) Not only is there clear historical evidence of Min wage reducing employment, it’s a extremely common sense logical position to take.

That is weak. Next time, if you got nothing don't bother joining in.

Check the paper that Krugman cites here by John Schmidtt: http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02.pdf

Here's the conclusion for you:

Conclusion
Economists have conducted hundreds of studies of the employment impact of the minimum wage. Summarizing those studies is a daunting task, but two recent meta-studies analyzing the research conducted since the early 1990s concludes that the minimum wage has little or no discernible effect on the employment prospects of low-wage workers.

The most likely reason for this outcome is that the cost shock of the minimum wage is small relative to most firms' overall costs and only modest relative to the wages paid to low-wage workers. In the traditional discussion of the minimum wage, economists have focused on how these costs affect employment outcomes, but employers have many other channels of adjustment. Employers can reduce hours, non-wage benefits, or training. Employers can also shift the composition toward higher skilled workers, cut pay to more highly paid workers, take action to increase worker productivity (from reorganizing production to increasing training), increase prices to consumers, or simply accept a smaller profit margin. Workers may also respond to the higher wage by working harder on the job.

But, probably the most important channel of adjustment is through reductions in labor turnover, which yield significant cost savings to employers.

Let me just repeat this part: The most important channel of adjustment is through reductions in labor turnover, which yield significant cost savings to employers. (Emphasis Added)

I guess your common sense approach does not equal reality.

"Next time, if you got nothing don't bother joining in" Being a jerk isnt going to make you seem any smarter.

"cost shock of the minimum wage is small relative to most firms' overall costs and only modest relative to the wages paid to low-wage workers"
Unless the majority of your firms workforce is minimum wage workers, the bulk of an organizations overhead is wages. thats why companies do that thing called a layoff.

"employers have many other channels of adjustment. Employers can reduce hours, non-wage benefits, or training. Employers can also shift the composition toward higher skilled workers, cut pay to more highly paid workers, take action to increase worker productivity (from reorganizing production to increasing training), increase prices to consumers, or simply accept a smaller profit margin."

Oh, thanks for makeing my point for me: Reduced hours, benefits, training Yay! Increase prices to consumers SWEET! Did you not watch the videos of Mr Friedman explaining these very things? lol

"That is weak. Next time, if you got nothing don't bother joining in. " hmmm Ironic...

Spartak wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Did you not watch the videos of Mr Friedman explaining these very things? lol

I did not watch him explain those things because youtube is work blocked and I read much faster than someone can say these things in a video. Text would have helped in this case, but that's just me.

 Frazzled wrote:
not trying to troll you. Thats a fair question you asked.

Of my entry jobs I'd say one in three sucked (both pre college and post college). one of three pre college sucked. One of three post undergrad sucked. Now by sucked all of them but one were probably decent compared to many many other jobs out there.

Fun tidbit: first job as a pseudo carnie at a crappy amusement park:
1. Its where I started making up horribly aggressive/black humor ditties to go along with popular Christmas carols playing on a loop over and over and over and over. I still do that and occasionally get a smack in the gut from wife/daughter when I hum one out loud to a new song of theirs.
2. You haven't lived until you you have this sense that something is amiss, and go over and see a toddler has accidently opened and engine compartment and is sitting IN THE GEARS of a machine...

Of the three I have had two suck. Dairy queen smelled like bleach all day and the dishes should have been nuked from orbit.
This one sucks because for two hours in the morning im hauling carts up a hill when it is just getting hot. I leave work ready for school smelling like a pig. And I make less then the old ladies who sit at the register all day.

What kind of person fights for increases to minimum wage?
Minimum wage jobs are the most unproductive work on the planet, they are temporary, they are not careers. Do these people have no pride? It is like entrenching yourself at the lowest possible position, resigning yourself to be a bottom scraper for the rest of your life. "I find myself in a miserable dead end job that a child could do, looks like a good place to dig in."

The kind of person who realizes that companies often also have minimum wage jobs for people who do have skill sets? Like Janitors or cleaners?
Also, The economist guy is basically adovating turning us into china. Beecause that is what companies will do, they will charge the same for a big mac, but pay workers pennies.

And it all comes back to this "living wage" and how many people it should be intended to support.

1 person. It should support one person full time.