Nobunaga wrote:There is probably no law more popular and less questioned by liberals than minimum wage laws. Tell a liberal that you are opposed to minimum wage laws, and he or she will look at you as if you are a heartless ignoramus. I’ll bet you could not find a single liberal who has the least degree of doubt about the wisdom and effectiveness of minimum wage laws. Being in favor of minimum wage laws gives you the satisfaction of thinking you’ve done something good even if the actual results are harmful.
Liberalism is about feeling good about yourself. It is public policy based on self-indulgence. In liberal never-never land, intentions are all that matter. Intentions are the be-all-and-end-all of public policy choices. Results be damned.
There are people who would like to work for $4 an hour, and there are employers who would like to hire them for that wage. However, for them to enter into such a transaction is a criminal act. Some far-away clueless politician has arbitrarily decided that $4 an hour is not fair and not enough to live on.
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/1 ... mum-wage/1The clearest evidence for the damage done by the minimum wage laws is the unemployment rates for teenagers, particularly minority teenagers. Today the overall unemployment rate in the U.S. is 7.9 percent. For those 16-19, the rate is more than twice as high (20.8 percent) and for black teenagers the rate is more than four times as high (37.8 percent).
... But think about it - high unemployment rates help Democrats. The fact that blacks are harder hit is only a bonus. It represents political opportunity for them. Is the introduction of a higher minimum wage and the resulting increase in unemployment not intentional?
Actually, think about this
thegreekdog in another thread wrote:http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm
(1) In 2011, 73.9 million American workers (which eliminates all non-workers) age 16 and over were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.1 percent of all wage and salary workers. So that eliminates 40.9% of workers.
(2) Among those paid by the hour, 1.7 million earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 2.2 million had wages below the minimum. Together, these 3.8 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 5.2 percent of all hourly-paid workers.
(3) Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly-paid workers, they made up about half of those paid the Federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers paid by the hour, about 23 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 3 percent of workers age 25 and over.
There are a lot more relevant statistics in the website. But what the above and the other statistics tend to show is that raising the minimum wage, on its own, will affect a very small portion of the population, a lot of whom cannot vote and a lot of whom are not taking care of themselves, much less a family. So, why do we care so much about minimum wage again?
I don't think Democrats care about minimum wage for any reason other than that their main voting constituency and their main donors have wages tied to minimum wage. Ultimately, the minimum wage is not enough for someone to live on if that person only works a 40 hour week. When I made close to minimum wage ($9.25 an hour baby), I worked about 60 hours a week and still had trouble buying enough beer. But that's irrelevant because no one who takes care of themselves works a minimum wage job for 40 hours a week. If those people existed in any great number, don't you think the Democrats would be trotting those poor bastards out?
Now, if minimum wage was raised to $21 an hour, maybe we'd have something to talk about.
Here, let's even look at this website's explanation:
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/08/156458470 ... lp-or-harmNow let's parse out some quote:
According to the Economic Policy Institute, if Harkin has his way and the minimum wage was actually raised to $9.88 an hour, it would increase wages for 30 million Americans — 10 percent of the country.
Harkin estimates that his minimum wage increase would mean about $25 billion more for GDP, 100,000 more jobs and 28 million Americans would get a raise.
Margaret Lewis
She makes minimum wage in Illinois ($8.25 an hour). She makes $18,000 a year. That means she works 2,181 hours or about 42 hours a week. Do you feel sorry for her? If so, why? What if you make $10 an hour and work 60 hours a week? Could she get another job? Could she get a different job making more money? Does she receive any other compensation apart from her work? Does she get money from the federal or state governments (the answer should be yes to both)?
Further, is Mr. Harkin or the Economic Policy Institute just talking about people like Margaret Lewis or they talking about others? Based on the federal government's own data, they must be talking about people other than just those that make minimum wage.
From the Economic Policy Institute:
Economic Policy Insitute wrote:Increasing the federal minimum wage to $9.80 by July 1, 2014, would raise the wages of about 28 million workers, who would receive nearly $40 billion in additional wages over the phase-in period.2
According to the federal government only 1.7 million people earn minimum wage. What gives? Oh yeah...
Economic Policy Institute in a buried footnote wrote:3. These data, and the data presented throughout this issue brief, include directly affected workers (those who would see their wages rise because the new minimum wage would exceed their current hourly pay) and indirectly affected workers (those who would receive a raise as employer pay scales are adjusted upward to reflect the higher minimum wage).
Those "indirectly affected workers" are who the Democrats are going after.
So, if people want to have a discussion about raising wages for people making over minimum wage, that's fine. Let's have that discussion. Let's not have this fake discussion about the horrible minimum wage laws. I mean for f*ck's sale, NPR couldn't even find some poor bastard making FEDERAL minimum wage; they had to find someone working 42 hours a week making $8.25 an hour (a dollar over the federal minimum wage).
EDIT - By the way, I find this sort of journalism by NPR to be disgusting. It is completely misleading if one does not understand the underlying data. NPR should be ashamed honestly.