And so it begins, the "Blank only accepts his own sources of information as facts" conundrum. Ill bite.

Quote Originally Posted by .blank cd View Post

So the question becomes Should minimum wage be raised?

We can look at the history of minimum wage in the US, adjusted m for inflation, and see that productivity and inflation have outpaced minimum wage.
Has inflation outpaced ALL wages? It affects everyone, not just the low wage earner. Im not sure you understand how inflation works. You cant put the low wage earners in a bubble and talk about how inflation hasnt kept pace with them, and ignore every other wage earner and pretend they are in a vacuum and dont suffer the same effect.

If inflation raised 20% tomorrow, it raises for everyone, but it affects the poor (or those with the fewest dollars) the MOST.

See: Price/wage spiral

So, the fact that minimum wage hasnt kept up with Inflation, is moot because all wages are affected by this. If you raised everyones wages to $12 or $40 hour tomorrow, everything would slide up, and the net effect would be ZILCH. I dont know how many times I have to say this for you to understand it but low wage workers make low wages, CRAZY I KNOW. You dont help them by paying them more and inflating their wages, you move them into a better job. You also ignore the possibility that prices will change.

I think its laughable that people want to argue wages not keeping up with inflation, then want to implement inflation to solve the problem. LOL Sure it bothers the low wage earners the most as previously stated, but you dont help them by raising the price floor for no reason but to "make them have a better life" unless you want to suffer the consequences.

you dont eradicate poverty with inflation
The neoclassical model of economics says that raising the price floor (minimum wages) above the equilibrium wage (what typical market forces dictate wages should be and have leveled off at) should create unemployment, but this model is typically based on simple supply and demand curves, and often overlooks other complicating factors, for example, the monopsony that exists in the labor market, or that the buyers (employers) have more market power than the sellers (employees).
*Uses big words stolen from some other web site*



A number of economists have accepted the theory (read: explanation, not "guess") that increases in minimum wage have little to no negative effect on employment. Kruger and Card did some extensive research on the subject

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...=rep1&type=pdf
Theories are educated guesses. Otherwise they would be called facts. I think you mean Kreuger not Kruger

Furthermore, these economists have adopted the theory that minimum wages have an overall positive effect on poverty. Here's a study by Addison and Blackburn describing the "poverty-reducing" effect of minimum wages.

http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/104...5/1/dp4298.pdf
well, unless you look at poverty charts like this that show it hasnt changed



Am I for raising the minimum wage? Yes and no. I like the case David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute makes for raising it to $10 an hour, in incremental increases (like what's been done almost every time minimum wage has been increased.
Its a very short sighted way of helping people. The initial impact will help, but long term, we will wind up where we are now, arguing for more wage increases to help the poor which show it doesnt work.

Look you can raise minimum wage all you want, just dont complain when Mcdonalds lays people off to keep their costs somewhat static. Will you trade jobs for higher wages? The conversation should be how to get low wage earners into better jobs, not paying their low wage jobs more because they cant be better workers.


Anyone care to refute. Please make sure you bring "sound evidence", or am I going to have to treat all subsequent posts as garbage in/garbage out and give a philosophical lesson in source credibility?
Anything we post wont be accepted because you are a dense partisan person who has tunnel vision.



I would feel differently if we were in the position of economic strength, but we arent. If economy was booming then you could argue, but with 7+% -9% of people still UE, and the labor force shrinking, the last thing you want to do is make businesses choose between layoffs and employing when you raise their costs.


http://247wallst.com/jobs/2013/07/31...lds-8-billion/