A Livable Minimum Wage

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by scheherazade, Jan 6, 2018.

  1. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    Couldn't manage to parse the word "term", huh?
    That depends on the choice. The rich can lose millions in a bad investment overnight.
    There's that made up term again. Cost of living is calculated around a certain standard of living. Anyone who denies that the rich and poor have different standards of living is just daffy.
    Authoritarianism and oppression both feature prominently in fascism. Authoritarianism allows limited freedom, but fascism is extreme.
    Seems you understood just fine, despite your protests.
    I'm not really buying any of that. If you think the "wrong class is winning", you seem to have a pony in that race.
    Between that and the hyperbolic partisan rhetoric, it all sounds like trolling.
    Trailer trash, redneck, etc. and proud of it.
    No more than blacks calling each other "nigga" represents class hatred. That would be a strange sort of self-class-hatred.
    There is no doubt that the United States takes the lead in world-class health care research. It runs the most clinical trials of any OECD country. The FDA has a shorter drug approval process than many other countries including Australia so new treatments are more readily accessible. It also leads the world in cancer treatments in areas and has one of the highest 5-year survival rates for breast cancer and colon cancer [5]. If you have adequate coverage, the wait time for specialist appointment or elective surgery is among the lowest of all OECD countries [5].
    https://onthewards.org/the-inside-s...-of-the-us-and-australian-healthcare-systems/
    Ever heard of enabling? It's actually more heartless to make excuses and string them along with crumbs that keep them a permanent underclass than to help them make better decisions and improve their lot in life. Teach a man to fish...
    Haha! So all those are great choices, but circumstance is the bad choice that damns you to a life of hell?
     
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  3. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    aka perceptive reality as a passenger of the system and society ?

    thus not being an active interactive member... ?

    ....and/or ... only doing what your told to do ?
    how does that work in a non communist society ?
     
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  5. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,502
    So poverty will disappear in how many years?

    And those who for whatever reason fail to be enabled ...what of them?

    Clearly the world is changing and jobs for poor folk are disappearing well for all workers jobs are disappearing so there will have to be a lot of enabling one could think.

    And yet major corporations find the best way to increase the profit and hence the top dogs return on share options and the like is to enable workers by laying them off and to introduce efficiencies in all areas except the area of reducing rather high remuneration packages for themselves.

    Oh they get big money because etc etc whereas I bet anyone with an education could do their job...in fact it would seem I have found the perfect area to implement artificial inteligence as no doubt an appropriate algorithm would make the right call more efficiently than a human.


    But please dont think I have any answers other than distribute wealth such that the gap between rich and poor is not so hideously wide.

    A poor person can't get a break with a minimum wage yet company execs and high government officials award themselves pay rises in excess of the annual wage of a poor worker...there's your problem.

    Alex
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Words in a row like that don't confuse me as they seem to confuse you.
    Not a minimum cost of living. It wouldn't make any sense at all to calculate a minimum cost of living like that.
    But not vice versa, which is what appears to be your confusion. Bears are mammals, but mammals are not necessarily bears, to illustrate.
    That would cost the poor more, also. They'd probably never dig out again.
    Yep. If the wealthy win this class war, the consequences will include the degradation of my country, community, family, and surrounding landscape. That would be bad, imho.
    I was amused at the thought of renting instead of buying a house being a choice, for example, for someone earning minimum wage. Likewise the "three streams of income", saving 20% of one's income, not incurring credit card debt, and so forth.
    According to your guy there, people who become rich have focused their lives on becoming rich, accumulating monetary wealth, to the exclusion of everything else. I find that unsurprising, and not very informative, and a good argument for not letting rich people get too much power and control of the place.
    None of that measures health care. By outcome - lifespan after diagnosis - The US has the worst health care system in the First World, and measured by efficiency - bang for the buck - maybe the worst on the planet. Everyone else with worse outcome stats at least doesn't waste so much money.

    If the minimum wage were set at a level that paid for US health care, it would have to triple. And until it does, poor people in the US will not get standard First World health care.
    .
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2018
    Xelasnave.1947 likes this.
  8. Capracus Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,324
    Whether submission is due to ideological indoctrination, logical appeal to reason, or threat of punishment, it all still amounts to a conditioned response fostered by one’s society. Our behaviors are largely governed by our environments, and for most of us that equates to our societies.

    It’s the only game we know.
    Existence implies active interaction.
    We all do what someone or something tells us to do, regardless of the social environment.
     
  9. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,634
    That is exactly right. And the next day they will reassess and invest their remaining millions somewhere else.

    Compare that to a retired couple who are (barely) living off their 401K. They might only lose $100,000. They will, most likely, not recover from that, and will die in poverty.

    There is a difference in outcomes there.
    Everyone in the US has a "pony" in the "race" between rich and poor. And if the result of that race is that the rich win, and the gap widens so far that they always win and there is no way to cross the gap - then everyone loses in the long term. There are no good outcomes from a permanent two class society.
    Good example. So we should be spending far more money on education, vocational schools, two year colleges etc to teach those people to fish.
    Circumstance isn't a bad choice; it's bad luck.
     
  10. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    Might as well ask how long people will make bad decisions.
    Doesn't sound like you understand what negative behavior enabling is.
    That's just class warfare.
    Idiosyncratic term that conflates personal choices with the well-defined cost of living.
    Idiosyncratic nonsense.
    You didn't quote, "Authoritarianism allows limited freedom, but fascism is extreme."
    "Not allowing voluntary action" is extreme.
    But go ahead and continue your irrelevant pedantry. Looks like you're having fun.
    The poor don't invest millions. Little thing called reality. Look into it.
    Yep, you sound pretty worked up over class warfare. Doom and gloom.
    Again, where was minimum wage ever meant to buy a house?
    "new treatments are more readily accessible"
    "one of the highest 5-year survival rates for breast cancer and colon cancer"
    "wait time for specialist appointment or elective surgery is among the lowest of all OECD countries"
    So you think voluntary and conditioned are mutually exclusive?
    Any conditioning removes all possibility of voluntary action?
    Is "everyone keep what they earn" a pony?
    The middle class is shrinking because more of them have gotten richer. And that's true for the lower middle and poor as well.
    No, we spend far too much on education because government loans have tipped the scale. More of that for people who may not be good with finances will only further sink them in crushing debt. And handouts are enabling.
    There should be taxes incentives for vocational/business partnerships, since that's the best return on investment.
    Tell iceaura that: "I think he overlooked the major and most common bad choice: getting born to the wrong parents."
     
  11. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    Nope.
    Nope. Lowest quintile hasn't seen any increase in real wages since 1970. Dramatic increases in income for top 20%, no change in income for bottom 20% = increasingly stratified society and a disappearing middle class.

    https://www.cbpp.org/research/pover...ics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality
    So: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. But don't teach him to fish; it's too expensive."
    You may have missed his point there.
     
  12. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    Damn, I guess I don't have a horse in the class warfare.
    That's only a measure of income inequality, not class in absolute income. And it doesn't account for class mobility, seeming to assume the same people always stay in the same class.
    Incentivize businesses to help teach.
    But I guess it's fun to make straw men by selective quoting.
    Are circumstances insurmountable?
     
  13. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,634
    Correct. It is a measure of _adjusted_ income (i.e. real purchasing power.)
    It assumes no such thing, nor does it purport to. It shows simple adjusted incomes of each income bracket.

    However, other studies indicate that upward income mobility is drastically decreasing. In 1940, 90% of children of families in that income quintile made more than their parents. As of 1980 it was down to 55% - and has been declining ever since.
    https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/fading-american-dream.pdf
    How?
    So what is the entire "teach a man to fish" quote? What part did I leave out?
    Nope. They just make things easier or harder.
     
  14. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,502
    May as well as anything is better than attempting to address the problem of poverty.

    The bad decisions are being made by greedy folk with the power to effect meaningful change who fail to learn from history and the horror that is revolution.

    Sure let it get to a stage where the are two classes. .the very rich and the very poor and then lets see what happens.
    Probably not but I guess it means dont try and help folk because they will only get used to a passing expectation of equality and reasonable distribution of resources.

    Its just such a pity that to make good decisions these days you need a college education and these poor folk just wont decide to go to college. . Why wouldnt they decide to go to college one could wonder.

    That certainly is where they make their first major bad decision.
    I suppose you are right.

    An expectation of a more reasonable wealth distribution would certainly have the rich going to war I mean how dare anyone suggest they are not entitled to everything ...

    Look let the rich be rich but please consider the benefits of an economy where all have meaning to their existence and better still a means to move more money around such that the nation as a whole may benefit...dont you think the place would be better with a larger middle class and a small group in poverty?
    Not only morally sound but makes reasonable economic sense.
    Alex
     
  15. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    Is family size and composition a measure of "real purchasing power?"
    I wonder what's changed since 1940.
    Maybe you should have read it the first time I said it.
    See above, where I just quoted the part you fail to in order to make your "But don't teach him to fish; it's too expensive" straw man.
    Exactly.

    More class warfare nonsense.
    Individuals making their own good decisions is the best motor for meaningful change throughout history.
    Class revolution is people blaming others instead of taking responsibility for themselves.
    College has little to do with it.
     
  16. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,502
    Yes look at the French revolution and the Russian revolution a fine example of individuals making good decisions...not.
    And why did those horrors take place...all those poor folk making bad decisions such that they took it out on all those making the right decisions.

    You are clearly well educated and can make good choices but not all can.
    Is there no duty upon those more capable to help those less capable.
    I bet you studied hard and resent those who did not or could not and so you think as presumably you did it tuff why should others not suffer..I did it tuff...useless education. Had to work a full time job but go to uni at night and do a cleaning job in the morning before the 9 to 5 job...and I made a fortune and lost it and then another ... I could say bugger the poor but I dont...as I said there is the morality but the main issue is economic.
    When I left school every one could get work and that is no longer the case and the change in human efficiency will produce more poor...things just need to change to accomodate the new reality.
    Alex
     
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,634
    Nope. That would be a measure of family size.
    The balance between corporate and personal power has shifted dramatically. Corporations now have far more power than they once did; these tend to enrich corporations (and the people who run them) more than people.
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    So you agree your source there was a bit silly about his supposed "choices".
    Your point?
    The US has the worst health care system in the First World, 34th of 34, measured by outcome - performance, lifespan after diagnosis, over the range of common lethal diseases or disorders. And it spends twice as much as any of them except possibly Norway and Switzerland - only outspending them by half or so.
    Big tax cuts for rich people. Military contract profiteering made standard instead of felony crime. Banks deregulated. Unions busted. College and medical care quintupled in real cost, housing doubled, and all the GI bill and other government benefits expired. Reaganomics came in, and increasing productivity gains were shunted to capital rather than labor.

    And so forth.
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2018
  19. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    Family size and composition is how they estimated adjusted income in your cited link, which you claimed WAS a measure of "real purchasing power."
    Did you not look to see how they estimated their adjusted income?
    I don't think that's it. Maybe the New Deal.
    And very few companies had their own Washington lobbyists prior to the 1970s. To the extent that businesses did lobby in the 1950s and 1960s (typically through associations), they were clumsy and ineffective.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/busines...obbyists-conquered-american-democracy/390822/
    Or it seems at least a direct backlash to the New Deal.
    Powell was addressing concerns held by conservatives surrounding the New Deal and the Great Society, which included Social Security, the Labor Relations Act, Medicare, Medicaid, and anti-discrimination laws.
    https://www.rt.com/usa/357045-powell-memo-corporate-takeover/
    No idea how you get there from me asking if minimum wage was ever meant to cover buying a house.
    Some of those choices do contribute to poverty. Others contribute to not building wealth.
    I don't care about your leftist talking points.
    No, I don't think so.
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    The claim that renting rather than buying a house, not saving 20% of one's income, and avoiding commercial debt, are choices made freely by poor people, especially poor black people, is stupid.
    Here's a thought: let's set the minimum wage so that its recipients can save 20% of their income - after paying for minimum available housing, food (at the prices in their neighborhood, standard recommended USDA diet), clothing, and medical care. (We'll ignore education - no sense in being ridiculous).
    The world in which a list of simple factual realities is a list of leftist talking points, is a deranged world.
     
  21. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    Like the man said, reality has a well-known liberal bias.
     
  22. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    Saving is not about income, it's about outlay. Getting a credit card you can't responsibly manage is a choice. Taking a exorbitant payday loan you can't keep up with is a choice. Not putting back even one dollar a week is a choice. Small, but good, choices build on one another.
    And for the fifth or sixth time now, when was minimum wage ever meant to buy a house or support a family?
    I'm sure you believe that, in your little bubble.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    And minimum cost of living is the outlay involved.
    So that's how one would determine a minimum wage that made sense of some guy's claim that the poor fail to save 20% of their income by choice.
    Whenever renting instead of buying a house was an actual choice for the poor - as seen in your link there.
     

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