NY State minimum wage set to rise to $15/hour . . . but only for fast food workers.

[Horatio Parker]

I'll take that as a yes.

I think it's a problem that you'd want to have. If workers leave retail for fast food, won't that put economic pressure on your employers to raise your wages?

I don't think anyone should have to work for $10/hr, except maybe for a no show gig. I have, but it was PT in combination with other stuff.

Two responses: 1) If the goal is to raise the wages all around, then raise the wages all around. Don't raise the wages in one industry and hope for the invisible hand of the market to work the rest out. 2) I don't think other industries will respond this way. It's not like this is going to create more jobs. If anything, it will kill some jobs. It's not going to create any new job mobility.

You don't think workers making less will try to get one of the $15/hr jobs?

 

[Jayjay]

Two responses: 1) If the goal is to raise the wages all around, then raise the wages all around. Don't raise the wages in one industry and hope for the invisible hand of the market to work the rest out. 2) I don't think other industries will respond this way. It's not like this is going to create more jobs. If anything, it will kill some jobs. It's not going to create any new job mobility.

You don't think workers making less will try to get one of the $15/hr jobs?

The $15/hr jobs that are already being held by people with relevant job experience?

More likely some of the fast food workers being laid off will have to look for lower-paying jobs elsewhere.

 

[bleubird]

http://readersupportednews.org/news...y-increase-by-68c-if-minimum-wage-was-doubled
This is a bit old ,but still....

 

[Achwienichtig]

http://readersupportednews.org/news...y-increase-by-68c-if-minimum-wage-was-doubled
This is a bit old ,but still....

Well, it doesn't look like raising the price on the big Mac will solve all their problems now.

http://www.infowars.com/mcdonalds-is-losing-so-much-money-it-stopped-telling-us-how-much/

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You don't think workers making less will try to get one of the $15/hr jobs?

The $15/hr jobs that are already being held by people with relevant job experience?

More likely some of the fast food workers being laid off will have to look for lower-paying jobs elsewhere.

Exactly.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

1) This is about offloading government costs onto business--namely, welfare costs.

2) It won't work anyway--we are going to see more unemployment, especially of teens.

3) The size of the business doesn't matter--a big business doesn't have higher profit margins than a small business, although they likely have more reserves to get out of an unfavorable situation without being destroyed.

4) It's a totally stupid idea when only applied to fast food.

5) It's just vote-buying.

6) In New York itself I don't think this will cause much harm because it's so expensive there already. In the outlying areas, though...

So you want to expand the welfare state. We agree on something...

You've got it backwards. Too high a minimum wage expands the welfare state.

The real issue with poverty is a lack of hours, not a lack of hourly wage.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Are we certain this is not an elaborate hoax?

It would be the kind of thing I'd expect to read on a news parody site like the Onion.

 

[Achwienichtig]

Are we certain this is not an elaborate hoax?

It would be the kind of thing I'd expect to read on a news parody site like the Onion.

Check out the government's website.

http://www.labor.ny.gov/pressreleases/2015/july-22-2015-1.shtm

 

[ronburgundy]

So you want to expand the welfare state. We agree on something...

You've got it backwards. Too high a minimum wage expands the welfare state.

The real issue with poverty is a lack of hours, not a lack of hourly wage.

McDonalds has a employee "McResource" line dedicated to encouraging and assisting its employees, including full timers, to utilize public assistance, including welfare and food stamps. It employees get over $7 billion every year in such public assistance. Full time wages are at about $18,000 per year, which is below the poverty line.

No, the problem is wages, not hours. Advances in tech mean that fewer and fewer hours are required for most jobs. That is going to become more and more true. Full time employment for all people willing and able is going to become more and more impossible. Thus the notion that full time employment is required to avoid poverty requiring public assistance must be done away with, in any sustainable society. The benefits of the tech must be translated into higher wages and less working hours needed for all, rather than just increasingly obscene wealth stockpiled beyond utility for the few.

 

[Achwienichtig]

You've got it backwards. Too high a minimum wage expands the welfare state.

The real issue with poverty is a lack of hours, not a lack of hourly wage.

McDonalds has a employee "McResource" line dedicated to encouraging and assisting its employees, including full timers, to utilize public assistance, including welfare and food stamps. It employees get over $7 billion every year in such public assistance. Full time wages are at about $18,000 per year, which is below the poverty line.

No, the problem is wages, not hours. Advances in tech mean that fewer and fewer hours are required for most jobs. That is going to become more and more true. Full time employment for all people willing and able is going to become more and more impossible. Thus the notion that full time employment is required to avoid poverty requiring public assistance must be done away with, in any sustainable society. The benefits of the tech must be translated into higher wages and less working hours needed for all, rather than just increasingly obscene wealth stockpiled beyond utility for the few.

I actually agree with this. Wages have to go up. But they have to go up across the board. If you inflate the wages in one industry without comprehensively fixing the system, I just don't see that going well.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You've got it backwards. Too high a minimum wage expands the welfare state.

The real issue with poverty is a lack of hours, not a lack of hourly wage.

McDonalds has a employee "McResource" line dedicated to encouraging and assisting its employees, including full timers, to utilize public assistance, including welfare and food stamps. It employees get over $7 billion every year in such public assistance. Full time wages are at about $18,000 per year, which is below the poverty line.

But how many of their employees are full time?

And $18k is well above the poverty line for one person. If you have multiple people in the household why don't you have two earners??

No, the problem is wages, not hours. Advances in tech mean that fewer and fewer hours are required for most jobs. That is going to become more and more true. Full time employment for all people willing and able is going to become more and more impossible. Thus the notion that full time employment is required to avoid poverty requiring public assistance must be done away with, in any sustainable society. The benefits of the tech must be translated into higher wages and less working hours needed for all, rather than just increasingly obscene wealth stockpiled beyond utility for the few.

If you put the wages high enough that people with short hours have enough money then you'll drive them so high that it will be only robots doing the work.

We should be aiming to increase the hours worked rather than the current system that actually encourages part time work.

Of course no politician would do that because it would raise the unemployment rate.

 

[Axulus]

Full time wages are at about $18,000 per year, which is below the poverty line.

False for a household size of up to 2.

http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/15poverty.cfm

 

[Axulus]

Also, for everyone in this thread talking about poverty, don't fool yourselves into thinking that the minimum wage is effective at reducing poverty:

Recently, Michael Wither and Jeffrey Clemens of the University of California, San Diego looked at data from the 2007 federal minimum-wage hike and found that it reduced the national employment-to-population ratio by 0.7 percentage points (which is actually a lot), and led to a six percentage point decrease in the likelihood that a low-wage worker would have a job.

Because low-wage workers get less work experience under a higher minimum-wage regime, they are less likely to transition to higher-wage jobs down the road. Wither and Clemens found that two years later, workers’ chances of making $1,500 a month was reduced by five percentage points.

Many economists have pointed out that as a poverty-fighting measure the minimum wage is horribly targeted. A 2010 study by Joseph Sabia and Richard Burkhauser found that only 11.3 percent of workers who would benefit from raising the wage to $9.50 an hour would come from poor households. An earlier study by Sabia found that single mothers’ employment dropped 6 percent for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage.

A study by Thomas MaCurdy of Stanford built on the fact that there are as many individuals in high-income families making the minimum wage (teenagers) as in low-income families. MaCurdy found that the costs of raising the wage are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Minimum-wage workers often work at places that disproportionately serve people down the income scale. So raising the minimum wage is like a regressive consumption tax paid for by the poor to subsidize the wages of workers who are often middle class.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/o...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

 

[bleubird]

What are you afraid of?
That the sad fuck that is making your lunch may be less than you and you may feel bad about thiat.

 

[Horatio Parker]

McDonalds has a employee "McResource" line dedicated to encouraging and assisting its employees, including full timers, to utilize public assistance, including welfare and food stamps. It employees get over $7 billion every year in such public assistance. Full time wages are at about $18,000 per year, which is below the poverty line.

No, the problem is wages, not hours. Advances in tech mean that fewer and fewer hours are required for most jobs. That is going to become more and more true. Full time employment for all people willing and able is going to become more and more impossible. Thus the notion that full time employment is required to avoid poverty requiring public assistance must be done away with, in any sustainable society. The benefits of the tech must be translated into higher wages and less working hours needed for all, rather than just increasingly obscene wealth stockpiled beyond utility for the few.

I actually agree with this. Wages have to go up. But they have to go up across the board. If you inflate the wages in one industry without comprehensively fixing the system, I just don't see that going well.

I agree. Assuming political realities preclude such a minimum wage in NY, does this development make that MW more or less likely?

 

[Achwienichtig]

Thank you, Axulus, for the article.

The way I see it, fiscal liberalism is driven by a sense of justice, while fiscal conservativism is driven by harsh economic realism. As this article points out, a deep seated sense of justice without a strong hold on reality can end up being totally ineffective at attaining that justice. On the other hand, fiscal conservatives tend to ignore the gross injustices that actually are present, which I find inexcusable. They are realists concerning the market, but they are not realist concerning social inequality.

Oddly enough, this leads me to being a moderate, which may be just as bad for all I know. Moderates are not spoken well of. I haven't determined whether or not we deserve that criticism.

 

[ksen]

Also, for everyone in this thread talking about poverty, don't fool yourselves into thinking that the minimum wage is effective at reducing poverty:

Recently, Michael Wither and Jeffrey Clemens of the University of California, San Diego looked at data from the 2007 federal minimum-wage hike and found that it reduced the national employment-to-population ratio by 0.7 percentage points (which is actually a lot), and led to a six percentage point decrease in the likelihood that a low-wage worker would have a job.

Because low-wage workers get less work experience under a higher minimum-wage regime, they are less likely to transition to higher-wage jobs down the road. Wither and Clemens found that two years later, workers’ chances of making $1,500 a month was reduced by five percentage points.

The paper looks at a law that went into effect in 2007.

Claim that two years later, in 2009, those workers have a lower chance of earning $1,500 a month.

Are they sure the greatest financial disruption since the Great Depression, which happened during that same timeframe, didn't have anything to do with that?

Many economists have pointed out that as a poverty-fighting measure the minimum wage is horribly targeted. A 2010 study by Joseph Sabia and Richard Burkhauser found that only 11.3 percent of workers who would benefit from raising the wage to $9.50 an hour would come from poor households. An earlier study by Sabia found that single mothers’ employment dropped 6 percent for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage.

"Many economists"

Well, I'm sold!

A study by Thomas MaCurdy of Stanford built on the fact that there are as many individuals in high-income families making the minimum wage (teenagers) as in low-income families. MaCurdy found that the costs of raising the wage are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Minimum-wage workers often work at places that disproportionately serve people down the income scale. So raising the minimum wage is like a regressive consumption tax paid for by the poor to subsidize the wages of workers who are often middle class.

This one could be solved by going to a two-tier minimum wage: one for teenagers/minors and one for adults.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/o...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Hahahaha, David Brooks.

 

[Achwienichtig]

This one could be solved by going to a two-tier minimum wage: one for teenagers/minors and one for adults.

I like this idea.

 

[ksen]

This one could be solved by going to a two-tier minimum wage: one for teenagers/minors and one for adults.

I like this idea.

Yeah, I first read about it being done in Australia.

It seems like a very sensible idea which probably means it'll never be enacted here in the US. I don't think the fiscal conservatives would like the teenage unemployment stick to be taken away from them for future MW debates.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Thank you, Axulus, for the article.

The way I see it, fiscal liberalism is driven by a sense of justice, while fiscal conservativism is driven by harsh economic realism. As this article points out, a deep seated sense of justice without a strong hold on reality can end up being totally ineffective at attaining that justice. On the other hand, fiscal conservatives tend to ignore the gross injustices that actually are present, which I find inexcusable. They are realists concerning the market, but they are not realist concerning social inequality.

Oddly enough, this leads me to being a moderate, which may be just as bad for all I know. Moderates are not spoken well of. I haven't determined whether or not we deserve that criticism.

Pretty close to target. I don't see a large number of gross injustices coming from conservative economics, though--rather, I see conservative economics failing to deal with problems that come up for other reasons. While I believe those problems should be addressed I don't think marketplace is the tool for the job--minimum wage laws don't make low value workers into high value workers, competition doesn't provide health insurance for the sick etc.

Rather, we should identify the points of failure and provide solutions outside the realm of the marketplace--for example, welfare and the EITC.

- - - Updated - - -

This one could be solved by going to a two-tier minimum wage: one for teenagers/minors and one for adults.

That helps the teens, it provides no path into the system for those who have fallen out of it for whatever reason. People would be less likely to end up on a life of welfare but those that did would be even more trapped.

 

[ronburgundy]

McDonalds has a employee "McResource" line dedicated to encouraging and assisting its employees, including full timers, to utilize public assistance, including welfare and food stamps. It employees get over $7 billion every year in such public assistance. Full time wages are at about $18,000 per year, which is below the poverty line.

But how many of their employees are full time?

70% of their employees are over 20 years old, and 40% are over 25, and 34% have kids. For most of these people, this is their only job and 1 in 3 have kids. If they are less than "full time" it is mostly against their will and forced on them by the company because that allows the company to not give them benefits and keeps the employees below income levels where public assistance picks up the remaining cost of a living wage. 7.5 million workers are part-time because their employer won't offer them more hours, most of these are in min wage jobs like fast food, and most of the time its because the employer uses part-time as a cost-cutting strategy. IOW, most McDonalds employees are either full time or want to be full time, yet full time pay would still land them on public assistance. Because so many companies use this strategy of only offering part-time work, these workers have no choice. Even most of those that are "willingly" part-time, it is only because their pay is so low that it is less than the cost of child-care. IOW, they are forced to "choose" part time because of their low hourly wage.

And $18k is well above the poverty line for one person.

$18k was overly generous on my part. It presumes 40 hour weeks at $9 per hour. The Fed minimum is only $7.25 and the State minimums are often below that, as low as $5.15, plus "full-time" is actually only 30 hours according to ACA. Employees making the current Fed min and working less than 34 hours are below the poverty line of $12,000, even for a single individual.
IOW, a large % of their employees that are full time are either below or just barely above the poverty line for a single individual. And over 1/3 have children they are supporting. Most of these are getting public assistance, and McDonald's aggressively promotes use of public assistance among its employees.
It does this because that is a way they can externalize their own costs onto the taxpayers, which is one of the primary sources of corporate profits. They cannot maintain employees that don't have sufficient resources to feed, clothe, and house themselves. Thus, they need their employees to be at a minimal level of resources, yet they don't want to pay that level. So, they deliberately pay them little enough so that they qualify for public assistance and let the taxpayers pay the rest. This strategy goes into both their hourly pay levels an into restricting hours they allow employees to work to ensure that they stay below levels that make them eligible for public assistance programs.

If you have multiple people in the household why don't you have two earners??

Because the others in the household are usually children, and even with a second parent, a second earner leads to a net loss in income if that job is below $10 per hour, due to childcare costs being higher than that. IOW, in many millions of 2 parent homes, they would be even poorer if both parent were employed rather than 1.

If you put the wages high enough that people with short hours have enough money then you'll drive them so high that it will be only robots doing the work.

We should be aiming to increase the hours worked rather than the current system that actually encourages part time work.

The only way to increase hours is by force of law. Force companies to offer full time hours to all employees. So, do you support such laws? If not, how do you propose to impact companies like McDonald's that refuse to offer most of their employees more hours because they profit when their employees are on public assistance due to part time employment?

What is needed is too harshly penalize all companies that make large profits without hiring employees that are paid above public assistance levels.
This can be done by setting a much higher corporate tax rate,combined with tax reductions for each employees they have that is paid above a set minimum, by any combination of hours below 40 per week and hourly wage. It fosters incentive to pay employees more while also hiring more employees by having each one work less than 40 hours but for still enough pay to be above public assistance levels. It disincentivises trying to increase profits by either replacing or underpaying employees.
For example, a company has 10 employees producing X widgets. A tech advancement allow them to produce X widgets in less time. The company still has X widgets it will sell for the same revenue. Currently, they will take the opportunity to increase the profits for those at the top by fucking over their employees, either by firing some or by cutting all their hours and their total wages. Either way, taxpayers pick up the cost., The proper tax levels and breaks would incentivize the company to keep all 10 employees at the same total pay, and either reduce hours for that same pay or find some other task they can perform for those hours saved by the tech.

Of course no politician would do that because it would raise the unemployment rate

We need to attack to empty discourse that emphasizes unemployment, and shift to % of people not earning a wage above levels that disqualify them for public assistance. That includes the traditionally unemployed, and both part timers and full timers whose combination of hours and hourly wage falls below public assistance maximums. That is the number that matters. That is the # that reflects a healthy economy rather than one where some reap at the direct expense of others suffering. That is the number that must be minimized in sustainable just society in which their is a less dangerously unequal distribution of available work, the benefits produced by work, and the benefits to quality of life from advances in human knowledge (most of which arise from collective and publically supported efforts rather than individual achievements).