It’s no small coincidence that Walmart supports minimum wage, as well as most large corporations. It’s because the large corporations pay more than minimum wage. Their smaller competitors do.

Go Democrats. Pass the minimum wage. Subsidize Walmart.

Republicans refuse to acknowledge the growing health care problems in this country, while rising health insurance premiums are placing an increased burden on employers and employees.

Republicans have increasingly allocated funds for small businesses to large corporations, instead.

Republicans are not, nor have they been for some time, friends of small business. In the next two years, Democrats will pursue policies that will help small businesses, including possible tax breaks, as well as comprehensive immigration reform. And a Democratic President will be able to do far more, allowing us to pursue real health care reform.

I’ve detailed time and again how the MW causes unemployment precisely among the people it ostensibly helps, but no one, either liberal or conservative, seems to care about economic reality. A minimum wage law does not force an employer to hire or retain a worker at the minimum wage. It’s quite simple, if a worker can’t produce $7.25 per hour in revenue, they just won’t be hired. It’s really not that fucking complicated people.

Also, I’ve never gotten a response to the question that if the government can raise the living standards of the poor by simple decree, why not raise the MW to $20 an hour? Why not $200 an hour, that way we can all be rich, right? I WANT AN ANSWER TO THIS.

“But Tyler, won’t greedy employers ‘exploit’ workers and pay them starvation wages in the absence of a minimum wage law?”

No. This argument is self-defeating. It assumes that employers are motivated by self-interest, yet denies that selfish employers won’t bid underpaid workers away from other businesses in an effort to increase their profits, which is what happens. If a worker who can produce $25 in gross revenue per hour for an employer, but is only being paid $15 per hour, another employer will be willing to pay more. This bidding war will continue upwards to the $25 level. Employees will tend in the free market to be paid their marginal revenue product. In other words, wages rates will tend towards equaling productivity.

“Conservatives commonly argue that increasing the minimum wage will negatively affect the economy, resulting in stagnating job growth and higher unemployment. However, numerous studies have examined recent increases in the minimum wage at both the federal and state level and found that higher wages do not result in job loss. One recent example is Oregon, which increased its minimum wage to $7.50 in 2002. Four years later, “Oregon’s experience suggests the most strident doomsayers were wrong,” according to a November 3, 2006, Wall Street Journal article. Indeed, private, nonfarm payrolls have increased there at twice the national rate, industries that employ many minimum-wage workers have experienced considerable job growth, and unemployment has dropped to 5.4 percent from 7.6 percent in 2002.”

“The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that a majority — 53 percent — of those who would be affected by the Democratic minimum-wage proposal are full-time workers (at least 35 hours a week). Similarly, an EPI study released October 25 found that “[i]f the federal minimum wage were increased to $7.25 per hour by 2008, 14.9 million workers would see their wages rise,” and those affected by a minimum-wage increase would be “mainly adults who typically work full time and provide significant income to their families.”

“Another common argument against raising the minimum wage is that it will put an undue burden on small U.S. businesses. But an April 2004 study by the Fiscal Policy Institute found that, between 1998 and 2001, the number of small businesses (defined as those with fewer than 50 employees) grew twice as quickly in states with higher minimum wages.”

“most small business owners (three out of four, according to a March 2006 Gallup poll) believe a higher minimum wage would have no effect on them.”

No one can deny that the wages are elastic: mandate the price higher and some employers will refuse to pay it.

Conservative economists contend that the harm caused by jobs lost exceeds the benefit of the raise to those who retain their job, but at the higher wage.

Liberal economists contend that the harm caused by the jobs lost is less than the benefit.

No one knows for sure until after the fact, yet the Democrats are willing to adopt the higher rate, hoping that 1) they get some good soundbites and 2) hope maybe they’re right, but don’t really care because the poor minimum wage worker doesn’t usually vote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/us/11minimum.html

No offense, but you’re not one to take much offense so I’m not worried:
I think you have been very swayed by the economic arguments of the type of thinking that seems to run the UNO Economics Dept. Unfortunatley, none of those arguents have ever ended up being true (case in point, the 80s) because they’re overly simplistic, among other reasons.

The conservative school of economics that hopes to eventually write a mathmatics based rule-book which functions with mechanical percision to explain economic process has failed on many fronts. The idea that all actions are driven by ration self-interest has been disproven and disproven again. It is not a contridiction to say that it is both in the self-interest of employers to pay a living wage (because it increases the over-all economy and increases worker-retention, etc… see the 1950s or 60s or 90s for example) and yet that employers will not do so usually unless forced (see the 1890-1920 for example… or the 80s or today).

The reason we don’t increase the Min Wage to $200 an hour is because that’s significantly more than the living wage needs to be. Because a culture-wide living wage is good for all business, but in bad economic times like today, businesses can afford to under-bid the standard of living when it comes to wages and therefore businesses that choose to pay employers a living wage are penalized, the best way to be fairest to everyone and increase everyone’s profits is to mandate a universal living-wage. We call it a min. wage in america, and 5.15 is too low. State-wide minimum wages are sometimes better to create, except that they can create bad situations near the edges of states.

That’s why there are a large number of studies showing that raising the min. wage can actually pull a country out of a recession by increasing the money in the pocketbooks of the bottom 20% of the country, which leads to increased consumer confidence and less debt.

“The conservative school of economics that hopes to eventually write a mathmatics based rule-book which functions with mechanical percision to explain economic process has failed on many fronts.”
You are absolutely, 100% correct about that. Although it wasn’t the Chicago School that began attempting to explain human action and happiness in mathematical formulas, but the left (ala Keynes, Galbraith, etc.). I am most certainly NOT a conservative, but a liberal in the true sense of the word (although today the term used to describe this in the US and Canada is “libertarian”).

“The idea that all actions are driven by rational self-interest has been disproven and disproven again.”
Wrong and wrong. Humans act purposefully to satisfy wants; this is axiomatic. They may not end up satisfying those want, but by virtue of the fact that they act, they benefit ex ante. Wants and satisfaction can’t be cardinally quantified, you know, and when you try to do so you will come to the conclusion that people are at times acting irrationally, when the fault really lies in the original measurement. You should really read “Human Action.”

“It is not a contridiction to say that it is both in the self-interest of employers to pay a living wage (because it increases the over-all economy and increases worker-retention, etc… see the 1950s or 60s or 90s for example) and yet that employers will not do so usually unless forced”
Even assuming that the MW is perfectly redistributive (which it most certainly is not) and doesn’t decrease total output, it increases present consumption in lieu of future consumption. To repeat the old cliche: there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

“The reason we don’t increase the Min Wage to $200 an hour is because that’s significantly more than the living wage needs to be. Because a culture-wide living wage is good for all business, but in bad economic times like today, businesses can afford to under-bid the standard of living when it comes to wages and therefore businesses that choose to pay employers a living wage are penalized, the best way to be fairest to everyone and increase everyone’s profits is to mandate a universal living-wage.”
You didn’t answer the question at all, you just begged the question (restated the original premise). I’ll ask once more: If the MW (or whatever you want to call it) is so great, why not raise it to $200 an hour? Also, the living/minimum wage is a completely arbitrary number, so your argument is doubly screwed.

“That’s why there are a large number of studies showing that raising the min. wage can actually pull a country out of a recession by increasing the money in the pocketbooks of the bottom 20% of the country, which leads to increased consumer confidence and less debt.”
I can’t really respond to this as it pertains to the MW, since here you show you don’t understand the causes of the business cycle at all. That’s alright though, a great many, if not most, “economists” don’t either.

The only way to legitimately get out of a recession is to let the businesses that became over-capitalized during the boom - due to the expansion of the money supply faster than the growth in productivity by the fraudulent fractional-reserve central banking system - be liquidated. A collapse in outstanding credit (deflation) that brings about a recession is the nicer of the possible results to this expansion (which Austrian economists properly refer to as “inflation”), the other is continually escalating price inflation, eventually resulting in hyperinflation if the artificial expansion of money and credit by the central bank is allowed to continue.

Also, the last part you wrote makes no sense; Keynesianism basically says that a recession is the result of people not spending enough on consumer goods, therefore government should increase the money supply (inevitably devaluing the currency in the process) to reward debtors and punish savers. That’s one of the many nonsensical implications of Keynesian economic thought - saving leads to poverty (an especially stupid idea, since when one gives a bank money to save the bank is not just holding idle cash), and debt leads to plenty. Anyways, I’m getting off topic here. Stay tuned for the debunking of the NY Times article you posted.