Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

[ByzantinePowerGame]

@Gaidin & @Antaeus,

Well, in my understanding, the main function of a wage is to compensate the worker for the time and effort they spent doing job x. The more probable the worker could be doing something else than job x, the higher the wage ought (this isn't the case for the 99.9%) to be to entice them to do it. When the government gets involved (or when it stands by doing nothing) and allows areas to under-develop, the political economy creates areas in a country where no other jobs are available. As a result, wages can get worse and worse through the dilemma of low-skill, low pay work or unemployment.

However, the real main function of the wage was always to compensate the worker enough to feed themselves, cloth themselves and rest themselves so they could return to the workplace the next day. This is usually called reproduction of labour. A living wage, which is what you're asking for, is just that bare minimum - taking into account that most Americans need to work two or even three jobs just to scratch at a living. What you're basically asking is this:

"Please, let us survive with the two or three jobs we already work."

My question is: Why would you even be asking that?!

The USA is NOT Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, NYC, or Seattle.

Most Americans I know only work one job, although most of the people I know are fellow professionals.

You talk of Americans barely scratching a living and needing 2-3 jobs. I see Greece as a sad broken backwater of a nation where people can't even find one job, let alone try to work 2-3 jobs, and people are barely able to materially exist at a minimal subsistence level.

If I wanted to take off all of April and go to Greece for the entire month, I could financially do that and I could do it work-wise, I would just have to bring along my phone, a headset, an international phone plan, a laptop, and digital copies of my most important case files so I could do a few things if urgent situations suddenly pop up that require immediate attention/drafting/filing that I couldn't otherwise shift to a colleague for a while. I have some colleagues who are more efficient at drafting and I can dump a lot of research/drafting on them at $100 per hour and just go do whatever I want during that time, or do things that are more lucrative for me. What I am best is the area of civil procedure, substantive legal knowledge, negotiations, and oral advocacy [motion hearing before the court, running an actual jury trial]. I am adequate researcher and drafter but I prefer to have a select few others do those things since they are more efficient and can research and write something in 3 hours what would take me 7 hours to do. It is a situation of, "While I paid that guy $300 to do 3 hours of drafting that would have taken me 7 hours, I spent 2 hours negotiating a resolution that sees me pocket $22,000 as my percentage and then I decided to take the rest of the day off and go do outdoor activities."

I doubt most Greeks can even afford the airfare to fly to the USA these days, let alone afford 30 days of renting a house or getting a rental car and hotels and doing a road-trip in the USA. I wonder whether most Greeks could even afford to stay home and not work for 30 days with a home vacation.

[Basileos Leandros I]

Are you sure? Since Romania joined EU the minimum wage have been rising, yet the inflation have been falling down significantly to below 3%. Since you said in the last 4 years, In 2016, the minimum wage was 275 Euros, which rose to 445 Euros in 2019. That's a roughly 62% increase. Yet, the same period saw a total of about 8.5% inflation.

That is partially correct, but there's another aspect linked to the cost of the nominal basket of goods increasing - oil prices.

In the space of about 5 months, from October - November to February - March, Romania went from having one of the lowest prices per litre of fuel to a jump of about 30-35 EUR cents. So in the space of 4 months it jumped more than 25%. So far the effects are not felt - apart from oil prices - but they will be down the line in the next couple of months. And keep in mind Romania still produces petrol.

[conon394]

Another issue I would have in a large federation like the USA is that not all states have the same basic living cost. 15$ per hour in NYC is below-living while in rural Mississippi it would be more than enough. From this map (which I am not sure how accurate it is) we see that New York State is ~60% more expensive than Mississippi. Using the same minimum wage would be crippling in some areas while not enough in others.

You got some points there and that is one problem with slogan policy its simple a pity but not really a policy prescription and than it can because are you with or not thing. But lets recognize the simple the real minimum wage is far lower than it was in the 60s I cannot see the data showing a hell scape of unemployment. Off the top of my head it peaked at ~12.50 and that was continuously stabled at about 10.50-11.00 after the mid 60s. In other words we have allowed it to fall in real terms it does need to be increased.

The appalling tip exception is worse since it has been allowed to a farce.

In any case the simple fact a slogan is easier to run on. Running on restoring a 11 dollar real minimum wage that is indexed to inflation (note that would include deflation) and regionally indexed (so yes it would be lower in rural middle of lower America vs LA) would start to likely just make people glaze over.

I consider all public spending to be a recipe for a market distortion.

What market is that again, because in most cases it very much needs the res publica to distort it.

[chilon]

And yet it has happened in Europe several times.

Most likely you are looking at the result of other variables. The best and most complete research on the topic over the last 20 years (comparing county to county where other variables are closest and controlling for other factors that "Free market" researchers didn't control for) shows it doesn't result in increased inflation or meaningful disemployment.

"Increasing the minimum wage does not lead to the short- or long-term loss of low-paying jobs, according to a new study co-authored by University of California, Berkeley, economics professor Michael Reich and published in the November issue of the journal The Review of Economics and Statistics."
"The two sets of minimum wage studies cited most often in debates about raising the minimum wage reach different conclusions. One group of researchers relied on local case studies and the other on national level data and state variation over time.The main problems, said the authors of the new study, are that the case study research could not be generalized to other areas and covered very short time periods, while the other research approach failed to account for critical differences in employment growth between minimum wage and non-minimum wage states that are unrelated to the minimum wage.
“Our reading of the literature suggests that this difference in methods may account for much of the difference in results,” the researchers wrote.
For example, they said in the article, both minimum wages and overall employment growth vary substantially over time and location, as seen in the South, where the economy has been growing faster than it has in the rest of the country for reasons unrelated to the South’s lack of state-based minimum wages.
The article noted that 17 states and the District of Columbia had a minimum wage higher than the federal level in 2005 and consistently lower job growth than the rest of the country from 1991 to 1996. However, those 17 states and states on the other end of the minimum wage spectrum experienced almost identical job growth between 1996 and 2006."
https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/12/01/minimumwagejobs/

"Using data from the ACS, the QWI and the QCEW, we implement event study and difference-in-difference methods, estimating average causal effects for all events in our sample and separately for areas with lower and higher impacts. We find positive wage
effects, especially in high impact counties, but do not detect adverse effects on employment, weekly hours or annual weeks worked. We do not find negative employment effects among women, blacks and/or Hispanics. In high impact counties, we find substantial declines in household and child poverty. "
https://irle.berkeley.edu/minimum-wa...ow-wage-areas/

[conon394]

odd delayed double

[Lord Thesaurian]

Limiting data to arbitrarily specific comparisons between counties isn’t necessarily a strength of Berkley’s research, but rather, a methodological flaw.

Our research design focuses on effects of minimum wages across counties and other small areas with different relative minimum wages, using the wider variation in relative minimum wages that exists between localities within each state.

All models control for county by event and year fixed effects, log state population, log state unemployment rate and log state GDP.

More specifically, we study the effects of high relative minimum wages and high minimum wage bites at the county level. We construct two well-established measures of local exposure to the minimum wage: a) the relative level of the minimum wage—defined as the ratio of the minimum wage to the median wage; and b) the bite of the minimum wage—defined as the proportion of workers who receive a pay increase if the minimum wage increases. While each of these measures provides an indicator of the intensity of the policy, the relative minimum wage and the bite are more sensitive to labor market conditions in lower-wage areas.

To summarize, the generalized differences-in-differences models indicate that while higher minimum wages raise wages more in high-exposure areas, we do not see a corresponding reduction in employment or hours. Importantly, this result holds even in areas where the exposure rates are very high, including localities where more than one in five workers are directly affected by the minimum wage.

https://irle.berkeley.edu/files/2020...Wage-Areas.pdf

The reason for this is there’s no evidence the county by county metric is an especially useful control in an integrated labor market, primarily because it is easily contaminated by spillover effects. The work I cited earlier specifically critiques Reich’s methodology and assumptions:

There is some intuitive appeal to the idea that cross-border counties are good controls because of their geographic proximity. And we might expect that, on a priori grounds, the case for using contiguous counties as controls is stronger than for using states in the same Census division (as in ADR). Nonetheless, it is not obvious, without evidence, that cross-border counties are appropriate controls. For example, spillover effects can certainly contaminate the control observations.

Because there is some a priori appeal to the idea that cross-border counties are useful controls (even if the evidence to this point does not bear this out), we also looked more closely at cross-border counties for MSAs that straddle two states, to see whether within these more integrated labor markets the cross-border counties were better controls.

We think the central question to ask is whether, out of their concern for avoiding minimum wage variation that is potentially confounded with other sources of employment change, ADR and DLR have thrown out so much useful and potentially valid identifying information that their estimates are uninformative or invalid. That is, have they thrown out the “baby” along with – or worse yet, instead of – the contaminated “bathwater”? Our analysis suggests they have. Moreover, despite the claims made by ADR and DLR, the evidence that their approaches provide more compelling identifying information than the standard panel data estimates that they criticize is weak or non-existent.

Our evidence points to serious problems with these research designs. Moreover, new evidence based on methods that let the data identify the appropriate control groups leads to stronger evidence of disemployment effects, with teen employment elasticities near -0.3. We conclude that the evidence still shows that minimum wages pose a tradeoff of higher wages for some against job losses for others, and that policymakers need to bear this tradeoff in mind when making decisions about increasing the minimum wage.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/wo...681/w18681.pdf

Thus not only does Reich/Godoy’s conclusions conflict with longstanding academic consensus, the methodology used to critique that consensus about the negative employment impacts of the minimum wage is arbitrary, flawed, and ultimately very weak.

[Kritias]

The USA is NOT Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, NYC, or Seattle.

Most Americans I know only work one job, although most of the people I know are fellow professionals.

You talk of Americans barely scratching a living and needing 2-3 jobs. I see Greece as a sad broken backwater of a nation where people can't even find one job, let alone try to work 2-3 jobs, and people are barely able to materially exist at a minimal subsistence level.

If I wanted to take off all of April and go to Greece for the entire month, I could financially do that and I could do it work-wise, I would just have to bring along my phone, a headset, an international phone plan, a laptop, and digital copies of my most important case files so I could do a few things if urgent situations suddenly pop up that require immediate attention/drafting/filing that I couldn't otherwise shift to a colleague for a while. I have some colleagues who are more efficient at drafting and I can dump a lot of research/drafting on them at $100 per hour and just go do whatever I want during that time, or do things that are more lucrative for me. What I am best is the area of civil procedure, substantive legal knowledge, negotiations, and oral advocacy [motion hearing before the court, running an actual jury trial]. I am adequate researcher and drafter but I prefer to have a select few others do those things since they are more efficient and can research and write something in 3 hours what would take me 7 hours to do. It is a situation of, "While I paid that guy $300 to do 3 hours of drafting that would have taken me 7 hours, I spent 2 hours negotiating a resolution that sees me pocket $22,000 as my percentage and then I decided to take the rest of the day off and go do outdoor activities."

I doubt most Greeks can even afford the airfare to fly to the USA these days, let alone afford 30 days of renting a house or getting a rental car and hotels and doing a road-trip in the USA. I wonder whether most Greeks could even afford to stay home and not work for 30 days with a home vacation.

You disregard around 38.1 million people in your country who make less than 25.000$ a year, and around 10% of the workforce who have to work multiple jobs. Add to this figure another 6-14% who were unemployed last year (estimates vary). There's also another 36% of workers who are involved in the Gig Economy, and are therefore financially unstable throughout the year. All these people are scrapping a living, which is why we're having this discussion in the first place.

Since you're a professional in a legal occupation (where according to the statistics, just around 2 million workers are employed), you're reasonably well-off. Kudos to you. You're making a mental fallacy to assume that since you and other professionals whom you come into contact with say all is alright that this is the case for the country in general. All may be well in your bubble but statistics show a very harrowing experience for the average American worker.

Europeans generally don't talk about how much they are making because it's considered rude. For protestants it is also almost a sin to talk about money, something to do with arrogance. I can tell you there's individuals who sit on accumulated wealth of 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 years.

In Europe people earn less in salaries yet they do not have the killer expenses you guys have; pharmaceuticals charge reasonable prices for their products, a trip to the hospital is generally free (except some cases like the Netherlands etc), education doesn't cripple you in debt. As a professional you can live a very rewarding life without having to work more than 40 hours a week. You might think you're so far better off, but I can tell you than in Europe we're very sorry for what you are going through. People are flabbergasted at the sheer brutality of working in the US.

Here in Greece, with massive debts and extreme austerity policies, we can still study and we can still go to the hospital just from our taxes; no extra costs involved. And during the pandemic we're fortunate that only 6.543 people have died of Covid-19 even with our under-staffed, under-funded hospitals. With massive unemployment of 15%, the crushing majority of Greeks work just one job; not because there's none to be found, but because you can actually live reasonably well with just one. Reason being, again, most of the things that you would never financially recover from, like contracting Covid-19 and staying in a hospital for treatment, is paid for from our taxes. Along with Portugal and the ascension states in the Balkans and the Baltic, Greeks work more than the average European; it's still around 40 hours a week (38.6).

The problems Greece has are mainly political; primary among them corrupt governments, to which apropos, your country has played a huge role in.

So, to wrap it up: I think you should talk to some 'typical' people in your country before you think about whether a living wage is something to type furiously against. And maybe you should read a little more on what they EU is and isn't instead of yapping how poor people are here in Europe.

[ByzantinePowerGame]

taking into account that most Americans need to work two or even three jobs just to scratch at a living. What you're basically asking is this:

https://www.census.gov/library/stori...n-one-job.html


Even though the majority of workers held a single job in 2013, 8.3% of workers had more than one job — and most held both jobs for the entire year.


If 8.3% now covers "most" then it seems the education system is in dire trouble.

Of the 8.3% who held more than one job, 6.9% of that 8.3% held three jobs.

What this means is 8.3% of the USA has more than one job, with 0.5727% of the population having three jobs. Less than 1 in 10 Americans work more than one job, and about 1 in 150 work three jobs.

[Kritias]

https://www.census.gov/library/stori...n-one-job.html


Even though the majority of workers held a single job in 2013, 8.3% of workers had more than one job — and most held both jobs for the entire year.


If 8.3% now covers "most" then it seems the education system is in dire trouble.

Of the 8.3% who held more than one job, 6.9% of that 8.3% held three jobs.

What this means is 8.3% of the USA has more than one job, with 0.5727% of the population having three jobs. Less than 1 in 10 Americans work more than one job, and about 1 in 150 work three jobs.

You forget (conveniently) the 36% of workers involved in the gig economy (multiple employers), on top of the multiple job-holders. And around 2 million workers earning less than the minimum wage. And around 38 million who are earning less or equal to 25.000$, which is the poverty line for a family of 4 in the US. Adding all these together makes "most" ie the majority of the working people in America, which in their totality number around 150-155 million people. Just for reference, the median income in the US is just 31.133 dollars (2019), just six grand above the poverty line. That's without even calculating how much debt the general population is servicing, either to healthcare providers, education debt, payday loans etc further evaporating their true spending capacity. These people can and/or do face some serious issues regarding their financial stability. Do you deny this or not?

Thank you for not continuing your diversion with the EU. Waiting for your reply.

[ByzantinePowerGame]

You forget (conveniently) the 36% of workers involved in the gig economy (multiple employers), on top of the multiple job-holders. And around 2 million workers earning less than the minimum wage. And around 38 million who are earning less or equal to 25.000$, which is the poverty line for a family of 4 in the US. Adding all these together makes "most" ie the majority of the working people in America, which in their totality number around 150-155 million people. Just for reference, the median income in the US is just 31.133 dollars (2019), just six grand above the poverty line. That's without even calculating how much debt the general population is servicing, either to healthcare providers, education debt, payday loans etc further evaporating their true spending capacity. These people can and/or do face some serious issues regarding their financial stability. Do you deny this or not?

Thank you for not continuing your diversion with the EU. Waiting for your reply.

If you're poor you shouldn't have education related debt, it means one of several things happened. It most likely means you went to a high-style university and got a useless degree that didn't get you a decent job, this means you lack foresight, wisdom, knowledge and discernment. It may mean a few other things, such as you were hit by a recession and lacked the resilience or presence of mind to roll with it and make a job happen or create your own job.

I paid off $100,000 in student loan debt within 12 months of becoming a licensed attorney, it took a colossal amount of work but I got it done.


If you maintain a healthy and fit lifestyle your medical costs will be extremely minimal. I have very empathy but little sympathy when it comes to those who eat themselves into obesity, smoke themselves into cancer, asthma, hypertension, or who contaminate their bodies with venereal diseases and abuse from drugs. The cost of trying to make them whole again, of repairing them, or maintaining them from crumbling should not be apportioned throughout society.

I am fundamentally okay with allowing people to live the consequences of their choices. I get this will rub some people as "unfair" but these are usually the sort of people who believe in being allowed to live a lifestyle that involves cost-shifting the consequences of choices onto the shoulders of others.

I shouldn't have to pay the gambling losses of another. If somebody rolled the dice too many times at Vegas and blew their rent money for the next six months that isn't my fault and it isn't my problem.

I studied for thousands of hours to get where I am, I applied myself diligently, I sacrificed, I avoided parties, I refrained from reckless living, I really don't have sympathy for those who adopted the mantra of "eat, drink, be merry" and who lived a riotous life of drunken hookups and are now entering middle-age with crippling health problems.


The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long. You have a set number of beats for your heart. Some people have chosen to have those beats overwhelmingly in the first 30-45 years of their life which wind up being the only 30-45 years of their life. I am trying to pace myself so I can reasonably hope to have 80-100 years of solid health.

It may shock you but your life is not my responsibility and the consequences of your choices are not my responsibility.

I am responsible for myself and the lives of those I chose to create and help bring into physical existence.


Many people are living in poverty because of choices they made. My first romantic encounter was at age 21 after I graduated from university. Ask the typical poor person when their first encounter was. I know poor people who lost their virginity at 14-15, some who had pregnancies or got a girl pregnant at 15-16. They made choices, they chose poorly, it isn't my fault and it shouldn't be my problem. While they were buried in the genitalia of others, I was buried in my books, studies, hobbies, physical fitness routines, and cultural pursuits.

Every person is dealt a certain hand in life, things that are outside of their control based on what sort of life they are born into. Some of us like the entire hand, some of us hate the entire hand, some of us want to keep a few cards and trade for a few better cards, some of us are dealt a crap hand and we play it the best we can and make it into a winning situation, others are dealt a crap hand and they make life choices that see them cemented into being stuck with a crap hand for life. I am not responsible for those who chose to throw away a winning hand or who chose to cement themselves into being stuck forever with a losing hand.


My life situation is the result of a handful of people who helped me along and my constant diligent application of myself to a viable and workable plan of self-advancement.


I just met up with a friend from high school and we were going over what happened to all of the popular and cool kids from our graduating class. It is coming up on 20 years and he and I were talking about how virtually every single popular kid from high school wound up falling flat, is a total loser, the ones in and out of jail, working trivial retail jobs, not working and doing small-time drug deals. A handful of people from our graduating class became attorneys, enlisted in the military, became officers in the military, became engineers, a few became accountants or doctors, but most of the popular kids, the preppy types, the jocks, the kids who were sexually active and "cool" hung around the area, stayed with their parents, and achieved a whole lot of nothing and many don't even have a basic job above part-time minimum wage.

I commented, "I see a number of the cool kids around town, they wash my car and hand me my take-out at this or that sandwich shop, some of them contact me and try to hit me up for free legal advice."


Everybody makes a choice. Some of us know by age 12-13 that we want more out of life than being "cool" for the next 4-6 years of school and that we have ambitions in life, and we put ourselves on a path to achieve said ambitions. Some of us decide at 12-13 that "being cool in high school" is the most important thing in life and we behave accordingly. Time ultimately reveals the validity of one's choices.


I'm fundamentally not sorry that a lot of people are losers who consistently made crappy decisions in life.


I occasionally speak to despondent young people and I give them the same general advice. When you're 16-18 in high school or 18-21 in university and you're not in the right clique, you're lame, you're not cool, you're not with the "in crowd" don't worry and absolutely do not engage in self-harm over the situation. In a few years you'll have graduated and moved on and none of those people will really ever matter again and who was cool, hip, or with it, won't count for anything the day after graduation. If you're successful you'll encounter those cool people again, most of them will be working menial jobs and doing low-level service work for you, while you enjoy your success and continue building more success. Such is life.

[ByzantinePowerGame]

You disregard around 38.1 million people in your country who make less than 25.000$ a year, and around 10% of the workforce who have to work multiple jobs. Add to this figure another 6-14% who were unemployed last year (estimates vary). There's also another 36% of workers who are involved in the Gig Economy, and are therefore financially unstable throughout the year. All these people are scrapping a living, which is why we're having this discussion in the first place.

Since you're a professional in a legal occupation (where according to the statistics, just around 2 million workers are employed), you're reasonably well-off. Kudos to you. You're making a mental fallacy to assume that since you and other professionals whom you come into contact with say all is alright that this is the case for the country in general. All may be well in your bubble but statistics show a very harrowing experience for the average American worker.

Europeans generally don't talk about how much they are making because it's considered rude. For protestants it is also almost a sin to talk about money, something to do with arrogance. I can tell you there's individuals who sit on accumulated wealth of 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 years.

In Europe people earn less in salaries yet they do not have the killer expenses you guys have; pharmaceuticals charge reasonable prices for their products, a trip to the hospital is generally free (except some cases like the Netherlands etc), education doesn't cripple you in debt. As a professional you can live a very rewarding life without having to work more than 40 hours a week. You might think you're so far better off, but I can tell you than in Europe we're very sorry for what you are going through. People are flabbergasted at the sheer brutality of working in the US.

Here in Greece, with massive debts and extreme austerity policies, we can still study and we can still go to the hospital just from our taxes; no extra costs involved. And during the pandemic we're fortunate that only 6.543 people have died of Covid-19 even with our under-staffed, under-funded hospitals. With massive unemployment of 15%, the crushing majority of Greeks work just one job; not because there's none to be found, but because you can actually live reasonably well with just one. Reason being, again, most of the things that you would never financially recover from, like contracting Covid-19 and staying in a hospital for treatment, is paid for from our taxes. Along with Portugal and the ascension states in the Balkans and the Baltic, Greeks work more than the average European; it's still around 40 hours a week (38.6).

The problems Greece has are mainly political; primary among them corrupt governments, to which apropos, your country has played a huge role in.

So, to wrap it up: I think you should talk to some 'typical' people in your country before you think about whether a living wage is something to type furiously against. And maybe you should read a little more on what they EU is and isn't instead of yapping how poor people are here in Europe.

The problem with the EU is that there are not enough Germans to go around. Germans can only accommodate so much dead weight and there is only so much surplus productivity among the German people, at some point the Germans can no longer carry the dead weight of the Italians, Greeks, Spanish, and Portuguese, to say nothing of the French, Romanians, and Bulgarians.

What the Greeks calls "austerity" most reasonable people would call "the party has ended and the bill has finally come due."

The Greeks wanted to live on an endless supply of borrowed money and now that absurd public pensions and freebies are running out and ending, they are engaging in seemingly endless riots.


Housing in the USA vs, say, Netherlands, Germany, France, or [no longer in the EU as of recent changes] the UK, is considerably cheaper.

The sort of house I have would cost at least $800,000 in the Paris metro area and probably $1,000,000 in Switzerland.


Health costs are expensive to those without insurance and for those unable to live a clean and healthy lifestyle.

[Kritias]

If you're poor you shouldn't have education related debt, it means one of several things happened. It most likely means you went to a high-style university and got a useless degree that didn't get you a decent job, this means you lack foresight, wisdom, knowledge and discernment. It may mean a few other things, such as you were hit by a recession and lacked the resilience or presence of mind to roll with it and make a job happen or create your own job.

I paid off $100,000 in student loan debt within 12 months of becoming a licensed attorney, it took a colossal amount of work but I got it done.


If you maintain a healthy and fit lifestyle your medical costs will be extremely minimal. I have very empathy but little sympathy when it comes to those who eat themselves into obesity, smoke themselves into cancer, asthma, hypertension, or who contaminate their bodies with venereal diseases and abuse from drugs. The cost of trying to make them whole again, of repairing them, or maintaining them from crumbling should not be apportioned throughout society.

I am fundamentally okay with allowing people to live the consequences of their choices. I get this will rub some people as "unfair" but these are usually the sort of people who believe in being allowed to live a lifestyle that involves cost-shifting the consequences of choices onto the shoulders of others.

I shouldn't have to pay the gambling losses of another. If somebody rolled the dice too many times at Vegas and blew their rent money for the next six months that isn't my fault and it isn't my problem.

I studied for thousands of hours to get where I am, I applied myself diligently, I sacrificed, I avoided parties, I refrained from reckless living, I really don't have sympathy for those who adopted the mantra of "eat, drink, be merry" and who lived a riotous life of drunken hookups and are now entering middle-age with crippling health problems.


The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long. You have a set number of beats for your heart. Some people have chosen to have those beats overwhelmingly in the first 30-45 years of their life which wind up being the only 30-45 years of their life. I am trying to pace myself so I can reasonably hope to have 80-100 years of solid health.

It may shock you but your life is not my responsibility and the consequences of your choices are not my responsibility.

I am responsible for myself and the lives of those I chose to create and help bring into physical existence.


Many people are living in poverty because of choices they made. My first romantic encounter was at age 21 after I graduated from university. Ask the typical poor person when their first encounter was. I know poor people who lost their virginity at 14-15, some who had pregnancies or got a girl pregnant at 15-16. They made choices, they chose poorly, it isn't my fault and it shouldn't be my problem. While they were buried in the genitalia of others, I was buried in my books, studies, hobbies, physical fitness routines, and cultural pursuits.

Every person is dealt a certain hand in life, things that are outside of their control based on what sort of life they are born into. Some of us like the entire hand, some of us hate the entire hand, some of us want to keep a few cards and trade for a few better cards, some of us are dealt a crap hand and we play it the best we can and make it into a winning situation, others are dealt a crap hand and they make life choices that see them cemented into being stuck with a crap hand for life. I am not responsible for those who chose to throw away a winning hand or who chose to cement themselves into being stuck forever with a losing hand.


My life situation is the result of a handful of people who helped me along and my constant diligent application of myself to a viable and workable plan of self-advancement.


I just met up with a friend from high school and we were going over what happened to all of the popular and cool kids from our graduating class. It is coming up on 20 years and he and I were talking about how virtually every single popular kid from high school wound up falling flat, is a total loser, the ones in and out of jail, working trivial retail jobs, not working and doing small-time drug deals. A handful of people from our graduating class became attorneys, enlisted in the military, became officers in the military, became engineers, a few became accountants or doctors, but most of the popular kids, the preppy types, the jocks, the kids who were sexually active and "cool" hung around the area, stayed with their parents, and achieved a whole lot of nothing and many don't even have a basic job above part-time minimum wage.

I commented, "I see a number of the cool kids around town, they wash my car and hand me my take-out at this or that sandwich shop, some of them contact me and try to hit me up for free legal advice."


Everybody makes a choice. Some of us know by age 12-13 that we want more out of life than being "cool" for the next 4-6 years of school and that we have ambitions in life, and we put ourselves on a path to achieve said ambitions. Some of us decide at 12-13 that "being cool in high school" is the most important thing in life and we behave accordingly. Time ultimately reveals the validity of one's choices.


I'm fundamentally not sorry that a lot of people are losers who consistently made crappy decisions in life.


I occasionally speak to despondent young people and I give them the same general advice. When you're 16-18 in high school or 18-21 in university and you're not in the right clique, you're lame, you're not cool, you're not with the "in crowd" don't worry and absolutely do not engage in self-harm over the situation. In a few years you'll have graduated and moved on and none of those people will really ever matter again and who was cool, hip, or with it, won't count for anything the day after graduation. If you're successful you'll encounter those cool people again, most of them will be working menial jobs and doing low-level service work for you, while you enjoy your success and continue building more success. Such is life.

Yes, but what has any of this to do with passing a law to readjust the minimum wage? I get that you worked very hard and you paid off your debts, and good for you. But do you think that menial work, let's say working at a fast food company, should be paid below the minimum wage, or at a rate you can't really afford anything because you're just not making enough to catch up with the gallop of prices?

Also there's biological factors that can cause serious illness despite your best efforts. People get cancer at various points in their life because they are genetically pre-disposed. There's nothing they can do about it. Let's not calculate the possibility of being in an accident of any kind which could wreck your body in a second. Should that cripple you financially?

From what I understand by what you're writing, you try to justify you working so hard to come to your position. But raising the minimum wage does not knock you off from your position? So, why are you against it?

[ByzantinePowerGame]

Yes, but what has any of this to do with passing a law to readjust the minimum wage? I get that you worked very hard and you paid off your debts, and good for you. But do you think that menial work, let's say working at a fast food company, should be paid below the minimum wage, or at a rate you can't really afford anything because you're just not making enough to catch up with the gallop of prices?

Also there's biological factors that can cause serious illness despite your best efforts. People get cancer at various points in their life because they are genetically pre-disposed. There's nothing they can do about it. Let's not calculate the possibility of being in an accident of any kind which could wreck your body in a second. Should that cripple you financially?

From what I understand by what you're writing, you try to justify you working so hard to come to your position. But raising the minimum wage does not knock you off from your position? So, why are you against it?

Minimum wage is unethical and I believe it is immoral. I also believe it is bad economically.

1- It requires force and coercion to compel employers/businesses to pay an artificially set [and arbitrarily determined] wage that is set based on bureaucratic whim.

2- It provides an incentive for mediocrity. "Well I don't really need to study hard and apply myself because I can always push carts for $15 per hour and be sort of okay..."

3- I believe it speeds up the pace of mass automation and will help usher in a new era with a permanently unemployed and UNEMPLOYABLE underclass for whom employment will just be an unattainable dream. We will have a permanent unemployed class of about 50% of people under 25-30 within the next generation. Most people will experience long-term, virtually permanent unemployment beginning in their 20s and possibly continuing for life. They will be a reliable category of voters for perpetually expanding government, tax and spend, tax and spend.

[Gaidin]

Low skills get low wages. I spent four years in university to earn a bachelor of science, I had to test to get into university, I then had to take tests for law school, get into law school, pass, and then I took and passed two bar exams for two different states, back to back, passing on my first try, with scores in the top 5% of all test-takers on those bar exams. I had seven years of post-secondary education [not counting courses that didn't result in degrees or semesters I spent studying foreign languages for my own edification] to get where I am, and my being excellent at what I do is a major competent of how I resolve in 1 day something that had been scheduled for 3 days, and how I resolve in 3 days something that had been scheduled for 5 days.

I am not interested in your degree. It has literally as little bearing on minimum wage as my degree does. Is law a "low skill"? Why are you comparing it to minimum wage? What bearing does your degree have on this discussion at all(except to just brag that you make six figures of salary and get a month and a half of vacation a year)? Low skills get a wage. Should they survive? Pay them a living wage. Or not.

Speak up to which now. This is about labor. What is labor worth. I am interested in your opinion on this now.

Your hilariously long post is literally saying that you have a bunch of degrees or qualifications and therefore a guy that may be stuck right now making burgers at McDonalds should live in abject poverty. That is...not just bad ethics. That is also bad morals.

Give me a better argument.

[Kritias]

Minimum wage is unethical and I believe it is immoral. I also believe it is bad economically.

1- It requires force and coercion to compel employers/businesses to pay an artificially set [and arbitrarily determined] wage that is set based on bureaucratic whim.

2- It provides an incentive for mediocrity. "Well I don't really need to study hard and apply myself because I can always push carts for $15 per hour and be sort of okay..."

3- I believe it speeds up the pace of mass automation and will help usher in a new era with a permanently unemployed and UNEMPLOYABLE underclass for whom employment will just be an unattainable dream. We will have a permanent unemployed class of about 50% of people under 25-30 within the next generation. Most people will experience long-term, virtually permanent unemployment beginning in their 20s and possibly continuing for life. They will be a reliable category of voters for perpetually expanding government, tax and spend, tax and spend.

I have a couple of observations to make about your points until now. Let's go.

1 - Despite the fact that words like 'employment', 'work', and 'profession' are used interchangeably in everyday speech they have real differences. If it can currently be done without wearing trousers in the safety of your home, it's not work. It's either employment or you are practicing a profession. The difference might be minute to you but it separates essential workers from the rest. Those menial jobs you're dishing over your last posts; if they weren't being done for less than a month, civilization itself would collapse. The pandemic should have taught you that by now. Show some respect.

2 - You connect medical bills to bad decisions. If you ever had a real work, you'd know that when you start working you're basically destroying your own body in the process. Backs, hands, legs, internal organs are all gradually grinded down when you're doing any menial work, which means you're wracking up medical bills in your future. An example: say you work in the coal industry. A thing people don't know about coal is that when you're around it, you swallow it when you talk. Swallow enough of it and your future rhymes with intestinal or abdominal cancer. Similar things happen to any kind of work where you come into contact with specific substances every day.

3 - You think work orientation is a choice; it's not. Any economy requires a sizable workforce to do the menial tasks. People will always be pushed to do these tasks. Even when natives don't want to do them, they import immigrants to do them. When people find themselves in these types of work, it's because of a combination of the political economy (how the economy is structured), availability of work, beliefs about work, communal ties etc. An easy book to read exactly why people do a certain type of job is the excellent 'Coal is our Lives'.

4 - What is also bad economically is to have a sizable population that works full-time but cannot use the money it earns to buy the products they produce. The fall of demand for products always leads to crises. This particular type of crisis is the so-called crisis of over-production or a doom spiral: this happens when you create more products than your available population has the ability to purchase. This leads to a drop in prices, which leads employers to fire workers to make up for the lost profit, which causes less purchasing etc etc etc

5 - Wages in the US have only marginally improved for 40 years now, yet automation keeps on going and going. Capitalists will always choose to pay less if they can. It's the nature of capitalism. It doesn't mean that it's good for society.

So, to wrap up: You seem very dismissing of the people who basically built everything that's around you right now. Can you prove anything of what you say? The incentive to mediocrity argument, for example? Because it just sounds to me that you really like giving advice to the poor about their bad decisions right about now...

[Sir Adrian]

Most likely you are looking at the result of other variables.

Uh no. The prices increases were the direct result of minimum wage or pension point value increases. It got so bad during the 2015 minimum wage raise the government had to pass an emergency ordinance fining companies with 90% of the price difference if they increased prices for the vat readjustment or the next raise. See my previous post with a bunch of examples. I mean there were supermarkets using "the government increased minimum wage but we won't increase prices, unlike our competitor" as a marketing slogan ffs.

Market research is inconsequential. The results will always say what the person sponsoring the research wants them to say.

[PointOfViewGun]

Uh no. The prices increases were the direct result of minimum wage or pension point value increases. It got so bad during the 2015 minimum wage raise the government had to pass an emergency ordinance fining companies with 90% of the price difference if they increased prices for the vat readjustment or the next raise. See my previous post with a bunch of examples. I mean there were supermarkets using "the government increased minimum wage but we won't increase prices, unlike our competitor" as a marketing slogan ffs.

Market research is inconsequential. The results will always say what the person sponsoring the research wants them to say.

Your previous post failed to generate the reality you wanted to create. A very large (62%) increase in minimum wage created a small inflation (8.5%) as well as a small increase in consumer price index (10%) based on your own data source.

[ByzantinePowerGame]

I have a couple of observations to make about your points until now. Let's go.

1 - Despite the fact that words like 'employment', 'work', and 'profession' are used interchangeably in everyday speech they have real differences. If it can currently be done without wearing trousers in the safety of your home, it's not work. It's either employment or you are practicing a profession. The difference might be minute to you but it separates essential workers from the rest. Those menial jobs you're dishing over your last posts; if they weren't being done for less than a month, civilization itself would collapse. The pandemic should have taught you that by now. Show some respect.

2 - You connect medical bills to bad decisions. If you ever had a real work, you'd know that when you start working you're basically destroying your own body in the process. Backs, hands, legs, internal organs are all gradually grinded down when you're doing any menial work, which means you're wracking up medical bills in your future. An example: say you work in the coal industry. A thing people don't know about coal is that when you're around it, you swallow it when you talk. Swallow enough of it and your future rhymes with intestinal or abdominal cancer. Similar things happen to any kind of work where you come into contact with specific substances every day.

3 - You think work orientation is a choice; it's not. Any economy requires a sizable workforce to do the menial tasks. People will always be pushed to do these tasks. Even when natives don't want to do them, they import immigrants to do them. When people find themselves in these types of work, it's because of a combination of the political economy (how the economy is structured), availability of work, beliefs about work, communal ties etc. An easy book to read exactly why people do a certain type of job is the excellent 'Coal is our Lives'.

4 - What is also bad economically is to have a sizable population that works full-time but cannot use the money it earns to buy the products they produce. The fall of demand for products always leads to crises. This particular type of crisis is the so-called crisis of over-production or a doom spiral: this happens when you create more products than your available population has the ability to purchase. This leads to a drop in prices, which leads employers to fire workers to make up for the lost profit, which causes less purchasing etc etc etc

5 - Wages in the US have only marginally improved for 40 years now, yet automation keeps on going and going. Capitalists will always choose to pay less if they can. It's the nature of capitalism. It doesn't mean that it's good for society.

So, to wrap up: You seem very dismissing of the people who basically built everything that's around you right now. Can you prove anything of what you say? The incentive to mediocrity argument, for example? Because it just sounds to me that you really like giving advice to the poor about their bad decisions right about now...

I began life with a fairly crappy hand in terms of family situation. There is where you start and where you want to get. Moaning, griping, claiming other people owe you something because you have a crappy rough childhood, were born into a dysfunctional abusive broken home situation, you have this and that going wrong, none of that counts for anything, it doesn't mean anything, and it doesn't do anything productive for you. Once you shrug off the victim mentality and dispense with the notion that you are a helpless victim and other people owe you stuff, you become free to realize your autonomy and you begin to understand "ah ha! I have the power to make things happen!"

I had intelligence, discipline, drive, ambition, and a handful of people willing to give me guidance and support, but I had to work very hard to show I was worthy of their support and further guidance.

I have done dangerous, dirty, unrewarding, crappy menial jobs, physically demanding jobs, and just downright crappy jobs. I've done radiological cleanup which people don't usually stand in line to do.

All the while I was always focused on "I can do better, I am going to move on to something" and I always had the presence of mind to look to make an opportunity so I could move on, move up, and move forward in life towards my goals.

Most people just play it safe, they fall into a familiar routine, they would rather "safely" make $3,000 per month as an office assistant in Rome than apply themselves diligently and have a realistic chance at landing in the USA to make $125,000 per year doing something in line with their degree.


I have encountered a lot of miserable young Europeans who are working jobs throughout the EU that are way below their degree skill-set and they are content to have a semi-guaranteed subsistence level existence as opposed to taking a say 70% chance of success in the USA with a 30% chance of failing miserably and having to start over from square one.

People who play it safe may get by and get along but they never get ahead and they never move up.

Every single instance I had the opportunity to fall into the trap of thinking, "I ought to just play it safe and keep this job and be content with this wage will provide me a bare minimum materially okay and comfortable existence" I said, "no" because I knew, "I want more and I am capable of so much more" and then I went out and I advanced myself further down the road I wanted to be on.


I think most minimum wage workers are content to be little more than minimum wage workers.

I know people who have worked retail in the same store for 20 years and they are still cashiers. There is no way I would be a cashier for more than 2-3 years. Within 2-3 years I would a shift supervisor, 2-3 years after that I would be an assistant manager, within 10 years I would be the store manager, and within 15-18 years I would be a district/regional manager.


Stagnation is unacceptable. Just treading water and just staying afloat isn't enough. It is up or out, sink or swim.

I cannot imagine being in an organization for 20 years and not being close to the top or at least in the middle bordering on the top. Some people are just content to pick-up roadkill or work a cash register for 20 years. I don't think they should be given artificially higher wages because you think their employer should pay them more despite their being in the same position and with the same skill-set as when they began.

Some people are just content to live with their parents, or have roommates, have minimal responsibilities, make trivially low amounts of money, pocket $1500 per month in their paycheck, combine with with $200-$400 in food-stamps and other public assistance, and live okay with a roommate or with their parents, and they have decent disposable income to buy video games and go out around town.

Everybody ultimately gets the life they want and are willing to make happen.

[Vanoi]

I know people who have worked retail in the same store for 20 years and they are still cashiers. There is no way I would be a cashier for more than 2-3 years. Within 2-3 years I would a shift supervisor, 2-3 years after that I would be an assistant manager, within 10 years I would be the store manager, and within 15-18 years I would be a district/regional manager.

That's not how retail works at all. There's no guarantee that in 2-3 years that you'd be a shift supervisor especially if someone already takes or has the position before you. Hell going from cashier to shift supervisor is a big leap. You'd likely get promoted to a lower position before you get to shift supervisor.


Rest of your post is just trash. It reeks of the same sayings and advice rich people give all the time. "I was poor once so I know exactly what it's like to be in your position." Or my favorite " You gotta pull yourself up by the bootstraps and work harder"

It's the same out of touch nonsense Boomers and rich people peddle all time. I've heard it all of my life and I'm sure I'll hear it again.

[ByzantinePowerGame]

That's not how retail works at all. There's no guarantee that in 2-3 years that you'd be a shift supervisor especially if someone already takes or has the position before you. Hell going from cashier to shift supervisor is a big leap. You'd likely get promoted to a lower position before you get to shift supervisor.


Rest of your post is just trash. It reeks of the same sayings and advice rich people give all the time. "I was poor once so I know exactly what it's like to be in your position." Or my favorite " You gotta pull yourself up by the bootstraps and work harder"

It's the same out of touch nonsense Boomers and rich people peddle all time. I've heard it all of my life and I'm sure I'll hear it again.

Hard work is for suckers. Hard work gets you tired, broken down, beaten up, worn up, used up, washed out.

A ditch-digger works hard, it is just nobody cares because he has no skills other than digging ditches.

A professor friend told me about a classmate back in his university days who spun his wheels studying 8 hours per evening to try to do well in calculus and he wound up failing and proclaiming, "hard work doesn't guarantee success."

You need a coherent and realistic plan with the skills and the mindset to achieve the plan. It may entail demanding physically hard work, it may not, most likely it won't entail physically hard work.


Telling somebody to "work hard" is rather bland and cliche.

Work diligently, work wisely, pace yourself, and realize life is a marathon not a 300 meter dash.


If you want to write my post off as trash it is probably because it hits close to home and you take it as a personal indictment and it is easier to blame people such as me, or elusive uninvolved "rich people" or "boomers" for your own failings and shortcomings.