Susan's Place Transgender Resources

what are your thoughts?
John Stossel - Real World Effects Of Minimum Wage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0xVojIYA-o#)

My first job was working in a pizza joint making minimum wage while I was still a college student. Sometimes I use to work at a grocery store during the summer unloading trucks and stocking shelves. Being around pizzas and grinders all the time makes one not a pizza or grinder person. It tools me years before I finally got back into pizza. I used to come home from work full of sweat from working near the hot pizza oven, and smelling like pizza dough. Those were fun days....NOT! The stupid things one will do when young just to have some spare money to buy gas and go out driving or doing something stupid.

Yay, grinders!

Apart from some maintenance and repair jobs I held that paid better as summer jobs after high school, I worked as news director and production manager for a small radio station, a summer job that turned into that acting position when the formally trained guy who held the job before I did got fired for drug use, or maybe he got fired because the station manager knew my self-esteem and desperation was profound enough that he could get me for minimum wage, rather than what he was paying the guy who'd gone through college to train in broadcast journalism?

My take is that industry and employers will take every advantage and wedge they can find to reduce costs, even if the net result guts the economy. Henry Ford "overpaid" his workforce for a reason, but somehow, at least in the US, people have forgotten how to do math, and what the inherent advantages are of industrial production jobs versus service sector jobs, in terms of raising material wealth.  Granted, it's far more complex than that, but politics rarely is... it might be wise to explore how much and where those who oppose a nominal bump in the min. wage are spending their money directed at opposing this.

Quote from: Elspeth on February 14, 2013, 08:46:10 AM

My take is that industry and employers will take every advantage and wedge they can find to reduce costs, even if the net result guts the economy.

I don't agree with this at all. Let me offer an example. I had 2 open job postings at my company for software architects. Both jobs paid between $100-$120k per year based on experience. Do you want to know how many people applied for the jobs???? Zero. The jobs went unfilled for over a year and I was desperate to get the work done, so I had no choices left. I had to bring in people from India to do the jobs. I was charged $220/hour by an indian consulting firm to fill these jobs. If I had employees I could offer them generous salaries, bonuses, stocks for that kind of money, but I can't find any. Guess who gets to pay the costs of those $220 workers, you the customers in the prices you pay for medical services. So who gets the experience and knowledge,an American worker? No, I couldn't find one. The indian guys had no competition from the US. Who is being hurt more by their own policies now? American workers or the government? The government loves the fact that the Indian guys get to pay social security taxes and income tax and Medicare tax and YET they themselves will never be able to benefit from what they paid into it. The American people get screwed over because no one will be able to have this job nor will they ever now. I was even willing to find a good developer I could train and mentor to become an architect, and you know what I get? More Indians applying for the jobs. How much more generous do you expect employers to become?

People really need to see what the problem looks like from the management side. Our society is literally insane, high paying jobs keep ratcheting up more and more and yet go unfilled. Our society is upside and backwards and that old line of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer is going to be seen in the next decade. We printed up trillions in funny money to get ourselves out of debt in the last financial crisis and when gas gets up to $10/gallon then that minimum wage job isn't going to cut it anymore and 50 cent and 1 dollar increases won't work anymore. I'll be just fine, my company will throw me another 50-60k per year and then I won't care if the price has goes up to $15/gallon. In 10 years $100k jobs will be paying $300k to keep up with inflation.

At my company we just did a "retraining" exercise by giving older employees the opportunity to work with newer technologies and become proficient. Some of them couldn't even handle basic navigation on an iPad, an iPad for goodness sakes! Of the 5 people that we retrained 1 turned out to be a definite keeper and the others had skills that were so obsolete that's we had to cut them. I literally had no choice but to hire young college kids, which of course makes things look like age discrimination. I know a few people who have had their jobs and livelihood eliminated because they only concentrated on the job and never looked at which way the winds were blowing.i have worked as a manager for quite a number of years now and have had employees I warned about not keeping the skills refreshed. I can't make them go and do something. I can offer it, offer to pay for it, but if they say no, then I can't do anything.

Sometimes it's really frustrating trying to hire and find good people. In my IT world I have just about given up all hope that I will ever hire an American in the remainder of my life.

Quote from: Zumbagirl on February 14, 2013, 10:05:13 AM
I don't agree with this at all. Let me offer an example. I had 2 open job postings at my company for software architects. Both jobs paid between $100-$120k per year based on experience. Do you want to know how many people applied for the jobs???? Zero. The jobs went unfilled for over a year and I was desperate to get the work done, so I had no choices left. I had to bring in people from India to do the jobs. I was charged $220/hour by an indian consulting firm to fill these jobs. If I had employees I could offer them generous salaries, bonuses, stocks for that kind of money, but I can't find any.

I believe we are talking apples and oranges. Your example is one where a very specific, hard-to-find skill set is needed, and can't be replaced by "faking it." There are jobs like that, and a shortage of workers qualified to fill those positions. I was not referring to jobs where the demand for such workers far exceeds the available supply.

Minimum wage jobs, by definition, are ones that can be filled by practically any breathing body that's capable of showing up on time and staying in place for the allotted hours.

I don't see how jobs that require some skills than many people are incapable of developing is relevant to the macroeconomic case of creating a minimum wage structure and financial system that is not rooted in conditions likely to lead to virtual serfdom for a fairly large subset of the population.

Is it good to develop marketable skills and skills that are in potentially high demand? Yes. But there are many skills and talents that are in far greater supply than there is demand, and in those, without some social artifice,  many people will wind up earning less than it takes to cover costs, and the long-term impact on the economy seems to me self-evident. But it's also a complex issue, and not one I have time or desire to explore in detail, at least not in the setting of a casual discussion forum like this one, especially given how iffy economic theory and research has been for many decades. 

I was also considered an economic analyst of sorts for the US government, not long after that radio job, and there I was being paid the equivalent of an E-5 salary (though I also had full room and board, and benefits that went along with enlistment at that time). What I didn't have was any really formal training in the subject, but I was a quick study, and a fairly careful reader, and my bull->-bleeped-<- sounded very convincing, or at least that's what I took away from some of the glowing notes I got from supervisors and consumers of my reports at the time.

By the way, to affirm your insights about tech, programming and staffing problems, Dick B, the guy who I keep talking about as a lousy lover, was, at one point, a Cobol programmer. He now does something in insurance.

And he comes to me whenever he has a computer problem, and I find his limited grasp of current tech, languages and scripting tools, etc., just a bit mind-blowing -- also a reason I'm glad I turned down the chance in high school to take a formal Cobol class after I'd run out of math and science courses in the local curriculum.

You don't happen to have any job openings do you? I've been tangentially interested in programming since at least college (I was reading programming books in the 60s or early 70s -- at any rate, it was early puberty, before I managed to get steady access to a mainframe -- that happened in the late 70s, at college, some Honeywell thing with lineprinters and modified teletypes as the main input devices).

The downside for me is that I'm almost entirely self-taught, but I have learned a bit about most of the interesting languages from Fortran, to C++ to Python (would like to learn Ruby). Best thing is I'm adaptable and not much worried about labels or job descriptions. With the right supervision, and some contact with someone who could spot the gaps in my competency, I could probably be a pretty good programmer or at least systems analyst, or in any case a positive contributor to a programming team.

I tend to be able to motivate other people to write javascript userscripts and bookmarklets for free to address missing feature issues on various websites from YouTube to Drawception. Maybe if you have a shortage of domestic people we should talk, because above all I do still have a capacity to learn.

That's an open invitation to anyone else too, since I really do need to be doing something to supplement what I got in the divorce settlement, and my time is becoming far more mine to control, now that my kids are approaching college age. I'd like to stay in New Jersey at least until the youngest is out of high school, but that's only another year. After that I would definitely consider relocation, especially if I could manage to be further along in transition by that point, and could start fresh somewhere that no one is likely to assume my gender as other than female-identified. Would prefer a place, though, with a large and progressive lesbian community that doesn't have a grudge against transwomen or transmen.

Quote from: Elspeth on February 14, 2013, 10:41:36 AM
By the way, to affirm your insights about tech, programming and staffing problems, Dick B, the guy who I keep talking about as a lousy lover, was, at one point, a Cobol programmer. He now does something in insurance.

And he comes to me whenever he has a computer problem, and I find his limited grasp of current tech, languages and scripting tools, etc., just a bit mind-blowing -- also a reason I'm glad I turned down the chance in high school to take a formal Cobol class after I'd run out of math and science courses in the local curriculum.

You don't happen to have any job openings do you? I've been tangentially interested in programming since at least college (I was reading programming books in the 60s or early 70s -- at any rate, it was early puberty, before I managed to get steady access to a mainframe -- that happened in the late 70s, at college, some Honeywell thing with lineprinters and modified teletypes as the main input devices).

The downside for me is that I'm almost entirely self-taught, but I have learned a bit about most of the interesting languages from Fortran, to C++ to Python (would like to learn Ruby). Best thing is I'm adaptable and not much worried about labels or job descriptions. With the right supervision, and some contact with someone who could spot the gaps in my competency, I could probably be a pretty good programmer or at least systems analyst, or in any case a positive contributor to a programming team.

I tend to be able to motivate other people to write javascript userscripts and bookmarklets for free to address missing feature issues on various websites from YouTube to Drawception. Maybe if you have a shortage of domestic people we should talk, because above all I do still have a capacity to learn.

There is a job air coming up in the hartford ct area I believe in April. A lot of paces are trying to staff up. The latest trend in IT today is mobile and "bring your own device" (BYOD). I interview people all the time, from the ones who fill up resumes with keywords which turn out to be duds, to candidates that might prove surprising. When I interview here are the things that I look for in candidates: people who can think for themselves, people who can solve problems or think they way through them, people who can learn. Notice that at no time do I mention technology. Those are not qualifications for java or enterprise developers or even entry level. I am looking for people that are worth investing in, who will then turn around and be productive. It is of course IT after all, so i will be looking for pele who have the know how to create algortihms and solve commob problems in IT. The problem right now that all US workers are facing is increasing competition from now green card holding Indian workers. You might be a good match, but for the kind of money I am paying, I can hire an in Indian guy who will be productive literally from day 1. I would hire someone who is self taught as long as they are willing to learn something new.

There is one other way to break into these companies and that is with consulting work. Find a piece of technology, java, .net, database, enterprise, iOS, android, security, cloud computing, something you can demonstrate a skill in and apply. Take some classes, whatever, to get in. You might have to start off lower, but in this world, if you have what it takes you will rise up fast.nonce you are in, learn something else. In IT a 1 trick pony is pretty much obsolete in no more than 5 years.

One of my IT coworkers lives in NJ and works from home. He has a daughter who recently got her masters in music. She has applied to 200 different symphony orchestras and has not had a single response back, almost all were outright denials. She tried teaching and most schools have decimated their music programs nowadays. So where did that leave her? She's the most over qualified person working at a Michaels arts and crafts store.

The really really sad part are the internships. A few years ago you could hire a bunch of kids and give them some experience and maybe some career guidance. It's so regulated now that the only people who show up for internships are kids coming from very wealthy families. So like I said, the rich will get richer, it's guaranteed now, by law.

can I have the 120k job? I'm a software Dev! LOL


you say employers will take every opportunity to takes advantage of employees... I say gov takes every opportunity to take advantage of Americans.  the big differences? gov uses guilt, fear, class warfare to divide and conquer and in the end we don't have any voice or choice in their decisions.  employment is voluntary... if an employer screws you over you can leave.  if the gov tries to screw us... all we can do is bend over and take it :-)

Quote from: oZma on February 14, 2013, 12:21:22 PM
you say employers will take every opportunity to takes advantage of employees... I say gov takes every opportunity to take advantage of Americans.  the big differences? gov uses guilt, fear, class warfare to divide and conquer and in the end we don't have any voice or choice in their decisions.  employment is voluntary... if an employer screws you over you can leave.  if the gov tries to screw us... all we can do is bend over and take it :-)

Government is another institution (and a monopoly or very nearly one in most States) that uses fear and other forms of coercion to transfer power from the many to the few... again, in most cases.

Can't both conditions be true? Power or the illusion of power is a narcotic. People will use many different strategies to get it, expand it, hold onto it.  A more stable society may pit one interest against the other, but it seems to me at this point there's a pretty huge imbalance on all sides of this, mainly against the many.

Against government there are passive resistance strategies that can have a real impact. For the last 20 years or so, despite the fact that I could probably have gone in a direction that would have me earning over $200K, had I chosen that, my disgust for US policy has instead led to my choosing to do volunteer work, live in relative poverty, mainly supported by my ex's mandated support payments, nearly all of which are untaxable, since the payments did not qualify as alimony.  People do have choices... they don't always find the ones that fit their conscience all that attractive, though.  You can quit a job, yes, but unless you plan on being homeless, you have to find some source if income from something, and not always something that's entirely consistent with your conscience.

I probably should have avoided this though, as I see these issues and problems as fairly complex, multivariant equations that no one can usually arrive at an agreement on, even when it comes to the structure of the equation. I find most such conversations, therefore, pointless and boring, unless we turned it into a game development project that someone would pay me for, and pay me well, at this point, considering my own contradictory desires and priorities.

Quote from: Elspeth on February 14, 2013, 12:56:43 PM
Government is another institution (and a monopoly or very nearly one in most States) that uses fear and other forms of coercion to transfer power from the many to the few... again, in most cases.

Can't both conditions be true? Power or the illusion of power is a narcotic. People will use many different strategies to get it, expand it, hold onto it.  A more stable society may pit one interest against the other, but it seems to me at this point there's a pretty huge imbalance on all sides of this, mainly against the many.

I'm not saying both are not true... they are! but employment is voluntary... gov coercion is not

Quote from: oZma on February 14, 2013, 01:00:51 PM
I'm not saying both are not true... they are! but employment is voluntary... gov coercion is not

As long as your definition of voluntary is a fairly loose one, I'd have to agree. But looking at people as populations, I find it hard to defend that particular assumption. With my talents and skill set, I've never found it hard to find decent paying work, (though I also have avoided looking during this latest recesssion, since I still had support payments and other assets to rely on). Others, though, do not necessarily have that luxury or those skills or aptitudes that would give them some degree of autonomy in an essentially bound system.

Quote from: oZma on February 14, 2013, 12:21:22 PM
can I have the 120k job? I'm a software Dev! LOL


you say employers will take every opportunity to takes advantage of employees... I say gov takes every opportunity to take advantage of Americans.  the big differences? gov uses guilt, fear, class warfare to divide and conquer and in the end we don't have any voice or choice in their decisions.  employment is voluntary... if an employer screws you over you can leave.  if the gov tries to screw us... all we can do is bend over and take it :-)

Both positions were on dice and careerbuilder and not a single person applied. Where were you a year ago? I just finished reading an article about raising the minimum wage. The argument is so damn silly. If a big Mac meal is $6 today and the labor is $8 an hour to make it, then it will be $7 soon once wages go up. The $9 an hour job is not going to look so good anymore once the price of everything else goes up along with it, food, gas, phone service, etc. Changes in minimum wages benefit only 1 group of people, labor unions, specifically government based unions. $9 jobs should be starting points for people's lives not the end of the job road. But there will always be a bottom 50% no matter what we do, who will never succeed. What do we do? Even if you could give them free college degrees only a tiny fraction will end up succeeding. Why not just give everyone a free medical degree and $200k per year end everyone would be a doctor?

I have no problem with car makers and laborers getting more money, which will also be a direct result but if anyone thinks the cost of cars is going to go down, that would be a mistake. So now this $9 person now has to borrow more money to own a car, and since it costs more, pay more in insurance and taxes to keep it on the road. How long can we let this spiral go on. Every time you raise the floor an inch, the ceiling goes up a foot. So if the poor guy gets a buck, the rich guy gets 10. There is no way to tax or spend a way out of this problem. Since the $9 person cannot afford a house we can lend them money as a high risk pool so that they are borrowing near 100% with no real ownership for 20 years. Finally when that $9 person turns 65 and the top 5% earners are averaging $500k per year, the that same person will be living in utter squalor.

Quote from: Elspeth on February 14, 2013, 01:09:31 PM
As long as your definition of voluntary is a fairly loose one, I'd have to agree. But looking at people as populations, I find it hard to defend that particular assumption. With my talents and skill set, I've never found it hard to find decent paying work, (though I also have avoided looking during this latest recesssion, since I still had support payments and other assets to rely on). Others, though, do not necessarily have that luxury or those skills or aptitudes that would give them some degree of autonomy in an essentially bound system.

granted... everybody needs a job, in theory right? it's like saying if ALL employers screwed and took advantage and we all needed jobs it would be voluntary yes but we are still being exploited.

but since we have a somewhat free market of jobs, employers fight for us to a certain extent and compete with each other to provide us with nice working conditions and pay :-)

and yes, it's easy for me to say this sitting in an office making a real nice living... because I got a good education... not everyone has my same opportunities I know.  this argument however leads us to education... gov schools, parenting, etc... which is another topic all together and I will start by saying a very ugly one... a very sad one :-(

Quote from: kkut on February 14, 2013, 01:17:35 PM
There's one thing, we can leave ...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/should-you-renounce-your-citizenship-144048875.html (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/should-you-renounce-your-citizenship-144048875.html)

but to be free, to renounce your citizenship, theres is a tax for that LOL... sounds like slavery to me

plus, where do you go? another slave master?  when someone hijacks a plane, do you let them fly it into a building? do you do something about it, or jump? you can always jump LOL

Quote from: Zumbagirl on February 14, 2013, 11:41:08 AM
The really really sad part are the internships. A few years ago you could hire a bunch of kids and give them some experience and maybe some career guidance. It's so regulated now that the only people who show up for internships are kids coming from very wealthy families. So like I said, the rich will get richer, it's guaranteed now, by law.

I couldn't agree with you more. Both my son and daughter have (in my daughter's case, based on her sophomore PSAT is likely to have) an 800 Math SAT score and an intuitive understanding of and active interest in math concepts that is fairly unusual and usually elicits surprise and admiration from those teachers who recognize that as an asset. Some of that is my ex, but some of it is also me.

My son enters Drexel this fall to study 3D animation but he also did well on the calc AP, and I keep hoping, now that he's out of brain-dead secondary schools with programming classes that had very little sense to them -- his last one was mainly grounded in Java (not javascript)) -- but I'm hoping once he's in a better, and more practically-focused program like Drexel's that he will begin to understand and take an interest in the algorithmic side of that area, though for now he's much more interested in things like character design.

I am nearly allergic to self promotion, but I think some of the things you say you're looking for are traits that I have, such as a desire to learn new things and approach problems without prejudice about platforms, tools or a particular language that may be out of vogue within 6 months. I've always been more interested in finding ways to approach a puzzle and solve it, than in which tool or language the execution was done in. Some of the deficit, of course, is that, apart from some volunteer contributions to spotting and analyzing problems with video rendering, and site vulnerabilities at YouTube, as one of Google's volunteer TCs, I have relatively little hands on experience working with an IT team, and a lot of it has been at a distance. However, before children I was managing to make a pretty good income as one of the very early telecommuters -- I was telecommuting with one of the more obscure CP/M machines for the early years of that, but also traveling a lot on various research trips.

On the other hand, if what I've been hearing in reports lately about shifting thinking is true, I do have an understanding of US culture and markets, that tend to translate into design priorities, that might be something many of those Indian coders lack.  Please feel free to IM me if you think of anyone I should try to contact, or have further suggestions. Given my basic competence with general programming principles, I've tended to avoid most classes, because only 5 or 10 percent of want they are teaching is likely to be something I didn't already know, and for a work project, learning that missing percent is going to be something specific to the project itself, more likely than the language or platform or other incidental details. 

I tend to be more shy and cautious than I want to be, of course, given my current, androgynous, but pre-transition state, so I will be looking for someplace where trans identity is less likely to become an issue, which means I'd prefer to look for direct personal contacts, rather than blind job applications.

Quote from: kkut on February 14, 2013, 01:43:33 PM
I agree but if 51% of the population supports flying the plane into the building...

and now we have reached the failure of democracy

Quote from: kkut on February 14, 2013, 01:43:33 PM
I agree but if 51% of the population supports flying the plane into the building, leaving may be one's only option. A lousy option for sure. I'm trying to figure out if people haven't figured out what's planned for this country, or if they're giving this four more years and plan to change direction when it doesn't work.

This country plans? That's commie talk. Part of what at one time was considered the genius of the American system of government, was that it institutionalized stasis... Until something garnered overwhelming support and approached some near consensus, in legislative and executive areas, at least there was rarely much change at all. A lot of that got corrupted, though, with the rise of the national security state, and the executive branch arrogating powers that the legislative and judicial branches were hesitant to oppose, or unable to do, because much of what was done by executive order was justified in near secrecy, with a "national security" blanket as justification and insulation from full  and open public debate and discussion, even if much of what was supposedly secret turned out to be in the open due to strategic and/or whistleblower disclosures.

Frankly, I don't think the country has had much of a direction since Eisenhower warned about this, over 53 years ago.

Quote from: kkut on February 14, 2013, 04:06:13 PM
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
― Alexis de Tocqueville

De Tocqueville never met Edward Bernays. (I used to chat with Bernays' daughter (http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/bernays-anne-fleischman), though).

Going back to the original question about "minimum wage" I find three questions that can be derived from it:

What is the acceptable minimum for a position with low skill requirement? Stocking shelves or fulfilling orders requires very little skill and a certain amount of repetitive labor but keeps business running.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2003/11/art1full.pdf (http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2003/11/art1full.pdf)

How valued is the skill used in the first place? What is the real difference between types of labor?
https://mises.org/daily/5612/The-Value-of-Labor (https://mises.org/daily/5612/The-Value-of-Labor)

If we don't value low skill or labor jobs, as a result of having a position that is valued more, what about those who do choose a job that is less "valued"? Shouldn't they be able to live within a certain means?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/8300471/18-40-an-hour-needed-for-living-wage (http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/8300471/18-40-an-hour-needed-for-living-wage)

@flan

I would argue that nobody can answer your first question as it encompasses an entire country with different kinds of people, different standards of living, different jobs, skills, ages, etc... I can't imagine you could come up with an answer to this... and we don't have to, it's the magic of the market

stocking shelves? if there is a demand for this and a surplus of supply based on the skills required... I would imagine a job like that would pay very little, but if it paid too little, nobody would do it and the wage would increase ~ isn't that beautiful?

how valuable are skills? the market decides... the only fair way... and by market i mean competition :)

should people who choose low skilled jobs be able to make a living? that's a broad and leading question.  if I choose a job that is so low skilled that a machine can do it... should I be able to make a living? should that machine be illegal? should we sacrifice innovation for security?  should we all walk as fast as the slowest person?  do we live by the lowest common denominator? does providing a minimum living wage encourage being low skilled? 

are we forced to take care of and worry about everyone? well yes we are... taxes.

when we are forced to love everyone... love becomes meaningless.

is it my job to plan the lives of those who refuse to plan for themselves? is it anybodies? should it be? i want plans by the many, not by the few.

these questions all lead to education... you tell people you can make a living with no skills, they get no skills and expect a living.  then when society moves forward, their no skill jobs are replaced by machines... who do we blame? do we drag those along who refused to take care of themselves? who refused to better themselves? to what extent? to what extent are people responsible for themselves?

don't legislate, educate!

and I'll argue that the best way to help people is to lead by example! you can't help someone who isn't willing to accept it! think about it this way... you walk around telling people they should be like you because you are successful.  most people will give you the finger.... but if you act confident in yourself and just let people see how successful you are, they might look at you and be like 'damn, she has her stuff together, I want to be like her' and they might get off their butt and help themselves! what message are we sending people when we reward them for not talking responsibility for their own lives? 

this reminds me.. anybody see the movie idiocracy?
Idiocracy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icmRCixQrx8#)

Quote from: kkut on February 14, 2013, 09:01:02 PM
This is very good...

he's so dreamy!
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ft.qkme.me%2F3q2exh.jpg&hash=5f3541b9bced890e01fd705e75f3db9c6d58fe88)

Quote from: Zumbagirl on February 14, 2013, 10:05:13 AM
I had 2 open job postings at my company for software architects. Both jobs paid between $100-$120k per year based on experience. Do you want to know how many people applied for the jobs???? Zero. The jobs went unfilled for over a year...

What do I need to learn? I have a bachelor's degree in information technology, and no professional software experience. I've dabbled in c and java. I pick up new skills quickly, I like solving puzzles, am willing to relocate and wouldn't mind tripling my paycheck.

Just why does any one listen what Fox News says about the minimum wage.   The Right wing which Fox News is a mouth piece for has been against the idea of a government imposed minimum wage since the days of Adam and Eve.   

Minimum wage today should be today be $20.00 and hour to have the same buying power as it did when it was $2.00 an hour in the 1970s.

The only thing that would make the a Federal minimum wage of $10.00 irrelevant would be if every one who worked for an hourly wage was paid $15.00 an hour or more.   Nobody was being paid less than $15.00 per hour at any job.

The point being that the only reason anyone would be against a Federal or State minimum wage would be that they wanted to pay less which a lot of restaurant and food service businesses and any other business where customers were expected to pay tips for their service and in illegal sweat shops.

Fox News and 16th century minded businesses would be happy to re-institute slave labor or indentured servants and pay workers $1.00 per day.   

Yes, when I was in elementary school in the 1950's I delivered news papers seven days a week working about 8 hours a week 365 days a year for about $1.80 dollars a week.  When I went to college I worked busing dishes in the student union cafe for about 80 cents per hour in 1965.  The full time workers made about $1.15 per hour.  I remember working construction in Minneapolis two summers in the late 1960s for  an high union wage of $2.00 per hour which was way above the minimum wage.  In 1970 I worked full time as a  physical therapy aide in North Dakota for $235 per month.   The attitude then by my employers was that they knew that I would rather work for free, but the law said they had to pay me.

In 1939 my father made $770 for the year fixing phonographs in South Dakota.   If minimum wage was still $1.00 per hour today would eggs still be 10 cents a dozen, gas ten cents per gallon and apartments renting for $25.00 per month.  I don't think so. 

Keeping minimum wage at about $7.75 per hour has not kept gas at  $2.00 per gallon or apartment rents at $150 a month or monthly health insurance payments at $125 a month,  or eggs at 1.00 a dozen.   Why has the price of almost every thing risen exponentially the past 5 years when minimum wage has barely budged?   

Fox News has based their argument on false premises.   

Quote from: michelle on February 14, 2013, 10:51:02 PM
Just why does any one listen what Fox News says about the minimum wage.   The Right wing which Fox News is a mouth piece for has been against the idea of a government imposed minimum wage since the days of Adam and Eve.   

Fox News has based their argument on false premises.   

Stossel is NOT right wing... I personally am disgusted as much with the right wing as with the left.  please inform yourself before you just see the FOX icon and start ranting...  you sound silly jumping to conclusions like that...

you say FOX new bases their arguments on false premises... your argument about FOX and the clips we showed being RIGHT WING are a false premise :)

and your OPINION about minimum wage is arbitrary... slave labor?  really?  good one...

i mean to say, lets have a conversation... like adults instead of children pouting and throwing around ad hominems about something as arbitrary as the network that aired these shows :)

why are you for the minimum wage, why do you think it should be raised?  please, i would love to know... and where do you get the $20 figure from?  again, lets have a conversation, not a debate, not an argument... i want to understand your perspective and i want to offer mine to you :) 

and if you are interested in having a conversation, i would advise watching those videos because they sum up some of the points i have!

My thoughts on the thread... (and for what it's worth I haven't watched the youtube thing yet on Stossel, since it's 40 minutes long)

The overall effect of raising (or maintaining) a minimum wage has not shown to correlate with a reduction in low-skilled work. The reason that this myth continues is because it is highly intuitive. Research by Princeton professors of economics David Card & Alan Krueger have indicated that if anything, raising the minimum wage has a slightly beneficial (albeit still significant) effect on the hiring of unskilled workers. A very good explanation for this is that the more you raise the minimum wage, the more money you give to the poorest of peoples who will spend their entire paycheck (instead of saving/hoarding) and will stimulate their local economies.

The next thing I've noticed about the thread is the $20 limit that Michelle mentions. Not that I agree with this, but I think it's worth mentioning, if the minimum wage were tied to productivity then it would actually be closer to $22 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/minimum-wage-productivity_n_2680639.html).

I also think that Michelle addressed a big issue, and that is that businesses aren't paying their employees a sustainable wage. As Michelle mentioned, inflation continued while minimum wage stayed stagnant throughout the 1980's and the 2000's. More so, this has lead to government having to step in and help people out via SNAP & low income housing. I think it's egregious that Wal-mart made almost $450 billion in gross revenue last year, but their employees (even some managers (http://www.politicaldog101.com/2012/11/19/wal-mart-workers-black-friday-strike-managers-on-food-stamps/)) are on food stamps and get no health insurance. Whether we like it or not, somebody has to pick up the scraps, and if this (radically) libertarian ideal were possible, then it wouldn't need to be the government.

I would also like to address why the myth of minimum wage and low-skill work continues. A few years back I took an econ 101 course. The professor got to the part of the course that dealt with minimum wage, price controls, economic floors and stated that "instituting minimum wages actually hurts low skilled employment." Being aware of the studies I mentioned earlier (Card & Krueger) I asked "why have recent studies shown a positive effect on hiring low skilled worker with minimum wage increases." I feel his answer explained a lot, he said "because this is econ 101. In this course we teach basic principles and then later on we teach the exceptions to the rules." It's true, and even Card & Krueger admit, that at some point raising minimum wages would hurt low-skilled workers. However, economics is a very complex study, rarely is anything so easily and so linearly graphed out as to be prima facie to all. For what it's worth, I would actually be more in favor of a guaranteed minimum income, in which the government subsidizes low incomes up to a certain point, than I would be for raising the minimum wage. But that's (real) socialism and we can't have that.

Quote from: Kayla on February 15, 2013, 01:47:58 AM
My thoughts on the thread...

For what it's worth, I would actually be more in favor of a guaranteed minimum income, in which the government subsidizes low incomes up to a certain point, than I would be for raising the minimum wage. But that's (real) socialism and we can't have that.

so these studies compare average productivity to the minimum wage.  looking at here (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t19.htm) shows that the average wage correlates with the average productivity you cited... unless i'm missing something?

i guess what my question is... how do you look at the AVERAGE of something and insinuate it should be the MINIMUM? not to sound condescending, but you know what an average is right?  if workers on average are getting paid the average of their productivity, doesn't that make sense?  and i'm not certain why we need government to give us a bottom?  if the average hour wage of Jan 2013 was $23.78 and people are getting paid for their productivity accordingly, what's wrong?  seems as if the min wage is just legislating out jobs that produce less than the minimum wage?  people are getting paid what they are worth... why not let people who are worth less than minimum wage get paid what they are worth and get experience faster so they can get higher paid jobs?

and for your socialist point... if there was a guaranteed income... what's the point of working hard?  i guess that's an argument between whats more important... security or productivity?  but without productivity, there isn't any creation of wealth and without the creation of wealth, you can't provide jobs.  there is a balance somewhere here? ahhh yes, it's competition :) having guarantees can stifle competition.  and a guaranteed income... does that mean you can't fire bad employees?  because it's guaranteed?

and i took out the link to the full episode.. it didn't seem relevant since i really just wanted to talk about minimum wage :) and people were writing about their first jobs which i really didn't care to know.  the section just about the minimum wage is still up and i changed the name of the topic

Quote from: oZma on February 15, 2013, 02:19:28 AM
so these studies compare average productivity to the minimum wage.  looking at here (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t19.htm) shows that the average wage correlates with the average productivity you cited... unless i'm missing something?

i guess what my question is... how do you look at the AVERAGE of something and insinuate it should be the MINIMUM? not to sound condescending, but you know what an average is right?  if workers on average are getting paid the average of their productivity, doesn't that make sense?  and i'm not certain why we need government to give us a bottom?  if the average hour wage of Jan 2013 was $23.78 and people are getting paid for their productivity accordingly, what's wrong?  seems as if the min wage is just legislating out jobs that produce less than the minimum wage?  people are getting paid what they are worth... why not let people who are worth less than minimum wage get paid what they are worth and get experience faster so they can get higher paid jobs?

I think you're confusing the two a bit. The link I gave stated that if minimum wage were pegged to productivity of the nation (I believe in 1965 wages) then the minimum wage today would be about $20. The fact that that is the average wage now a days helps point out this disparity. The point is, the ultra well-off could live just as well off as they did in the mid-60's (relative to everyone else) and the masses of people could enjoy the same purchasing power they had then. The fact that the people at the top (which your BLS stat did not include as it's only payroll employees) make something like 300-400 times what their employee makes helps explain why even though productivity is at an all time high, the amount of people needing government subsidies to get by is increasing.

Quoteand for your socialist point... if there was a guaranteed income... what's the point of working hard?  i guess that's an argument between whats more important... security or productivity?  but without productivity, there isn't any creation of wealth and without the creation of wealth, you can't provide jobs.  there is a balance somewhere here? ahhh yes, it's competition :) having guarantees can stifle competition.  and a guaranteed income... does that mean you can't fire bad employees?  because it's guaranteed?

Well, this basic income guarantee would be (theoretically speaking since I'm offering this as my ideal) tied to work. Thus if Walmart wants to screw over their employees on wages, the employees would get a sum of money from the government, up to a certain point, as compensation. Another study on the productivity of basic income guarantees in Manitoba found that the decline in productivity was "negligble" (http://www.irpp.org/po/archive/jan01/hum.pdf) with most people working as productively as normal. The exceptions were teenagers who were working to support their families (who then spent more time on school) and new mothers (who spent more time tending to their children). Considering what the two groups spent their time on, I don't consider the loss in productivity an issue.

I really have no idea what raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour would do. I will go downstairs at work tomorrow to the employment department and ask their economist what his thoughts are. I did at one point work for an agency that provided on the job training funds to employers. In my experience, an employer is far more likely to give somebody they otherwise would not have hired a job, if somebody else pays a portion of their new employees wages for the first 6 months. I believe a drastic jump in minimum wage could take away some opportunities for unskilled workers to prove themselves.

I guess I don't support a $10 an hour minimum wage. I feel it would take away jobs. In my state the minimum wage is $8.95 so it wouldn't really be much of an jump. A while back the state voted to increase minimum wage at the same rate as inflation. I'm guessing a lot of people currently being paid around $10 an hour, would be expecting a raise. I know I'd want at least an equivalent bump in pay.

Quote from: kkut on February 15, 2013, 06:42:29 AM
Kayla, watch the video, more people need to get 'Stosseled'... BOOM!

I watched the first 20 minutes before realizing that I hadn't heard a thing about minimum wage. I then became distracted by a kitten.... Regardless of how you cut it, kittens>politics.

Is there any part of the video in particular I should watch?

Quote from: michelle on February 14, 2013, 10:51:02 PM
Just why does any one listen what Fox News says about the minimum wage.   

I don't watch Fox News, except to laugh. And I actually have studied economics, and price-related issues in considerable depth, so if I had watched that, whatever device I might have watched it on might now be broken.

I have yet to figure out why Stossel's head is so large when it's so empty.

As to relevance, there is a time tag you can use with YouTube if there is something in there that you believe would change my mind.

Example: If it comes at 16 minutes, 25 seconds, add ?t=16m25s as I've done with the Stossel video URL below: 

http://youtu.be/2NcydJQVFa4?t=16m25s

Quote from: Kayla on February 15, 2013, 07:05:11 AM
I watched the first 20 minutes before realizing that I hadn't heard a thing about minimum wage. I then became distracted by a kitten.... Regardless of how you cut it, kittens>politics.

Is there any part of the video in particular I should watch?

I removed the full episode and left there segment about minimum wage which is I think 10 mins.  kkut is referring to the episode entitled 'Battle for the Future' which is a full 40 mins but is a very good episode!

Quote from: Elspeth on February 15, 2013, 07:10:13 AM
I don't watch Fox News, except to laugh.

I have yet to figure out why Stossel's head is so large when it's so empty.

I think there is an important point to be made. it's important to understand many perspectives on different issues.  the best way to learn is to challenge yourself... another competition reference! these threads I make about politics are my attempts NOT to argue with people but to provide my current perspective and get responses.  if I wanted smoke blown up my butt, id go to a liberty blog.  I'm trying to find people to challenge my opinions in attempt to learn!

I find it silly people refuse to listen to something based on the source... there are somethings I could say about what this means, but ill just say ALL mass media have a bias.  to single out fox news for something EVERY network does? ugh... lets be consistent people! respond to the ideas, not the network!

OK I don't think I've made my point yet... I think any reasonable intelligent person who is interested in learning, interested in gaining perspective, won't completely write off a an idea purely based on the network that commissioned it.  I didn't take Kayla's article, which it seems I still need to do a little research on because I misunderstood, and say 'I can't believe anybody reads that left wing Huffington Post garbage!' I read it,  tried to understand her perspective and responded. 

and please lets stop with the ad hominems... every person has a valid predictive and valid ideas... lets concentrate on the ideas these people are presenting, not the people or the network :-)

but I guess I can't assume people on these forums are interested in gaining insight, learning, or expanding their political awareness?

and by no means am I trying to convince anybody to change their minds, but to get them to understand the perspective :-) I work to understand yours, do the same for me? its hard to have a meaningful conversion unless we both understand what the other is saying ;-)

Quote from: kkut on February 15, 2013, 10:37:13 AM
Try this, it's only about four minutes and it's not John Stossel or evil Fox news  ;)

good video, we need more freedom in this country... not less :-)

The point you make ^^ is valid.  People who dismiss information based solely on the source, without testing the validity, are intellectually short-changing themselves.

That can be very frustrating.

I have read all your comments about minimum wage in the USA and find it interesting.

Personally I think there should be a minimum wage for people.

In Australia we have a minimum wage system that the government has put in place to help the low income earners, this is $15.96 per hour or $606.40 per 38 hour week, casuals get 22% casual loading on top, seeing the casuals don't get holidays and paid sick leave.  If the person has children then the government gives them money towards raising their kids, this is around a $180.00 per fortnight depending on the age of the children. My family has 1 main income earner(my wife)and she earns around $35k at mo, and the government still gives us money towards raising our children, plus free health care and reduced costs with medications( most doctor scrips cost $5.90 for most medications).

We don't pay tips in this country as it's not part of our culture. So people do not work for a business for free, they have to pay their employee's minimum wage depending on the type of work they do, but there is a minimum.

The part that gets confussing, we have working awards that list pays rates for different jobs/industry's and are very confusing to read and understand for most people (personally I don't have any issues with reading and understanding the awards, but my education is at uni level, plus I was a manager in the disability industry.)

So I think there should be a minimum wage!

It works in Australia, I'm not saying that our system is the best or that it works correctly, but at lest we try to help the people that work the low wage jobs!

Quote from: Pleasingly Plump Jamie D on February 15, 2013, 12:44:04 PM
The point you make ^^ is valid.  People who dismiss information based solely on the source, without testing the validity, are intellectually short-changing themselves.

That can be very frustrating.

Time is an inelastic commodity of which I have a finite and unknown quantity. I had listened to Stossel in the past and found his insights unimpressive. I also remarked in passing that I avoid this kind of discussion as it usually leads nowhere productive. You're assuming quite a lot, with no objective basis if you imagine I'm being closed minded. It has much more to do with the inherent limitations and political biases that exist and are probably beyond remedy when it comes to economic theories in general.  I spent decades studying the subject in detail and in depth. I'd estimate there is a 0.1% probability that Stossel, even if he were far more brilliant than is my impression of him, would be likely to say, in a general audience TV program, anything that I hadn't read and considered before.

I'm out of this thread. My impulse to enter it was a moment of weakness and bad judgement.

Please don't read this as an affront or anything personal.

Quote from: Elspeth on February 15, 2013, 06:03:16 PM

I'm out of this thread. My impulse to enter it was a moment of weakness and bad judgement.

Please don't read this as an affront or anything personal.

nothing taken personally :-) lets just remember that your opinions on life, economics, politics are not the only valid ones.  I find Stossel a very  smart guy, I've read his book 'No, They Can't' and I agree with his libertarian politics and philosophy towards life.  I'm here to share these same ideas and maybe learn something along the way.  it's entirely possible you do know 99.9% of the things he talks about and don't agree... in that case it would be nice to have a conversation because I would love to know why you don't. 

if that isn't something you're interested in... thats fine too, but lets remember to respect the perspectives of others and to keep discussions about the ideas - as easy as it is, we need to refrain from ad hominem :-) no hard feelings!

What should minimum wage be now?   Well when minimum wage was about $2.00 dollars per hour, gas was about 25 cents a gallon.    When gasoline was $2.50 per gallon, minimum wage to have the same buying power should be $25.00 per hour.    You could get family Blue Cross/blue shield for $30.00 per month from a credit union.   Ten times $30.00 would mean full family insurance should only be about $300.00.    In 1973 I rented a house for $80.00 per month which was the same as my parents rented one for in the 1950s.  They were small.  It costs over $1000 to rent a house like this today.    You can also compare the costs of hamburger per pound in 1974,  eggs, milk, car insurance, and many other items.   Having been born in 1946 and starting my own family in 1973, I have worked for minimum wage and raised a family from the time minimum wage was around $2.00 per hour.   I worked construction at $2.00 at this time and had to work 60 hours a week to make ends meet.    I paid rents then and now.   I bought food then and now.   I have seen eggs go up from 15 cents a dozen in the 1950s.   I paid 25 cents for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie in the 1960s.

If you consider just the price of gas, rent, health insurance, car insurance, car payments.   There are no more $600 dollar cars,  you can do the math and take $2.00 per hour times ten to get $20.00 dollars per hour.   Then take ten time 25 cents per gallon for gas to get $2.50.   Gas is now over $3.50 per gallon now.    Take ten times a cheap $600.00 car and you get $6,000 for a good running used car today.   $30.00 a month for full family Blue Cross/Blue Shield and get $300.00 a month for the same insurance today from a credit union.   You can't do it.  And you can see that I am under estimating  the buying power of $20.00 per hour today, compared to the $2.00 per hour minimum wage in the 1970s.   

I have also listen to the conservative Republican position on minimum wage from the time I was in high school in the 1960s.    Every thing in your video from Fox News was the same old conservative line.   I have a Social Science major in college with many hours in history.   I have studied and read the political history of the United States for almost 40 years.  Even more if you count high school.    Conservatives in the Republican party have been trying to get rid of the minimum wage from the day the wage became law.   They have used the same arguments to prevent raising the minimum wage ever since it became law.   

So if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it must be a duck.   If you are on Fox News which is a mouth piece for the Conservative Republican line and you present the same points that conservative Republicans have been making since the beginning of minimum wage against there being a minimum wage,  What does that make you?

I know the value of having a minimum wage,  I worked at minimum wage jobs until I went back to college and got my teaching credentials.   My first year of teaching I made $6,000 per year and lived in a mobile home in the country which was used for migrant labor housing in the summer.   I worked summer jobs to support my family.   

Life's experiences have taught me the value of the minimum wage.   It has also taught me that it has not kept up with inflation and the rising price of a barrel of oil which rose dramatically during the administration of Jimmy Carter because the developed countries had been ripping the oil producing countries off for years with a barrel of oil selling for around $5.00 per barrel.  OPEC embargoed oil and the price of a barrel of oil increased dramatically.    Minimum wage did not keep up.    Now oil can sell from anything from $80.00 dollars per barrel to $140 per barrel and up.

Many employers, especially in rural areas only raised their starting wages when the minimum wage was increased.    If the minimum wage was not necessary then no employer would pay less than $15.00 per hour today because modern technology has made workers that much more productive.   No one would fight raising the minimum wage to $10.00 per hour because everyone would be working at wages more than this after they gained experience.   Minimum wage would only be a workers starting wage for their first six months of work.

Stossel was only presenting the traditional Republican objects to minimum wage, which based upon my life's experience are invalid.   And if one argues that employers should be free from government interference in the free market,  then government should not be used to limit worker's economic rights to organize and bargain for wages.   There should be no right to work laws because they interfere with the worker's right to form labor unions and negotiate for their wages and protect their jobs by striking and causing work stoppages.   The point being is that you cannot have a free market without government regulation and the government determining the rules by which labor and management interact with each other.

If people are against government laws regulating business practices why should government pass laws that interfere with worker's  rights to organize.   Why must businesses be free to run their businesses in any way they choose and worker's not have the same freedoms from government control over their labor.

Arguing from the libertines point of view,  if businesses are free to form corporations free from government interference,  why shouldn't workers have the same rights to form corporations to bargain with labor free from government interference.    Right to work laws are government interference in the free market system.    From the libertine's point of view worker's should have the same freedoms from government as capitalists do.

Of course using the libertine's line of argument the conflicts between the capitalists and the laborers would bring the free market to a stand still which the government would be powerless to regulate and to settle the disputes between capitalists and labor because the government has no business taking sides according to their philosophy.  If  Ayn Rand's philosophy  is good for the capitalist, it is good for the laborer.    Ayn Rand's philosophy in its strict form would bring about the breakdown of any economy.   It's totally unrealistic.   

@michelle

ok, so lets make sure i understand your position.

1. minimum wage should be attached to inflation
2. right to work laws interfere with the worker's right to form labor unions

i have to do some research on the first one still since i'm not all that familiar with that argument... i'll get back to you :)

as for the right to work laws... doesn't a right to work law give the employee an option to opt out? to say thanks, but no thanks?  it doesn't change the worker's right to form or take part in a union does it?  i think forcing someone to take part in something they don't want to is wrong.  if employees don't want unions, they don't want unions... why force them?