McDonalds: "What, my peon, you don't work two full time jobs?"

[crazy canuck]

Nothing gets much easier or harder overall - lets be honest, these are min wage jobs. They CANNOT get harder, because the bar for doing them is, by definition, about as low as possible. If you make some min wage job even nominally harder, then people will get a different min wage job that isn't.

I think this assumes a degree of fluidity in the labour market that does not exist.  There is also an assumption that people take minimum wage jobs because they are looking for the easiest possible job which is, frankly, offensive.

[crazy canuck]

Here is an interesting stat which support the point Shielbh was making

in 35 states, it's a better deal not to work—and instead, to take advantage of federal welfare programs—than to take a minimum-wage job.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/09/02/on-labor-day-2013-welfare-pays-more-than-minimum-wage-work-in-35-states/

[garbon]

There is also an assumption that people take minimum wage jobs because they are looking for the easiest possible job which is, frankly, offensive.

I don't think that's true at all.

1) Who wants to work a hard minimum wage job (when one has no prospect of advancing) if you can get the same pay doing something not as hard? That's not offensive that's just common sense.

2) Some of the lifers/people doing that minimum wage job could be doing so as that's their competence level. If you make it harder, they will not be able to do it. Not sure how widespread this is - but I also don't know common holding the same or similar minimum wage job is for life.

[crazy canuck]

1) Who wants to work a hard minimum wage job (when one has no prospect of advancing) if you can get the same pay doing something not as hard? That's not offensive that's just common sense.

People who are working at the only job they can find.  As I said, he (and you) assume a market fluidity - mobility is a better word - that doesn exist.

2) Some of the lifers/people doing that minimum wage job could be doing so as that's their competence level. If you make it harder, they will not be able to do it. Not sure how widespread this is - but I also don't know common holding the same or similar minimum wage job is for life.

People who are working at minimum wage jobs do so because those are the only jobs available to them.  That is why the issue of minimum wage laws is important.

[Malthus]

I guess the issue appears to be that increasing productivity is benefiting everyone, with the notable exception of the workers.

I can accept that setting wage controls isn't the right way to spread the benefits more evenly through society. But it strikes me as unsustainable to not do it somehow. Otherwise, I suspect what you tend to get is an increasing tendency for more and more to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

Seems like that would be fair to say if a sizable chunk of workforce consists of permanent/long-term minimum wage earners. Do we know if that's true?

Well, I don't know about that. I do know that, in the US and I suspect here to a lesser extent here, wealth has in fact been concerntrating, while the ability of the average person to find jobs other than of the minimum-wage type has been declining.

Much has been written about the demise of the middle class. What I think has been happening, is that below the level of the independently wealthy, the middle class has been dividing - many sinking lower into what amounts to lower-classdom, and a few rising higher.

The difference lies in the ability to be mobile in one's occupation - that is, in barganing power. Those rising have the ability to switch from employer to employer, and the employers know it. Those sinking have, increasingly, to take what they are given - meaning they are headed to job status equal to minimum wage earners.

I suspect both you and I belong, now, to the class who are mobile. People who belong to the class who are not experience a very different, and less forgiving, work world.

Edit: I see what CC wrote.

[garbon]

1) Who wants to work a hard minimum wage job (when one has no prospect of advancing) if you can get the same pay doing something not as hard? That's not offensive that's just common sense.

People who are working at the only job they can find.  As I said, he (and you) assume a market fluidity - mobility is a better word - that doesn exist.

2) Some of the lifers/people doing that minimum wage job could be doing so as that's their competence level. If you make it harder, they will not be able to do it. Not sure how widespread this is - but I also don't know common holding the same or similar minimum wage job is for life.

People who are working at minimum wage jobs do so because those are the only jobs available to them.  That is why the issue of minimum wage laws is important.

Okay, if you want to maintain there is only one reason why people take a minimum wage job then no need having a discussion.

[merithyn]

There are far more aspects that make the environment different now than the one of the pre-70s being used as a comparison. Some of the same issues in the decline of Japan discussions apply also.

For one, the shift away from children supporting their parents later in life is all but gone now. Having children used to be a retirement plan, now it's an expensive hobby. Now, parents have their own assets that perform that task as well as state assistance. That's a big pile of assets that might otherwise have been in the pockets of working people, as well as an additional pressure for investment profits to fund the savings growth of future retirees. Before, that savings might have been put in the family farm or home and be left to the heirs later on.

Information exchange and the certification economy matter too. You can't get a job just because you're good at it. You have to have papers saying so, or a membership in the proper guild, or have taken some tests or attended a school for a certain period of time. What is a job search anyway? It's people looking for a way to occupy their time. If, say, under normal circumstances, 80% of the population is capable of learning and performing any job. The other 20% maybe divided up between those who are only capable of doing 50% of the jobs and another portion not capable of work. There's no way to estimate it well. Anyway, you put up some barriers to entry for a large percentage of those jobs like requiring a degree, union or bar membership or something. Now, a smaller portion of the population has attained qualification to perform a larger number of jobs. The obvious economic impact of that will be that the supply of "qualified" people will diminish and labor glut develops in the "lower-skilled" areas. In other words, low-income people are making less because high-income people are making more--the latter due to constructed barriers to entry that have been constructed to protect them.

These are all good points. Thanks, MiM.

[garbon]

Well, I don't know about that. I do know that, in the US and I suspect here to a lesser extent, wealth has in fact been concerntrating, while the ability of the average person to find jobs other than of the minimum-wage type has been declining.

Much has been written about the demise of the middle class. What I think has been happening, is that below the level of the independently wealthy, the middle class has been dividing - many sinking lower into what amounts to lower-classdom, and a few rising higher.

The difference lies in the ability to be mobile in one's occupation - that is, in barganing power. Those rising have the ability to switch from employer to employer, and the employers know it. Those sinking have, increasingly, to take what they are given - meaning they are headed to job status equal to minimum wage earners.

I suspect both you and I belong, now, to the class who are mobile. People who belong to the class who are not experience a very different, and less forgiving, work world.

Edit: I see what CC wrote.

I will certainly agree that there has been a tendency for more wealth concentration. That doesn't mean that all workers are not seeing any gains from increase efficiency...and I'm also not sure who everyone is when you remove workers.

I really just wanted to raise that we've been speaking about minimum wage workers and wanted to make sure that we weren't generalizing the various charts, etc. to all/most workers.

[DGuller]

Of course, in the real world, what the owner does is raise his prices to make up the difference--not necessarily on the day the new minimum wage goes into effect, but over time (and, since these things get passed into law before they actually go into effect, perhaps the prices actually go up before the minimum wage does).  So if you want to raise the minimum wage from $7.25/hr to $10/hr, get ready for your $6 value meal to become your $9 value meal.  The end result leaves the minimum-wage earners no better off than before.  Nobody really benefits, and the people currently making wages in the $9-$12/hr range get screwed, because they'll get raises, too, but whereas the increase in the minimum wage will roughly match the increase in prices, the folks currently making $9-12/hr won't get quite the same increase in their pay.

So, a 38% increase in wage costs results in a 50% increase in price of products?  That only makes sense if cost of labor makes up more than 100% of the price of value meal.

[garbon]

Of course, in the real world, what the owner does is raise his prices to make up the difference--not necessarily on the day the new minimum wage goes into effect, but over time (and, since these things get passed into law before they actually go into effect, perhaps the prices actually go up before the minimum wage does).  So if you want to raise the minimum wage from $7.25/hr to $10/hr, get ready for your $6 value meal to become your $9 value meal.  The end result leaves the minimum-wage earners no better off than before.  Nobody really benefits, and the people currently making wages in the $9-$12/hr range get screwed, because they'll get raises, too, but whereas the increase in the minimum wage will roughly match the increase in prices, the folks currently making $9-12/hr won't get quite the same increase in their pay.

So, a 38% increase in wage costs results in a 50% increase in price of products?  That only makes sense if cost of labor makes up more than 100% of the price of value meal.

On a different note, right now minimum wage protesters seem to be pushing for $15, which appears to be over 100% increase from current federal wage.

[merithyn]

Of course, in the real world, what the owner does is raise his prices to make up the difference--not necessarily on the day the new minimum wage goes into effect, but over time (and, since these things get passed into law before they actually go into effect, perhaps the prices actually go up before the minimum wage does).  So if you want to raise the minimum wage from $7.25/hr to $10/hr, get ready for your $6 value meal to become your $9 value meal.  The end result leaves the minimum-wage earners no better off than before.  Nobody really benefits, and the people currently making wages in the $9-$12/hr range get screwed, because they'll get raises, too, but whereas the increase in the minimum wage will roughly match the increase in prices, the folks currently making $9-12/hr won't get quite the same increase in their pay.

So, a 38% increase in wage costs results in a 50% increase in price of products?  That only makes sense if cost of labor makes up more than 100% of the price of value meal.

I would guess that additional costs would be the taxes and such that are paid based on an employees pay.

[DGuller]

Of course, in the real world, what the owner does is raise his prices to make up the difference--not necessarily on the day the new minimum wage goes into effect, but over time (and, since these things get passed into law before they actually go into effect, perhaps the prices actually go up before the minimum wage does).  So if you want to raise the minimum wage from $7.25/hr to $10/hr, get ready for your $6 value meal to become your $9 value meal.  The end result leaves the minimum-wage earners no better off than before.  Nobody really benefits, and the people currently making wages in the $9-$12/hr range get screwed, because they'll get raises, too, but whereas the increase in the minimum wage will roughly match the increase in prices, the folks currently making $9-12/hr won't get quite the same increase in their pay.

So, a 38% increase in wage costs results in a 50% increase in price of products?  That only makes sense if cost of labor makes up more than 100% of the price of value meal.

I would guess that additional costs would be the taxes and such that are paid based on an employees pay.

I would guess that dps pulled the numbers out of his ass, so they would work to support his extremely dubious point that minimum wage increases are self-defeating for people who earn it.  The article that re-started this thread discussed this very subject extensively, and the conclusion was that labor costs made up only a third of the costs.

[Berkut]

Nothing gets much easier or harder overall - lets be honest, these are min wage jobs. They CANNOT get harder, because the bar for doing them is, by definition, about as low as possible. If you make some min wage job even nominally harder, then people will get a different min wage job that isn't.

I think this assumes a degree of fluidity in the labour market that does not exist.  There is also an assumption that people take minimum wage jobs because they are looking for the easiest possible job which is, frankly, offensive.

I think there is easily that much fluidity in the labor market when it comes to min wage jobs.

I think every single fast food joint in the Rochester area is hiring, and at higher than min wage.

And I make no such assumption - people take min wage jobs because that is what they can get given their availability, desire, competence, etc. But given that they are taking a min wage job, if they take one that is overly difficult, they will simply leave for another one, because there are plenty of them out there.

Again, I've been there - I've worked min wage, and I've run businesses that employee min or near min wage jobs. There is incredible fluidity in that labor market, people leave those jobs and get another one constantly based on all kinds of factors like availability, or whether they like their managers, or even just because they don't give a shit about coming to work on some particular day because they know they can just get another min wage job down the street if they get fired from this one.

[Berkut]

1) Who wants to work a hard minimum wage job (when one has no prospect of advancing) if you can get the same pay doing something not as hard? That's not offensive that's just common sense.

People who are working at the only job they can find.  As I said, he (and you) assume a market fluidity - mobility is a better word - that doesn exist.

I think the person making the assumptions here is you. What data do you have that suggests that even minimum wage jobs are so hard to get that there isn't any such fluidity?

I don't know, maybe it is different in Canada, but here in Rochester, NY, the only reason you cannot find a min wage job is because the min wage job like positions pay more because they cannot find enough people.

Hell, the local McDonalds all have forgone advertising on their signs to advertise that they are hiring, and starting salaries are in $8-9/hour range for crew positions.

2) Some of the lifers/people doing that minimum wage job could be doing so as that's their competence level. If you make it harder, they will not be able to do it. Not sure how widespread this is - but I also don't know common holding the same or similar minimum wage job is for life.

People who are working at minimum wage jobs do so because those are the only jobs available to them.  That is why the issue of minimum wage laws is important.

Of course but you are assuming that there is a lack of min wage jobs out there. That simply is not true, at least not around here.

[derspiess]

Here is an interesting stat which support the point Shielbh was making

in 35 states, it's a better deal not to work—and instead, to take advantage of federal welfare programs—than to take a minimum-wage job.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/09/02/on-labor-day-2013-welfare-pays-more-than-minimum-wage-work-in-35-states/

There may be another way to fix that