Minimum Wage?

[Ksandra]

I honestly want to move away from us being a capitalist country, because too many americans have no morals and its created a society of "get as much as you can, and fuck the rest" mentality that I hate. Granted, any change would be so slow I'd never get to see the effects in my lifetime, but I do think it's a good thing to start moving away from it.

[Acevalefor]

After trying to read 3 pages of debate/discussion, I feel like I need to play a little game of "grammar police" and leave these right here:


Carry on.

[Conrad]

i don't want my fellow man to be able to survive because he's not me, fuck helping other people with taxes i am able to give away comfortably

[Cream Soda]

On the devil's advocate side of that

Oh hey, you have more money than me, so give it to me! You spent all those years studying so you can give me money since I wasn't able to do it myself.

[Pirian]

I honestly want to move away from us being a capitalist country, because too many people have no morals and its created a society of "get as much as you can, and fuck the rest" mentality that I hate. Granted, any change would be so slow I'd never get to see the effects in my lifetime, but I do think it's a good thing to start moving away from it.

People. Too many people have no morals. And it's because of that no better society has arisen. Look, I want us all to live comfortably, but that's just not possible, because I want things. And lets be honest here, you want things too. Our wants come at a cost, and that cost takes resources that could be used elsewhere, which contributes to a child dying every 10 seconds in Africa. It's like that stupid movie that came out a while ago where there was this button and if you pressed it then someone somewhere would die, but you would get a million dollar. It's overly dramatic, but every time you go to the grocery store it's like you're pressing that button and someone somewhere is paying the real cost of your luxury.

oh wow are we off topic yet?

[Pirian]

edit: double post

[Conrad]

On the devil's advocate side of that

Oh hey, you have more money than me, so give it to me! You spent all those years studying so you can give me money since I wasn't able to do it myself.

yeah, society isn't really about working only for one's individual gain though

[Pirian]

yeah, society isn't really about working only for one's individual gain though

Yeah! It's about working for the gain of a group of individuals with the hope that there's enough left over for the rest of us

[test123]

I honestly want to move away from us being a capitalist country, because too many americans have no morals and its created a society of "get as much as you can, and fuck the rest" mentality that I hate. Granted, any change would be so slow I'd never get to see the effects in my lifetime, but I do think it's a good thing to start moving away from it.

The USA is not a capitalist country. You have the FED distorting the money market, you have social security and many, many other welfare programs. Government is bought and owned by the rich and powerful. This is not the traits of a capitalist country. It is the traits of a corporatocracy and an oligarchy.

The people who live on the "get as much as you can, and fuck the rest" principle are probably already in jail. Most people are decent hard working with good morals and a good sense of right and wrong.

Running a country full of ignorant people is like raising a child. It has to learn the hard way of doing the wrong things. People must be held accountable for their actions. Play with fire and you get burned. It is a continuous cycle that every generation must go through.

Now, I am all for a safety net, whereas if you are doing all the right things you should be able to keep afloat. I would suggest a sort of insurance program. All children are covered until they reach 21 years old. And you can not lose the insurance unless you refuse to do work, i.e cleaning toilets. If you like, let Government run the insurance, but be warned, they won't do a very good job at it.

[Churchill]

I heard everyone with similar education or experience levels had jobs that paid them well and they all have decent lives

[Conrad]

The people who live on the "get as much as you can, and fuck the rest" principle are probably already in jail.

lol

[tyven]

I heard everyone with similar education or experience levels had jobs that paid them well and they all have decent lives

well you heard wrong sucka cuz my job is way ahead of my education and experience level. THIS IS HOW WE DO IT.

[Pirian]

I heard everyone with similar education or experience levels had jobs that paid them well and they all have decent lives

The unemployment rate for a college graduate with a bachelors is something like 5%, and for a masters it's like 3%. I know this is kind of not what you were saying, but yeah

[Pirian]

The USA is not a capitalist country.

No, it's closer to a Social Capitalist country, thanks for pointing that out.

I would also love to know what education you have on the matter to be making the claims you do, because <.< I think you have a rose colored stain on your glasses and a blind eye to history when it comes to your ideas of capitalism.

[Pirian]

Why the fuck am I getting these double-posts

[TummieGaruda]

Man all this talk about Min wage has me remember my second job.

It was at a fast food joint and they were paying min wage of $5.75 (CA). After a month they did a performance review and I got a $0.10 raise but then a few months later minimum wage was increased to $6.25 I think, and my raise didn't carry over and I remember how mad I was at the time.

Honestly minimum wage should be raised slightly, but also I think the biggest issue is companies should provide growth in raises in terms of raises. It doesn't make sense to have someone who is 30 working at some place for 2-3 years and only makes minimum wage.

[Demosthenes11]

lol

romney pls

[nervous]

On the devil's advocate side of that

Oh hey, you have more money than me, so give it to me! You spent all those years studying so you can give me money since I wasn't able to do it myself.

Well, to be fair, they did.

[quannum]

Giving everyone lots of money will solve problems?

Works for Brazil

Rumour has it that when senior civil servants at the Department for International Development (DfID) tried to interest the development secretary Andrew Mitchell in cash transfers, they couldn't get anywhere. One morning he came across a column by my colleague Aditya Chakrabortty and was converted.

Within a short space of time the "must read" book for senior DfID officials was Just Give Money to the Poor, which charted the success of projects all over the world where aid was given straight to the poorest people – without all the consultants on fat salaries to analyse poverty reduction.

Mitchell jumped on the idea as a version of the "Big Society" applied to aid – bypass the institutional structures and empower the people directly. Interestingly, another DfID minister is believed to be less enamoured. Alan Duncan worries about that bogeyman of Conservative party nightmares: dependency. Won't the poor just get hooked on handouts?

Probably the biggest and best known of all the cash transfer schemes in the developing world is the Bolsa Familia in Brazil. Since 2003, 12 million families have joined the scheme and receive small amounts of money (around $12 a month). Inequality has been cut by 17% in just five years, which is perhaps one of the most dramatic achievements in welfare ever recorded. The poverty rate has fallen from 42.7% to 28.8%.

Such is the fascination in this "social technology" that Brazil is now being sought for advice on cash transfer programmes by countries across Africa (Ghana, Angola, Mozambique), the Middle East (Egypt, Turkey) and Asia (including India). Even New York City has implemented a version of the programme.

"It's social policy diplomacy," suggested one of the ministers involved in the Brazilian programme, Dr Romulo Paes de Sousa, when I caught up with him in London after speaking at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex earlier this week.

He's delighted by the interest. "Brazil is developing a new model of donor whereby we give expertise as well as aid. Brazil is already one of the largest donors of food aid in the world." He is also struck by the paradox that Brazil is expanding its welfare state just as Europe is cutting back on welfare.

There are some aspects of the programme, he explains, which have attracted particular interest. The first is conditionality. The payments are dependent on the family's children staying in school until 17, and attendance must be at least 85% up to 14 years and 75% for the remainder. Another form of conditionality is that children get the full set of vaccinations in their first five years and that mothers attend pre and post-natal care.

"Bolsa Familia has definitely contributed to the improvement in infant and maternal mortality that we are seeing in Brazil," said Dr Paes.

One of the advantages of the conditionality is that the investment in welfare has a real bang for its buck. For just 1% of GDP, Brazil is simultaneously boosting education levels, improving dire health indices and reducing poverty. This might meet Andrew Mitchell's requirement for "value for money".

What has been controversial is the transparency. All the names of recipients are publicly available on a website. Individual claims can and have been checked. Anyone can report abuse. But it's working. Independent evaluations found that 80% of the money is reaching the poor; pretty good in a country in which welfare has been dogged by corruption.

One clever aspect of the programme was to put all payments through the banking system. Recipients use a debit card to draw out the money from their bank accounts at ATMs. The registering of claims is a more complex process and since the scheme started in 2003, a network of social services centres has increased from 1,000 to 9,000.

Inevitably, the programme has led to criticism that it will generate a dependency culture. Unlike another comparable programme in Mexico, it is not time limited. But Dr Paes points out that the level of support is low so it is designed to supplement income from a job, never replace it. It helps that studies of its impact show how the injection of this cash into particularly poor communities is helping stimulate the local economy. Other studies have shown that the vast bulk of the money is spent on necessities such as food, school supplies, clothing and shoes - that helped squash arguments that if you gave money to the poor, they would simply spend it on alcohol.

Such evaluations (including publications by the World Bank) have helped the programme win legitimacy, but Dr Paes admits it was very hard at the beginning, when the Brazilian economy was weak, to persuade middle class voters of this disproportionate investment in the "bottom of the pyramid". "It's got easier since then as the Brazilian economy has grown," he added. It seems as long as everyone's share of the cake is growing, the middle classes are prepared to tolerate this modest degree of redistribution.

Bolsa Familia is another example of how the emerging economies – such as Brazil and China – are increasingly becoming players in the global debate on aid and development. Dr Paes – who was educated in the UK as an epidemiologist – jokingly referred to the UK as an "old country", and while very admiring of many aspects of the UK's welfare state, he saw Brazil as now being in the driving seat in helping to forge new welfare models for export.

[Kuya]

Holy shit, I can't believe what I am reading.... Giving everyone lots of money will solve problems? If you gave every American 1 million dollars tomorrow then the price of everything would rise explosively. Houses would instantly go up 10000% in prices. And where do you suppose the money to hand out 40k to everyone should come from? If you print it, prices will rise, money will lose much of its value and you are back to where you started. If you tax it you will destroy business and cause massive unemployment. In some European countries you see over 35% of the adult population is out of work, simply a result of Gov handing out money. Gov even relabel the unemployed to avoid high statistical numbers.

Simply handing out money when there is no or little value in the labor is just a highway to collapse.

Getting rid of Minimum Wage would open up jobs for everyone interested in working, it would end unemployment for good.

Talking about raising minimum wage would cause more unemployment as businesses won't see the benefit of selling goods and services at a loss. In order for them to stay open they would have to raise their prices, negating the minimum wage increase and you are back to zero. Raising minimum wage will not solve anything, the poor will still be poor the only difference is higher prices.

Handing out X amount of money to everyone covering basic income for all necessities is exactly the same as just giving out a free home, free lunch and free clothes to people. Money is just the middleman here. So how are you going to get free homes, food and clothes such that you can distribute them to everyone? You might want to look at the housing crisis as a reference here.

It's hard to take you seriously when most of what you say is a lot of hyperventilating.

But just to make a few things clear:
1. Prices don't automatically rise just because the money supply rises, since price doesn't simply reflect the amount of money in circulation. A rise in the amount of money in circulation won't raise prices if there is also an increase in production. Likewise, if the price of goods rises, it also means that the cost of goods has also risen, and part of that cost is labor. That means that the amount you pay workers also rises, though that depends.

2. Taxing doesn't automatically cause destroyed business and massive unemployment. Come back with a real argument, rather than just parroting your opinions and presenting them as fact without backing them up.

3. Europe isn't currently suffering unemployment due to "handing out money". It's suffering unemployment because their economies are contracting and their economies are contracting because they are deleveraging and pulling money out of the economy in order to shore up banks and pay up debt.

4. The housing crisis is nowhere near related to a basic income, because having the money to buy bare necessities is not the same thing as having the money to buy luxurious houses, and for a lot of different reasons.

This is not true. There are many other factors that are attributed to available employment besides the cost of labor. Just wanted to point that out.


Also, this rediculusness about a "universal wage", or basic wage, would in no way work in a capitalist society. Giving a comfortable living wage to people for doing nothing just means that they can spend all their time on leisure activities. The only reason someone would work is if they wanted more than what was provided. We already have something similar to that -- it's called welfare. Another form of it currently in practice is social security, and everybody loves that program.

It really would be nice if we lived in the type of world where you could keep everybody afloat, but in order for there to be winners in a capitalist society, there has to be losers. Programs like minimum wage attempt to bring the "bottom" up, and probably do more good than harm, for the most part. I would also like to point out that one could make an argument that an absence of a minimum wage stifles innovation in production, in much the same way that cheap oil stifles renewable energy technology production.

I'm making the same assumption as you, that we live in a capitalist society. If this is true, then people aren't simply satisfied with having their bare necessities. They want more. They want more food, more gadgets, more status, more power. That's why i think even if people have a basic income, they will still want to work so they can make money to buy more things. If no such desire exists, than the entire animus behind capitalism doesn't exist either. And a basic income is different from welfare, because if you take work and make enough you can lose welfare, but you never lose a basic income even if you find a job. Therefore, unlike in welfare, there is no negative incentive to avoid getting a job or a higher paying job because you might lose government assistance.

You don't need to have absolute losers in a society in order for there to be winners, minimum wage and wealth polarization proves that. People's perception of what losing means changes depending on what the standards of living become. So in China being poor means one thing, and in America being poor means another. Neither of the two cease being poor relative to the standards in their society. So a basic income doesn't eliminate losers, because the losers, technically speaking, are still those who have less than everybody else.