Minimum Wage?

[test123]

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.

So injecting 1 Trillion dollars into circulation will somehow drive up production of Gas? How about Doctors, will 1000 Doctors appear tomorrow if we did that? Or how about cattle? Magic dude....

The only effect of injecting money into circulation has is that it transfers wealth to those who will get to use it first!

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.

A Corporate/property Tax is always passed down to the consumer in higher prices, which results in less competitiveness and ultimately bankruptcy.

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.

England, Scandinavian countries, France, Spain, Germany and many other EU countries have lucrative welfare for the unemployed. I know personally people who get more money not working after taxes.

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.
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.

As above, most unemployed people in Europe are young people, many live with their parents and have enough money for drinking, gadgets, and they have no incentive to start working.

[Pirian]

I'll address your first paragraph responding to me by responding to the first point that you responded to test with because the two are addressing the same issue, I think.

Most importantly, an increase in the money supply through the printing of money (I assume that's what we're talking about here) DOES decrease increase the price of goods. We live in a global economy where we are trading with many other countries to receive the goods that the final consumer purchases. Fiat money has intrinsic value because people recognize it as a store of value that can be exchanged for goods or services. This value is not all that important for the country using the currency because everybody is using the currency. The dollar is worth as much as it is on the global market because other countries recognize it for its stability and store of value, which is a function of the total supply and demand for the currency. If the US government decided it wanted to start giving $20,000 to all 311 million of its population each year, that would be an increase in the money supply of 6.22 trillion. What would follow is the following:

1. Yes, demand for goods would rise, but eventually we are going to get to a point where there is not enough being produced in order to meet that demand at the price it is being produced

2. The value of a currency is expressed a ratio between 2 currencies (ie. 1.3€/$1, or how many dollars can a euro buy). You have to play with the currency of the country you're trading in, so in order to trade with other countries we buy their currency with dollars, then buy the goods. That rate is a function of the supply and demand of each currency verses the other. As we exchange more and more goods with the other country, the trade balance shifts and it takes more and more dollars in order to buy the other currency -- inflation.

The first example that comes to mind is the hyper-inflation experienced in Germany after WWI because the other countries demanded payment for the damages to their countries. Germany printed money in an attempt to pay, but this caused the price of everything to skyrocket.


In response to your second paragraph responding to me -- I think we're agreeing, or at least, it seems that my 2nd paragraph reflects the same sentiment.

[Kuya]

So injecting 1 Trillion dollars into circulation will somehow drive up production of Gas? How about Doctors, will 1000 Doctors appear tomorrow if we did that? Or how about cattle? Magic dude....

The only effect of injecting money into circulation has is that it transfers wealth to those who will get to use it first!


A Corporate/property Tax is always passed down to the consumer in higher prices, which results in less competitiveness and ultimately bankruptcy.


England, Scandinavian countries, France, Spain, Germany and many other EU countries have lucrative welfare for the unemployed. I know personally people who get more money not working after taxes.


As above, most unemployed people in Europe are young people, many live with their parents and have enough money for drinking, gadgets, and they have no incentive to start working.

Injecting money doesn't automatically mean increased production. What it means is simply that if what is keeping production back is a lack of capital, then easing capital flows allows for increased production. This also means increased employment. This won't lead to inflation if the increase in money keeps pace with the increase in production. We're not really talking about this though, but a basic income could help with this. If what you're arguing is that a basic income might lead to some inflation because it equates to increased spending power in an economy, then we'd have to weigh if the negatives of inflation outweigh the positives of a basic income system.

Don't care for your point about taxes. Same comment applies here. We weigh whether an increase in prices is worth decreasing unemployment, giving workers more choice, and ending poverty.

As for your final comment, i'd ask you to ask yourself whether it really seems european youth are comfortable being unemployed considering the amount of protests that are going on.

[Gregorio]

Holy shit, I can't believe what I am reading.... Giving everyone lots of money will solve problems? ...

(My post was sarcasm, figured $100 an hour and 16 year old kids with 40k a year jobs would have tipped that)

[Jer]

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

Might need a source for this. That sounded way too low, so I did one of those Googles. The one at the top was http://www.epi.org/publication/bp340...ung-graduates/ which places the unemployment for those with Bachelor's at 9.5% for Aprill 2011 - March 2012. While I still believe this number is too low, it is nearly double what you think. If there's something wrong with the site, I'll go down to the next one. In any event, 5% is lol worthy.

As for everything else, it is sad to say, but this country counts on those who have no other choices to take care of themselves. People who grab the shit jobs nobody else wants and do it for pay next to nothing. Although I guess we could always just fix things for citizens and have illegals take over entire industries.

[Sera]

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

lewl, so naive

[Pirian]

Might need a source for this. That sounded way too low, so I did one of those Googles. The one at the top was http://www.epi.org/publication/bp340...ung-graduates/ which places the unemployment for those with Bachelor's at 9.5% for Aprill 2011 - March 2012. While I still believe this number is too low, it is nearly double what you think. If there's something wrong with the site, I'll go down to the next one. In any event, 5% is lol worthy.

As for everything else, it is sad to say, but this country counts on those who have no other choices to take care of themselves. People who grab the shit jobs nobody else wants and do it for pay next to nothing. Although I guess we could always just fix things for citizens and have illegals take over entire industries.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

Split the difference on my numbers, apparently. 4.1% for July 2012 for those with a Bachelors or greater.

[archibaldcrane]

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

Split the difference on my numbers, apparently. 4.1% for July 2012 for those with a Bachelors or greater.

That is for people 25 and older, if you go below there it'll go up but I doubt it would even approach 6% total.

[hey]

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

Well this is obviously not true, but it would end the serious long-term unemployment. Without minimum wage, anyone desperate for a job would almost certainly be able to get one almost right away.

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's really no need for losers. There will always be winners, but there really is enough wealth to go around that no one needs to be a loser. We could make sure every single person could get by, without working. They wouldn't have much money for leisure, but they wouldn't go without food, and they'd a place to live.

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.

What the fuck.

No we don't. Our welfare system is not even close to adequate.

Another form of it currently in practice is social security, and everybody loves that program.

Fuck yeah, government run ponzi schemes. It's especially great when you know in advance you will never see a single penny of return, but you still have to pay into it anyway.

[archibaldcrane]

Might need a source for this. That sounded way too low, so I did one of those Googles. The one at the top was http://www.epi.org/publication/bp340...ung-graduates/ which places the unemployment for those with Bachelor's at 9.5% for Aprill 2011 - March 2012.

That's only for people 21-24 years old with a Bachelor's. When you look at the total population it's less than half that.

[Churchill]

That's only for people 21-24 years old with a Bachelor's. When you look at the total population it's less than half that.

That's somewhat of a more important statistic though.

If you're going to say "Living wage is dumb, why should I need to pay for someone else when I got my degree, did this, that, etc" but yet right now, 10% of people graduating college can't find work. That number isn't going to go down unless a bunch of people die or tons of new jobs are created/that they qualify for.

Not to mention, people being employed out of college are pretty often not actually doing anything but working a shit job, maybe for minimum wage, maybe above it, but definitely not the salary some of their peers may get.

[archibaldcrane]

I'm not making an argument, just concerning myself with accurate facts.

[Churchill]

scroll up, also send me money

[archibaldcrane]

hey i need my money

[Pirian]

My guess for why that statistic is 25+ is it makes sense that people that JUST graduate experience abnormally high, but natural, frictional unemployment. By the time you get to 25, you have the late graduates and those experiencing frictional unemployment

[Churchill]

So you're saying you don't know people living at home right now because they can't get a job, or work a shit job to pay the bills, yet are college educated.

[Pirian]

Right now all my college educated friends are working. The friend that took the longest was around 6 months. Why are you asking for anecdotal evidence?

[Churchill]

It's not that I am, but more that it just seemed like every girl I dated, friend she had, person I met, etc. was working part time/shit job/outside their field and had no real discourse for changing that. All college educated, some had masters, some were in a lot of debt and had decided to start their PhD's in hopes that they'd somehow get hired then lol.

So in my experience, for the numbers to be so low is odd. Sort of how once you get off the system altogether and no longer fit the requirements for unemployment, you are no longer counted as unemployed.

[Pirian]

There is another statistic called "underemployed" that fits what you're talking about

http://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm

unfortunately, it doesn't look like they have the details for the demographic we're looking for, but there is a good amount of overall underemployment, but that's to be expected coming out of a recession

[Cantih]

There is another statistic called "underemployed" that fits what you're talking about

http://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm

L.A.
U-6, 22.1%

Yep, it is not fun out here.