The Gaming Den

I'll readily admit that there are some nutcases who claim to be economists pushing some crazy theories. I do not think this means there is no unified field of economics, it just means those folks are crazy. I've got one word for you here: creationism. Doesn't mean there's no unified field of biology.

FrankTrollman wrote:So to make a no minimum wage system work, you'd pretty much have to go full commie. Each person would be guaranteed a stipend that would support them whether they worked or not, and any work they did on top of that would be voluntary and for whatever agreed upon wage.

Hang on, you don't need that at all. You want something that looks like a minimum wage and quacks like a minimum wage but isn't a minimum wage? How about this: employers can pay people whatever price they mutually agree upon, plus anyone who is employed gets helicopter drops of cash from the general tax revenues of the government. Removes the disproportionate burden from the people already hiring the folks.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out here that that is a terrible idea, because people would literally work for a penny a day just to get the government transfers, but nevertheless, there are other options besides "minimum wage" and "full commie". I may even be able to come up with some of them after I have some caffeine.

Gelare wrote:I'll readily admit that there are some nutcases who claim to be economists pushing some crazy theories. I do not think this means there is no unified field of economics, it just means those folks are crazy. I've got one word for you here: creationism. Doesn't mean there's no unified field of biology.

But the science of Biology doesn't take them seriously. Joseph Stiglitz says that he does not know why TV stations run a stock market ticker on the grounds that the ups and downs of the stock market are virtually irrelevant to the overall health of the economy. This is like if a Biology textbook gave a chapter to the Clay and Breath theory, a chapter to the Stork theory, and so on and so forth and then put Darwin, Mendel, Franks, Gould, and McClintock down in chapter 14 under "The Evolution Theory."

How about this: employers can pay people whatever price they mutually agree upon, plus anyone who is employed gets helicopter drops of cash from the general tax revenues of the government. Removes the disproportionate burden from the people already hiring the folks.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out here that that is a terrible idea, because people would literally work for a penny a day just to get the government transfers

Beyond that. People would pay themselves a self employed people out of their last cash drop into getting their next cash drop. Since that plan would involve literally everyone getting cash drops except the mentally ill (who would starve), you'd be better off just cutting the bureaucracy and giving a cash drop to literally everyone.

but nevertheless, there are other options besides "minimum wage" and "full commie". I may even be able to come up with some of them after I have some caffeine.

Are you seriously telling me that you've been arguing for the removal of the minimum wage and you don't have anything to replace it with that would not end up depressing wages, then driving down consumer demand, thereby shutting factories and businesses, driving unemployment up, and finally stabilize with indentured labor and much lower standards of living for everyone? Seriously, you didn't even have a plan that wouldn't be a rapid return to the levels of "prosperity" seen in the 1890s?

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:This is like if a Biology textbook gave a chapter to the Clay and Breath theory, a chapter to the Stork theory, and so on and so forth and then put Darwin, Mendel, Franks, Gould, and McClintock down in chapter 14 under "The Evolution Theory."

But what actually tends to happen, in my experience, is that chapters 1-14 are the widely agreed upon things (bearing in mind that "widely agreed upon" actually is the standard of things you want to teach in virtually any science, including physics and medicine) and chapter 15 and 16 are "alternative things". Granted, if you get one neoclassical book and one neokeynesian book, you're going to get wildly different theories out of them, but that's the case in any science with opposing theories.

FrankTrollman wrote:you'd be better off just cutting the bureaucracy and giving a cash drop to literally everyone.

I get the feeling that not very many people here are actually opposed to this. Or if you don't like the cash drop sound of it, have the government open up a bunch of jobs for those surly, incompetent operators at the Department of Motor Vehicles that pays whatever you'd like the minimum wage to be and employ folks with low marginal product. Double effect of employing people and restricting supply (raising wages) of people who were being - ah, what's the word folks here toss like a salad? - exploited. This, too, is a bad idea, but at least it gets the burden where it should be - everyone - rather than a few individual business owners. Seriously all, if you want people to be paid more and you are a small business owner, you can jolly well pay them more. If you want them to be paid more and you don't want to do it yourself, you're full of shit and should reexamine your ideals. Social cooperation doesn't mean putting the pressure to lift folks out of poverty only on those people who aren't you.

FrankTrollman wrote:Are you seriously telling me that you've been arguing for the removal of the minimum wage and you don't have anything to replace it with that would not end up depressing wages, then driving down consumer demand, thereby shutting factories and businesses, driving unemployment up, and finally stabilize with indentured labor and much lower standards of living for everyone? Seriously, you didn't even have a plan that wouldn't be a rapid return to the levels of "prosperity" seen in the 1890s?

-Username17

Well actually, I'd prefer to replace it with nothing, since with all the other government welfare programs in place, it's simply not even necessary to achieve the goals that people claim to want it for. And Frank, minimum wage laws don't do (the opposite of) those things you mentioned - it barely increases wages, it has an indeterminate impact on consumer demand, it certainly doesn't open up factories and businesses, it definitely doesn't bring unemployment down, and it doesn't magically deliver everyone from the evils of capitalism and send everyone into a new era of luxury and prosperity.

Gelare wrote:Well actually, I'd prefer to replace it with nothing, since with all the other government welfare programs in place, it's simply not even necessary to achieve the goals that people claim to want it for. And Frank, minimum wage laws don't do (the opposite of) those things you mentioned - it barely increases wages, it has an indeterminate impact on consumer demand, it certainly doesn't open up factories and businesses, it definitely doesn't bring unemployment down, and it doesn't magically deliver everyone from the evils of capitalism and send everyone into a new era of luxury and prosperity.

Name one example of minimum wages being eliminated and prosperity rising.

Every single example I know of has resulted in exactly what Frank described. And I don't know a single counterexample.

Gelare wrote: And Frank, minimum wage laws don't do (the opposite of) those things you mentioned - it barely increases wages, it has an indeterminate impact on consumer demand, it certainly doesn't open up factories and businesses, it definitely doesn't bring unemployment down, and it doesn't magically deliver everyone from the evils of capitalism and send everyone into a new era of luxury and prosperity.

You are overthinking this.

Look, I used to make just over the minimum wage. My boss set my salary to just a little bit over the minimum wage, so he could say he offered more than the minimum. If the minimum wage hadn't been raised recently or was lowered, I would have been making less money. Having less momey would have meant being less able to afford things. If the minimum wage was raised, I would have been able to afford more things.

That's the benefit of the minimum wage right there. It means that people on the bottom have a better chance to afford food and other such things they like, and poor college students like me can feed themselves and go into a little less debt.

The counter argument to minimum wage, at least the one you seem to be espousing, is that raising the minimum wage hurts workers. Because raising the minimum wage gives employers an incentive to fire workers because the costs of employing them has raised. The idea is that poor worker like me would be paradoxically hurt by a mandated wage increase.

However, the empirical data does not match this hypothesis. If your theory is right, we should see a dip in employment pretty much every time the minimum wage is raised. But that is not what the data shows. The data shows that sometimes unemployment increases when the minimum wage is raised, and sometimes it decreases. This suggests there is no correlation between raising the minimum wage and unemployment.

And that's a problem for you. We know the benefits of raising the minimum wage. It means that the poorest (legal) workers in our society get more money and a better quality of life, if only marginally better. Now, there are ways to argue against the idea of the minimum wage. You could for example argue that society does not want poor people to have more money or that the right to contract should be absolute, but ypu can't argue that raising the minimum wage hurts the poor more than it helps, because the evidence suggests you are wrong.

EDIT: it looks like you are moving away from the standard argument against minimum wage to that it disproportionately effects business owners. I don't buy that either, because it is fairly clear that business owners can redistribute their rising labor costs to the rest of society through the use of the pricing mechanism, especially if every business owner that employees people at the minimum wage has to raise it simultaneously.

When I see the Seastead plan, am I the only one who sees this:



-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:When I see the Seastead plan, am I the only one who sees this:

-Username17

It's amazing how well that fits. The Seastead plan and the Methuselah Foundation; that's better unintentional satire than when the US Republicans went 'teabagging.'

Shiritai wrote:It's amazing how well that fits. The Seastead plan and the Methuselah Foundation; that's better unintentional satire than when the US Republicans went 'teabagging.'

But not quite as good as Sean Hannity's Ministry of Truth.