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So Seattle has passed a minimum wage increase, their minimum wage is now $15/hr. Let's have a good ol' Halforums discussion about this! I'll start - it's going to raise prices and unemployment, and exacerbate inflation in a city that is already stupidly expensive to live in. Next up?

GasBandit said:

So Seattle has passed a minimum wage increase, their minimum wage is now $15/hr. Let's have a good ol' Halforums discussion about this! I'll start - it's going to raise prices and unemployment, and exacerbate inflation in a city that is already stupidly expensive to live in. Next up?

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Seventh most expensive according to the Seattle PI itself.

Anyways, there is a lot of high-tech, legal, and other business firms that won't be affected much by a minimum wage hike. It probably won't raise prices at Walmart, definitely not at places like Costco that already pay pretty high wages compared to others. Small business will have to decide, though: raise prices, eat the loss out of profits (which IS an option) or some combination of both.

No chance of those small businesses doing more transactions because there are more customers with spare cash for spending?

figmentPez said:

No chance of those small businesses doing more transactions because there are more customers with spare cash for spending?

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Some, but that will come second, not first. So the small businesses will have to weather paying out to employees and then a couple months later seeing a little spike in business. Will it be enough to offset costs? Possibly for some. It depends a lot on how much work you can wring from people for the wage. For some it might mean more business for the same amount of employees, others not so much.

Yeah, I'm all about helping the poor, but raising the minimum wage just isn't the answer. Oh, it might be in the short term, but it would be essentially the same as giving everyone X dollars. It will devalue the dollar in that market and prices will rise to follow suit. It's really macro-economics 101.

I gotta tell you, the leftists over on Daily of the Day/Disqus are shitting themselves with joy, and when I rain on their parade, they immediately demand "sources/proof instead of rhetoric" even though they haven't posted a single link themselves. It's tiring dealing with frothing zealots. One had just got done talking about how he hates the "fucking rich pigs" and hopes soon everybody will be fed up enough to "overthrow capitalism" and yet is surprised when I tell him I don't think it's worth my time to source him any links as he'll not abide any dissent regardless of source.

You can't argue with a cemented ideology. It's why atheists will never convince religious people that God does not exist, religious people will never sway an atheist into believing god exists, or Justin Bieber into realizing his music sucks and he's a douchebag.

It kind of makes me wonder about working at a national chain up there. I know at my college job when I transferred to a different location I got to keep my current wage even though I was making almost a dollar more then my coworkers due to minimum wage differences. I wonder if you could work up there for a few months then transfer down to a different cheaper city and keep the same pay scale. I have a feeling most places wouldn't accept the transfer as you'd be making more then some managers but just a thought that popped up in my mind.

Anyway I forsee a lot more online shopping going on up there as the prices will be way too high to compete minus the time convince factor.

Honestly, all I see this doing is convincing a lot of the businesses that don't have to switch until 2017 that they should look into more contingency staffing (aka, contract employees). There's already a lawsuit coming up from a group representing franchisees (because apparently they wrote the law in such a way that if you own a McDonald's you're considered a business with over 500 employees, even if you only own one). And sure, the socialist city councilwoman looks good to her constituents right now, but that'll sour when things start heading south.

Dave said:

You can't argue with a cemented ideology. It's why atheists will never convince religious people that God does not exist, religious people will never sway an atheist into believing god exists, or Justin Bieber into realizing his music sucks and he's a douchebag.

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I'm guessing this is just hyperbole, but historically the first two have been done, and half of the third was probably always true, but he doesn't care 'cause that music makes money.

Rovewin said:

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Anyway I forsee a lot more online shopping going on up there as the prices will be way too high to compete minus the time convince factor.

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And what city has the largest online realtor in the world?

Checkmate athiests

Oh boy! A test case!

--Patrick

Being a starbucks employee looking for a condo in Dallas Tx...I'm intrigued.

Headlines tomorrow: "Microsoft develops the XDrudge, a robot employee based on Xbox technology. All minimum wage workers in Seattle fired."

bhamv3 said:

Headlines tomorrow: "Microsoft develops the XDrudge, a robot employee based on Xbox technology. All minimum wage workers in Seattle fired."

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Microsoft doesn't need to do that, they already have at least 95% of their low-wage workers (I don't think anyone actually makes minimum wage at Microsoft) staffed by contract workers. Also, Microsoft isn't headquartered in Seattle, so this would only affect a couple of office buildings filled with mostly much-higher-paid staff.

Google, on the other hand...

It's a big hike, but to be fair minimum wage has only doubled since the 80s iirc, and real prices have gone FAR higher than that. Minimum wage has been lagging terribly. In other words, minimum wage has been at 15$ an hour for far longer than it hasn't, if that makes sense.

I remember in the 90s and early 2000s how there was such a labor shortage even the fast food franchises were hiring above minimum wage.

Necronic said:

minimum wage has only doubled since the 80s iirc, and real prices have gone FAR higher than that..

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Gasoline prices have tripled since the 80's (80's are when gas finally went and stayed above $1/gal). When it costs 3x80's to drive to your job where you get paid 2x80's, you notice.

--Patrick

Here's a good graph on it.

http://www.mnbudgetproject.org/image-gallery/graph-declining-value-minimum-wage.gif

If you don't want a minimum wage at all then so be it, but if you want to maintain a minimum wage then it should at least follow inflation. Anyways, if you follow "trickle-up" economics the extra money in their pockets will go right back out into the market and lift up the rich. Remember, "a rising tide lifts all boats"

Necronic said:

Remember, "a rising tide lifts all boats"

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Er... that phrase is generally used to promote trickle-down economics. Not up.

Actually it comes from JFK. But yeah I was just being cute. Really though there is little reason it couldn't work both ways.

Putting more money into the pockets of "poor" (i.e., "not rich") people just means they then have more to take, making them that much more tempting of a target.

--Patrick

Putting more money in the pockets of the "poor" is best done via job creation. We've got massively huge unemployment (despite certain media venues now claiming that we're back up to where we were before the recession, the labor participation rate still puts the lie to the claim), and I don't know about you guys, but I've never been hired for a job by a poor person.

Besides, remember stimulus checks? How'd that turn out? (hint - people mostly paid of existing debt, thus minimizing any economic impact of the cash infusion)

I just think... if you can't afford to live in Seattle, then don't live there.
There's already businesses moving out of Seattle now because of this. It'll be interesting to see what happens in a few years... I feel like it'll just do more bad than good.

GasBandit said:

Putting more money in the pockets of the "poor" is best done via job creation. We've got massively huge unemployment (despite certain media venues now claiming that we're back up to where we were before the recession, the labor participation rate still puts the lie to the claim), and I don't know about you guys, but I've never been hired for a job by a poor person.

Besides, remember stimulus checks? How'd that turn out? (hint - people mostly paid of existing debt, thus minimizing any economic impact of the cash infusion)

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I've never been hired for a job by a rich person. Well this one HR person did have a rich husband.

sixpackshaker said:

I've never been hired for a job by a rich person. Well this one HR person did have a rich husband.

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HR hires you on behalf of a rich person - the person who owns/runs the business at which you gained employment.

Eh. High minimum wage in Seattle is ridiculous because the USA is pretty much an open market. Same reason why people wanting to raise the Belgian minimum wage are nuts in a Europe that contains countries like Poland and Croatia. Yes, a minimum wage should be able to support a person (though not in luxury). Raising minimum wage in only part of a market is stupid and will have adverse effects. You know how many trucks are on Belgian roads? Literally hundreds of thousands (highest amount of trucks per capita in the world.) You know how many of them are driven by Belgian teamsters? ...Yeah, some 5 or so. All the rest are Bulgarian or Polish or, increasingly, Romanian (despite not being part of the EU, we have free traffic of labour with them). I'm not racist or prejudiced against Polish people or any other Eastern European countries, but, unlike in most cases, here it's a very clear "they took our jobs" thing at play. Any job that can be done by someone without a fixed address in Belgium, is slowly being "outsourced" to other European countries, with "consultants" and "temporary assignments" and so on in Belgium. Polish carpenters, Bulgarian plumbers - they're just as capable as their Belgian counterparts (hell, with our over-education, they're often better), and they cost half. And it's, in most cases, legal! Why the * would you hire a Belgian construction worker for €15+ if you can hire a Polish one for €6 + room and board (of course, what passes for "room and board" in construction circles is....Somewhat rudimentary)?

Minimum wage should be enough to live on. Living costs vary around a market (living anywhere in Poland is obviously cheaper than living in Paris). There's bound to be some differences. Make the differences too big and multinationals will go where labor is cheapest and regulations laxest. I've said before and I'll say again that unions etc in the Western world are digging their own grave and being short-sighted by fighting for our rights, when they should be fighting for everyone's rights. A minimum wage in Thailand will do more good to factory workers here than a thousand new law and regulations here.

GasBandit said:

HR hires you on behalf of a rich person - the person who owns/runs the business at which you gained employment.

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I guess nobody has ever worked for a start up or a mom-n-pop store...

sixpackshaker said:

I guess nobody has ever worked for a start up or a mom-n-pop store...

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...funded by people or ran by people with more money than their employees...

stienman said:

At 40 hours a week with full benefits and paid time off and supporting a family of four as the sole breadwinner living close to work with good schools and reasonable entertainment options?

Or at 80 hours a week with no benefits or paid time off, living in a single room shared rental with no dependents and significant travel time to work or any entertainment options?

1. What is your definition of "live on"?
2. Why should everyone adopt that definition?

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You're deliberately misquoting me, stienman. I said support a person, but not in luxury. That means no, not 4 people as a sole breadwinner. As for how much you should work - I can't help it that you live in a backwards country where they count minimum wage per hour. In Belgium, minimum wage is based on a monthly salary, for normal working hours. AKA, for 40 hours a week, most things you'd consider "benefits", and the minimum amount of paid vacation.

1. "Survival with the option of bettering yourself" = welfare. "Living without most luxuries but being able to have a social life and at least one normal hobby" = minimum wage.
2. Because I say so. Oh, wait, no, I didn't anywhere say anyone else should adopt my definition. *shrug* Anyone's free to have their opinion. However, the left in Belgium, who are literally trying to raise welfare to be equal to minimum wage, are morons - there's already next-to-no incentive to find work. The right in the US, who would happily lower it (or do away with it altogether) are also idiots because poverty and hunger don't make for good consumers or good workers - lowering or stopping minimum wage is a good way to drive the market down. Lower income, lower costs, lower prices, happier consumers as long as those consumers aren't also your employees. Which is why bargains are always produced in China or Taiwan and sold to people in other countries or regions.

I think what stienman was trying to do was point out the difficulty of defining exactly what constitutes subsistence when codified as ordinance.

I'm well aware. But you can raise the question without resorting to cheap strawmanning. I'm trying to be fairly moderate in my opinions and careful in how I express them, having them reworded to be an "opponent" to fight against is what I'm used to from facebook "friends" and comments on the newspaper. I've been burned a few times too many on here to still appreciate it much. Sometimes I have trouble expressing myself clearly because of a language gap. Sometimes I try to provoke. When I'm doing neither, I find it disappointing that someone like stienman feels the need to simplify "my" point into something I didn't say. I wouldn't have commented on it if Charlie had done it, but I hold stienman to a higher standard. it's his own fault for being often on the "other" side of debates than where I'm at, but still managing to make sense .

Covar said:

...funded by people or ran by people with more money than their employees...

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Just because I have more money than you, it does not mean I am rich. At least twice since my Dad's retirement he worked for people that did not have the quality of life that he enjoys.

stienman said:

I took an exact quote, the full sentence, from the beginning of the second paragraph in your post. It's not my intention to attack you, and I'm sorry if I've offended you.

Here is the full post, unaltered, that I quoted from, in case there's a question as to which post I quoted. Please refer to the first sentence of the second paragraph for the part I originally quoted:

Again, I'm sorry if I've misrepresented you or your posts - it's not my intention to muddy the waters, I much prefer to clear them.

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*blinks* I'm going to go for some gymnastics and pur both my feet in my mouth -_-. I changed that sentence around the first time in my post, because I wanted to avoid exactly this "reply" - which is also why I reacted slightly allergic. I completely missed that I used the same phrase again, later, and didn't change that. I'm a moron.

I present this personally-made-just-for-Kagsin's-outsourced-baby stuffed toy in repayment:

It's really not that hard to see that it's impossible to live on minimum wage, but somehow people are willfully blind to this. My favorite, by FAR, is the McDonalds suggested budget for their own employees, which works by ignoring a lot of unavoidable costs while assuming you are working two jobs at over 60 hours a week....

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/mcdon...ughable-but-its-implications-are-not-cm261920

That's not livable and it's wrong. Moreover it's a bullshit corporate welfare system. These companies get away with underpaying their workforce because we, the taxpayer, pick up the bill on welfare and foodstamps to bridge the gap that their wages don't cover. Wallmart may be the single largest "welfare queen" in the united states.

Nobody argues its "possibility." You aren't meant to "live" on minimum wage - you're meant to use it as a stepping stone to a real career. Why should someone be entitled to a living wage whose contribution doesn't merit it?

GasBandit said:

You aren't meant to "live" on minimum wage - you're meant to use it as a stepping stone to a real career. Why should someone be entitled to a living wage whose contribution doesn't merit it?

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If a job takes 40+ hours a week to do, shouldn't someone be paid enough to live on that? Why is their effort not worth a living wage, just because it's deemed "menial" labor?

F.D.R. said “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”, “By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.” (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act)

Seems pretty clear it's not "no one" who is arguing that wages paid to employees should be enough to have a decent life based on.

figmentPez said:

If a job takes 40+ hours a week to do, shouldn't someone be paid enough to live on that? Why is their effort not worth a living wage, just because it's deemed "menial" labor?

F.D.R. said “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”, “By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.” (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act)

Seems pretty clear it's not "no one" who is arguing that wages paid to employees should be enough to have a decent life based on.

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FDR, king of the Keynesian ruination of the US, said that? Color me sarcastically unsurprised.

I said no one argues the possibility of actually maintaining a living based on what minimum wage currently is, you're misquoting me.

But to answer your initial question (with another question, and also pointing out I never said "menial"), why does an unimportant contribution, not worth a living wage, suddenly become so because of the amount of time spent doing it? Minimum wage is for temporary entry level stuff and kids' summer jobs. If you're doing something worth paying for, you get paid for it. Maybe work on increasing one's earning power and jobworthiness before starting a family?

Bubble181 said:

I find it disappointing that someone like stienman feels the need to simplify "my" point into something I didn't say. I wouldn't have commented on it if Charlie had done it, but I hold stienman to a higher standard. it's his own fault for being often on the "other" side of debates than where I'm at, but still managing to make sense .

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@stienman has a long and storied history of asking questions that make us think about things more deeply. He often does this by presenting the other side of a story. I have noticed that he does not necessarily believe these statements to be true, to me it seems as though if someone says that A + 5 = B, he will then ask us to ponder whether or not it automatically should follow that B - 5 = A. Sometimes this will be something which is uncomfortable to contemplate.

--Patrick

GasBandit said:

Minimum wage is for temporary entry level stuff and kids' summer jobs.

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If that's true, then why is the average age for a minimum wage earner 35?

why does an unimportant contribution, not worth a living wage, suddenly become so because of the amount of time spent doing it?

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Because it's not unimportant. A lot of tasks considered menial are actually quite important. If they weren't important enough to get someone to be in the position for hours on end, then the position wouldn't exist in the first place. By the very existence of the job, and the fact that the employee is hired to be there for a significant chunk of their time, shows that the job is important to that business. If they need that position filled, then they need to be paying the person a fair wage for their time. Doesn't matter if they're waiting tables, sitting at a security desk, answering phones, or whatever. If they're being asked to take enough of their day that they couldn't reasonably be expected to have another job just to live, then they deserve to be paid enough to live for the hours they're employed. If the work can be done in less time, then the business should hire them for fewer hours.

figmentPez said:

If that's true, then why is the average age for a minimum wage earner 35?

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Because we're in the slowest recovery on record for the worst economic downturn since the great depression, and the real unemployment rate is still at 13%, which means all that suffering rolls downhill, and raising the minimum wage in a situation of high unemployment certainly isn't going to help.

Because it's not unimportant. A lot of tasks considered menial are actually quite important. If they weren't important enough to get someone to be in the position for hours on end, then the position wouldn't exist in the first place. By the very existence of the job, and the fact that the employee is hired to be there for a significant chunk of their time, shows that the job is important to that business. If they need that position filled, then they need to be paying the person a fair wage for their time. Doesn't matter if they're waiting tables, sitting at a security desk, answering phones, or whatever. If they're being asked to take enough of their day that they couldn't reasonably be expected to have another job just to live, then they deserve to be paid enough to live for the hours they're employed. If the work can be done in less time, then the business should hire them for fewer hours.

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Again, I didn't say "menial." The fact of the matter is that if a job is only worth 7 dollars to a company to do, but the minimum wage is 15 dollars, that means half the people get hired to do it as would normally be, but are still expected to accomplish the same total amount of that work. And if any one of them has an unsatisfactory performance level, the other half of the people, the ones who didn't get hired, are waiting to pounce on that position. This creates an unfavorable situation for those who already have it hardest. People are not entitled to a wage, to a job, to much of anything other than life and liberty (and that second one is rapidly dwindling as we speak). No matter how much of "their time" it takes up. It is not, and should not be, up to others to provide an individual with a livelihood - it is up to the individual to leverage their skills and training to become desirable, and thus, enticed by higher compensation. And after, all, if I am entitled to $30,000 a year no matter my contribution, what motivation have I to contribute more than just enough to not get fired? Heck, in Texas, a single person can live fairly well on that.

Well, you must live in some magical other world where businesses never take advantage of workers, there's never been such a thing as a company town, and people always have a choice of a better job if they just work hard enough. Since you don't live in the same world I do, I'm done with this discussion.

figmentPez said:

Well, you must live in some magical other world where businesses never take advantage of workers, there's never been such a thing as a company town, and people always have a choice of a better job if they just work hard enough. Since you don't live in the same world I do, I'm done with this discussion.

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I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just saying the minimum wage hurts those it is supposed to help much more than it does the employer.

But if it helps, I'm right with you there on corporate welfare. Or was that Necronic.

People who think Keynes or Austrian/Mises system is a one size fits all (or none) system don't understand the Laffer curve or economics. Both have their time and place. Austrian economics is for times of prosperity, to accelerate the momentum of a good economy. Keynes is to artificially create momentum in times of economic need. It baffles me that this is so hard for people (including politicians) to understand.

But the real issue to me is the corporate wellfare that the low minimum wage requires. Regardless of what the minimum wage is, somoene pays the difference between that and a living wage. My "always low prices" are artificially held low by the welfare and foodstamp costs that eat up my paychecks. As a taxpayer I would rather see my wallmart/McDonalds prices increase to pay a living wage to their employees. It's a bullshit system. d

edit: I have a lot more to say about this and I don't think I can do it without pissing off pretty much everyone on this forum. Now, I've pissed most of you off at one point or another, but all at the same time? I dunno, gonna have to think about it before I pull that trigger.

ed2: Ah ok I took too long writing and then deleting stuff, GB responded on the corporate welfare. I would be curious what you would rather have happen then. Should these companies pay real wages or should the government subsidize Walmart? Or should we just let them starve?

Necronic said:

ed2: Ah ok I took too long writing and then deleting stuff, GB responded on the corporate welfare. I would be curious what you would rather have happen then. Should these companies pay real wages or should the government subsidize Walmart? Or should we just let them starve?

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I don't think it is right that a company give substandard compensation based on the understanding that government will pick up the slack. I view this as a side effect of redistributory government policy. We saw it again in action recently - Obamacare goes live, companies drop health care coverage. As for what we do about it, that's a stickier wicket, isn't it? The genie's out of the proverbial bottle. It'd not be best to simply sour the milk by immediately eliminating the crutches they've come to take for granted - even assuming they would make the adjustments to their compensation to make up for what isn't there any more, it would undoubtably take time that the kind of people who live paycheck to paycheck couldn't afford to absorb. And you can't simply levy an additional tax on walmart to balance the equation, they'd just pass the expense on to their customers (and employees).

I'm sort of an unconventional libertarian in that I'm against both government AND business getting "too big." I view one critical, essential role of government is to make sure that competition is present in the marketplace, for in a free market it is competition which makes sure that the goods and services of highest quality are delivered for the lowest price, thus most benefitting the consumer. And really, what's good for Ma Bell is good for Sam Walton, isn't it? A lot of Walmart's leverage to do this sort of thing comes from their gravitas as what you might could even call an "ultranational" corporation. Their ability to absorb loss in one area by virtue of being everywhere else too gives them the ability to act in bad faith when it comes to employee relations and in competition - hence, their poorer compensation packages and their long-running tendency to put small, local stores out of business. I believe an argument could be made under the interstate commerce clause that Walmart is starting to encroach on monopolistic practices territory, at least to the same degree AT&T was. So break them up. I think if a way was found to do so, you'd see a lot of these other concerns would also find themselves getting fixed as competitive balance is restored.

GasBandit said:

A lot of Walmart's leverage to do this sort of thing comes from their gravitas as what you might could even call an "ultranational" corporation. Their ability to absorb loss in one area by virtue of being everywhere else too gives them the ability to act in bad faith when it comes to employee relations and in competition - hence, their poorer compensation packages and their long-running tendency to put small, local stores out of business.

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So they're acting like Rockefeller, except instead of ruining competition one corner at a time, they're going one State at a time.

When I worked for Kodak, Wal*Mart came along and wanted to have us do their development. "We'll increase your business 20%." And they did. And then about 6 months later, they "negotiated" to have all of their business done first. "We account for 20% of your business, so we expect you to meet our demands or else we'll pull out."

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

So they're acting like Rockefeller, except instead of ruining competition one corner at a time, they're going one State at a time.

When I worked for Kodak, Wal*Mart came along and wanted to have us do their development. "We'll increase your business 20%." And they did. And then about 6 months later, they "negotiated" to have all of their business done first. "We account for 20% of your business, so we expect you to meet our demands or else we'll pull out."

--Patrick

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Imagine if the three+ walmarts in town had to compete with each other, instead of collude.

GasBandit said:

Imagine if the three+ walmarts in town had to compete with each other, instead of collude.

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Well, we'd lose the benefits of economy of scale. Though I am not against the idea of each Wal*Mart being a franchisee instead of corporate arm.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Well, we'd lose the benefits of economy of scale. Though I am not against the idea of each Wal*Mart being a franchisee instead of corporate arm.

--Patrick

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Not all the benefits of economy of scale. It wouldn't be necessary to make every single walmart an independent company... just break the whole mess into say, 5 companies. Give or take. And make it so that each company can't have more than 1 store within 100 miles of another.

GasBandit said:

And make it so that each company can't have more than 1 store within 100 miles of another.

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Why would you need to have the stores be 2 hours of driving apart? Do you know how impractical that would be for a large city like Houston? There are 11 Walmarts (and 8 Targets, numerous Krogers and HEBs, some of which have furniture sections) within Beltway 8, and that's just a 15 mile radius around the center of Houston. You expect 5 stores, all from different companies carrying different store brands, to serve what 11 stores do now... Plus all the other locations in the suburbs that would fall into the 100 mile radius around Houston?

I'm not sure you thought this one out.

figmentPez said:

Why would you need to have the stores be 2 hours of driving apart? Do you know how impractical that would be for a large city like Houston? There are 11 Walmarts (and 8 Targets, numerous Krogers and HEBs, some of which have furniture sections) within Beltway 8, and that's just a 15 mile radius around the center of Houston. You expect 5 stores, all from different companies carrying different store brands, to serve what 11 stores do now... Plus all the other locations in the suburbs that would fall into the 100 mile radius around Houston?

I'm not sure you thought this one out.

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While I did pick it more or less arbitrarily, the underlying idea is to not let a geographic monopoly develop like the cable companies. The number of companies and the mile radius can be fiddled with - the point is it's not enough to break up WalMart, it the pieces have to compete with each other - for both customers AND workers. Thus, we're not reducing the number of "superstores" in Houston, just making them be run by different companies. If the prices/wages aren't good enough at Walmart, now you just go down the street to WalCoStore. And I'm not talking about a blanket legislation here - it wouldn't apply necessarily to all the other companies you mentioned. It's a specific, targeted action to break apart a force so dominating its market that it is toxic to competition and bad for both consumers and employees.

Imagine if the government had not broken up AT&T. You think they're bad now (and they are), but imagine how bad they'd be if Verizon, Sprint, etc all didn't exist. Or, conversely, as bad as Verizon is now, imagine how bad they'd be if they were permitted to buy AT&T, or if AT&T just went out of business, leaving the markets to be gobbled up by Verizon.

GasBandit said:

While I did pick it more or less arbitrarily, the underlying idea is to not let a geographic monopoly develop like the cable companies. The number of companies and the mile radius can be fiddled with - the point is it's not enough to break up WalMart, it the pieces have to compete with each other - for both customers AND workers.

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It would seem to me that the mile radius does the exact opposite, and only encourages each of the companies to stake out their own neighborhood, and not fight with the other stores. If they're limited to how many stores they can put in a city, then they're not going to try to compete, they're going to be like cable companies are now, where each services their own little domain, and they all work together to keep new competition from coming up to ruin their sweet deal.

figmentPez said:

It would seem to me that the mile radius does the exact opposite, and only encourages each of the companies to stake out their own neighborhood, and not fight with the other stores. If they're limited to how many stores they can put in a city, then they're not going to try to compete, they're going to be like cable companies are now, where each services their own little domain, and they all work together to keep new competition from coming up to ruin their sweet deal.

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They can't, unless they agree to not build a store within 100 miles of each other as well as themselves - which already can't be done because there's 11 stores in Houston alone. But even if they started off by bulldozing all existing stores, it still opens up the market by creating a demand for another upstart company to swoop in and build a store to undercut the others. There'd be a lot of money to be made doing that, and opportunities like that don't go just left on the table.

That's why it's a 100 mile radius and not a 10 mile radius. It has to be big enough to create and maintain a demand for multiple stores in a single city, but yet small enough to not prevent a store from having a location in both Houston, and say, College Station. But as I said, one company alone can't satisfy the demands of all of Houston, and where there is demand, supply moves in to make money. Hence, more companies in the same market, and voila - competition. Keeps prices low, quality high, and makes employers at a disadvantage when negotiating with workers instead of being able to lock workers out and dictate terms.