Seattle's Minimum Wage Hike

MindDetective

MindDetective

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.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

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

MindDetective

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.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
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.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
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.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
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.
 
Rovewin

Rovewin

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.
 
Gared

Gared

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.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

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.
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

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

Gared

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...
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
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.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
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.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

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
 
Necronic

Necronic

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

PatrThom

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
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
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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linglingface

linglingface

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.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

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.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

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.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

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.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
I think what stienman was trying to do was point out the difficulty of defining exactly what constitutes subsistence when codified as ordinance.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

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 :p.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

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.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

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:

 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
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.
 
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