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How easy is it to eat healthy on food stamps?

We are already a 21st century feudal nation. But I digress.

I would not advocate for abolishing the minimum wage cold turkey. You are right that doing so would probably be disruptive to the economy - that's what happens when government interferes in the economy, the economy tends to become dependent on the interference and there are bad effects when the drug is removed. However when you are in a hole the best approach is to stop digging, and accordingly I am against raising the minimum wage any further. That doesn't mean that I don't recognize the fact that the bottom 50% of earners (if not more) are hurting and need help. I think all our feudal overlords should be taxed equally to provide the help, instead of the current practice of adding additional taxes (in the form of the minimum wage, Obamacare, and a million pages of employment-related regulations that kick in when you get to 50 employees) on just the ones who are the employers of those earners. I don't buy into the whole GOP rhetoric of "job creators" but I do think that a person would have to be willfully blind to ignore the adverse affects that these employer taxes have on overall employment.
 
It doesn't matter whether do it once or over time. If you do it over time, our economy will stagnate until it is abolished as virtually no hourly workers will get raises during the process. Once the minimum wage is gone, we will become a third world country.

Unless you accept millions of people living on the street or in shanty towns, another definite result would be dramatically higher taxes on everyone else to pay for the social services the poor will need.

Another factor you aren't thinking about is how many millions of jobs this will cost. Remember it's not just the $7.25/hour that will be impacted. Tens of millions of non-union workers will have their wages slashed or stagnated. All those tens of millions at minimum wage and those up double minimum wage won't be able to buy anything. This will destroy the economy.

Getting rid of the minimum wage is quickest way to totally destroy our economy imaginable.
 
RJKarl said:
Getting rid of the minimum wage is quickest way to totally destroy our economy imaginable.
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Well, except for all the other policy suggestions that you have stated will destroy the country in the quickest way imaginable, amiright? :D


PS: I'm just giving you a hard time RJ. I have no desire to turn this thread into a slap fight over what you may or may not have said in any of your 30,681 posts.
 
Wal Mart is an interesting example to look at because as 923 mentioned, despite all of their faults (and there are plenty) they save poor people more money than any other retailer in the world. I'm torn on the minimum wage thing because it just feels intuitive to me that someone that works 50+ hours a week should earn enough money to live a safe lifestyle on the wages they earn with the ability to hopefully have upward movement in their career. Just a couple of weeks ago I posted that I was in favor of increasing the minimum wage with accompanying cuts in social welfare to make it neutral for those working these jobs, essentially tying a worker's real cost to their industry rather than being buoyed by federal assistance. My BOI apetit made some good points about how it would likely not work in my pie-in-the-sky brain. I'm now confused as ever and am glad that I don't have to be the one making the decisions.
 
bmoneydeac said:
Wal Mart is an interesting example to look at because as 923 mentioned, despite all of their faults (and there are plenty) they save poor people more money than any other retailer in the world. I'm torn on the minimum wage thing because it just feels intuitive to me that someone that works 50+ hours a week should earn enough money to live a safe lifestyle on the wages they earn with the ability to hopefully have upward movement in their career. Just a couple of weeks ago I posted that I was in favor of increasing the minimum wage with accompanying cuts in social welfare to make it neutral for those working these jobs, essentially tying a worker's real cost to their industry rather than being buoyed by federal assistance. My BOI apetit made some good points about how it would likely not work in my pie-in-the-sky brain. I'm now confused as ever and am glad that I don't have to be the one making the decisions.
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As you can see my proposal is the opposite of yours - i want to keep the minimum wage the same but increase (and radically change the delivery method of, but that's another thread) social welfare. Think about it this way - if you raise the minimum wage but lower social welfare, what you have just done is given an indirect subsidy to all the businesses who do NOT employ minimum wage workers. You've just made business more expensive for those who employ the low-skilled people where the really huge job gaps exist in the economy, and less expensive for all the other businesses. Thus, all else being equal, investment and innovation will tend to flow away from the first category and toward the second, and businesses who can figure out how to reduce the number of low-skilled workers will make more money than those who employ more.
 
Deacon923 said:
Well, except for all the other policy suggestions that you have stated will destroy the country in the quickest way imaginable, amiright? :D


PS: I'm just giving you a hard time RJ. I have no desire to turn this thread into a slap fight over what you may or may not have said in any of your 30,681 posts.
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Capitalist economies do not work from the top down. They succeed from the bottom up and middle out and up.

By getting rid of the minimum wage you would destroy the bottom of the economy.

You would succeed in one thing. There would be an explosion in employee unions.
 
Deacon923 said:
As you can see my proposal is the opposite of yours - i want to keep the minimum wage the same but increase (and radically change the delivery method of, but that's another thread) social welfare. Think about it this way - if you raise the minimum wage but lower social welfare, what you have just done is given an indirect subsidy to all the businesses who do NOT employ minimum wage workers. You've just made business more expensive for those who employ the low-skilled people where the really huge job gaps exist in the economy, and less expensive for all the other businesses. Thus, all else being equal, investment and innovation will tend to flow away from the first category and toward the second, and businesses who can figure out how to reduce the number of low-skilled workers will make more money than those who employ more.
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I understand your point but the counter argument would be that the social welfare has been a subsidy for companies that employ MW workers for years.
 
bmoneydeac said:
I understand your point but the counter argument would be that the social welfare has been a subsidy for companies that employ MW workers for years.
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Like I said I used to make that argument but I am no longer sure it holds water. If I imagine what would happen at Wal Mart if the entire social welfare system were abolished tomorrow, I think that (1) their customers would have a lot less money to spend, so they'd have to lower prices even further or find some other way to make up for the lost volume; and (2) their existing employee base would be even more desperate for work than they already are (which in this economy is barely possible). Do you think the 7.15/hour greeter who is getting food stamps would suddenly walk off the job if her food stamps disappeared? Hell no. She'd be begging for overtime.

Now it is possible that workers made more desperate by the removal of the social welfare state would be more likely to unionize and demand job security and higher wages. I don't generally think that is something that is good for anyone, since unionized businesses tend to have decreased dynamism and innovation, and as we have seen are more susceptible to efforts by management to move productions to countries without unions and worker protections. I'd rather keep people at a decent standard of living with public assistance as a method to keep unionizing pressure lower. I suppose that is a way that social welfare indirectly subsidizes those who employ low-wage workers, but again I prefer to spread that cost over the entire economy because we all benefit from low unemployment, less outsourcing, and more dynamic companies.

Again, if you continue to put the burden of social welfare disproportionately on the shoulders of those who employ low-skill workers, the sectors that don't rely on low skill workers (finance, tech) become bigger and bigger parts of the economy and large segments of our population become a permanently unemployed underclass. This is good for exactly nobody in the long run.
 
Except WalMart wouldn't be willing to pay OT.

You still haven't answered how a person making $100-150 per MONTH (like they do in Bangladesh and other places) could possibly live in the US?

Minimum wage has ZERO to do with changing our economy from manufacturing to service. Eliminating the minimum wage would kill the poor.

I hate to say it, but your position makes no sense and would harm the poor unconscionably.
 
(1) But 1 doesn't happen unless we start employing Americans to make all the shit that Walmart sells that's currently made in China by workers making $1 a day or whatever. Walmart doesn't operate on huge profit margins. Lowering wages by 10% will only make so much difference. You have to make some estimate of what the market equilibrium age would be, how much below the current minimum wage, to be able to determine if a retailer like Walmart would even be able to continue to exist. It might not.
 
923 isn't talking about lowering wages by 10%. He's talking about no bottom for WalMArt. He's talking about no minimum. Instead of some employees on food stamps and Medicaid, a majority of their hourly employees will be.

Eliminating the minimum wage will absolutely equal higher federal, state and local taxes for everyone. There's no way around it.
 
RJKarl said:
923 isn't talking about lowering wages by 10%. He's talking about no bottom for WalMArt. He's talking about no minimum. Instead of some employees on food stamps and Medicaid, a majority of their hourly employees will be.

Eliminating the minimum wage will absolutely equal higher federal, state and local taxes for everyone. There's no way around it.
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I understand that. But there is a market equilibrium wage at which people won't bother working for Walmart and I don't think it's a whole lot less than $7.15/per hour. "No bottom" doesn't mean $1 per hour.
 
The higher unemployment is the lower wages will be. Once wages are accepted to be lower, they will stay lower.

It's not just for the lowest paid. It will be for every employee in companies who use this tactic.

The more companies that use the lower wage scales the less everyone who does those jobs will get elsewhere.

This is the worst idea possible for our economy. It guarantees wildly expanded poverty and people dropping from the middle class in poverty. You couldn't come up with a much worse idea.
 
I didn't say it was a good idea. Wages are sticky. Prices are sticky. Neither rises or falls overnight in most cases.

Every other employee in the US who is not at minimum wage is subject to this tactic.

No, there are places in the US where the minimum wage is unimportant because fast food jobs go unfilled at higher wages. Not every labor market in the US is the same.

I agree that it would lead to a more impoverished lower class, but wouldn't affect middle class Americans much more than current policies.
 
to be clear I am not advocating for eliminating the minimum wage. It's too late for that. I am advocating for no more increases and instead supporting the working poor through reformed and enhanced social welfare programs.
 
It will definitely impact the middle class. Let's say you have a two family income family with each making $15/hour. With the dramatic downward pressure of no minimum wage, it would not be completely unlikely that they could drop to $10-12/hour.

This would dramatically harm our economy.
 
Deacon923 said:
to be clear I am not advocating for eliminating the minimum wage. It's too late for that. I am advocating for no more increases and instead supporting the working poor through reformed and enhanced social welfare programs.
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No more increases is basically akin to eliminating it. The federal minimum wage has only been raised three times in the past 30 years.
 
Deacon923 said:
to be clear I am not advocating for eliminating the minimum wage. It's too late for that. I am advocating for no more increases and instead supporting the working poor through reformed and enhanced social welfare programs.
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Given who is in office on both sides of the aisle and those who are likely to follow, it's too late for that as well.
 
Deacon923 said:
to be clear I am not advocating for eliminating the minimum wage. It's too late for that. I am advocating for no more increases and instead supporting the working poor through reformed and enhanced social welfare programs.
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So you are proposing higher taxes for everyone?
 
RJKarl said:
It will definitely impact the middle class. Let's say you have a two family income family with each making $15/hour. With the dramatic downward pressure of no minimum wage, it would not be completely unlikely that they could drop to $10-12/hour.

This would dramatically harm our economy.
Click to expand...

No. You're wrong. If the market wage for a job is above minimum wage, eliminating minimum wage won't affect it. Minimum wage affects minimum wage jobs; not jobs at twice the minimum wage.
 
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