Should voting be mandatory?

[BigRob]

That may be one “honest” way of looking at some of the facts, but it is not a clear picture.

You talk about groups that make minimum wages of $43 K and $60 K. A person at minimum wage, $8 per hour, amounts to about $16 K per year. The average family size is 2.54 people. On average, if all in the family have minimum wage jobs they can't make more than $40 K total. So obviously some in the family make more than minimum wage, especially if some are below working age. You obscure the picture when you intermix the statistics.

But that is exactly the point. The group that makes minimum wage to begin with is quite small - and the majority of this group lives in households that make the figures I cited - meaning they are not in poverty.

When you talk in averages and percentage of averages the picture is obfuscated. What is more significant is the absolute percentages in terms of the total population. That is, 7% of 25% of some undefined number is not an totally honest way of looking at the facts.

The BLS stats show that roughly 1.6 million workers in the United States make minimum wage (based on their most recent stats). On that group - 704,000 are above the age of 24. The stats previously cited show that 25% of this group roughly lives at the poverty line - or 176,000 people. Splitting further into this data, it shows 7% of this audience works full time - or 12,320 people.

So the total result is that 12,320 people (based on BLS stats) work full time and live at the poverty line....doesn't seem to be the problem that we are told it is.

It is obvious that most people make more than minimum wage. And it is obvious that anyone in poverty can get out of poverty by working more. However, elderly, disabled people, cannot always work more. “The solution is jobs - nothing else” What jobs?

I am glad you bring up the elderly. Let's again check the BLS stats. Workers making minimum wage who are 55 or older account for 94,000 workers - this would again be split down into a smaller segment to pull out who exactly lives at the poverty line - but you can quickly get the idea that it is simply not that many people.

If the purpose of a minimum wage hike is to lift people out of poverty we should be honest about the fact that we are talking about a very small audience. There is no reason to blankly raise minimum wage under the guise of fighting poverty when almost no one in the group even lives at the poverty line. It just doesn't make any sense.

The solution is jobs. We need to promote pro-growth, pro-business policies that gets government off the back of businesses and allows them to expand and hire more workers.

McDonalds and Walmart are paying sub-survival wages because they can and they add to their profits that way. Sure that's what businesses are supposed to do. The upshot is that the government has to help bail those in poverty and thus indirectly subsidize those companies. I stand by my statement that Walmart and Mc Donalds benefit at the tax payers expense.

The cost to taxpayers if you accept your premise at face value is essentially nothing overall given the negligible number of people earning minimum wage and living at the poverty level. Its all fine and good to view this as an issue - but lets be clear that it is an issue that amounts to maybe a couple million a year throughout the entire country - and is not some billion dollar boondoggle.

 

[Lagboltz]

But that is exactly the point. The group that makes minimum wage to begin with is quite small - and the majority of this group lives in households that make the figures I cited - meaning they are not in poverty.

The BLS stats show that roughly 1.6 million workers in the United States make minimum wage (based on their most recent stats). On that group - 704,000 are above the age of 24. The stats previously cited show that 25% of this group roughly lives at the poverty line - or 176,000 people. Splitting further into this data, it shows 7% of this audience works full time - or 12,320 people.

So the total result is that 12,320 people (based on BLS stats) work full time and live at the poverty line....doesn't seem to be the problem that we are told it is.

I am glad you bring up the elderly. Let's again check the BLS stats. Workers making minimum wage who are 55 or older account for 94,000 workers - this would again be split down into a smaller segment to pull out who exactly lives at the poverty line - but you can quickly get the idea that it is simply not that many people.

If the purpose of a minimum wage hike is to lift people out of poverty we should be honest about the fact that we are talking about a very small audience. There is no reason to blankly raise minimum wage under the guise of fighting poverty when almost no one in the group even lives at the poverty line. It just doesn't make any sense.

The solution is jobs. We need to promote pro-growth, pro-business policies that gets government off the back of businesses and allows them to expand and hire more workers.

The cost to taxpayers if you accept your premise at face value is essentially nothing overall given the negligible number of people earning minimum wage and living at the poverty level. Its all fine and good to view this as an issue - but lets be clear that it is an issue that amounts to maybe a couple million a year throughout the entire country - and is not some billion dollar boondoggle.

The following statement comes from the US Census Bureau.
http://www.census.gov/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-249.html

“In 2013, there were 45.3 million people in poverty. For the third consecutive year, the number of people in poverty at the national level was not statistically different from the previous year’s estimate”

The US Census seems to differ significantly from your BLS data. The USCB data is a simple hard number. The BLS data is confused by subsets of subsets. Of course the USCB data does not distinguish how many are employed or family size or % at minimum wage, but it is difficult to reconcile the huge but simply stated 45.3 million poverty figure of the USCB with the more complexly stated BLS data.

 

[Lagboltz]

The CEO of Wal-Mart and McDonalds lie awake at night thinking of how to make my life better.

Surely you are joking. I'm positive the CEOs are thinking of how to increase profits for their stockholders. If they are making you happy you must be a large stockholder.

Anyone in any business is in the business of pleasing customers.

Joking again? For large companies, increasing profits is the goal. Lowering costs and getting customers is the means. If the customers are pleased, that is a bonus.

Ironically, competition produces cooperation.

Surely you are dripping with sarcasm. Does Microsoft cooperate with Apple? With Sun Microsystems? Does Verizon cooperate with AT&T? Etc. The list is very very long.

Lag, I have one question for ya, Where is this money going to come from my friend? This will not and can not continue, it will come to an end and it won't be pretty.

More money can come from increased taxes, closing tax loop holes, ending subsidies, ...

 

[BigRob]

The following statement comes from the US Census Bureau.
http://www.census.gov/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-249.html

“In 2013, there were 45.3 million people in poverty. For the third consecutive year, the number of people in poverty at the national level was not statistically different from the previous year’s estimate”

The US Census seems to differ significantly from your BLS data. The USCB data is a simple hard number. The BLS data is confused by subsets of subsets. Of course the USCB data does not distinguish how many are employed or family size or % at minimum wage, but it is difficult to reconcile the huge but simply stated 45.3 million poverty figure of the USCB with the more complexly stated BLS data.

It's easy to simply cite the full figure and assume the solution is the raise minimum wage and think the impact will be large - but the data subsets are important.

The Census Bureau reports obviously states that there are 45.3 million people in poverty. But what do we know about these people from the dats subsets?

1) 35% (15.7 million people) of this group did not work single week during the year.
2) Only 6% (2.7 million people) of this group worked full time last year.

The Census Data gives us the numbers as an age range from 18-64, so it's more difficult to break down into age ranges and split out who makes minimum wage from these categories - but we know from the BLS stats a general concept of how many people would fit this criteria - a ballpark of 176,000 people. (25% of minimum wage earners over the age of 24 and living at the poverty level)

Meaning it seems reasonable to argue that only 6% of full time workers over the age of 24 make minimum wage and live at the poverty line - correct?

Therefore - I would argue blanket minimum wage increases really offer no substantial benefit to lifting people out of poverty - nor is the alleged "corporate welfare" provided to this group overly substantial in number. If anything the vast majority of this alleged "subsidy" goes to the audience that doesn't work at all (or only part time). If you don't have a job and live in poverty it's irrelevant what the minimum wage is - bringing me back to where I maintain the focus must be placed...on jobs and pro-growth pro-business policies.

It's late and I'm reading these charts on an iPad - so it's possible I missed some of the data - but I'm not currently seeing where that might be.

 

[Lagboltz]

Meaning it seems reasonable to argue that only 6% of full time workers over the age of 24 make minimum wage and live at the poverty line - correct?

That would be correct only under the assumption that the worker is living alone. For example if the worker had to support a family of four, that would mean all four are living in poverty, and an increase in minimum wage would aid four people.

If your 6% figure is accurate, and the average family size is 2.6 a very rough correction to that would indicate that 2.6 x 6% would benefit. I would argue that roughly 15.6% would benefit from an increased minimum wage under those assumptions.

That would partially explain why the 45.3 million living in poverty is so much higher than the minimum wage work force.

However, I still prefer to look at the statistics in a more straightforward way:
According to the DOL (http://www.dol.gov/minwage/) 28 million workers are at minimum wage. The labor force (May 2014) is 156 million. The result is about 18% (28/156) of the work force is at minimum wage.

I would argue that when you consider family size, a minimum wage increase for that 18% would have a very large benefit to American families.

 

[Cruella]

Yes, voting should be mandatory, and there should only be one candidate to vote for. In some districts, Obama won 141%. In others, he only won 99% of the vote. They should go out and track down those people that didn't vote and put them in jail.

 

[BigRob]

That would be correct only under the assumption that the worker is living alone. For example if the worker had to support a family of four, that would mean all four are living in poverty, and an increase in minimum wage would aid four people.

If your 6% figure is accurate, and the average family size is 2.6 a very rough correction to that would indicate that 2.6 x 6% would benefit. I would argue that roughly 15.6% would benefit from an increased minimum wage under those assumptions.

That would partially explain why the 45.3 million living in poverty is so much higher than the minimum wage work force.

It seems to be a fair assumption that the number of people living on minimum wage and being the sole bread winner for a family is a pretty small group. Even if we assume 15.6% of minimum wage workers need such a raise - we are still talking about a very small group of people.

However, I still prefer to look at the statistics in a more straightforward way:
According to the DOL (http://www.dol.gov/minwage/) 28 million workers are at minimum wage. The labor force (May 2014) is 156 million. The result is about 18% (28/156) of the work force is at minimum wage.

I would argue that when you consider family size, a minimum wage increase for that 18% would have a very large benefit to American families.

Those stats do not argue that 28 million people are a minimum wage - those stats argue that 28 million people would benefit from a wage hike with a new floor of $10.10 - which grabs a much larger group of people than than currently make minimum wage. I'll look for stats on this group.

 

[PLC1]

What's the difference between someone making $10 an hour and a large pizza?


Run your mouse just below this line to see the answer
answer: A large pizza can feed a family of four.


If you have a family to feed, or even if you don't, you need to find a better job than that. They're out there, but may take some sacrifices.... like going back to school, or moving to where there are jobs.

 

[Aus22]

The Minimum wage in Australia is about double your 84 an hour. This why burgers are dearer here according to one MC Donald's manager, What do you prefer a decent wage or cheaper burgers?

 

[BigRob]

The Minimum wage in Australia is about double your 84 an hour. This why burgers are dearer here according to one MC Donald's manager, What do you prefer a decent wage or cheaper burgers?

I prefer for the market to set the price of labor.

 

[Lagboltz]

It seems to be a fair assumption that the number of people living on minimum wage and being the sole bread winner for a family is a pretty small group. Even if we assume 15.6% of minimum wage workers need such a raise - we are still talking about a very small group of people.

Those stats do not argue that 28 million people are a minimum wage - those stats argue that 28 million people would benefit from a wage hike with a new floor of $10.10 - which grabs a much larger group of people than than currently make minimum wage. I'll look for stats on this group.

I found household income statistics from the USCB for the year 2013.
( http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-249.pdf )

On page 23 they show data for 0-$15,000 and 15,000 to $25,000. Interpolating the data for $0 to $20,000 you will find that the 18.4 % of households have an income less than $20,000 (roughly equivalent to the new $10/hr min wage proposed.)

On page 30, the second row from the top shows that 20% of the households have an income less than $20.900. This is roughly consistent with the data on page 23.

These two figures show that the number of households affected by a $10 min wage is surprisingly close to the percentage of workers at minimum wage now.

In short, 18.4% of households would benefit from a minimum wage increase. That increase would take some of the burden off of federal expenditures, and put it on the companies where it belongs. If you prefer that the market sets the price for labor, that will put a higher burden on welfare expenditures.

The actions that many conservatives would want - eliminate the minimum wage, and eliminate welfare - would be a double whammy and leave at least 18.4% of households with nowhere to turn.

 

[Lagboltz]

If you have a family to feed, or even if you don't, you need to find a better job than that. They're out there, but may take some sacrifices.... like going back to school, or moving to where there are jobs.

If the 28 million Americans living in poverty could all find the money to do that you would still find 28 million Americans still living in poverty and over-educated for the only jobs they can find, and in debt for student loans.

Lets face it the middle class jobs that used to be in manufacturing have gone overseas, or to robots, or both. The US will always have an abundance of menial jobs that have to be filled.

 

[PLC1]

If the 28 million Americans living in poverty could all find the money to do that you would still find 28 million Americans still living in poverty and over-educated for the only jobs they can find, and in debt for student loans.

Lets face it the middle class jobs that used to be in manufacturing have gone overseas, or to robots, or both. The US will always have an abundance of menial jobs that have to be filled.

Those menial jobs need to be filled by teens wanting to get some job experience and make a little extra money, and not by heads of households trying to make a living. Moreover, they should not be filled by illegal aliens as many of them are now. If we'd address the problem of illegal immigration, the supply and demand ratio for menial jobs would change dramatically.

 

[Lagboltz]

Those menial jobs need to be filled by teens wanting to get some job experience and make a little extra money, and not by heads of households trying to make a living. Moreover, they should not be filled by illegal aliens as many of them are now. If we'd address the problem of illegal immigration, the supply and demand ratio for menial jobs would change dramatically.

That is a very idealistic way of looking at how you think the problem should be addressed, but reality isn't like that. It's not going to happen that way. There are simply not enough jobs, let alone jobs above minimum wage. The heads of households have no choice but to get the jobs they can find.

 

[dogtowner]

Just for reference, average period of time aworker spends at min wage is 2 months.
This allows companies to keep kids at min and provide an aporopriate test drive for nonstudents.