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although you would at first think that the national minimum wage LAWS prevents employers from paying their employee's pennies per hour.

have you ever thought that the use of national minimum wage LAW was to prevent people being paid in non government fiat.

what i mean to say is governments are requiring a business to pay atleast £6.19 $7.25 etc BY LAW instead of allowing businesses to pay in groceries, gold bars, or other forms such as bitcoin.

can someone clear up the matter of the ability for businesses to ever pay workers in other forms LEGALLY. as this page on the UK government site clearly states that only accommodation provided by the employer can be use to subtract a very small part of the FIAT wage and no other benefits such as cars, vouchers or other forms of payment can be subtracted.
https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-accommodation (https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-accommodation)

so look into amercan and other countries laws on minimum wage. as from what i can tell on the UK point of view. paying someone in bitcoin is not paying national minimum wage, even if the value of the bitcoin exceeds NMW value.

So businesses in england can be sent to court for breaching employment laws if they only paid their employee's with cars or bitcoins

I can't really speak for Britain, but in the U.S. there are barter laws that cover this. It's actually pretty common for people to barter trade (I'll cut your lawn if you give me some vegetables from your garden), but doing it a lot gets very difficult from an accounting perspective. This also has the effect you're describing, but I'm not sure if it's really that intentional or just a side benefit.

there is a bartering system that is accepted in britain too for non formal employment. but when an employment contract is used. then the minimum wage is critical.

Minimum wage laws make it illegal to create a job worth $7.00 / hr or less. (Wonder why there is high unemployment?)

As for debts, legal tender laws keep from offering to pay in another currency/barter. If you claim I owe you 100 sheep / 500 bitcoins / 20oz of gold, A court would not order me to pay in specie. A USD amount would be assigned that I pay you.

just been reading the american minimum wage stuff
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.2: (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.2:)

alot of waffle to read but i found the term "certified professional employer organisation" which basically means a proper employer who uses employment contracts. is legally suppose to pay national minimum wage and tax revenues.

so USA is similar to UK. if you have employment contract your suppose to be paid in FIAT.

goodbye any hope of walmart, bestbuy and 7-11 paying their staff in bitcoins as their salary instead of FIAT.

cunning government..

This forum is for bitcoin legal questions and info. There is a politics and society board where this would belong. I think you can move it on your own.

It would be great if the person who made the least made a lot.

It would be bad if someone got hurt for offering a job (especially bad if someone wanted to take that job).

im not talking about government ethics. im asking what are the national minimum wage LAWS concerning the ability to accept bitcoin as wage. ill reword the topic to clarify this

That's different because the guy isn't your employee.  You can do a contract specified in anything you want.



Now I'm not really knowledgeable on labor laws... but a plain reading of the law


says no you can't pay an employee in bitcoins.

Sorry, my mistake.

Good, if you want poor people and black people in particular to remain jobless.

Bad if you want to give everyone an opportunity to find a job, even if it is at a wage you would dislike for yourself.

Minimum wage laws are among the most racist laws on the books -- they are part of the modern Jim Crow laws together with zoning restrictions to keep people segregated. Nominally, they allegedly "benefit" (translation: ruin) everyone equally... but in reality it is minorities that get the most royally fucked.

Minimum wage laws are a perfect example of liberalism gone wrong.  They only look at the surface of the problem (low wages) and try to fix it without considering the consequences of such laws.  Sure, people don't get paid less than $5.XX an hour now, but all of those jobs that COULD have been in place without minimum wage laws are simply lost.  Higher unemployment is a result.  I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a low paying job than no job at all.  I could work hard, better myself, and move my way up the ladder or have enough experience to move on to a better job with a different company.

True unemployment in the US is around 50% (153 million working people out of 306 million people in the US).  A large part of that is children and stay-at-home moms, sure, but I'm also certain a significant number of those people would like to work if they could.  Instead, they're stuck in a never-ending loop of collecting welfare to survive instead of working a low-paying job and gaining experience to better themselves.  All at the taxpayer's expense.  Yay.

Any type of price fixing is bad because it leads to higher prices, poorer quality and shortages.

You're seriously saying a significant number of children (including young children) want to work?



I agree with the latter two points, but how does a low fixed price lead to higher prices?

minimum wage is fixed up, not down. If employers are forced to pay more what that job is worth, they'll transfer that cost onto the consumer -> higher prices.

Is this, like, so hard to believe?  Are people in your country so thoroughly brainwashed that kids wanting to work appears baffling or incomprehensible to you?

I worked when I was 14 because I wanted.  I was doing software for an uncle already.  I got paid, too.  I worked at a factory.  I walked around the factory whenever I wanted, and I learned the whole process.  I even got to use the machines myself -- bandsaws, punch presses, a bunch of other machines that would be considered "dangerous" for a child.  Was I a "child slave"?

No offense, but to me, your question is like asking a rape victim "so why is it that you don't want to have sex?", because the answer is exceedingly obvious.  Kids don't work today, by and large, because the State punishes and marginalizes people who allow kids to work in all but the most menial and poorly paid occupations.

This is not a mystery -- you can go and look up the laws that prohibit and / or sabotage children and adolescents from being gainfully employed.  If you're a kid looking for paid work but nobody wants to give you a job, it isn't because "people are evil" or "work is not for children" -- it's simply because anyone giving you a paid job gets threatened with jail.  Only certain kinds of jobs are legal for adolescents (but not children!), and even then, there's mountains of paperwork, without which the employer gets put in a cage.

By the way, you can thank union lobbyists for that -- they didn't want the cheap competition, so they had the competition outlawed.

To me it's funny when people appeal to the State to "protect children from labor" -- the State was the very same criminal group of people who ruined work for adolescents who wanted or needed to work, and they did so exclusively to benefit a political class at the expense of everyone else.

I also worked off the books, I think maybe even when I was a single-digit minor, and for more than minimum wage. When I did music gigs, it was way more, and I don't think anyone ever asked for my Entertainment Permit (https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/ChildLaborPamphlet2000.html#50). LOL

FTFY.

Actually I did make a mistake but you didn't fix it. It should have said:

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear.  I'll make it more clear.

- The number of unemployed people in the US is about 50% of the population.
- Many of those who make up that 50% are children and stay-at-home-moms (and retired persons as well).
- A significant number of the REMAINDER of that 50% would like to work if they could.

Getting rid of the minimum wage laws would allow those people (the remainder of the 50%) to work.

I'm not sure what you mean by "fixed down." Minimum wages are supposed to reflect a living wage (which they currently don't) and force employers to make business choices that reflect market reality.

It means wages can't be any lower than what the minimum wage forces employers to pay even if the employers determines that it's more than what the job is worth. So if he has to pay more than what it's worth, he has two options, either fire/not hire the employee or to raise the price of his goods and services to make it worth that job ergo higher prices.

And here I thought you were making a libertarian argument. My bad.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

What I really want is good outcomes, to maximize my potential more precisely, and I know that just like with food I buy a market regulated strictly by consumption i.e. a free market will yield the best products at the cheapest prices so too I know a market strictly regulated by consumption will yield the best jobs with the highest wages.

Utter nonsense. The notion of a free market is a myth.

Saying it doesn't make it so.

Show me evidence of a macro-economic free market and I will show you a market controlled by government regulations.

Fallacy: begging the question. Heard of it?

I am not the one trying to prove a negative here. Since you claim a free market exists, do you have any evidence?

Get back to me once you understand why I said you used that fallacy and where you made your mistake.

Begging the question is positing an argument without backing it up. I did not profer anything. Calling something a myth is nothing more that expressing skepticism. It is a fugure of speech. I was not implying that it is a grand mythos followed by worshippers.

That's not it.

Let me help you out a bit:

Your argument: A market regulated strictly by consumption i.e. a free market is utter nonsense because it is a myth i.e. there is no macro economic example.

Now go to either of these:
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/begquest.html
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/begging-the-question.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

And figure it out.

All I'm saying is that a market driven by consumption doesn't exist. I did not say it isn't a good idea. But such a thing does not, and cannot currently exist. Even Bitcoin will not solve that problem. Some future descendant of Bitcoin may do so.

Oh, how should I have interpreted your "Utter nonsense." comments then?

Again, fallacy: begging the question.

Perhaps I should have exclaimed Poppycock and Balderdash! Harrumph! You may believe that a free market can exist, but I will not attend your church.

Good thing people didn't think like you that there can not be a world without direct slavery just because they didn't know a world where that was ever possible before.  ::)

Are you beginning to see the fallacy?

Now who is begging the question? I think the only difference between us in human motivation. I do not believe in markets. I see them as abstract notions inculcated upon children, much like Santa Claus. Slavery is another issue, and that's why god invented gunpowder.

I'm sorry, from what you're telling me it is my opinion you lack basic comprehension and reasoning skills for us to be able to have a productive discussion and so I'm removing myself from it. Cheerio.

Yes, I am not able to make inductive arguments based upon assumptions. My bad. Good luck with creating the free market! I'll continue to promote a resource based economy like is used by every family in the world.

I notice a serious lack of actual argument here.

Can you start participating in the conversation like you mean it?  Thanks.

I agree, so far from my reading of what you've said, you clearly aren't able to do so.

hazek is talking to you about what a free market can accomplish.  You deny what he says simply based on a claim that "a free market is a myth".  If you actually understood argumentation, you would know that your response is entirely nonsequitorial -- it doesn't actually argue anything that disproves what hazek said.  That is to say: you are not even talking with him, you're talking past him.

So, how about responding to the aaaaaaaaaargument? www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLODu02R_gA&feature=youtu.be&t=17m13s

Heh I don't think he will get it. I actually see this happen all the time. People make an assumption they think is fact but no one really conceded to that and then they draw conclusions based on it.

cbeast assumes that because we haven't had something in the past, we can't have it in the future. He thinks such an assumption is fact when in reality it's completely wrong. Anything new, any political system, philosophy, or basic goods or services, ANYTHING you want to pick that we have today, we can point to a time in the past when they were just a "crazy" theory. So not only is he making the mistake to think I conceded to his assumption, but the assumption is false.

Saying a market regulated strictly by consumption i.e. a free market is "Utter nonsense!" because we haven't had a pure macro economic example yet is fallacious precisely because the fact that haven't had something yet is irrelevant.

Now this is no way means that the counter argument of it being possible is automatically true, it just means it's not false for that reason. We can then look at micro examples and see if we can detect elements of such markets on a smaller scale to get an idea of whether or not it could be possible. And anyone who honestly examines the world can find plenty of examples in their own personal life where they are a participant in a market that is regulated strictly by consumption (such as dating, buying bread..) which I'd argue is a very good indicator that it is possible on a macro level as well.

But of course all of this is above his head so what I'm doing here is really talking to everyone who is interested and can understand this.

This is like talking about religion. I know that you have a hypothesis that CA can create a free market. I just think you are setting your sights too low. Markets are not theory. It reminds me of the scene with Rodney Dangerfield in "Back to School" discussing widgets in a business lecture (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlVDGmjz7eM). The theory of a free market is like listening to creationists using entropy as a reason against evolution in order to promote their religion. Things are far too complex to even care about a free market. I'm just trying to help. Go ahead and worship whatever you want. I look at Bitcoin as a transitional step toward breaking civilization away from the crutch of money and create artificial intelligent agents. Only technology promotes progress.

Hazek,

Well said.

I insist you come on to our radio show to discuss philosophy and organized aggression ("government").  You'd make a helluva guest.

Thanks ;) Maybe one day I'll find the courage to agree to it :P

So we agree that minimum wage laws supporting a living wage are good and that business profitability is a complex issue that cannot be narrowed down to one issue like consumer demand. I would love to debate you live just to hear you shouting and ignoring my argument like you are now.

You don't have an argument. When you do, I'll respond to it.

Your contention is that a free market can exist simply because it can be shown "in theory." I get that. Some people say that when you die they imagine you become pasta sauce for the flying spaghetti monster, because it makes sense to them. I get that too. Arguing hypotheticals is baseless. A free market is nonsense because it is reification. You are imagining an intangible that cannot exist due to the complexities of the Universe. You cannot isolate a mathematical model proof of any sort (not even physics) and apply it to the Universe. Everything we know breaks down. Something as complex as human needs cannot be driven by a simple mathematical model. Even my hypothesis of creating artificial intelligence agents will not solve all human needs, but it will be a helluvalot more efficient than trusting people to make the best choices.

Nope, not my argument at all. See, you can't even read, let alone compose an argument.

Minimum wage makes alot of sense in socialism.

People who would otherwise earn below it are financed by the state. This not only keeps them under control but also those who work for higher wages and who are forced to work harder to supply the workforce otherwise lacking. Because they could be "worse off".

Socialism goes hand in hand with the concept of employment itself. Without it everybody would be providing goods and services as an entrepreneur.

I don't see how "a market regulated entirely by consumption" isn't a free market, but replace that phrase and my argument stands.

I second this.  cbeast has no argument and his behavior here demonstrates that he doesn't know how to compose an argument.

I'm adding him to my ignore list since his comments contribute little value to anyone, so I'd prefer not to be annoyed by them.

In a civilized society, good.

Is Hazek your Champion? Are you unable to form an opinion of your own? Obviously you did not read my response to the quote you included, so you don't pay attention to the thread discussion. Please do ignore me, I don't want to stoop down to your level.

Minimum wage laws may decrease employment, since companies won't be able to afford as many workers, but at the same time they may reduce the employee pool, since workers who used to work two jobs, or work two shifts, may now be able to quit their second job/shift, since they now have enough money to cover their expenses. This in turn frees up the job for someone else.
So.... complicated  :P

To look at it conversely, the worker could have produced twice as much for the same wage, helping to reduce the prices of those services and products he produced, and making things more affordable across the board for people to purchase.

If they're already working as hard as they can though telling them to work harder isn't going to make much difference and it seems to me a lot of these companies that are failing are poorly managed in the first place, I don't think minimum wage laws do anything either way, what you need is an economy that isn't being constantly tampered with, incompetent employers who keep their wages low to offset the cost of their business while keeping their own wages high would quickly go out of business if people learned about what he was up to and someone else was willing to do better. This is because of course rather than invest it in making the business grow the employer is just taking the profit and this means of course that the business will start to fail if competitors arrive and there isn't enough cash going in the company.

There have even been studies on worker productivity and people have discovered that changing the designs of buildings or putting things like plants etc. in or letting them work more freely increases their productivity, I don't think it's a matter of minimum wage laws being good or bad but rather work conditions. I think if you're being paid peanuts to work in a horrible factory with terrible conditions while they are being paid thousands then you should be able to sue the employer, it shouldn't be about wages at all.

Minimum wages are a price floor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_floor). Price floors are always either ineffective, or detrimental.


So on the balance, minimum wage laws are BAD.

What is it with these armchair economists that say "uh dunno could go either way nobody knows derp"? Do they ignore supply and demand? Do they not know what price controls do to the supply of a resource? Do they think that supply and demand will magically not apply because God or a politician say so? Do they not understand that a minimum wage is a price control? Or do they just not want to accept reality, because they would rather believe populist nonsense?

I am sitting here watching morons debate whether a rock ten pounds in size will fall ten times faster than a rock one pound in size, saying "well, it could go either way" and I feel that Galileo must have felt like I am feeling right now.

God the five dammit, we have all the knowlegde necessary to figure this matter out, right at our fingertips, ann even with that, some people still choose to remain in the Dark Ages.

^this and


^this probably.

And it's not really their fault because no one taught them this, so how could they know? No one taught them how to reason correctly either, so how could they ever figure it out on their own?

The answer is to keep educating, preferably the younger still fairly open to new ideas people.

An extreme example of no minimum wage laws was the cotton farming industry in the Southern US states before the Civil War. Some people called it good business, but most countries in the world called it immoral. Tens of thousands died over that argument. Before that in France, the aristocracy felt that poor people should eat cake. A new hat removing device was invented to solve that issue.

Maximum wage laws are much better at protecting economic health. Tax incentives to keep business owners from making too much money will incentivize them to reinvest in their business and allow it to grow. Paying workers higher wages spurs competition for better qualified employees. Unrestricted earnings only incentivizes business owners to hoard wealth and cause government to print money in order to drive the economy, causing inflation.

All I can say is this is a troll thread. People that support the argument in favor of an unregulated economy have no historical evidence to support their position. It's pseudoscience.

One way, you get very low paied jobs and super rich people since they do not need to pay that much tax to support the welfare system

The other way, you set minimum wage, below that is covered by social welfare, which is coming from the tax of super rich people

Either way, the money supply depends on the total consumption of everyone, in the first case, the consumption will mainly come from super rich people, in the second, majority of people

It's not about efficiency, the efficiency is already too high (that's the reason for high unemployment) it's about how to shape the society so that majority of people can get a good living standard

In the first case the consumption comes still from the majority of the people.

The high unemployment isn't due to high efficiency, it's due to people taking silly degrees. Who needs  an another lawyer?

But if you picked the right education and chose a right place to live, you will be making a lot of money:

Health care: from technicians to medical billers, even can easily become a pharmacy technician
IT field: programmers are always in demand and so are the IT project managers
Mechanical engineerings: these guys never ran out of jobs

Hell just work for the big four for few years to figure what you want.

The one thing I love about the internet is it gives me plenty of time to read peoples responses thoroughly, that kind of response is very clever but extremely flawed and tries to present an ultimatum when the fact is there is none. You claim that an unregulated economy is pseudo-science but that is only because it hasn't ever really been tried yet in history until Bitcoin of course. The unregulated markets you seem to be thinking of are actually regulated but it is done through a sort of Darwinism style system where there will obviously be methods that you disagree with but will still work in the long run. This isn't an unregulated economy, in fact one could argue that it is more harshly regulated because it is indiscriminate in who ends up getting killed off in their line of work and who doesn't.

Looking at Bitcoin as the only example of this supposedly unregulated type economy you speak of but even this isn't entirely unregulated, you can see exactly what I'm talking about, you have scammers trying to be clever and scamming people who are daft enough to give them money, you then have the scammers trying the tactic again but now people are beginning to adapt and come up with ways to get around them. I don't think there will ever be such a thing as an unregulated economy realistically, I do think though that Darwinism style economics is probably the best thing, that said, because we're different from animals there's no rule saying that people can't help the weak and the poor out of kindness which is what I believe we'll inevitably end up with because I seriously doubt there are people out there who would be that mean normally.


The south from what I know kept slaves so that definitely isn't unregulated you muppet.

News flash.  The entry level and short college program IT and Healthcare occupation markets are flooded.

There is no easy market.  Consolidation and efficiency are prominent.

Agreed on ppl taking unmarketable degrees.

A minimum wage law prevents people from reaching a mutual, voluntary agreement on the price of labor, if that agreement would fall below a certain price. Thus, it is a price floor. Your example is more akin to an extreme example of taxation (taxing the laborer 100% of their wages)..

News flash: we can't hire enough people for an entry level jobs. We have 10 positions and can't fill them.

Entry level programmer (C# and html): 80K

Plenty of positions for seasoned people: senior developers, project managers. If you know mathematics, we need quants to develop models. We need mobile developers, we need html5/websockets guys, we need sysadmins that know how to set up clouds and real time systems.

Of course you need to know stuff, brain dead don't need to apply.

Jobs are there. You probably live in the wrong place then. Jobs won't come to you, you need to get them.

No. You are wrong. There was a mutual voluntary agreement on the price of labor to be zero by the employers. They were shown the error of their ways. The government only enforced the business practice but did not force every business owner to follow it. Some employers chose to not follow that practice. They were not taxed or penalized for this.

That's your problem. I'm sure your competition will find a better solution.

We will deal with our problem. But don't bitch that there are no jobs. Jobs are there.

I never did complain. I'm sure there may be quants willing to work for such a low wage, but don't bitch about grocery stockers wanting more than 8 bucks an hour either. Not everyone is capable of doing the same jobs, but that doesn't mean they are not all valuable to society.

I don't bitch, I simply won't pay. I could care less what he wants, he may want $1000 / hour too.

Maybe you won't. Laws will correct the situation to force a minimum wage whether you like it or not.

They will? When?

 ::)

If you are in New Zealand, then it happened in 1894. These laws are spreading globally and exist in all developed nations. If you are in a country that has not adapted them yet, then you do not have adequate security to provide for your own development and don't even have the resources to develop the infrastructure that will attract qualified workers.

If you're running on the delusion that any relevant percentage of employment agreements in modern times can be considered to be an agreement between equals, sure.

But given that many employers tend to have hundreds/thousands/millions of times greater financial power than any given employee, I fail to see how any sane person can consider that an agreement between equals for the purpose of law.

Personally I wasn't arguing against supply and demand. That minimum wage laws reduce the supply of jobs and create unemployment is 100% correct. What I was arguing is whether the demand for jobs remains constant. Take it up one level, and you have an increased supply of income for people, which reduces their demand for jobs. They can (barely) survive with one family working, or both only working part time. And though they may still want full time jobs, an increase in a minimum wage may make them be better off, even with lower employment, than they were before.

But, big emphasis on "may" here. Though minimum wage laws may make people better off financially, despite increasing unemployment, I don't believe we can know for sure. Why? Because there are waaaaay too many distortions in this economy, like those underemployed receiving food stamps, subsidized housing, subsidized healthcare, and maybe even direct welfare payments. I'm not arguing for getting rid of those things (shoo trolls!), but they do make it difficult to see how much better or worse off people are with minimum wage laws.


You forgot finance: needed in every single company and business on the planet.

Programmer is a bad example, since the purpose of hiring programmer is to further reduce the workers by replacing them with software

I always think that reducing the working hour is the best way to solve the unemployment problem, people have more time to enjoy the life and spend, and employer will need more people to work. But reduce the minimal wage is on the totally opposite direction

If one policy could improve majority of people's quality of life, then it should be the right policy

We do actually have a perfect example of this playing out in modern times, in China (and to a lesser extent India), which gives us a perfect example of what happens in a modern globalized country without minimum wage laws:
China has no minimum wage laws, labor is cheap >
Lots of companies move in to take advantage. Unemployed people are still desperate, so take any job >
As more companies moved in to try to compete against other companies, unemployment dropped to near zero >
What used to be long lines of prospective employees at the company gates, has turned into empty parking ports, with not enough employees >
Companies in China started struggling to find workers, and have started to compete for labor >
High demand for employees + low supply of labor = higher wages and better benefits

End result is, despite the media sensationalizing the destitute working conditions in China because drama sells in TV, the quality of jobs and the average wage in China have shot up dramatically over the last decade. So much so that for many companies it no longer makes sense to outsource to China or India, as they'll just break even on shipping charges. The same thing happened in India, but on a much more dramatic, and possibly unsustainable level. So, here's your example of the "tragedy" of the lack of minimum wage laws in modern times. The market works, and it's not as bad as you think.
(Source: series of case papers from my Global Economic Environment graduate class)

Correct and happy to do that. Machines should do basic tasks, humans should do complex tasks - like programming the machines.



Basically you're a lazy person.

Japan and Korea were once like China. It didn't work for them. What makes you think China will not go the same route?

Some good programmers can make a program to replace many talent workers, and those workers do not have the same skill to do programming, this is a long lasting changing phase until everyone start to learn programming in their primary school

And, even they learn it very early, there is still barrier of time. Today's software system already reach the complexity that no one can easily understand, thus become very risky. Since those people who started to work with computers in 70's have worked 50 years in this area, that is a life time of learning and practise, it means any future programmer will not make any usable program after at least 20 years of learning, since all the simple program has already been made everywhere for free


The more you work, the less you spent, and the more you hurt economy. Saving is a illusion, there is not a lot of things can be saved without depreciate quickly

So you want to stop progress because of a bunch of retards? Awesome philosophy. Oh and today's systems are easy to understand. Really easy.

The older systems are much harder to understand, because they're written in crappy old assemblers. Citibank is using IBM TPF, what a piece of shit that thing is. It doesn't even have a normal database or apis or anything remotely usable.




That's wrong. I work hard, I make a lot of money, I spend a lot of money. This year I spent 4 weeks in Europe: Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Monaco, Russia. I also was in FL, CT, Canada.

But not the "employees," so it was neither mutual, nor voluntary.

The golden irony of saying this on a Bitcoin forum, of all places.

I've noticed that a few of you continue responding to cbeast.

Why?

It's pretty obvious that he doesn't know how to actually have an argument.  Guy's as intellectually dishonest as they come.  You can palpate it here.

Observe his behavior.  If you advance an argument, he refuses to respond to the argument.  If you refute something he says, he ignores the refutation and proceeds to advance another flawed hypothesis, which he never backs up or substantiates with any evidence-based argument whatsoever.  He's playing whack-a-mole with increasingly crazy Goddidit-style hypotheses and fallacies like arguments from emotion, just so he doesn't have to accept the observably true statement that minimum wages hurt poor people.  From what I could tell from the brief quotes in others' responses, he's still doing this -- throwing words your way to busy you up and provoke you.

If he's obviously not having a conversation with you, why, then, do you give him your attention?  To contaminate the thread with more stupidity from him?  Cos that's what engaging him accomplishes: it fills the thread with more and more stupidity that he happily makes up to cling to his beliefs.

There's nothing you can do to change this sad man's mind.  Nothing.  He's married to the idea that organized violence (in this example, against employers) can make the world better.  That kind of person cannot be persuaded.  Just add him to your ignore list, and note that he's in your ignore list whenever he intervenes in threads you're commenting (this is only so new forum members won't waste their time with him either).

Talking to a man in denial doesn't work.  Ostracism does, if you actually ostracize idiots.

Start a blog: People I Ignore on the Bitcoin Forums: Essays on People I Disagree With.

If there's one thing I learned back when I was working as a programmer, it's that you have to constantly learn new things every six months or so, and any skills you've obtained as little as two years ago are practically useless.
The other thing I learned was that with programming, the main thing to learn is computer logic and how it all works. After you manage to wrap your head around that, the rest is just ever-changing syntax (language), and new tools to make your life easier.

So if you learned programming just two or three years ago, you're likely not too far off skill-wise from someone who's been doing it for 50 years (sorry old-timer egos), and if you learned programming 50 years ago, and dropped it for a few decades, chances are you'll be able to pick it up again easily, since you already know the hard part (PC logic).

I work daily with many different programmers, some of them has been working with computers for 30 years, they still do not have a clue how the system works as a whole. If they do not understand the system from the binary level, e.g. how 0-1 level change will affect the registers, they will never get a clear picture, unfortunately, most of the programmers belong to this category, they just program at user level, which is just a game player who plays other's game

Back to the topic, programing is still a good job, but I see for each programmer hired, 3-4 traditional workers will be fired, and since his salary (and consumption) can not be 4x of those fired workers, the total consumption of the society is on the way down. I think in the latest 100 years, every such a wave of efficiency lift generated a huge recession

Sure, they had a choice to work or die. Many volunteered to choose life and some chose death. Just like minimum wage folks do now, though actuarial statistics show that their lifespan is lessened.

I don't think you understand "volunteer." "Work for me or die" is not a voluntary choice. It is coercion. It is also, I might add, the choice presented by the tax man.

You are splitting hairs. We are talking about sets of populations, not individual cases. The population of today's minimum wage workers suffers much the same choices as enslaved peoples. It's funny that most (if not all) civilized people get this and you don't. I hate pull the ad populum card, but this is a moral issue.

[edit] when you pulled the tax man argument it brings up red flags that you may be a libertarian with an overactive hypothalamus.

Minimum wage laws create the problem you are railing against.

Minimum wage laws are a price floor. Price floors, when they do anything, create a surplus in the controlled commodity.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e9/Surplus_from_Price_Floor.svg/200px-Surplus_from_Price_Floor.svg.png

Not true. Just as machines freed up farmers, and those farmers went on to do other jobs, after programs free up traditional workers, they will go on and do other jobs as well. Despite HUGE advances in technology in the 20th century, and many many jobs being replaced or made obsolete, the unemployment rate has largely remained the same. That suggests that plenty of new, more higher level (and leaner/white-collar) jobs were created, as well as that people have to work less (need fewer jobs) in order to stay prosperous (e.g. we don't bust our backs on farms of in factories from 6am to 9pm any more)

Please re-read this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=127908.msg1377300#msg1377300
When there are minimum wage laws, there are more workers than jobs, and thus minimum wage workers are forced to compete for their job, because there are lots of unskilled workers who are ready and waiting to take their place. In places in China, as in my linked example, there are no minimum wage laws, and thus way more jobs that workers, meaning employers have to compete for workers instead. End result is workers are actually important, are treated better, and have a choice to change jobs if they want to, because there are plenty of employers willing to hire them on.

Wouldn't it be nice if the real worked like it does on a chalkboard? As smart as Newton was, even his theories don't hold up in every situation. Computer modelling gets us a little closer, but nothing in you chart speaks of laws. Laws are real world applications of theory overseen by judges and juries because simple statistics and theory don't apply in every situation. Theories about economics are surely interesting, but to be a real science they must pass experimental muster and peer review. So while you have an interesting mathematical model it is no more science than any other math. It is simply math theory, no more, no less. Math is a very important tool, but when all you have is a hammer everything starts looking like a nail. Your error is in confirmation bias.

You use China as an example. A communist dictatorship. This is your model for the study of markets? Lets give them a couple decades to develop before using them for study.

Mechanization has always displaced workers, and those workers have always found something else to do. When all needs are met by a machine, well, that'll be a pretty nice problem to have.


I see. Economics only works if it agrees with your preconceptions, huh? Sorry, princess, that's not science. That's fantasy.

What happened?  Things got too hot for ya?

cbeast is the wrong nickname.  The right nickname is just beast.  Cos that dude is a beast.  Like, a brute beast.

Heh, you are partly right. That is partly where my name comes from, but only when I want to win!  ;D

Yes, I am using China, a communist dictatorship, which, despite that, STILL has very plainly visible market forces at work in their labor sector. Labor there is "free market," even if the rest of the business isn't. It's why our capitalist corporations invest there.

My job got outsourced back in 2001, I saw the whole India thing coming (and especially saw that although I was a rare computer nerd way back in school, EVERYONE was a computer nerd by 2001), and decided to switch to finance instead. So... yes :D

Oh, also, 10 years later, I found out about #1 on this list in my Tech Management MBA class http://www.techslog.com/archives/2006/10/8_expensive_it_blunders.html
That was the project they considered me for and had me start on (I was a web developer there), which they then quickly decided to outsource to someone else shortly after laying me off. Schadenfreude!  ;D

Whose corporations are doing this? Germany's? France's? Italy's? Please be more specific?

I was using the definition of science used by every scientist on the planet. You now resort to ad hominem which tells me your hypothalamus is heating up. How does that make you feel?

Ad hominem attacks? Where? Telling you that you're fantasizing instead of using science is not an ad hominem.

And, on that note, welcome to my shit-list. Bye-bye, princess.

lol

Yes. Also America's, Russia's, Japan's and other's. Though it's getting a bit less competitive now, since China's wages have started to go up a lot (free market competition for workers and all)


Wait, are you saying that every scientist on the planet believes that their scientific calculations only work on a chalk board, and don't apply to the real world???

Russia's time is coming, but not yet. They are still recovering from communist dictatorship. The other countries have protectionist trade laws that make such imports not so beneficial. They may do it to some degree, but not nearly as much as the USA. American laws tend to swing like pendulum. It is very likely that future investment in China will be based on things other than labor cost like in Japan and Korea. In fact, it's starting to happen. China is starting to invest in American labor as do the Koreans because our labor is very cheap. This won't last. If it was successful, then Chinese companies would be owning business in Germany, France, and Italy as well. I'm surprised you didn't mention Mexico. There is a marvelous model of cheap labor and its awesome benefits.

Myrkul is the last person on Earth who should be posting supply demand curves. He has demonstrated a total lack of understanding of their context and how to apply them. I don't think he ever advanced beyond Econ 101 theory. He doesn't understand how to apply human psychology to their interpretation.

In the case of diminishing resources, he completely fails to understand how standard analysis of a supply demand curve actually produces the opposite result of what usually happens when human psychology is added into the mix.

In the case of wages, he again fails to understand the elements of human psychology. He doesn't understand how low wage earners might have hopes and dreams (no matter how small) which will affect how they interpret misleading comments from employers who might lead the employee to believe that if they work hard, and do well, there might be a raise in the near future.

On the contrary, your Econ 101 charts are over simplified mathematical relations which simply don't apply universally. Thus, your insistence that they do is a fantasy you cling to. Get your nose out of the books preaching libertarian dogma with its preselected examples to make you feel good, and start reading texts whose audience does not show a higher than normal correlation to libertarian readers, and you'll be on your way to a more honest and less biased understanding of the world around you.

Oh look, now Wikipedia has libertarian bias.  :D

At least Myrkul is good applying (bad) analogies...

http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/5061/financemalaysiaimpactof.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/402/financemalaysiaimpactof.png/)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

Are you referring to the definition of a supply demand curve? If so, it's supposed to say exactly what you would learn in Econ 101. It's a chart and a mathematical relation. Duh. I wouldn't expect Wikipedia to deviate from the mathematics. Nor should it. And I wouldn't expect your favorite libertarian texts to expound upon it when the cold hard theory of it supports the values of libertarians.

But out in the real world, where other factors apply that the supply demand curve function does not have inputs for, it can (and does) breakdown. Therefore, only an individual (that would be you) who doesn't understand those other factors and real world scenarios where the curve breaks down would cling to the function for any scenario that he believes fits his desired outcome.

It's a tool, like any other economic tool. I don't think the debate is about if there should be minimum wage laws or not, but how do you adjust that tool. No minimum wage law means you remove one tool from your economic tool box, and I think it's pretty stupid. Civilization is built by making and using more tools, not less.

Minimum wage laws has proven to be beneficial, and is a direct counter to slavery. The problem of the minimum wage law is when a massive external group is available to work at slaves wages, on the short term, you lose jobs. But at the same time, at long term, I think it's beneficial, since people are forced to find and create jobs with more or different value. It forces the quality of jobs to go up, not down.

I see the minimum wage law like a seal of quality of the labor of a country. Minimal wage here is 9.90$/hour, so, in a way, our government guarantee that his citizens labor provide value for at least that amount.

The only massive problem I see is when you have a minimum wage too high and your country can't provide enough high-value work. For example, if the quality of education and skills level goes down while keeping the minimum wage too high, you can't keep up with the technological progress, and your labor get over-valued. Easy solution would be to provide free education up to university level, but hey, you know how politics work, right?  ;)

Oh godamnit, no! I said corporations are investing in China, you asked which countries' corporations, and I replied that corporations that are based in Germany, France, Italy, America, Russia, and Japan are all investing in China. Not that other corporations are investing in those other countries, but that all countries around the world are investing in China.

Also, Mexico is way to f'in expensive to outsource to. Their labor is way too expensive, for the same reason that China's is getting expensive. It's why we stopped outsourcing to Mexico and started to Outsource to China and India. It's also why we're slowing down outsourcing to China/India, and exploring the options of outsourcing to Kenya and the rest of Africa.

There's really not all that much psychology in economics. You are referring to behavioral economics here, specifically market inefficiencies due to asymmetric information. The boss has all the information - he won't be giving them a raise, and the employee doesn't have all the information - he falsely believes there may be a raise when that's not true.
I don't know where you picked that up, but if it was in an actual econ (or securities&investment) class, they would have told you that market inefficiencies are just mere blips in economics, having some short-term effect, but generally not having any long term ones. The employee would believe his boss the first time. After a few month, he will be skeptical the second time. The third time, both employee and employer will have the same information, which is that the boss is full of shit, and the market inefficiency will be gone, as will be the employee, and anyone else he may have shared this with. The most an employer can do is distort the market a bit for a short while, and likely not more than once or twice before getting a reputation for being dishonest.

Just to be clear, we are talking about investing in China to take advantage of cheap labor and cheap imports, right? Both must exist for a corporation to find an advantage. We still have cheap imports from Mexico, just not so cheap labor anymore. We used to do the same with Korea and Japan. Again, this may be a good opportunity for opportunists to take advantage of China, but I have a feeling that China will not react the same way as Korea and Japan. In fact they are building their factories in specialized zones. This way they get trained labor forces that are geographically based. It is an ideal way to plan for possible nationalization of these factories. So go ahead and use China as a gleaming example of unrestricted capitalism via no-minimum-wage. Time will tell. I am still skeptical. I will classify using China to make you argument as special pleading.

Yes we are. But, if you mean cheap exports FROM China, which are then imports INTO your own country, then cheap "imports" and cheap labor are practically the same thing. The import is cheap precisely because it was manufactured with cheap labor. Mexico doesn't have cheap labor any more. Try to find something that says "Made in Mexico." You'll have a lot of trouble, and if you do, it won't be something cheap.


Time has told. China (and India) is an example of unrestricted capitalism when it comes to wages, and has shown that, when companies have to compete for employees, wages do go up, and working conditions do improve, even without minimum wage laws. Whatever the government decides to do later is irrelevant, because it would not be unrestricted capitalism, and it will have nothing to do with the point of "free market competition for wages in an environment free of minimum-wage laws DO in fact increase wages, improve working conditions, and decrease unemployment." (And Mexico, and to a lesser extent Kenya, and Korea, and Vietnam, and South-Pacific island nations).

By the way, the question of whether minimum wage laws are good or bad doesn't really have an objective answer. A job is worth a certain amount. If you put in a price floor for the job, it will be moved where there is no price floor. So the people who are destitute and need jobs to survive will get them. In that way, these laws take the jobs from those in 1st world nations who want them, and give them to those in 3rd world nations who actually need them (good?). And, really, the only thing that minimum wage laws do is give us a choice:

* Do we want to keep ourselves on a higher income plateau, above the poorer nations, and wait a very long time for them to catch up to the rest of us well-paid individuals
* Or do we drop ourselves from our place of financial privilege, join them at the bottom, and quickly raise all our collective wages through market competition by sharing and competing with all our productive capabilities equally.

It's basically a question of having us earn $7 an hour and letting them earn $1 an hour, or having all of us earning $3 to $4 an hour. This is why I consider minimum wage laws a type of FY,GM policy.

I made one example to demonstrate that human psychology plays a role. There are other factors too. Like smiles on the employees' faces. The incentive for employers to create jobs with value. Are you familiar with David Seigel (douchebag of the year).

A service provided to the customer, which may increase sales if it's a service desired by those customers, and which also follows strict economic rules? (Notice how underpaid employees often refuse to provide that service)


You'll have to be more specific


Yes. Is he "the economy" or a significant part of it? And what does a small attempt to affect a political situation have to do with economics, or minimum wage? (ther than just his specific company now having possible issues of employees wanting to gtfo) Will this now change the way Hilton, Sheraton, Sandals, Disney Resorts, Best Western, Wyndham, DoubleTree, Royal Plaza, Holliday Inn, Hyatt, Ritz-Carlton, Atlantis, or any other resort companies do business, and change the resorts market in any way? If not, why bring it up?

I think his response after the election was rather telling.

See, this is the kind of claim that I called "armchair economics" a few comments ago.  It's an argument from economic ignorance.

Can you reason with a person who insists that what is well-known is unknown or unknowable?  NO.  It's like arguing facts with a creationist -- he'll just deny them and call you "arrogant".

Ostracize, people.  Point out ignorance and hostility, then move on.  Reasoning is for reasonable people.  You don't reason with mules -- you shouldn't reason with people who insist on remaining ignorant.

But Rassah's got a good point:

So, they're bad for the nation enacting them, but good for developing nations and international trade. Of course, this benefit is usually ruined by tariffs and other import taxes. Shooting themselves in both feet, as it were.

Yes, he does have a good point.  He's just been insistent all the time that there's no way to deduce the effects of wage price floors.  Yet there is, and he proves so in the very second paragraph by giving out a deduction of that which he calls impossible.  He contradicts himself in the same post.  How is that logical?

He's not directly contradicting himself, he's saying that "good" is hard to nail down when a policy has some benefits to some, and detriments to others. Arguably, they're a good policy when viewed from the right perspective, though they're clearly bad for the economy of the country that enacts them.

Of course, I'm of the opinion that mucking about in the market in any way is bad, because it introduces distortions, and distortions introduce inefficiencies, which waste resources, which, of course, is bad.

Define a distortion in the market without giving an example.

A market distortion is any event in which a market reaches a market clearing price for an item that is substantially different from the price that a market would achieve while operating under conditions of perfect competition and enforcement of legal contracts and the ownership of private property.

If the owner of private property suddenly decides the resources on his property are no longer available to the market which were available up until now, has a market distortion occurred?

No. Market distortions require outside agency. A market participant cannot introduce a distortion, because he is part of the market, not outside it.

Incorrect. An outside agency which is not influencing the market is not part of the market. But upon influencing the market, then that outside agency is part of the market. And don't come back and say that the agency must be a buyer or seller. An event, caused by an outside agency XYZ, which renders property owner Smith's goods no longer fit for sale, has influenced the market. Is XYZ a market participant? Has the market been distorted?

So, when a government passes a law that makes the sale of, say, a plant, illegal, thus distorting the price of that plant, they become part of the market?

You are free to draw your own conclusions. I asked you a question though. Is XYZ a market participant? Has the market been distorted? This conversation is not about pot.

this 3 minute video does a great job explaining pretty much everything you need to know on this subject (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siW0YAAfX6I)

do let me know if you actually watch it, tell me what you think

I watched it. How come the actions of David Siegel clearly provide counterpoint to the video's content about the cost of goods?

I can't answer your question without you answering mine. The type of event that XYZ causes will determine if it is a market action, or a distortion.

Does the government, in your opinion, become part of the market when they pass a law limiting it?

Short video about minimum wage.  Very straightforward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFbYM2EDz40

Which was?

actually it isnt a counter argument. a rigorous logical argument can not be disproved using empirical data, it is a form of logical fallacy to attempt to do so (sorry i dont remember what the name of the fallacy is) In order to counter a rigorous logical argument you must demonstrate the existence of either a faulty premise or a non sequitur in the argument its self.

With that being said i can still attempt to prove an explanation for this anomaly. (which will of course only be a guess)

Perhaps his unwillingness to fire employees has drawn enough media attention that the positive externality of pro bono advertisement has compensated for the loss he has taken as a result of those employees whos wages are higher than their marginal revenue product.  If this were the case than we would expect the public interest to wane quickly with the 2nd or 3rd or 100th person to attempt what this fellow has done.

As an alternative explanation maybe he as found a way to run his business in such a manner as to have no need for lower skilled employees and by avoiding ever hiring such employees he has managed to never need to fire them.

I'm sorry, but you are confusing me with someone else. I've been insisting that there ARE specific effects of wage price floors. My point with "good v.s. bad" was just regarding whom specifically it's good for. Overall, yes it slows down the progress of global economy. But some people do find it good, because they end up being better off at the expense of others.

You don't know? He boasted that Obama's taxes would make his business unsustainable with all of his employees if he was elected. The takeaway is taxes were killing his business. He would have to do layoffs. Or lower their wages.

He was blustering and bluffing and whining, not unlike many here. After the election, his bluff was called. He realized he was a douchebag and gave everyone a raise. And guess what, he's still going to keep his house, which is the largest in America: http://gawker.com/5950189/the-ceo-who-built-himself-americas-largest-house-just-threatened-to-fire-his-employees-if-obamas-elected

Truly douchebag of the year, if ever there was one.

The argument for no minimum wage floor isn't what you think it is. It's about greed and laziness to not run an efficient business.

OK, I'm sorry, but the curiosity is killing me. Do you actually have a degree in this stuff, or are you spouting bullshit you picked up in other forums? Because what he said was exactly what you said, but more summarized.

If I'm spouting bullshit, and it's exactly what myrkul said, then myrkul is spouting bullshit as well. Please correct your assessment of my comments. I'll help you distinguish the difference:

Once an outside agency influences the market, it is part of the market, whether or not it is a buyer or seller, which is exactly what I said, and what you quoted.

Liked.

His argument being dumb and having nothing to do with economics because Obama lowered taxes instead of raising them aside, what did his douchebaggery have to do with minimum wage, or economics, or anything for that matter???



I see. So you are spouting bullshit you just randomly picked up somewhere...

And same question to you: how do you define a market distortion?

that one is really good also. i love the art design, atmosphere and production values.

So you're saying that a government does become part of the market when it passes a law that limits that market?

this is a semantic argument

Individuals like him are the source of arguing against minimum wage floors.


No. I'm not spouting bullshit.


There's no such thing as a market distortion. Everything affecting market prices are simply affecting market prices.

Yes, very clear and concise.

I knew about his "Vote for Romney or else" bullshit, but not about his minimum wage stuff (which isn't even there, since his complaint was about taxes, not minimum wage), thus he wasn't the source of my argument, and thus your claim is invalid.

He gave his employees a raise after the election (and backlash). It demonstrates his insincerity about the expenses his business incurs, one of which is wages.

A market, by definition, requires that property rights are respected. Any entity that initiates force is not a part of the market, but a distorter of it. The use of force is the distortion, fundamentally.

A study on how minimum wage floors and increases alter unemployment:

http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/SS280/Card-Kruger-AER_Jan95.pdf

So you're in favor of laws, correct? Because property rights don't exist without laws.

Laws don't create rights.

What creates the right for you to say that this line is the boundary of the land you claim to own? What creates the right for you to say that the the 2 ounces of steel in some gadget you claim is yours is owned by you? Going back to first principles, where did the steel originate from, and how did it enter into a state that allows you to claim you own it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ownership

I own myself, as did the miner, steelworker, etc, and they (and I) freely contracted our labor to, respectively, mine the ore and shape that steel into something I would desire, and earn the money that I would use to buy it.

Oh dear... Here we go again. Myrkul and his daily distortion of well established concepts...

http://lawbrain.com/wiki/Substantive_Law


Could anyone tell Myrkul to free himself from the "Biaspedia" and start to search for independent sources?

OK.

So he was claiming to live in a fantasy land, where the economy was crap and he wouldn't be able to afford employees, and eventually admitted to being in the real world, where the market is doing well... What's your point? And, again, what is this supposed to show or prove about minimum wage laws? Was that the "insincerity" part? If that's your point, then that's actually an example of how a market distortion (asymmetric information, or lie in this case) only cause short-term blips on the economy, but are then forced right back into the same general economic rules. In his case, he made the value of his own jobs lower by being a douchebag, reducing the demand for the jobs he offered, and had to raise what he paid to keep his employees.

Oh dear god, not this again! Didn't you two settle this argument with "You're a dummy! No, YOU'RE a dummy! Let's just agree to disagree" last year?

lol... I don't think he got to that last part. Seems he couldn't stay away.

I must just be too damn smexy for him to resist.

bitcoin proves that this is not true. I have a property right to my bitcoins by virtue of the fact that only i know the private key despite the fact that there is no law supporting my property claim in any way.

Actually you only own that private key because you homesteaded it or someone consensually transferred it to you. Had you fraudulently obtained it, you would possess a copy but not own it.

Much like physical property... Fraudulently/forcibly obtaining it does not grant ownership.

But assuming no back up, it denies ownership.

If property rights do not exist with out law (which is what was said) and there are no laws pertaining to bitcoin (which is true) than logically one must conclude that one has a bitcoin property right. So you could make an argument saying "ok great you just proved that no one owns bitcoins but they do have access to them and thats what matters in this context" to which i would reply "this is not a particularly useful way to define the word ownership or property right"

if you wanted to revise the argument and say "except for the unusual exception, property rights don't exist without laws" i wouldn't protest.

He's not disputing that you own the key. What he is disputing is your reasoning as to why.

I, on the other hand, don't really consider that data to be property, or protected by property rights, except in the sense that one would need to trespass upon your property or commit fraud to acquire it illegitimately.

ah well what i am interested in is the question of whether bitcoins can be "owned" in a state of pure lawlessness. I think they can and thats probably the thing about them that is most wonderful. before bitcoin the ancap model suffered circular reasoning, we proposed to use markets to establish law but markets require property with which to barter and property claims (were at the time) a function of law. Bitcoin changed all that by allowing people to have completely undeniable property claims in the complete absence of law.

as an aside i do know that this problem of circular reasoning could be overcome by having property as a product of social norm instead of law but it could take ages to solve the problem that way, bitcoin solves it right now.

I really hate to beat a dead horse, but laws protect property, they do not establish it. Self-ownership (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ownership) establishes it.

Ok yes thats definitely true and maybe i should have been more careful with my wording. but this is a philosophical distinction. From a systems analysis standpoint "rights" are irrelevant what matters is the ability for given individuals to exercise dominion. so when i say property in this context i dont mean it in any Lockean sense i mean in the sense that certain individuals have greater and lesser capacities to dictate how objects are or are not used. Part of the confusion seems to come as a result of the fact that the english language seems to be missing an important word.

Funny thing is, that's exactly how I mean it: You own your body because you have exclusive control on how it is used. Because you own your body, you own the products of it - the fruits of your labor.

Ah well then lets move out of the pragmatic systems analysis realm and talk philosophy. If what you say is true and an alien brain parasite gained control over my body than this would make him the legitimate owner of my body by virtue of the fact that he was in control of its actions. In my mind this is would not constitute a legitimate property claim.

Why not arrive at it by just using mutually agreed upon contracts? In a small enough society, there is no need for a legal body to oversee your market. Contracts are signed and agreed upon, and if broken, enforced by whoever has more power, or pays a third party to exhert power.

BTW, I've mentioned this before, but this whole, "There are no rights without laws!" crap stinks way too much like the "There are no morals without the bible!" crap.

These are the same thing.

Epic fail. Thank you though for putting your foot in your mouth and showing your true colors: Money and power rule all. Forget justice and truth.

"Property rights" do not exist, with or without belief in papers ("laws").

Property is a concept.  When you say "This Coke can is my property" or "I own this Coke can", what you are saying is only an abbreviated form of "I obtained this Coke can ethically, therefore I ought to be the one who decides, exclusively, what will be done with it".  That's what the concept "property" means.  Concepts do not exist -- when we speak of concepts, we can only speak of their validity or invalidity.

Of course, implicit in that sentence, is the idea that there is (not "exists", is) an unambiguous set of rational rules that allows two or more people to figure out who owns what scarce and rivalrous resource without having to resort to brute force to "decide".

There's lots of debate over what those rules might be, whether it's rules written in a certain set of Holy Papers, or rules that mandate communal ownership of stuff, or rules that mandate individual ownership, or the rule set composed of the "I will shoot you if you don't give me your stuff" (which incidentally is the ultimate rule of the Holy Papers), et cetera.  My point is not to debate what the "right" rule set is.  My point is to get you to think of property in terms of a concept rather than a magical right given or granted to you by anyone or any piece of paper.

Now, in my view, the only two rules needed to decide who owns what are homesteading and consensual transfer.  I'm not here to tell you that is the ultimate rule set and you should obey that.  But I can tell you that, deducing from these rules, if you generated or got (via consensual transfer) a private key for a Bitcoin wallet, and proceeded to generate or obtain (via consensual transfer) Bitcoins in said Bitcoin wallet, then the logical deduction is that "You own that wallet and those Bitcoins".

i disagree. Ownership implies legitimacy of means of acquisition. Exercising dominion over an object implies no such legitimacy. Of course in my original statement i was using these ideas interchangeably for lack of a better term and because this philosophical distinction wasnt relievent at the time.

i totally agree with what you have written here. Sometimes it is difficult for one to be rigorous enough to phrase everything correctly so it was my mistake if i said something that implied that i do not agree with what you have written here. Technically in the earlier dialogue i wasn't interested in property rights (even though i used those words for simplicities sake) but rather a situation where multiple actors were exercising dominion over multiple separate objects (the conditions that allow a market to form).

Ownership is legitimate dominion. If you own something, you by definition have dominion over it. You seem to be saying that a market needs only the dominion, not the legitimacy, in order to function. This is false. If legitimacy is not a qualification to trade, then you end up with illegitimately gained items being traded equally with legitimately gained ones, invalidating the legitimacy of the legit goods. In other words, if stolen goods are not classed separately from - and lesser than - legit goods, you ruin the value of the effort of gaining something legitimately, when you can just steal it. A free market requires that property rights - ownership - be respected in order to work properly.

sure a market can function with illegitimately acquired goods. Americans basically stole everything they have from the natives and we built very robust markets out of that stolen property.

also "If you own something, you by definition have dominion over it." that isnt true at all. If someone steals my property from me it is still my property but i no longer have any capacity to exercise dominion over it.

Ah - but only because the "property rights" of the thief were respected. If no property rights are respected, then you end up with a cut-throat, steal and be stolen from market, where violence is the rule, not the exception. This is the anarchy that statists fear and hold up as boogey-man, not the anarchy we seek.


On the contrary. You can go take it back, by force if need be.

granted


In my theoretical example lets say you dont know who the thief is or where your property has been taken and you have no means to regain the property. It would still be your property but it wouldn't make any sense to say you had dominion over it since you would have no capacity to dictate the terms of its use.

Which is why stealing is wrong - it separates ownership and dominion.

Do the judges and police officers in your country work for free?

Of course not. They take their money by force, the truth and justice way.

Having trouble seeing the obvious? I guess so.

Your argument doesn't sound very solid. Let me understand. Goods are made from natural resources. They were ultimately come by through homesteading the land they came from, right? Those would have been (in the case of North America) the first Americans, right? They laid claim by hunting and agriculture, correct? Therefore, if others (let's say Europeans) 'homesteaded' on such lands (by use of guns and power), then according to your logic, all goods which ultimately originated from the Europeans manufacturing from resources on American soil are illegitimate.

It seems that it's really power that determines ownership. And Rassah even admits it. At least governments try and allow that power to be available to everyone equally more so than private defense agencies where it's very clear who will win.

"All" might be a little excessive, certainly there were some legitimate transfers, or homesteading of unclaimed lands. But at this point, it's nearly impossible to determine which were which, especially after several generations of good faith legitimate transfers.

That's the best you can do? In actuality, it was the U.S. government which laid claim to the lands, using power to grab the land, homestead it, or whatever. If you wish to wave your hands and sweep it all underneath the rug (which you are clearly doing), then fine. By doing so, you are left with the realization that you are a tenant of the U.S. government, and ownership of a parcel of land by you and/or a right to squat on their land is under the provision that you pay taxes. By being said tenant, then you play by their rules, just like I should play by your rules in your house. One of those rules might be a minimum wage rule, as designated by a state, which is also granted rights by the federal government.

If you disagree with this analysis, then I suggest you rephrase your last comment to factor in the realities of the world, which includes power as being the ultimate arbiter. This is in fact what you argue for in your AnCap society.

You make an assumption: that the government is a legitimate entity. It's not. Therefore, any transfers made by the US Government are by definition not legitimate. I am no more a tenant of the US Government than a person living in the territory of the mafia is a tenant of them. If you're interested in justice, you should be advocating returning government lands to the natives, since that is a very easily traced illegitimate transfer.

Of course, drawing lines on a map doesn't grant ownership, so even those people who homesteaded land claimed by, and granted to them by, the US Government aren't tenants, they're the ones who legitimately earned, and so own, that land. (Unless, of course, they had to kill some natives to get the land, which makes the transfer illegitimate, but again, since that was so far in the past, and both the original - native - owners and the people who took the land from them are long gone, it's effectively impossible to track it all down.)

So do you. You missed that paid third party that enforces contracts could be paid by the party that broke the deal. That's how it would likely work: Want to deal voluntarily? Agree for both parties to sign the contract, and pay the third party to keep both of us in line.

The difference is that if power is supported by voluntary means, such as me paying for security, for protection, or even to attack someone, that's still voluntary. And if I want to do something with my own stuff, on my own property, that power will not interfere with me, since I never paid or asked it to. In the government's case, that power is decided on by either everyone collectively, or by a few who think they know better how everyone should run their lives. I could have had that power exerted against me, against my will, and in the privacy of my own home, as little as 30 years ago, just because of the gender of the person I'm in love with.

... another one of those rules might be a rule that gives you special privilege, or takes away all your rights entirely, based on your skin color. Yet another rule may grant, or take away, your right to own land or take out loans, based on whether you have a penis. Of course all these rules were right, just, and ethical, because they were written in law, which is where rights come from. And since rights come from law, those rights, or lack of rights, are absolute. You can't just change a law that you don't agree with. You have no right to!   :P ::)

Btw, it's been a year, and you still haven't explained: if rights come from laws, how, or even why, did black people ever get them in this country, if they had no legal right to rights, and the law is what dictates rights and ethics?

...eeehh... I don't know about attacking someone. Unless, of course, the person has agreed to be attacked. Otherwise that's voluntary only on one side of the equation, which is to say, not voluntary.

Rassah, stop confusing ethics with law. Ethics influence law. We live in an evolving society which is becoming more sensitive to ethics everyday, and laws are influenced by them over time. Please stop pontificating as if your imagined and desired society actually sounds like an inviting place to live. It really does not. It actually sounds rather scary and backwards.

As for you knowing better - honestly, you don't. Only someone who is an expert in many fields (geology, ecology, biology, structural building codes, hydrology, etc.) would really know best. That's why we have regulations. You're free to revisit the FYGM thread and demonstrate that you do know better, but I see you abandoned it.

Yes, I imagine personal responsibility would seem rather scary to someone like yourself.

And those regulations are enacted by those polymath experts, right? Oh... right. They're enacted by idiots, whose sole skill lies in getting elected, who don't even read the bills they pass.

Is this thread even about minimum wage anymore?
My input if so is minimum wage has to be there.

Take walmart for example if they paid all their employees $80 more each week, it would cost them an extra 8,736,000,000 granted they made 15 billion last year, but that's more than half of profits. Would hurt the economy more I think.

i would love to get back to the topic! Do you believe that companies can chose to pay a wage that is below market price and still attract employees? Do you believe that employees deserve higher than a market wage? If the answer to either question is yes than why?

before you reply check out this very short 3 minute video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siW0YAAfX6I) to save me the trouble of outlining the basics of the anti-minimumwage position.

I'm going to be the advocate of the devil here (I mean that I'm going to defend the idea of a minimal wage, even if I disagree with it).

If you allow wages to price labor to its real economic value, then many people might end up earning less money than what they need to sustain their life.  Because they have no skill whatsoever, and no real economic value.  They'll be destitute or at least very poor.   Then they might either die or chose crime in a society where they have no economic place.

The idea of the minimum wage is to prevent that, I guess.

definitely, i play devils advocate myself sometimes.

I usually have to start with a few questions to learn what my opponents position actually is. otherwise ill argue against the wrong thing such as such as making and economic argument when the disagreement is philosophical in nature or vise versa.

I would ask you whether or not someone who is unable to produce enough value to sustain even their own lives is entitled to the products of those who are able to sustain their own lives? Do you believe a market wage till tend to be unfairly decoupled from a workers marginal revenue product in a free market society?

If the answer to question 1 is yes than we have a philosophical disagreement, if the answer to question 2 is yes than we (probably) have an economic disagreement (some crazy ass communists believe capitalists are not entitled to anything for sacrificing consumption in order to invest in capital).

This is a dangerous question.  I won't answer it.    I'll just say that this question has the same nature (though it's a bit of a caricature), than the question of whether or not the State should take care of disabled people.


No, I believe a free market can totally price wages to their accurate (and thus "fair") economic value.  I just think this value might be lower than the maintenance cost of a human being.  In other words, from a purely economic point of view, I think many human beings are non-efficient machines, i.e. they have a negative net profitability:  they cost more than what they can produce.

The philosophical arguments have already been advanced, so I'll present the practical one: If indeed someone has less economic value for their labor than the minimum wage, what sane person is going to hire them at the minimum wage? They'd be losing money. Thus, the result of the minimum wage is to produce, instead of a poor man, an absolutely broke man. The man whose labor is worth less than the minimum wage has, now, only two options in order to survive: accept charity (whether private or state-funded) or enter a life of crime. The very result which you sought to avoid is, in fact, caused by the policy you enacted to attempt to avoid it. Economists call that "unintended consequences." ;)

Well, that's why wherever there are minimal wage laws, there is often also a "welfare" state that deals with unemployment by paying people for doing nothing.

Thus granting them, entitled or not, a portion of the products of those who are capable of working at a net positive - reducing that net positive, and thus the incentive to work for that net positive. The cure for one perceived problem causes another problem, like giving someone a drug, and then another drug to help the side-effects of the first. But that drug has side-effects, too, and so on.

Each attempt at "correcting" a "problem" with the market causes side-effects, which then have to be "corrected," causing more side-effects, which then have to be "corrected"....

ok well then this is a much easier question to deal with.

If it is true that employers tend not to be willing to employ people at a wage that is higher than what the employer perceives to be the marginal revenue product of that employee (because if he did this he would expect to take a loss); and if it is also true that minimum wage legislation will tend to forces employer to chose between increasing an employees wage to a level that is higher than their marginal revenue product or firing that employee; and that a person who has negative net profitability will tend to be such a person whos marginal revenue product is low for an employer; than we should expect minimum wage to cause unemployment for people who have net negative profitability and to rarely result in an increase in wages. If our intention is to help people who have net negative profitability than perhaps putting them out of work isnt the best way to go about this.

you guys are bickering about something you really agree upon.  define your terms so the conversation can proceed.

That's the idea.  The reality is that these people end up jobless and then turn to crime.  Black youth are especially affected by this.  Hence minimum wage is a racist and populist measure.

Did you read the paper I posted? The one about not finding any correlation between wage floors and unemployment rates?

Have you considered that a job which pays $3 an hour isn't actually much different than unemployment?

Have you ever walked into a Walmart and think "My gosh, too bad the minimum wage laws are preventing Walmart from hiring more employees", as you navigate your way through the door greeter, the the girl pushing Walmart credit cards, etc?

Unemployment problems are typically with higher wage jobs. Minimum wage floors give a little bit more bargaining power to those seeking entry level jobs. It forces the employer to actually try and create jobs which create some value for the workers.

...and then stand at one of the four (out of 40) checkout lines that are open, waiting in line for longer than it took you to pick out your items...

If a worker accepts employment in which he does not receive a high enough wage to sustain himself, then he's an idiot.  A worker should only accept employment in which he receives a high enough wage to sustain himself.  If all workers do this, it creates a natural minimum wage floor.

That said, I can see how getting paid $2/hr in the US could still be sustainable if a person worked an insane number of hours.  Is this acceptable?  Sure.  Anyone who doesn't want to work an insane number of hours is free to better themselves through education, work experience, moving up through the company, finding a new job, etc.

A lack of minimum wage would ensure increased abuse of the welfare and unemployment system.  Who would work for $2/hr when they can be paid more from the government just for sitting on their couch all day?  Therefore, if the minimum wage was abolished, the welfare system would have to be abolished (or restricted to serve only to those who cannot work) as well.

On the crime prevention side, I believe the government should offer unlimited jobs at below-market-value, and this would be the form of monetary compensation that would replace the welfare system.  Just got laid off from a construction company?  Work for the government at 75% of the market wage on a new courthouse.  The factory you worked for just shut down?  Ok, come work on the roadkill cleanup team for 75% of the market wage until you can find something new.

I don't like the idea of government handing out taxpayer dollars to individuals, but it is a necessary evil to prevent desperation and crime.  However, if they're going to hand out money, better make sure that the individuals receiving it actually work for it!

I don't actually care for Walmart, but the truth is, I've never found that in Walmart. Every time I've been in one, they had a shitload of registers open. Probably close to 20 at least, given their double stacked arrangement of registers.

Home Depot is another thing altogether. Self checkout and maybe two registers open if you're lucky. But they pay over minimum wage.

The minimum wage floor gives the job seeker some bargaining power, in a sense.

No, it removes the ability to bargain. There's a difference.

In your world, perhaps. But we don't live in your world for a good may reasons. In the real world, there aren't actually job seekers out there wanting to work for less than minimum wage. Thus, they are saved from being offered really shitty deals. Get it?

Put another way, it kind of removes the ability for the job seeker to be an idiot and accept a job for which he cannot sustain himself.  But, it would be much better for the free market to determine what this sustainability wage floor should be, instead of the government.  The problem is, the idiots may reduce that wage floor for everyone else, making it more difficult for those who are not idiots to find a job in which he can sustain himself.

I would argue that there are, because the minimum wage is too high.

Did you read the paper?

You don't say?

I can provide multiple datapoints that refute that. Would you like to revise that statement?

No.

Can you explain why there is no correlation, when the basic law of supply and demand says there should be?

you may be missing the point that it is in the interest of some workers to work for a wage that is not high enough to sustain themselves. Imagine a teenager who has all of his needs met by his parents and gains valuable work experience from the low wage job.

Oh god, this.

Exactly.  Taking away the option to charge less for his services doesn't give the seeker doesn't get bargaining power -- on the contrary, such a policy takes his power away.

But you can't expect sociopathic FirstAsshat to understand this simple fact.

Those teenagers work at minimum wage jobs. And if they don't, you have pointed out that all his needs are met.

He's not gaining power by being allowed to bargain for slave labor.

I don't think you quite understand at least one of those terms you used.

I don't think my answer was in reply to a remotely grammatically correct sentence, but I don't bother with petty statements like yours.

Let's try again, then. Care to explain how a slave can bargain for the price of his labor?

Oh man. I really didn't understand what you meant at first. Now I simply see your inability to find a meaningful response to what I said, so instead you try and twist literal meanings out of words and make false assumptions about the class and position of a person doing bargaining.

If you have a point, find it and say it.

How, exactly, is voluntarily accepting a wage below some arbitrary mandatory minimum "slave labor"?

Did I really just see this on Bitcointalk? Are the tides turning? Good job breaking it down. I hope too see more of this around here.

this fails to address my argument

If two people are bargaining with each other than this indicates that the relation ship between them is not one of master and slave. You see slave masters have no need to ever bargain with their slaves, in fact this is pretty much the defining characteristic of the master and slave relationship.

Hey, I have an idea. Instead of putting a price floor on earnings with minimum wage laws, why don't we just put a price floor on all products created with minimum wage labor? Stuff like fast food, farming produce,really cheap shoes and clothing, various cheap plastic and paper products, nursing assistance, basic income tax services, and other things like that, typically used by the poor. This way everyone will be forced to pay enough for those burgers and other junk to actually generate enough revenue for companies to raise their employees' wages! Of course, doing this will also make the stuff poor people actually rely on much more expensive for them to obtain  :P

Nah, never mind. Let's just stick to increasing wages, and forcing companies to raise prices on all that stuff poor people use. At least that way, those poor people will feel better about their wages, and might not notice that the price of everything they buy went up.

I've got an even better idea. Since we can legislate prosperity just by increasing wages, Let's just set the minimum wage at $1 million/hour, so none of us will have to work more than a few hours every year.

wage implies that someone has to work. Lets just mail 1 infinity dollar bill to every household.

I think you just qualified yourself for the job of FED chairman.

Nope.  He also needs a "Nobel" prize :-)

A very valid point indeed.  So then, jobs that require little experience and can be worked part-time would be overtaken by teenagers who already have their basic needs met.  They would compete with each other to find an artificial floor, something along the lines of "the wage is more beneficial than the opportunity cost and benefit I could have by participating in other activities".  Maybe $4/hr or something.  I know when I was still in high school, I didn't like work all that much, and the $5.95/hr I was paid in my first job was just barely enough to keep me interested in working instead of doing other activities.

More aged workers who need a higher wage to sustain themselves would have to differentiate themselves from these teenage workers in order to compete.  Experience would be the large factor here, perhaps with ability to work a full-time, non-flexible schedule being a close second.  Those are valuable traits to many companies wishing to hire, traits for which they very well may be willing to pay a significant amount higher to attract non-teenagers to the positions.

Where's the Zeitgeist Movement cultists? I think it's about the time for their turn to chime in  ;D

Well said, SgtSpike.

It's enlightening to know that current labor restrictions on teenagers and young people in general were actually legislated as political favors to unions and other forms of guild-mentality organizations interested in immunizing themselves from competition.  Of course, these were sold to the public as "Decent wages" and "Protect the children", but the real intention was simply "fuck you, got mine".

It's funny how people who readily use politics to "fuck you got mine", accuse us voluntaryists of being the "fuck you got mine" people.

assuming i can make sure that these infinity bills make it to some houses just a little bit sooner than other houses, i think you're right!

Flawed research.

Haven't a number of people opened your eyes to this? I mentioned examples myself regarding the basic supply/demand curve (not necessarily related to minimum wage floors). The basic supply/demand curve doesn't necessarily apply in the real world, where there are other factors. Off the top of my head, it's easy to point out that anything below $8 an hour is just noise (made by screaming libertarians). As I pointed out earlier, I don't see a shortage of Walmart workers in Walmart stores, even at minimum wage levels.

(I definitely see a shortage at my local WalMarts)
So, it's NOT because an increase in minimum wage increases the cost of goods & services, which increases their price, which in turn pushes up the price of everything else, causing a sort-of inflation, and in the end making the minimum wage earners earn (and cost) the same amount of value they have before, even if the numbers on their paychecks increased? Which, while making their purchasing power be basically what it was before, makes everything in the country go up in price, and thus making the country as a whole be less competitive compared to the rest of the world? If these supply/demand factors I mentioned are not it, then what factors are?

Are you asking me what drives inflation? Marketing which capitalizes on the effects of materialism and the 'me too' crowd. Diminishing natural resources. Increasing population. Printing money. Competition between nations to have the best national defense and security. Technological advances in products which encourage product upgrade cycles.

Also, did you miss my lesson on one instance where the supply/demand curve breaks down? I guess so, considering it would have been inconvenient for you to parse it into all the dogma you digest in favor of your "evolved and higher" belief system.

Yes I missed your lesson on where supply/demand curves break down. Rather, if you had such a lesson, I didn't see it.

No, I am asking you what the "other factors" you mentioned you knew are making the unemployment rate stay stable despite the cost of labor being increased.

That's unfortunate.


Perhaps because the minimum wage floor puts enough money in the lowest wage earners' pockets that they can actually become (to a point) effective participants in the economy, which in turn helps drive the economy.

Or perhaps the actual unemployment issues are for the higher wager earners?

Well, then why don't we make minimum wage $25/hour? Then everyone will be well paid enough to become very effective participants in the economy. Why keep the lowest wage-earners just above, poverty? Why not legislate prosperity, instead?

I know you're not actually so stupid as to believe that some thought doesn't go into what the minimum wage floor is. Did you know that $25 an hour might actually cause the problems you believe exist right now? You see, it has been demonstrated that the minimum wage floors don't cause problems. How about that?

Well, if minimum wage floors don't cause problems, why not set them high enough to actually do some good, instead of keeping the poorest people poor?

There's a balance in everything.

Let's put it in terms that you're more familiar with.

If dumping a lot of perchlorate into the river is harmful to the fish, is there a balance of an appropriate amount of perchlorate that will help the fish?

Let's put this in a perspective that maybe you can understand. Would you rather live in a world with zero CO2 in the atmosphere, or ten times the current amount that is currently in the atmosphere?

This thread is now hilarious.

Keep the punches rolling, guys!

You are whipping FistAsshat's ass, myrkul. I love how he can't make "theories" up fast enough to obscure the truth. I love how he cannot substantiate his made up stuff either.

Human beings could not live in an atmosphere with zero CO2 (or is that your point?).

That is actually an argument for letting the market determine the wage for a specific labor, you know that, right? The level of CO2 in the atmosphere is self-regulated by the animals and plants. It's not "decided" and enforced by some regulatory agency. CO2 levels increase, more plants take advantage of that CO2, reducing the levels and increasing oxygen.

Price floors cause surpluses in every other good which you set them for. Why would they not cause surplus in labor?


Yes, that's his point. We actually need a small amount of CO2 to trigger our breathing response. Too much, or too little, and we suffocate.

Statists have a great fondness for Goldilocks "arguments" because they deny absolute truths and allow them to bicker endlessly and theatrically about how hot the soup should be, inflating their own self importance.

Let's be a statist for ten seconds guys. Would you rather live in a world where you are raped not at all, or a world with rape ten times as its current prevalence? I think we can all agree that, obviously, the world with just a little bit of rape (our current world, coincidentally) has the right amount of rape, because we couldn't possible think that no rape is good, amirite? those people saying that rape is always wrong are just stupid because, you know, sometimes bitch asked for it.

Yep, I see that now. Apples & oranges really. If my posts disappear from this thread, it's because it looks just too daft to keep appearing in my new-replies list. Feel free to quote for posterity... :)

Being willing to turn up every day counts for a lot too. Also commitments so that you don't just walk out when the job gets crappy.

it's worth noting that the idea that we suffocate in an environment or an atmosphere without co2 is wrong -- we do not suffocate, we do breathe, even el 100% oxygen, because the body is producing co2 as you breathe so there's always enough co2 to in the lungs to trigger your respiration reflex.

FirstIdiot can't even get his analogies right. Not even that. I loled. plus the analogy is stupid because it doesn't capture minimum wage and its economic implications.

Veeery slowly. We might be OK at night, but during the day, I'd wager you'd have to spend half your time remembering to breathe.

So I actually did look at the paper (http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/SS280/Card-Kruger-AER_Jan95.pdf)...

1) That paper does not make the claim First Ascent says it does (it claims to have detected publication bias, not "no correlation")
2) That paper is flawed research, and this has been reported in the literature. However it looks like they accidentally came to the correct conclusion
(they had a 50-50 chance of doing this)
3) The claim first ascent is making is supported by other different literature, in fact the same literature that debunks that first paper.

See:
Publication Selection Bias in Minimum-Wage Research? A Meta-Regression Analysis
Hristos Doucouliagos and T. D. Stanley
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2009.00723.x
47:2 June 2009 0007–1080 pp. 406–428


Welcome to the confused world of academia.

Actually, the markets, absence regulation are causing excessive warming. It's regulations which are needed to prevent humanity from over polluting. But I don't expect your conspiracy believing clique to buy into that.

Way to mix your analogies, and bring in your agenda at the same time. You want to try again? Hint: we're actually talking about wages here, not global warming climate change. Let's ignore for the moment the pollution argument, before or against. Before humans started doing that, would you agree that the environment regulated itself?

I never mentioned climate change until you brought up the fish example analogy. What a hypocrite you are. And apparently a dumbfuck as well if you didn't recognize that my CO2 example stemmed directly from your own actions.

Instead of ad hominem attacks, would you like to respond to the argument? Specifically: Before humans started polluting/attempting to regulate that pollution, would you agree that the environment regulated itself?

Perhaps you can help by pointing it out? I likely missed it because I confused it with just another random debate post.


For that to be true, you would have to assume that raising the minimum wage does not increase the cost of products&services, and does not raise the price of everything at the same time as well (I.e. a min wage earner earning $5, then getting wages raised to $7, will still be earning an equivalent of $5 when adjusted by the resulting inflation).


Ah, I remember examining and looking for that balance in one of my economics classes. We still used supply/demand/price/quantity graphs to find out where it was and what overall effect it has.

They're not ad hominem attacks. Can you comprehend that? They're forum posts containing text which describe your character. There is nothing about the written observations which relate to the validity or invalidity of your argumentation. Rather, they simply are observations of your behavior.

Now, regarding your question about environmental pollution, did you not just say that you did not want to go down that road? You just accused me of bringing it into the argument.

Knock it off with your hypocritical attitude, and stop with your accusations of me conflating issues, and then you yourself immediately picking up that line of argumentation in your next post (or next sentence, for that matter). Once you can address your own problems regarding posting, we can discuss.

You need to demonstrate some things to follow that line of logic. They are:

- The efficiency of $5 workers vs. $8 workers
- The operating margins of the company
- The law of diminishing returns regarding more workers
- The quality of service or products using cheaper labor

Witness, everyone, the forum sociopath in his natural habitat. Notice how he avoids answering the question, for he knows he has overstepped his ability to debate. Notice how he switches from debating the issues to debating the character of the poster. Proof positive that he has no argument; else he would advance it.

I say again: Remove humans, and your preconceptions about their effects on the environment. Does the environment regulate itself?

Please give him some (A LOT of) credit; at least he's not cunicula.

When you are ready to discuss, let me know, and I will be happy to discuss. Let me know.

Does asking a question not indicate a willingness to discuss? Very well, let me explicitly state it. I am willing to discuss. Please answer the question: Is the environment (ignoring human intervention, either way) self-regulating?

Prediction: you will refuse to answer, deflecting, because you know that the truth hurts your argument.

I'm saying you are using nominal values, when the real value of those is the same. The efficiency of a worker earning $5 in year 1 is the same as the efficiency of a worker earning $8 in year 2 when adjusted for the 60% inflation caused by the rise in that wage. Now, I'll grant you that the inflation jump won't be in the entire economy. As i mentioned previously, high level services and products used by wealthy people will probably not be affected, but things used by those same minimum wage earners, like fast food, bread, milk and other produce, discount store prices, and other businesses like that will be.


In a perfectly competitive market, margins, and thus profits, are zero. A lot of the companies that have minimum wage workers are in industries with enormous competition. McD's has Burger King, White Castle, Hardee's, Checkers/Rally's, Wendy's, Arbys, Roy Rogers, and even Taco Bell to compete against if you include substitutions. Thus I expect their margins to be tiny, pennies per hamburger (close to $0.13 for a BigMac back in 2001, no idea what now). Small margins = raise prices or reduce costs (employees)


This is almost irrelevant, as any company that hopes to compete would keep only the workers it needs. Companies don't hire more employees just to give someone a job. Those that do that are beaten out on price and fail.


Again, irrelevant, because the quality of the product or service is what you are selling, not what you are giving away for free. The reason Checkers/Hardee's can charge more than McD's for their burgers and still stay in business is because they provide more quality burgers. It is NOT because they pay their employees more, and the employees choose to make better burgers as a "thank you" to the company. So, if the quality of your product sucks, yes, you can hire more competent employees and pay them a higher wage (which wouldn't have anything to do with minimum wage laws), but then you would have to include that increased cost in your product, or go broke. And if the quality of your product sucks compared to your competitor, but you are both paying the same wages, then obviously something else is wrong. And if your product just plain sucks, then no amount of well paid employees will help you anyway.

Let me know where I've missed something

Let's revisit what you said a few posts back:


Given your above statement, I see an insistence on your part to stick to wages, despite you bringing up the fish analogy, and then you have the nerve to say my CO2 argument is irrelevant, and then state you wish to ignore the pollution argument, and then you wish to continue with discussion on the environment.

It doesn't work that way.


So you're willing to discuss. I already know that. But am I willing to discuss if you dictate the questions which can be asked immediately after telling me what I should or should not bring up? I don't think so.


Regarding the answer to the question you're asking, in actuality, the truth does not hurt my argument in the least.

The wages paid to In n Out Burger employees, the fresh materials used in their products, and the fact that their products cost less than McDonalds.

I've had the "pleasure" of watching this happen in real time. Minimum wage went up, out came the McDouble - a double cheeseburger with only one slice of cheese. They reduced the cost of the burger to retain what slim margin they had.

Nailed it.

I'm not familiar with In-n-Out, so you'll have to be more specific about their wages (more than $7.25/h?), their burgers (higher quality?), and their business (walk-in restaurant? Amenities?)

Best and freshest fast food burgers around. Best service around. $11 an hour starting wage. Fast food business model. Cheeseburger, soda and fries for $5.

Food quality: http://www.in-n-out.com/menu/food-quality.aspx

Very limited range. Specifically, a 1-day drive from the distribution center. Understandable, since it allows them to use refrigerated trucks instead of freezer trucks, keeps their food fresh, and limits transportation costs. Pretty good business plan, actually, but it sux that I can't have one in Texas. It's OK. we have BBQ.

They do have a distribution center in Texas for In-n-Outs in Texas. Their business model works. And they are expanding. And believe me, it works like crazy.

And the fact that they pay higher than minimum wage starting wages indicates that they hire (or keep) only skilled and efficient workers. Which is backed up by their speed and quality. Go into your local In-n-Out. Ask 'em what their turnover rates are, and if they hire 14-year old kids.

I should also point out that their business model is based on biblical principles. They don't hire lazy/dis-honest workers. They also do drug testing and full background checks. The business model would fail if it didn't include superior service.

There seems to be a bit of a disconnect. This:
Does not follow this:
In fact, firing or not hiring lazy and dishonest workers, and doing full background checks would lead to exactly the opposite. The drug testing is sort of a wash, since off-duty activities don't necessarily alter on-duty ones. But it's their prerogative.

Ever think that maybe the superior service came from the fact that they only hire people worth hiring?

There are a lot of people who simply aren't worth hiring at minimum wage. The result is that they end up not working. Therefore they end up sponging off the government and therefore voting Democrat. It's win-win for the left.

None of which still answers how they can sell good burgers, with good service, and pay high wages, while still selling burgers cheaper than the competition. Something somewhere simply doesn't add up. Maybe they have the same business plan as Los Pollos Hermanos?

lol... No. Well, probably not. Efficient workers mean efficient production. Efficient production means you can make more burgers, faster. More burgers, faster, means you can price them cheaper, and thus sell more. And the prices aren't exactly lower than the competition. A double-double (two meat, two cheese) is ~$3.00 (source (http://fastfood.ocregister.com/2010/04/13/in-n-out-burger-raises-menu-prices/58221/)). A Double (two meat, two cheese) from McDonalds is ~$1.29. I haven't tasted In-N-Out's burgers, but it's probably worth the extra $1.70.

EDIT: it's up to $3.15...http://www.ocregister.com/articles/prices-297781-costs-year.html

Oh, so, you mean higher wages DOES mean higher costs and thus higher prices? Well, that example just got busted

To be fair, some of those higher costs are food costs, since the owner is committed to buying local. That they're competitive at all is a minor wonder, IMO.

I do wonder, though, which products were you speaking about, FirstAscent?

http://images.onset.freedom.com/ocregister/article/lk811c-b78785065z.120110425113450000gfvuqcj8.1.jpghttp://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bv2hH9YPKyM/STWIwB7IvpI/AAAAAAAAAr0/P803fpiiVlg/s400/IMG_1204.JPG

This is factually inaccurate.  Pure oxygen, particularly at the partial pressures that would occur anywhere near Earth atmostpheric (~14.5 pounds per square inch) is poisonous, very dangerous, and potentially fatal.  Particularly for someone who might pass out.  We humans (not all animals can do this, BTW, most actually cannot) have a great deal of mental control over out own breathing, but only while awake.  CO2 is used by the body to determine when to actually cycle breath, but the presence of pure oxygen in the lungs, and the lack of CO2 of some small percentage, tricks the system into waiting to breath until the CO2 that is coming back from the bloodstream is high enough to trigger a breath.  The problem is that the detection of CO2 is delayed for many reasons, so while the lungs aren't really running low on oxygen, the stagnation of the oxygen in the lungs, combined with it's elevated concentration in the bloodstream, contributes to oxygen toxicity syndrome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity

While I know that this is off-topic, I can't stand to see falsehoods go unchallenged.  Please return to your regularly scheduled topic thread.

Your logical fallacy is... (http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman)

Oxygen makes up slightly less than 21% of Earth's atmosphere. CO2 less than .04%. Even replacing all CO2 with oxygen wouldn't be enough to noticeably change the percentage of O2 in the atmosphere.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Which_gases_make_up_the_earth%27s_atmosphere

100% Oxygen however, is lethal, not because we'd fail to breathe, but because the oxygen itself would kill us.

Not to me.  They make damn good burgers.  Zero comparison to McD's or Burger King.  They're competitive for the same reason true "restaurant" burger joints are competitive.

Every time I take a trip through CA, I make sure I stop at an In-N-Out at least once.

Well, I meant "that they have competitive prices," but from everything I've heard, they definitely are worth the additional cost.

Nonsense.  I wasn't making any comment about whatever topic he was referring to, other than to point out that he was factually incorrect in his use of it.  I do not, and have not, made an judgement about the topic at hand.


You didn't actually read either his post, nor all of my response, did you?  Read what you quoted, from him above, and all of what you didn't quote from my response, and you'll discover that your not even arguing in the same room.

Sure. Care to point out where in this:


You found this?


'cause I don't see it. I do see a lot of pulmonary effects, most notably irritation, but I also see references to "48 hours on pure oxygen..." Is that on sleep deprivation, as well?

Better yet, how about I actually highlight your errors, rather than respond to your attempt to pretend that you actually interpreted the discourse correctly the first time....


Please note, if you will, that you highlighted the correct part of the original post that I was responding to.  However, you then completely misinterpreted it to mean something entirely differnet....

You appear to conclude that he, and presumedly I, were talking about replacing 100% of CO2 with oxygen in the atmostphere.  That wouldn't be dangerous at all. Duh. No one was talking about replacing less than  a percentage point of anything with anything else.  And then you folow up with this...


Which was almost exactly my argument.  So what do you do?



The reason that you "don't see it" is because that link was just a reference for oxygen toxicity syndrome, but it even does have a loose reference in there that you filtered out with your cognative disonance...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity#Pulmonary_toxicity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity#Mechanism

As noted elsewhere, CO2 is used as a method to detect when the body needs to breath, but the system has delays; thus a pure oxygen environment leads to slower breathing cycles than even a 99.6% oxygen to 0.4% CO2 ratio would, permitting more time for oxygen to proceed through the reduction process before being expleled and replaced with fresh oxygen.  This doesn't prevent toxicity, but does delay it as more of the oxygen ions are expelled with the rest of the breath.

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque

You really are incapable of recognizing your own faults, aren't you Myrkul?

So do Checkers and Hardee's. Their burgers are great. And they may pay higher than the minimum wage, too.

FirstAscent would argue that the reason is: Minimum wage laws, or something else, increases wages> Employees get paid higher wages > Employees are more competent and more satisfied > Employees make better burgers > Company makes more money due to sales, I guess?, because their burgers are as cheap as McD's

I'm saying that's somewhat ass-backwards, and it's actually Company differentiates itself by wanting to make better burgers > Company sets up quality standards for the burgers > Company pays for better ingredients and higher wages for better employees > Company sells better burgers, and charges a premium on the improved quality of food and service.

Minimum wage has nothing to do with it, and the burger quality improves from the top down (the company), not bottom up (employee's good intentions). And even these better burgers follow supply/demand/quantity/price: If there are not enough people willing to pay for the more expensive burgers, even if the burger chain makes a killing on profit margins, it is limited by how much it is able to sell and expand. That's probably why In-n-Out is still only on the west coast, while McDonalds is around the world.

Yeah, myrkul, what the hell was that? O.o

Why do you have such a hard-on for me? I'm in a committed relationship, I'm sorry.

He said that humans would continue to breathe, even in an atmosphere of 100% oxygen... and specifically started by saying "with no co2."

I don't believe anyone denied that it would be slowed. The oxygen would damage the lungs, yes. But we'd still breathe autonomically. Less frequently, and during those long breaths, the oxygen would have more time to do damage, but we sure as hell wouldn't suffocate, which is what he said, and what you failed to disprove with your little tirade on Oxygen toxicity.

And I am perfectly capable of recognizing my own faults. Are you?

Pay attention, MoonShadow, I'm about to acknowledge my own faults:

It was not the best formatted post. I probably should have simply stopped after calling him out on the Strawman.

Yes, I completely agree with you.  The fact that In-N-Out is in business and NOT paying minimum wage only further proves the argument.  The market had set a natural wage floor for burger-flippers at the "higher quality" fast food joints.  There's no requirement for In-N-Out to pay anyone extra wages - they CHOOSE to do it because they want the better workers that come along with paying that higher wage.  Likewise, if someplace like McD's doesn't really care much about the quality of their workers, they (should be able to) choose to pay less than what the current minimum wage is to match that sentiment.  If they find that the turnover rate is too high, or that their workers are so bad as to be consistently driving customers away, then they would choose to raise their offered wages to acquire better workers.  The market would naturally set the proper wage, and we wouldn't be losing jobs due to minimum wage causing too much supply and too little demand in the labor market.

What are you talking about? Seriously. You can't buy a burger/sandwich at McDonald's, Carls Jr., Jack in the Box, or any other fast food establishment for less than about $3.50 that is as filling as any burger at In-n-Out, let alone their Double Double. I noticed that you tried comparing it to McDonalds' little toy cheeseburgers, which is silly. And we haven't even begun to discuss the freshness or dripping good taste of In-n-Out burgers.

Let's be clear: Most fast food establishments sell their better burgers for $3.50 and more. That's more than In-n-Out's most expensive burger on the menu. There isn't a single burger, no matter how large or expensive at McDonald's that compares with an In-n-Out burger. McDonalds' Quarter Pounder, which is comparatively dull and not that filling, and has no lettuce or tomatoes, probably costs about $3.69 and does not compare to any burger at In-n-Out.

Ummn, no. Read my post above this. There is no premium. Their burgers actually cost less.

But the real problem is dimwitted management and policy. In-n-Out burgers actually cost less than your typical McDonalds 'better' burgers. Such businesses should actually go out of business rather than fund their bad business making decisions with hiring below minimum wage employees.

In-n-Out proves that $10+ an hour wages does not result in higher menu prices, despite using fresher ingredients.

I was in an In-n-Out today. I saw no empty tables. I saw four workers at four registers, one worker calling out numbers, one worker cleaning tables, nine people working in the kitchen, and I suspect there might have been at least one worker in some back room. I saw about ten customers at the beverage bar, and about ten more standing and waiting for their orders to go.

In-n-Out demonstrates how a business can and should work. They train their employees properly. The other guys seem like a ghost town in comparison - their bad policies and bad food are what require them to pay less wages.

"In-n-Out proves that $10+ an hour wages does not result in higher menu prices" One data point does not empirically "prove" anything, cmon guy i know you are smarter than this.

No, he's really not... He's too focused on ecology to understand economics.

As he told me once, he really should stick to what he knows.

I'm curious, myrkul. What exactly do you know?

To be honest, comparing In-n-Out to McD's isn't that straightforward, because McD's prices vary drastically based on location. Around here, I can get a Angus Deluxe (One of McD's premium burgers with fresh vegies that does compare to In-n-Out burgers) for about $3.50. Down in Orlando near Disney World (Downtown Disney shopping strip), a Big Mac meal goes for about $7. Last time I was in Switzerland 10 years ago, that same meal went for $12 when converted to USD.
So FirstAscent may be looking at skewed prices for his McD's. For example, a Quarter Pounder here costs about $1.50 to $2.00, not $3.50.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFbYM2EDz40

I know that when the minimum wage went up, so did the menu prices at McDonalds and most other fast food places. Minimum wage increases don't effect In-N-Out's prices because they don't pay minimum wage. If they did, they could sell their burgers more cheaply. Of course, they would likely lose some of that fine service, perhaps even some of the quality of the burger, thus selling fewer.

I know that you can't point to In-N-Out and say, "See, that's how all burger joints should be run." It's a business model that works, yes, but it wouldn't work for all fast food restaurants. You said you went to In-N-Out yesterday. Did you ask them the questions I gave you? What were the answers?

I know that smarter men than I, men who get paid for doing this sort of thinking, have determined that minimum wage laws are a detriment to an economy, and remove the bottom rungs on the ladder, creating unemployment.

I know you're full of shit.

Please render your opinion again once you've visited an In-n-Out.

What is the minimum wage of a cat? I think she get a good social welfare system and do not need to work

Similarly, rich people having too much production power, they could afford to have some people walking around in the city without doing anything, just like pets. Or more positively, they want a pleasant social environment that everyone has a good living standard, so that they enjoy seeing everyone walking on the street have smile  :)

Interesting idea.

On the other hand, my cat pulls his own weight around the place. He keeps my outbuildings free of rodents (which he eats - mostly) and keeps stray cats away from the house. Sometimes he warms my lap when I sit on the porch and makes very relaxing sounds when I scratch him under his chin. In exchange for these benefits, I feed him once in awhile (mostly left over chicken parts that I'd just throw away anyway - or the last bit of milk or cream that's in the process of turning) and a handful of cat chow whenever I feel happen to feel like it (mostly on really cold or rainy days).

I'd call it more of a barter arrangement...

Now if you could convince some welfare recipient to keep people from asking me for spare change or cigarettes every time I walk around downtown... in exchange for the heels of my loaf of bread, the left over bits of vegetables that I've cut off my food before I cook it and the occasional day old donut, dollar burger or left over burrito AND be willing to sing/hum a catchy tune whenever I they were around...

Then yes, I suppose that idea might work.

You really like In-N-Out, don't you FirstAscent?  :)

They have a really limited menu.  Your choices are basically hamburger (with or without cheese), fries, and drink.  That probably saves them a lot of time and money.  They probably have a grill, a fryer, shake machine, and soda fountain.  At the McDonald's where I worked, we had all that plus multiple grills for different meats, an extra set of fryers for chicken products, a steamer, a cafe setup, a microwave for the cinnamon melts, a device for marinating the McRibs, a counterside fridge for salads, and probably more things I don't even remember.  Buying and maintaining all these things must cost quite a bit.

I'm not really sure what this has to do with minimum wage though.  Raising the minimum wage isn't necessarily going to cause more places to adopt In-N-Out's business plan.

On the "limited menu"

You have to try stuff out to find out what's it called - they'll make anything (I'm big on animal style)... But here's a starter link http://daviswiki.org/in-n-out_secret_menu

Yeah, I saw that.  Those are all mild variations of their base menu.  None of that stuff requires additional equipment or expertise.  You can ask for special orders in almost any restaurant.

It's strange, because I remember I never went there more than once or twice precisely because they refused to leave off certain ingredients.  Either that's changed, or my memory is faulty.

I couldn't say for certain (and my better half is fairly picky) but I'd guess you'd just have to check.

Well anyway, minimum wage laws are pretty obviously dumb. But you need to consider how dumb the rest of the way society is run as well, to understand it doesn't really matter. They will always lag inflation more and more every year, etc. The real problem is the idea people hold that growth=good. Maybe sometimes, but not always.

I can't as I'm nowhere near California. But you can get an Angus Deluxe and let us know what your opinion on the two are.

I've had an Angus Deluxe two or three times and I can let you know what my opinion is. It was okay, and simply does not compare to In-n-Out. I go to McDonalds when, say I'm at A, and I need to go to B, and McDonalds is the only place in between, and I'm hungry, and there's little time for a detour. I know for a fact (from experience) that In-n-Out generally comes out to less money, and tastes much better. Sometimes, if I'm trying to avoid spending hardly any money at a all, I'll get a McDouble for $1.29, but really, that's nothing more than a snack. Rassah, perhaps a donation fund could be put together for you to travel to an In-n-Out friendly state. So sad, otherwise.

Once again, as others have pointed out, McDonalds does not compare to In-n-Out.

Topazan,

Actually, In-n-Out brags about the fact that their restaurants have no microwaves, heat lamps or freezers. But they do have a heavy duty manually operated machine for pushing fresh whole potatoes through a grille to cut them into fry slices. Honestly, it seems your point is about kitchen costs. I did point out that at lunch hour there's approximately ten kitchen personnel in the kitchen (at above minimum wage).

Well, since the conversation is no longer about minimum wage, and the last statement actually about minimum wage laws was that they're bullshit, I guess that point's been conceded.

or that nobody cares.

Suppose we are a few people already can make everything we need but we wonder what to do with the rest of the people on the planet

Some choice:
1. Kill those people since they are just not needed
2. Let those people work hard and compete with ourselves
3. Hand out some social benefits to them so that they don't bother
4. Give them some meaningless work and a good pay so that they could keep buying things that we make

I guess we can rule out the possibility of 1 and 2... Anyway, when productivity is enough high, any kind of counter-efficient thing could happen, there are many ways to waste money, just like feeding a cat with excessive food :D


 

McDoubles are 99¢ here. You can get a McDouble and a McChicken for 99¢ each to make a huge McChurger for just $2.00.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-1z7NQYlbC5c/T8MTlf48rmI/AAAAAAAA8ks/vwN8suJkvtw/s576/snapshot-5.jpg

I guess prices are just more expensive where you live.

If he lives within the range of In-N-Out, yes, yes they are.

I would not, however, eat a "McChurger" if you paid me.

McDoubles are $1.29 where I live. Quarter Pounders with cheese are typically $3.99. But neither really compare with any In-N-Out offering - not even the Quarter Pounder. Therefore, In-n-Out offers tastier, fresher burgers for less than McDonalds.

OK, now that you have established that, you'll need to explain your premise that employees getting paid higher wages leads directly to better quality and lower priced burgers. How does that work exactly? I.e. what's the math?
Then explain if you believe that raising the minimum wage again will make others' (e.g. McDonald's) burgers become better quality and cheaper, too.

In-n-Out is a demonstration that a business which pays higher employee wages can still offer high quality products made with expensive materials at lower prices. We've established that, at least for fast food.

I argue that McDonalds (and Walmart and others) do not suffer from minimum wage floors. They're clearly successful - mightily so. But it's clear that most fast food restaurants could take some lessons from In-n-Out.

They are: Adopt policies which work. Have very specific policies for how things are done. Train your employees and pay them well. Specialize and build an efficient business model.

Some things which are very specific about In-n-Out which you do not always notice at other fast food restaurants:

1. Managers never interrupt a cashier when he or she is taking an order. Cashiers, once they say "may I help you?" maintain their focus on the customer until the order is finished. I notice very sloppy and inconsistent application of this at other fast food restaurants.

2. At most fast food restaurants, I notice the floor gets rather wet when it is mopped, and then when customers walk through it, they leave footprints (from the dust and dirt on their shoes) which nulls the mopping. In-n-Out has a special procedure for mopping the floor, where only a damp mop is used, and a second employee moves with them, absorbing any dampness with a floor duster.

3. At many fast food restaurants, I notice that an employee might clean tables with a spray bottle containing cleaning chemicals, and I have experienced the mist from these bottles settle around me (and my food). In-n-Out never does this.

4. In-n-Out's food is very consistent. At other fast food establishments (not all), I have noticed sloppy construction of the food, (condiments missing or poorly spread, partially or poorly baked buns, etc.). In-n-Out trains the employees on such things, apparently, because of the extreme consistency and quality.

5. At many fast food restaurants, I have often experienced no policies regarding complaints about food - often I am met with blank stares or incomprehension. In-n-Out will always make sure the customer is treated well.

6. Most fast food restaurants offer new menu items every few months. This does not increase their menu selection, as it simultaneously causes an item to be deleted from the menu. What does this mean? Apparently marketing is a higher priority than great recipes. If they can't win the customer with food, than win them over by telling them they're still trying to figure out what the customer wants.

McDonalds is successful, and it does pay minimum wage (or higher). Yet their product is far below the quality of a much more successful operation which pays its employees more, and offers a better product (food quality and service combined), and yet on balance, seems to charge less for its products. And McDonalds' sales per store are much less than that other successful operation.  

Just FYI, a typical McDonalds restaurant makes about $160,000 in revenue per month.

Back to the topic, it seems you have now thoroughly[/q] argued for the point that businesses can set their own wage floors, based on the quality of service and products they want to sell, and possibly even save money due to increased employee competence, decreased turnover, and increased sales volume, and that those wage floors they set can be even higher than the "officially" set ones. Which is exactly what we were arguing - that the free market can set its own wage floors, and they will not be close to zero, since a business can be much more productive by paying living wages and having happy employees.

So... why do we need minimum wage laws again?

can... possibly... looks like your moving the goalposts here. So what about those employers that want to do the same things, maybe even better, but want to pay lower wages? This will make them more profitable and hence more competitive. They will put your higher wage employer out of business. Then it becomes a race to the bottom.

Saying that a "free market... can be much more productive by paying living wages and having happy employees" is only supported if you can prove that it produces higher wages, which you have not. If higher wages produced more productive employees, then we would not be outsourcing labor to prisons and communist dictatorship countries.

We need minimum wage laws to prevent America from becoming a dictatorship.

So why is In-N-Out so successful? Why hasn't someone done the same thing they're doing, but paid minimum wage, thus running them out of business?

^^^ This. Beat me to it. Just need to add...


You don't have to pay to be able to vote. Those earning below minimum wage would be able to vote just as much as those earning a lot. Billionaire Sheldon Adelson's vote counts for 1 vote, just as much as a retired old lady's who is living only off of SSI. So, no, political corruptions lead to dictatorships. What's happening in China was actually what started as a dictatorship, which is now slowly being eroded away by capitalism.

In-N-Out is in a different market than McDonalds. In fact, I have only ever seen but a few In-N-Out stores compared to thousands of McDonald's. But if they do intend to compete with McDonalds, I wish them well.

I don't know. Ask all the CEOs of all the fast food operations which have lower sales per store, mostly unappealing food, and crappy service. Ask them why they don't see the obvious things that In-n-Out does, because it is obvious.

McDonalds has more stores per region, but less employees per store, and food that isn't as good. Most importantly, they have less sales per store. But note that they pay extra for land leases and equipment per sale. In-n-Out pays less for land leases and equipment per sale.

Thanks for taking the red herring. The original argument was getting boring. It's kinda hard to vote when you can't get time off of work to do so. Those mail in ballots tend to get misplaced and not counted. Oh, and what about those 10 hour waiting lines for voting in the poor districts? It's hard for many parents to pay for a babysitter while they vote. Poll taxes are just a stepping stone to dictatorship.

Actually, I would agree with you on this, too. Voting is turning into a rather pointless endeavor, with winning being largely decided by who can outspend the other with negative advertising, or who can make voting as hard as possible. And if you think the solution to this escalating problem is to vote for change, just reread this sentence again.