You only trotted out the philosophical argument after being asked numerous times to tell us what is fair. It was your only out. As for the minimum wage thing what wage do you want to use. $10 PH? If that's the case a CEO can only make $250,000. I never said that CEO's are worth what they get. Some are some are not. That's has never been the point. Fuck there are plenty of employees that aren't minimum wage. Chances are if you are not worth your salary then you will be unemployed.You're getting it wrong. The minimum wage is an economic argument, not a political argument. It has always been this way until recently, when democrats and republicans decided to pick sides. And so now, we have idiots arguing one side or the other without actually understanding the economics of it.
If a CEO wishes to take less salary then I have absolutely no problem with it as long as it is purely voluntary. The minute the government steps in and tries to regulate salary then they are fucking up the market.
I have not had the time to read the articles you linked to but I will this weekend. Good luck and have a great weekend. Originally Posted by Budman
I'm not going to say how much a CEO should earn. You can argue that it's unfair, but if a multi-billion dollar company wants to pay it's CEO $10 million, that's up to them. That's the price of capitalism. CEO's are usually much more important than people assume them to be. There's a notion that executives just sit in their office and bark orders all day without doing any actual work. The truth is that they are responsible for the entire direction a company takes, and anything that goes wrong or not-as-expected is considered their fault. The pressure of being a CEO alone is worth the salary they earn.
However, there is an argument against increasing CEO wages as well. See here:http://www.epi.org/publication/ib331...top-1-percent/
For the minimum wage, however, the argument is completely different. Having a federally man-dated minimum wage allows companies to give their employees a certain specific wage, and it does not matter if the wage corresponds to the worth of their work.
Minimum wage is not and never was meant to be the income necessary to live a comfortable lifestyle. It is an entry level wage to get you started in the workforceYou can argue that all day long, but the truth is that there are people who live on minimum wage. They might be going to college and/or gaining other skills simultaneously, might be lazy/unambitious, might even just be unfortunate, but it's the reality of the world we live in. Saying everyone should go out and "learn skills" instead of bitching about minimum wage is extremely idealistic. Whether they're trying to get out of those jobs by learning skills SHOULD NOT relate to the argument for or against minimum wage. The ONE AND ONLY argument applicable, is IF the minimum wage increase makes sense from an economic standpoint. The decision should be made based on whether increasing the minimum wage will increase both the economic and social health of our economy as a whole. Lets evaluate that.
Whats the prime argument you hear against minimum wage? That it will reduce the number of jobs available, correct? What most don't understand is, that that IS NOT the only effect of minimum wage increase.
The effects of minimum wage aren't discernible simply by theory. All you have is projections or empirical evidence from other countries.
In theory if you raise minimum wage it makes sense to assume that the higher costs would be a deterrent to companies hiring more people. The negative effect might be reducing jobs. Keyword is might.
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib341...-minimum-wage/
The positive effects however are several. In fact the Economic policy institute estimates that increasing the minimum wage would actually increase jobs. This is because when you distribute money in the lower end of the income spectrum, it immediately leads to more spending. Pretty obvious, considering that the spending-savings gap is much smaller in the incomes of poorer people. So, for example, give a poor person $10, he might immediately spend $7 of that on Mcdonalds and save $3 for later. Give the same $10 to a rich guy and most likely it will go to his bank or retirement account. Not a single dime will be spent on goods and services that could boost production in the economy. Of course this is just a micro example, repeat that on a macro scale and you've got a pro-spending argument for minimum-wage increases.
Now that we've established that a minimum wage increase might increase spending, consider the effects of higher spending on the economy. When you buy something, it increases demand for the product. When demand for the product increases, so does the demand for the labor that is making the product. This includes all kinds of workers, not just those that make minimum wage. Again, repeat that on a macro scale, and you've got a pro-employment argument for raising minimum wage.
Those are just two of the possible positive effects of minimum wage. If you're looking for more, just read the complete EPI study that I linked above.
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib341...-minimum-wage/
Now, if you're looking for empirical evidence, look at the UK. They raised the minimum wage in 1999; it had no discernible effect on income. Our minimum wage is only 38% of the median. That means that if the median wage in our country is 10 dollars, someone on minimum wage will only be earning $3.8. The minimum wage in the UK is around 47% of median.
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=MIN2AVE
Now I'll give you the flip side as well. France has the highest youth unemployment rate in Europe and it also has a much higher minimum wage, one that is 60% of the median income.
Tthe situation in America would be more like the UK, because even if we raise the minimum wage, it will still be less than 50% of median income.
The reason why this is important is because minimum wage has to be at a low level (unlike in France). No one in their right mind should argue that minimum wage should be 15$/hour. That is ridiculous. It's not about giving everyone free money, its about paying a wage that will only have positive or very low adverse economic effects on employment, spending, poverty etc etc and will OVERALL be beneficial to the economy.
What Obama has advocated, and what most economists advocate, is minimum wage closer to $9-10. This will index the wage to the level of spending power it had in 1979. In essence, people on minimum wage would be no better or worse off than min-wage earners in 1979. Afer 2009, I believe it is supposed to be indexed to inflation. Both of those are completely fair in my opinion.
Also, I want to say that it shouldn't be politicians arguing these issues. It should be economists. The biggest mistake we've made is allowing republicans or democrats to argue this issue without having even a basic understanding of what it could actually mean.
Doesn't surprise me in the least.