The Wealth of Nations by "Adam Smith"

We need more women in the White House. An Indian woman, a labor party rights activist, just raised minimum wage in Washington State and brought many workers back up to the middle class. In the past 2 months, consumer goods have risen 3 percent, yet wages remain stagnant. How is one to pay taxes while living and working for slave wages? Originally Posted by HoustonMilfDebbie

How can an executive afford to pay a decent wage when pussy costs three bills an hour?

Requiring minimum wage increases actually stifles the income of most middle class wage earners. I realize that makes very little sense when taken from one point to the next, but if you really want to grasp and advocate for the concept of the invisible hand and a free market approach then government intervention is the last thing that should come between business owners and market-driven wages.

Considering this was fucked up beyond repair decades ago, attempting to fix it now would be wildly futile and wholly ineffective. Society has no patience for a truly self-correcting economy.

Also echoing the of EW and others! Keep on keeping on!

Requiring minimum wage increases actually stifles the income of most middle class wage earners. I realize that makes very little sense when taken from one point to the next, but if you really want to grasp and advocate for the concept of the invisible hand and a free market approach then government intervention is the last thing that should come between business owners and market-driven wages.

Considering this was fucked up beyond repair decades ago, attempting to fix it now would be wildly futile and wholly ineffective. Society has no patience for a truly self-correcting economy.

Also echoing the of EW and others! Keep on keeping on! Originally Posted by thathottnurse

The minimum wage is futility itself, unless one needs a tool to enslave.

Sometimes I look at the big picture, not the small unimportant details such as you point out! Originally Posted by HoustonMilfDebbie

And yet, you somehow don't understand the big picture either, do you?

He has some very interesting points which make for an interesting debate. I think compassion and rights for workers plays in here. America today is run by huge multi-national corporations, which literally stamp out all competition and "free market trade". These monopolies of huge corporations make their own rules and systematically de-regulate "fair market trade", to the benefit of themselves, purely for profit. Originally Posted by HoustonMilfDebbie

An Indian woman, a labor party rights activist, just raised minimum wage in Washington State and brought many workers back up to the middle class. Originally Posted by HoustonMilfDebbie

You do understand that Adam Smith believed free markets are driven in part by profits and profit-seeking? And that government intervention - whether in the form of tariffs or minimum wage laws - is often the antithesis of letting free markets sort things out? Corporations should be left to compete. If they try to restrict markets or unfairly "stamp out all competition", then they should be prosecuted under our anti-trust laws. Very few corporations are true monopolies.

You seem to have a problem with the word "profit". I don't. You need to have more faith in Adam Smith (a Scotsman) and the good old American way. If somebody is making big profits somewhere, someone else will notice and start competing away those big profits. Think Samsung Galaxy undercutting the Apple I-Phone. In a healthy market economy, it happens over and over again.

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Any decent economist will tell you that raising the minimum wage will have a short term "good" effect on people's paychecks but over the long term it will cost jobs to those who have the least skills and raise prices for everyone. It's great when someone is learning new stuff but you have to take the time to marinate in the material, think about it, and read some opposing viewpoints. Like they say, don't take the first offer.

Any decent economist will tell you that raising the minimum wage will have a short term "good" effect on people's paychecks but over the long term it will cost jobs to those who have the least skills and raise prices for everyone. It's great when someone is learning new stuff but you have to take the time to marinate in the material, think about it, and read some opposing viewpoints. Like they say, don't take the first offer. Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

I have seen the minimum wage rise for the last 50 years. And today, we have the MOST number of jobs for those who have the least skills - look around you - name me a point in time where we had more people employed in fast food and retail firms.

Prices rising is an effect of monetary policy (the Federal Reserve bank) not fiscal policy (the Labor Department.)

I have seen the minimum wage rise for the last 50 years. And today, we have the MOST number of jobs for those who have the least skills - look around you - name me a point in time where we had more people employed in fast food and retail firms.

Prices rising is an effect of monetary policy (the Federal Reserve bank) not fiscal policy (the Labor Department.) Originally Posted by Submodo

You point about monetary policy isn't wrong but the phenomenon you mention are all relatively recent historically and don't make for much.

I have seen the minimum wage rise for the last 50 years. And today, we have the MOST number of jobs for those who have the least skills - look around you - name me a point in time where we had more people employed in fast food and retail firms.

Prices rising is an effect of monetary policy (the Federal Reserve bank) not fiscal policy (the Labor Department.) Originally Posted by Submodo

Are you saying that the GDP and overall supply side econ are directly related to the minimum wage?

Maybe a tertiary relation, but not a primary.

Ah yes "profit". The economic engine of all businesses. The one owner business is working just as hard to make a "profit" as the big multinational corporations. Who really owns those huge conglomerates that are so hated. I would be that most of them are PUBLICLY owned by hundreds of thousands of individuals. Perhaps even the small businessman that competes against them has a stake in some. Sure the Illuminati decide who is on the baords just like the skull and bones and so many other secret organizations.

I have seen the minimum wage rise for the last 50 years. And today, we have the MOST number of jobs for those who have the least skills - look around you - name me a point in time where we had more people employed in fast food and retail firms.

Prices rising is an effect of monetary policy (the Federal Reserve bank) not fiscal policy (the Labor Department.) Originally Posted by Submodo

Am I to understand that you are excited about having so many burger flippers working for minimum wages? Less than 1% (other than wait staff) of American employees work for minimum wages. There are people who work for much more money but support a minimum wage increase. Some unions adjust their scale of pay to the minimum wage. In other words Joe Blow gets (by contract) $22 more per hour than the federal minimum wage. So if you raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour, Joe gets $32 an hour without a negoiation or strike. That is hardly the free market that Adam Smith envisioned.

It's a statistical fact that a mandatory minimum wage contributes to unemployment. It's also known that increasing minimum wages increases prices for goods and services; hence, the anecdote regarding the "carrot on a stick" applies. Regardless of how many steps (minimum wage increases) are taken towards the desired goal, the net result is that the goal is kept beyond reach by those very same steps.

In 1955 the first Federal minimum wage was set at 75ȼ per hour and a six ounce bottle of Coca Cola costs 5ȼ. Today, the Federal minimum wage is set at $7.25, and a twenty ounce Coca Cola costs $1.60. The increase in minimum wage is approximately ten fold, and the increase in the cost of a Coca Cola is also approximately ten fold. This is but one example of how a mandatory minimum wage has not changed real purchasing power. The carrot is still at the end of the stick; hence, it ain't any closer!

Prices change; that's fundamental to how economies work.

And yet: In 1886, a bottle of Coke cost a nickel. It was also a nickel in 1900, 1915 and 1930. In fact, 70 years after the first Coke was sold, you could still buy a bottle for a nickel.

Three wars, the Great Depression, hundreds of competitors — none of it made any difference for the price of Coke. Why not?

In 1899, two lawyers paid a visit to the president of Coca-Cola. At the time, Coke was sold at soda fountains. But the lawyers were interested in this new idea: selling drinks in bottles. The lawyers wanted to buy the bottling rights for Coca-Cola.

The president of Coca-Cola didn't think much of the whole bottle thing. So he made a deal with the lawyers: He'd let them sell Coke in bottles, and he'd sell them the syrup to do it. According to the terms of the deal, the lawyers would be able to buy the syrup at a fixed price. Forever.

Andrew Young, an economist at West Virginia University, says the president of Coke may have signed the contract just to get the guys out of his office.

"Anytime you've got two lawyers in your office, you probably want them to leave," Young says. "And he's saying, 'I'll sign this piece of paper if you'll just please leave my office.' "

Bottled drinks, of course, took off. And Coca-Cola was in a bind. If the bottlers or a corner store decided to raise the price of a bottle of Coke, Coca-Cola wouldn't get any extra money.

So, if you're Coca-Cola, you want to somehow keep the price down at 5 cents so you can sell as much syrup as possible to the bottlers. What do you do?

"One thing you do is blanket the entire nation with Coca-Cola advertising that basically has '5 cents' prominently featured," Young says.

The company couldn't actually put price tags on the bottles of Coke saying "5 cents." But it could paint a giant ad on the side of a building right next to the store that says, "Drink Coca-Cola, 5 Cents."

"Since everybody was brainwashed — people saw these ads all over — it was hard for anyone to increase the price," says Daniel Levy, a professor of Economics at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and at Emory University in Atlanta.

That contract with the bottlers eventually got renegotiated. But the price of Coke stayed at a nickel. That was partly due to another obstacle: the vending machine.

The Coca-Cola vending machines were built to take a single coin: a nickel.

Levy says the folks at Coca-Cola thought about converting the vending machines to take a dime. But doubling the price was too much. They wanted something in between.

So they asked the U.S. Treasury to issue a 7.5-cent coin. At one point, the head of Coca-Cola asked President Eisenhower for help. (They were hunting buddies.) No luck.

In the end, inflation killed the nickel Coke. The price of the ingredients rose. In the late 1940s, some stores sold Cokes for 6 cents. The last nickel Coke seems to have been in 1959.

The nickel price had lasted over 70 years. And in retrospect, Andrew Young says, it wasn't a bad thing for the company. It's one reason Coke is everywhere today. The company couldn't raise the price. So it did the only thing it could: It sold as many Cokes as possible.

Are you saying that the GDP and overall supply side econ are directly related to the minimum wage? Maybe a tertiary relation, but not a primary. Originally Posted by thathottnurse

No, I'm not saying that at all.

I'm saying that each time the minimum wage is hiked, some say that it will eliminate jobs at the bottom of the wage scale, but I look around me and see more minimum wage paying establishments than ever. Anecdotal evidence I know, but sometimes you have to put down the calculator and just observe.

In the end, inflation killed the nickel Coke. Originally Posted by Submodo

In 1949* the first Federal minimum wage 'for all workers'* was set at 75ȼ per hour for all workers. State mandated minimum wage increases contribute to 'inflation'.


*DENOTES CORRECTIONS