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#360596 - 18/12/2013 13:39 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: TigerJimmy]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Originally Posted By: TigerJimmy
It's not dirty pool at all. It's just a reductio ad absurdum argument, which is totally valid and rational.


Reductio ad absurdum has to be used within the confines of the question being debated, or it becomes a straw man argument. You have to work within the bounds of the original claim being made, which was not whether the minimum wage can be set to any level and have no effect on unemployment, but whether the minimum wage levels people are actually asking for are likely to lead directly to measurably higher unemployment. I said there was no discernable correlation, and that statement is correct. If there were a state with a $100/hr minimum wage and high unemployment, that would contradict my claim, but there aren't, so the question of whether an unimaginably high minimum wage might possibly cause more unemployment (which is by no means settled) is irrelevant, and a transparent attempt to play in the land of unprovable hypotheticals instead of talking about the reality of the situation we're in now.

Originally Posted By: TigerJimmy
The study hardly rebuts the argument, since there are too many other factors involved besides minimum wage increases.


I have no idea what this means. The paper directly those factors as other channels through which employers can respond to the higher minimum wages that don't involve "prohibiting" jobs. You seem to believe the current price of their labor has been magically arrived at by some perfect machine without any kind of elasticity or other adjustment channels other than laying people off, which is ridiculous. The paper calls these other channels out by name. If you can't tell me why none of those channels is valid, and firing people is the only option, then you have no argument.
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#360597 - 18/12/2013 14:16 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: Tim]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
First of all, minimum wage increases aren't binary. You can't divide states into "above" and "at or below", count them, and prove a point, because states that are higher above the federal minimum than others have to be weighted more heavily when determining the correlation. Your logical error is akin to if we tried to measure the correlation between ionizing radiation exposure on leukemia by simply recording if someone was exposed to any level of ionizing radiation above the mean instead of recording the actual level they were exposed to.

This is why we have statistical analysis -- to measure actual correlations. These do not prove or disprove causation, but they can be used as part of an inductive proof or refutation of a question. Your facile binary analysis cannot.

And, anyway, your numbers looked like bullshit to me, so I checked them, and they're indeed bullshit. Here's what a spreadsheet of current state minimum wage laws and current state unemployment rates looks like. The numbers on the right side show the rankings within the top 10, 20, etc. Note the complete absence of a pattern. Five of the top ten have minimum wages higher than the federal minimum, and five are lower. It continues with 10 of the top 20, 13 of the top 25, etc. I don't know what kind of numbers you were looking at, but they're just not even close to accurate, and, again, you can't just look at above vs. below, you have to look at how much above.
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#360599 - 18/12/2013 16:34 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tonyc]
Tim
veteran

Registered: 25/04/2000
Posts: 1522
Loc: Arizona
So you think the numbers from the Department of Labor (USG) and Bureau of Labor and Statistics (again, USG) are bullshit, but CEPR is a lot more trustworthy?

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#360600 - 18/12/2013 16:53 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: Tim]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
No, I'm saying that in addition to trying to make this a true/false story when it's actually a lot more complicated than that, you cherry-picked the "top 6" spots to make a tendentious point, and when you look at the list in its entirety, it's clear there is no trend there. We're looking at the same numbers, but you're trying to interpret them in a way that would get you laughed out of a high school statistics class.
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#360601 - 18/12/2013 17:08 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: Tim]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't respond to this:
Originally Posted By: Tim

As of last year, the US was facing a shortfall of over 3million (gah! I can't find the link - it might have been an internal memo) jobs in engineering/math/science/technology. How about we fix the education system and society issues that are guiding fewer people to these STEM jobs?


with this.
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#360602 - 18/12/2013 17:15 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: Tim]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
and this:

Originally Posted By: Tim

While not exactly the same, heavily unionized (and demanding higher pay than the company thinks the labor is worth) areas are evidence that paying above what a person is worth is detrimental to unemployment. Michigan and the Rust Belt can attest to that.


with the fact that two sides sign a contract, and the union side fulfilled their part of it by doing their jobs, while the employers, be they auto makers, government agencies, or anything in between, are the ones who couldn't hold up their end of the bargain.

It's also the employers who were looking to exploit the favorable tax treatment of non-cash compensation by giving out inflated pensions and health plans. All things being equal, I can guarantee you the unions would have rather had money on the table now instead of promises of money in the future. Management calculated wrong, and it blew up. You can't blame the unions for that.
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#360603 - 18/12/2013 17:16 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tonyc]
TigerJimmy
old hand

Registered: 15/02/2002
Posts: 1049
Originally Posted By: tonyc
If you can't tell me why none of those channels is valid, and firing people is the only option, then you have no argument.


Wow, talk about a straw man! This is an absurd statement. Those other options can be valid, and occur, AND employers can reduce staff. It can be (and probably is) a combination of all these things.

My argument applies. The claim, supposedly supported by this study, is that increases in minimum wage do not affect unemployment rates. Considering a $10,000/hour minimum wage is clearly a reductio ad absurdum argument meant to test this assertion. I am not saying that anyone is considering a minimum wage that high, merely that in these corner cases, albeit absurd, unemployment would certainly be affected. So, the assertion is false: unemployment can be driven by minimum wage. At what level this affect becomes statistically measurable is a different argument entirely, as is whether we "should" do it.

What I was getting at about there being other factors is that unemployment is a volatile measurement that is affected by many factors. It's quite possible that there *is* an affect, but smaller than the measurement certainty of the overall "unemployment" number. For example, if we imagine something like 2-4% of workers are actually employed at minimum wage, and then we say that raising it has a 1% increase of unemployment for those workers, then this is only .02-.04% of the employment total. It's quite possible that measurement methods won't show this affect and conclude there is "no correlation", when in fact there is one. Another example is how "unemployment" is defined, which is really mostly defined today as people collecting unemployment benefits. If a worker isn't on unemployment, they aren't "unemployed", which is why some people like to look at U6 instead of this number. Consider you generally need to work a certain length of time and at a certain number of hours before you become eligible for unemployment. Imagine a hypothetical situation where the minimum wage rises and employers fire all the recently-hired minimum wage workers, most of whom don't yet qualify for unemployment and thus are not considered. Finally, there are macro trends that affect the (un)employment rate much more than minimum wage. Yes, I understand that linear regression techniques are meant to eliminate those from analysis, but for small affects on small populations, this can be quite difficult to do.

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#360604 - 18/12/2013 17:19 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: TigerJimmy]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Originally Posted By: TigerJimmy

My argument applies. The claim, supposedly supported by this study, is that increases in minimum wage do not affect unemployment rates


Incorrect. The claim, supported by this study, is that minimum wage increases have not affected unemployment rates.
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#360605 - 18/12/2013 17:26 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tonyc]
TigerJimmy
old hand

Registered: 15/02/2002
Posts: 1049
Originally Posted By: tonyc
Originally Posted By: TigerJimmy

My argument applies. The claim, supposedly supported by this study, is that increases in minimum wage do not affect unemployment rates


Incorrect. The claim, supported by this study, is that minimum wage increases have not affected unemployment rates.


Yes, fair enough. But we must not conclude from this that further increases would not. That's the point of my thought experiment.

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#360606 - 18/12/2013 17:42 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: TigerJimmy]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
And I'm calling a foul on that, because it takes us out of things that are at least notionally connected to the economy we live in. Engaging with that argument allows you to take shots at unprovable theoretical problems at the outer reaches of the debate instead of the debate we're actually having about potentially raising the minimum wage to $10 or $15.

But since you won't relent, and I'm feeling generous with my time in the holiday season, I'll bite.

A $100/hr minimum wage sounds unthinkable, and we couldn't just jack up the minimum wage to $100 and expect things to go smoothly -- economies don't like short, sharp shocks. But it's not like people would stop working and producing goods if we phased one in over time. What would happen is prices would go up to adjust to the fact that labor costs more.

A HA!

But, of course, your consumers are most often someone else's employees, so the extra money they're getting would make them able to pay the higher prices you're now demanding as a business owner. The entire wage scale would shift upwards, and everyone who's working would be fine. Non-workers would have to have their "wages" (retirement income or safety net spending) increased in proportion to the amount of the minimum wage increase, but that's not hard to do in a hypothetical where it's possible to multiply the minimum wage ten-fold -- I just assume the same can opener you did when you created the mythical scenario, and we're done.

See why it's not helpful to have economic debates this far outside the bounds of our current economic realities?
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#360607 - 18/12/2013 18:04 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tonyc]
TigerJimmy
old hand

Registered: 15/02/2002
Posts: 1049
Originally Posted By: tonyc
And I'm calling a foul on that, because it takes us out of things that are at least notionally connected to the economy we live in. Engaging with that argument allows you to take shots at unprovable theoretical problems at the outer reaches of the debate instead of the debate we're actually having about potentially raising the minimum wage to $10 or $15.

But since you won't relent, and I'm feeling generous with my time in the holiday season, I'll bite.

A $100/hr minimum wage sounds unthinkable, and we couldn't just jack up the minimum wage to $100 and expect things to go smoothly -- economies don't like short, sharp shocks. But it's not like people would stop working and producing goods if we phased one in over time. What would happen is prices would go up to adjust to the fact that labor costs more.

A HA!

But, of course, your consumers are most often someone else's employees, so the extra money they're getting would make them able to pay the higher prices you're now demanding as a business owner. The entire wage scale would shift upwards, and everyone who's working would be fine. Non-workers would have to have their "wages" (retirement income or safety net spending) increased in proportion to the amount of the minimum wage increase, but that's not hard to do in a hypothetical where it's possible to multiply the minimum wage ten-fold -- I just assume the same can opener you did when you created the mythical scenario, and we're done.

See why it's not helpful to have economic debates this far outside the bounds of our current economic realities?


Actually, I think this is a *very* helpful conversation. Your argument is that a big jump would merely cause inflation, and nothing would be materially affected in the long term. This is true, assuming that money supply is not fixed. If there was a fixed quantity of money, or if a "hard" (commodity) currency is used, then this can not occur. Of course, a reasonable man might ask, "why bother then"?

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#360608 - 18/12/2013 18:05 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tonyc]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
With respect to this:

Originally Posted By: TigerJimmy

For example, if we imagine something like 2-4% of workers are actually employed at minimum wage, and then we say that raising it has a 1% increase of unemployment for those workers, then this is only .02-.04% of the employment total. It's quite possible that measurement methods won't show this affect and conclude there is "no correlation", when in fact there is one


I grant you that this is possible, so let's see some real numbers, not hand-waving. The fact that something could happen in the world of made-up numbers doesn't win against the actual results of actual states that have actually increased their minimum wage.

The burden of proof, therefore, is on those like you and Tim who insist, despite our real-world experience, that unemployment will skyrocket if we raise the minimum wage. The fact that the best you can do is cite American Samoa as an example speaks volumes.
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#360609 - 18/12/2013 18:09 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: TigerJimmy]
TigerJimmy
old hand

Registered: 15/02/2002
Posts: 1049
Originally Posted By: tonyc
And I'm calling a foul on that, because it takes us out of things that are at least notionally connected to the economy we live in. Engaging with that argument allows you to take shots at unprovable theoretical problems at the outer reaches of the debate instead of the debate we're actually having about potentially raising the minimum wage to $10 or $15.


I would argue that a jump to, for example $15/hour, is a much larger jump than past jumps, and suggesting that what happened in the past is not necessarily predictive. I also argue that the study merely shows that no *measurable* correlation *has* existed for past changes. It seems entirely reasonable to me, especially given a distressed economy like we have now, that the American Samoa situation could arise if a big enough jump were made. The biggest theoretical difference between our economy and the Samoan "micro economy", is that a much higher percentage of workers in Samoa were affected by the change to the minimum wage. The bigger the jump, the more workers are affected. The study does not find, and you can not rationally conclude, that the large increases being proposed or enacted today (like in Seatac), will have no measurable affect simply because previous increases did not.

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#360610 - 18/12/2013 18:12 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: TigerJimmy]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Originally Posted By: TigerJimmy
Actually, I think this is a *very* helpful conversation. Your argument is that a big jump would merely cause inflation, and nothing would be materially affected in the long term. This is true, assuming that money supply is not fixed. If there was a fixed quantity of money, or if a "hard" (commodity) currency is used, then this can not occur. Of course, a reasonable man might ask, "why bother then"?


The supposedly reasonable man in your scenario is assuming that the amount of inflation would be linear with the amount of wage increase, but that is not the case:

Quote:

One way to assess the threat of inflation posed by a minimum wage hike is to estimate directly how much it could raise businesses’ costs. This would give us a sense of what the potential impact of a minimum wage hike would be on prices, assuming businesses would pass these costs onto their consumers. Of course, there are other ways firms can adjust, aside from raising prices. For example, employers may experience some labor-cost savings as their higher wages lower turnover rates and motivate greater worker productivity. But for the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that firms pass the entire cost increase from a minimum wage hike to consumers.

Past research on how business costs rise with minimum wage hikes indicates that a 10-percent minimum wage hike can be expected to produce a cost increase for the average business of less than one-tenth of one percent of their sales revenue. This cost figure includes three components. First, mandated raises: the raises employers must give their workers to meet the new wage floor. Second, “ripple-effect” raises: the raises employers give some workers to put their pay rates a bit above the new minimum in order to preserve the same wage hierarchy before and after minimum wage hike. And third, the higher payroll taxes employers must pay on their now-larger wage bill. If the average businesses wanted to completely cover the cost increase from a 10-percent minimum wage hike through higher prices, they would need to raise their prices by less than 0.1 percent.[1] A price increase of this size amounts to marking up a $100 price tag to $100.10.

COLA increases are much, much smaller than 10 percent. The average rate of annual inflation, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers, averaged 2.6 percent over the last two decades (1991-2011). The average business therefore could easily cover the cost increase from a typical COLA by raising prices less than 0.03 percent.[2] This amounts a price tag of $100 going up by less than three pennies. Price increases this small would have a negligible impact on a 2.6 percent average inflation rate.

This basic conclusion is supported by a 2008 study that reviewed the economic studies on the impact of minimum wage hikes on prices and inflation.[3] The estimates from these studies cover a relatively wide range, suggesting that a 10-percent increase in the minimum causes overall prices to rise somewhere between 0.2 percent and 2.16 percent, with most estimates falling below 0.4 percent. These estimates are larger, but in the range of how much businesses’ costs increase as discussed above. Even the higher estimate of a 0.4 percent rise in price level with a 10 percent minimum wage hike suggests that a typical COLA adjustment to the minimum wage rate would only push up the price level by 0.1 percent.[4] Recall that this amounts to adding just one dime to a $100 price tag.


Considering that Team Austerity won't even let the minimum wage keep pace with current inflation, it's amusing to see you rolling out the inflation boogeyman to argue against increasing it just to keep up.
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#360611 - 18/12/2013 18:12 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tonyc]
TigerJimmy
old hand

Registered: 15/02/2002
Posts: 1049
Originally Posted By: tonyc
With respect to this:

Originally Posted By: TigerJimmy

For example, if we imagine something like 2-4% of workers are actually employed at minimum wage, and then we say that raising it has a 1% increase of unemployment for those workers, then this is only .02-.04% of the employment total. It's quite possible that measurement methods won't show this affect and conclude there is "no correlation", when in fact there is one


I grant you that this is possible, so let's see some real numbers, not hand-waving. The fact that something could happen in the world of made-up numbers doesn't win against the actual results of actual states that have actually increased their minimum wage.

The burden of proof, therefore, is on those like you and Tim who insist, despite our real-world experience, that unemployment will skyrocket if we raise the minimum wage. The fact that the best you can do is cite American Samoa as an example speaks volumes.


I have never asserted that unemployment will skyrocket. That's a function of how big the increase is and the number of workers/employers actually affected by it. A relatively small portion of workers are actually minimum-wage workers. Saying this you behave in a way you complain about in others -- by putting words in their mouths. I do reject that we can conclude that wage laws do not affect unemployment rates at all. That defies logic.

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#360612 - 18/12/2013 18:15 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: TigerJimmy]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Quote:
I have never asserted that unemployment will skyrocket.


The hell you didn't. The American Samoa example that served as your opening statement in this thread was a cherry-picked data point that had the obvious flaw of occurring in a territory with a very unique labor situation during a global economic crisis. You called it a "tragedy." You fucking used the word "holocaust." Don't try to back away from it as if you weren't predicting doom and gloom.
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#360613 - 18/12/2013 19:47 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tonyc]
TigerJimmy
old hand

Registered: 15/02/2002
Posts: 1049
Originally Posted By: tonyc
Quote:
I have never asserted that unemployment will skyrocket.


The hell you didn't. The American Samoa example that served as your opening statement in this thread was a cherry-picked data point that had the obvious flaw of occurring in a territory with a very unique labor situation during a global economic crisis. You called it a "tragedy." You fucking used the word "holocaust." Don't try to back away from it as if you weren't predicting doom and gloom.


I believe it completely repudiates the claim that these laws have no affect on unemployment. One data point is enough to establish this. It is certainly an extreme example, but enough to prove the point.

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#360614 - 18/12/2013 20:36 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: TigerJimmy]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Quote:
I believe it completely repudiates the claim that these laws have no affect on unemployment.


You're not only misstating my claim, you're making a statement that wouldn't hold water even if my claim was what you say it was. To review, here's my original claim:

Quote:

When you take into account that there is no discernible correlation between increased minimum wage and increased unemployment...


That is not me saying categorically that minimum wage laws have no affect [sic] on unemployment, it's me saying (with supporting evidence) that studies show that there is no discernible correlation. There may be a correlation in other studies, and there may be more studies in the future to isolate variables and conclude there is a deleterious effect, but all we have to substantiate that counter-claim is a transparently biased sample taken during a time of great economic upheaval on an island that was highly dependent on a single industry that had already begun to see falling exports before the mimimum wage was increased. That's like six different red flags for that one data point, compared to a uniform cross-section of the U.S. Are you shitting me?

Your argument is a valid as Fox News using a 50 degree day in July as proof that there's no correlation between emissions and higher global temperatures, or a Bitcoin enthusiast saying the currency is stable because there was one day where it didn't gain or lose more than 20% of its value in a 24-hour period. This is just ridiculous, and if you're offering this argument in good faith, I really can't continue, because we're just not operating in the same plane of existence.
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#360615 - 18/12/2013 21:28 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tonyc]
TigerJimmy
old hand

Registered: 15/02/2002
Posts: 1049
Which of us was the one using this study to justify a change in policy?

Ok, I give up. One thing we certainly agree upon is that we are not operating in the same plane of existence. But one last bit of advice for you:

When you decide to be snarky and use "[sic]" to imply the person you are quoting is a dumbass and you are smarter than him, you should make extra sure you're right.

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#360616 - 18/12/2013 23:43 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: TigerJimmy]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
He was right, though. It was a misspelling. In that sentence, it should have been effect, not affect. At least in the US. I've got no idea whether that's one of those weird UK/US differences.

You have a point that he was probably being snarky by calling attention to it. We knew what you meant. In any case, one's ability to spell (especially in the case of a tricky homonym with a subtle distinction in definition like that one) is unrelated to their cited evidence in a political debate.
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#360617 - 18/12/2013 23:51 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tfabris]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Change in policy? I suppose technically that's true, but really it depends on what you call change. I call the Federal minimum wage failing to keep up with inflation a covert, passive erosion of an existing policy. I don't know anyone who'd accept having the real value of their wage erode over time, but that's exactly the situation for minimum wage workers.

Besides, my statement was "there is no reason we can't do better than the federal minimum we have now." For many states, this wouldn't even be a change in policy, because many have higher than the minimum wage now. I just think it's disgusting that, with all of the productivity gains we've had since the 1960s, people are getting 2/3 of what they were paid back then in real terms. That is unconscionable.

Including [sic] to denote original errors is pretty standard procedure when quoting someone. We all make typos, so I didn't think it would be taken personally. I sincerely apologize.

I don't think I'm smarter than anyone, but I'm damned certain that I'm making more logical arguments than you are. You just tried to tell me that your one very sketchy data point is enough to repudiate many studies and meta-studies cited by the paper I linked to of the real effects of minimum wage laws in the U.S. That's an insult to everyone's intelligence, and either demonstrates bad faith on your part, or a complete inability to judge evidence. Nobody can step outside of their ideological bias, but if all I had was one data point on my side, I'd go do some Googling and bring something better to the table.

Look, it's entirely possible that my first principles are wrong and yours are right, but the logic you're employing to get from your first principles to the point you are trying to make is just very poor. I get that you're a Hayekian free market type, so you're not going to be receptive to any argument that involves the government telling employers what to do, but you need better evidence than you've presented. I can assure you that if you have such evidence I will take it seriously, but as it is now, I read you as just not wanting to do the homework required to support your points, choosing instead to shout "QED" repeatedly.
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#360622 - 19/12/2013 16:55 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tfabris]
Roger
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Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
Originally Posted By: tfabris
At least in the US. I've got no idea whether that's one of those weird UK/US differences.


Nope. I effect change, you are affected by that change, because it has effects. Or maybe that's an affectation? How's my example? Effective?
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#360667 - 28/12/2013 19:19 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: Roger]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
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#360723 - 06/01/2014 11:17 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tonyc]
Tim
veteran

Registered: 25/04/2000
Posts: 1522
Loc: Arizona
I figured the airport would be the best place for that wage to work, since the customers using it are pretty much a captive audience and would be forced to pay whatever the increased cost of the goods ended up being.

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#360730 - 06/01/2014 21:45 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tonyc]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA


Hrmph. Explains a few things about my experiences there.
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#360738 - 07/01/2014 00:22 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: tonyc]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
The reasoning is that the airport is run by the port of Seattle, and not the city of SeaTac.

May be a moot point though, since both the new Seattle mayor and the new socialist council member are pushing hard for $15 too.

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#360739 - 07/01/2014 10:12 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: drakino]
Tim
veteran

Registered: 25/04/2000
Posts: 1522
Loc: Arizona
Originally Posted By: drakino
May be a moot point though, since both the new Seattle mayor and the new socialist council member are pushing hard for $15 too.
I wonder how long until Sawant really ticks off the businesses in Seattle. She already urged Boeing workers to take over the factories shutdown the company (which would be great for wages).

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#360903 - 28/01/2014 14:14 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: drakino]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
_________________________
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#361110 - 28/02/2014 00:32 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: drakino]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868

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#361111 - 28/02/2014 00:51 Re: "Living wage" and minimum wage [Re: Tim]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
Originally Posted By: Tim
I wonder how long until Sawant really ticks off the businesses in Seattle. She already urged Boeing workers to take over the factories shutdown the company (which would be great for wages).

So far she hasn't caused any harm in her two months of being on the council. Boeing not only picked Everett for the 777X, but also picked it to build a new factory for the 777X wings. This though is outside Sawant's jurisdiction, and always was.

In her jurisdiction is Amazon though. Her election hadn't scared them away from buying more land in the city.

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