[Laughlyn]

Barend: That opens up a whole can of worms in the regions deparment. If the company is American (and pays American taxes) then it would get creamed by a similar company in say India, with lower costs at the base level. (it would be able to pay it's US employees about $1.4 dollars an hour).

So most big companys would desert the US and head for which ever nation offered the lowest minimum wage (if at all), buggering our whole economy.

[barend]

no because you would still need companies to fill their gap...

so indepentand and smaller business could floourish, after the strangle hold of the monopolizing "big" compnanies left.

I mean a law should be imposed to prevent any real power from companies who sell out their own country to make a quick buck.

you wanna move to india? i hope They can afford your overpriced computers!!!!!

as long as the goverment introduced enough import taxes, then anyone who wanted, traitor brand software would have to pay for it in mink coats and ivory backscratchers....

[Laughlyn]

It does happen now and then without the law. The tech support job I used to work tried to shift to India, but after about a month of public backlash\lawsuits they switched 90% of the operation back to Pictville. Bangalore took the crap (how do I switch on the PC?) but we still dealt with anything serious because when the dialogue turned nasty, they just couldn't hack it.

I was glad to be rid of the complete idiots to be honest.

[barend]

see... i'm the man with the plan!!!

[dynamis]

Jordan,

The minimum wage is the prime reason why we have unemployment.

Essentially this is a discussion about Price Controls. Whenever you impose artificial price controls, you have shortages. Back in the 70's, the Nixon Adminstration imposed price caps on gasoline. The result? Massive shortages. Long lines. General pandemonium and paranoia. This bad move from the government caused a problem (temporary, artificial supply shortage) to become a big problem (nobody could get gasoline). It would have been better if everybody paid what gasoline cost at the time.

With the minimum wage issue, it's the same concept. The product here is not gasoline, but (potential) employees. Let's say there's 20 employees working at a fast food restaurant, each making $5 an hour. The state government passes a law stating the minimum wage is now $10 an hour. The restaurant has the following options: They can fire half their workers, they can keep all their workers, but have them work twice as hard and make them sell twice as many burgers, or they can raise their prices by 2x the price. The result is, when minimum wage gets raised, people end up unemployed in the long run, or even in the medium-run.

Some on this board have rightly said that you currently cannot live on the minimum wage and support a family. This is true. The people who usually end up on their keesters are unskilled laborers, ie teenagers. If you're 45 and you are working at a fast food restaurant, you're probably a manager or you just got out of prison. Most people move on to other, better paying jobs after they graduate from high school.

But are these people saying that the minimum wage should be a wage you can support a family of four? How much should it be? $10? $20? Why not make the minimum wage $20 an hour? What about $100? I'd like to make that. Minimum wage and price controls are the enforcement of an illusion.

Enjoying the boards btw

This post has been edited by dynamis: 30 May 2005 - 11:17 AM

[dynamis]

It does happen now and then without the law. The tech support job I used to work tried to shift to India, but after about a month of public backlash\lawsuits they switched 90% of the operation back to Pictville. Bangalore took the crap (how do I switch on the PC?) but we still dealt with anything serious because when the dialogue turned nasty, they just couldn't hack it.

I was glad to be rid of the complete idiots to be honest.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I am also in the tech support-ish biz, and there has been a trend towards bringing this stuff back home. People get sick of having over-polite but under-skilled technicians, who call themselves names like Vaughn but clearly are not named Vaughn because of their incomprehensible accents, adding to the frustration level of your problem. That's free markets in action.

[Laughlyn]

It much the same as people reacting to machine answering services, they're far happier talking to a real person than a guy how's following the script. One of my old friends from that job told me that the company now wants him to be more 'independant' with his dialogue, to prove that he's not just reading it from a book. India does a fine job of training it staff in the recent happenings of soap operas and football, but as soon as you go into a tangent with those people the act dies pretty quickly.

[SPQR]

the argument against minimum wage is basically "not allowing the (ahem) 'market' [profiteers] to define what a empoyer should pay their employee is bad for the 'market' [profits]" because having a standardised minimum wage means employers can't react to dynamic changes in the marketplace - ie when profits are down by a few quid, they can't put the burden on the employee.

Yes, its a bullshit argument.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's always the same, some of these companies use virtually indentured illegal labor to "keep prices low". Is this a fact? I bet it effects their margins more than the prices. The fact is we don't 'save' as much as they 'make more' from the exploitation. The problem with where we are headed is that the economy answers to shareholders and not society. When do markets stop serving the society, as a whole, where they practice and only serve the investors? How about now. Jobs leave the US constantly, but that's fine because the markets reward the investors with increased dividends. Meanwhile Americans are without jobs and society degenerates. See Michael moore's only relevant film- Roger and me, to get a whiff of this.

[SPQR]

Jordan,

The minimum wage is the prime reason why we have unemployment. 

Essentially this is a discussion about Price Controls.  Whenever you impose artificial price controls, you have shortages.  Back in the 70's, the Nixon Adminstration imposed price caps on gasoline.  The result?  Massive shortages.  Long lines.  General pandemonium and paranoia.  This bad move from the government caused a problem (temporary, artificial supply shortage) to become a big problem (nobody could get gasoline).  It would have been better if everybody paid what gasoline cost at the time.

With the minimum wage issue, it's the same concept.  The product here is not gasoline, but (potential) employees.  Let's say there's 20 employees working at a fast food restaurant, each making $5 an hour.  The state government passes a law stating the minimum wage is now $10 an hour.  The restaurant has the following options:  They can fire half their workers, they can keep all their workers, but have them work twice as hard and make them sell twice as many burgers, or they can raise their prices by 2x the price.  The result is, when minimum wage gets raised, people end up unemployed in the long run, or even in the medium-run.

Some on this board have rightly said that you currently cannot live on the minimum wage and support a family.  This is true.  The people who usually end up on their keesters are unskilled laborers, ie teenagers.  If you're 45 and you are working at a fast food restaurant, you're probably a manager or you just got out of prison.  Most people move on to other, better paying jobs after they graduate from high school. 

But are these people saying that the minimum wage should be a wage you can support a family of four?  How much should it be?  $10?  $20?  Why not make the minimum wage $20 an hour?  What about $100?  I'd like to make that.  Minimum wage and price controls are the enforcement of an illusion.

Enjoying the boards btw

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Free Trade has hollowed us out. We need price protection and tarriffs, that is what the US was founded on: self-sustainment. As long as jobs (service and manufacturing) can escape paying Americans' wages, we are headed for high unemployment and lower wages. When the US says, fine China you can sell your shoes here, with a 1000% tarriff, and India, you can service US customers at a stiff phone tax, maybe some of these employers will stay put and support American society.

[civilian_number_two]

American society will eat itself up if it continues to assume that every man woman and child in America is going to have a "good" job when they grow older, and that minimum wage jobs are for outsource countries like India and "teenagers." America has fed itself this line about the CEO running the company, but for all you can say about burger-flipping, without burger-flippers, there would be no billion-dollar burger companies.

Yeah, pay the CEO more, but 500+ times more is getting damned medieval. The system is eating itself when companies have to send work out of country to make their products more affordable to the milions of people who, now laid off, will not be able to afford them.

Barend, what you were describing way back there is socialism, and the myth propogated by the like of Ayn Rand is that socialists think that everyone whould get paid the same no matter what they do. This is garbage; it's what philosophers call a "straw man" argument. Socialists agree that doctors should get paid more than street-sweepers. They just happen to disagree that the CEO of a retail chain should get $10 Million per year while the stock-taker gets $14000. Somewhere in the middle would be better for the stock taker, would NOT cause the CEO to suddenly refuse to provide the world with his unique wisom, and ultimately the whole business would be better for commerce, since it has been proven: give lower-income workers more money, and they will spend it.

Someone was saying something about minimum wage being a fixed price, and that if companies can't reduce it, they go out of business, or outsource. Why hasn't anyone in business ever considered reducing the wages of the higher-income workers, in times of difficulty? Especially since, in the myth of the CEO, it is under their leadership that the profits have come down?

[mrtimp]

I work for a major Supermarket chain and I can tell you maybe this would'nt be an issue if certain higher ups didnt make 6 figures a year, my store manager easily makes $125,000 a year, for what?????? seriously he does not much plus he gets a bonus at the end of every year if he keeps payroll low, why not pay a higher minimum wage with that hefty bonus he gets ya know? Spread it around to the people who need it and do hard work for the company. Just my 2 cents.

[Slade]

The thing is that the poor will spend their money, and the rich will horde it. And since the rich decide the wages, it's easier to cut 500 workers and give the guy under you a raise than to cut him out and keep your workers.

[barend]

this is why we need to violently kill the rich...

so many working their asses off the afford a small selsct few in the country club an effortless life?

that's slavery brother, and we should not fucking take it.

[Slade]

I hear you, but try telling the sheep that. Or the people who refuse to believe, or who rely on the system for their profits.

[Laughlyn]

this is why we need to violently kill the rich...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

why is it that all your plans seem to require excessive amounts of homicide?