Tis an ill wind that blows no jobs....

[The Good Reverend Roger]

But, anyway, if you're gonna throw centuries of study in economics out the window,

The laffer curve is centuries of years old?

Minimum wage is?

[Prickly]

Alright, just so long as we're clear that the best response either gnimbley or Roger can come up with is "economics is wrong because I disagree with it and that's all there is to it", I'm satisfied.

Although, gnimbley, if your hiring workers is based, purely and simply, on needing them to do work, and has nothing at all to do with the cost of hiring them, why didn't you just pay all your workers twice what they could have made anywhere else? Just wondering.

[Anonymous]

Alright, just so long as we're clear that the best response Prickley can come up with is everybody else is wrong because they speak from personal experience and don't have charts and graphs, I'm satisfied.  

Although, gnimbley, if your hiring workers is based, purely and simply, on needing them to do work, and has nothing at all to do with the cost of hiring them, why didn't you just pay all your workers twice what they could have made anywhere else? Just wondering.

?????????

1. show me an employer who hires people to stand around and do
nothing because he already has enough people to do the work but thinks
if he hires more people he will make more money.

2. where did I say employers like to lavish money on their employees?
On the contrary, I believe I said that employers (mostly) like to exploit
their employees. (When I was an employer I gave employees annual
raises. If they were a good employee I kept them. If they were a
bad employee, I fired them. I paid a lot more than minimum wage.
As I was able to build business I hired more people. At the end, when
I sold, I let one person go because I didn't have a job for her
anymore. The rest went with the new employer or quit on their own.
Not once did I consider the marginal utility of employee/wage/etc.
in making a hiring/firing decision. Not once.)

3. Around here, several years ago, there was a shortage of "minimum
wage" workers and the local fast food restaurants were putting big
banners on the side of their sides of their buildings advertising signing
bonuses to get workers, and you know, amazingly, not one of them
raised prices. Fit that into your charts and graphs.



Seriously, Prickly. You are arguing academic economics and I am
arguing real life experience, and the two just don't fit together
neatly. And that is not arguing that "economics" is wrong. That's
arguing that some of the people who write economics texts have
their heads so far up their ass that they can't see what's going on
in the real world. Real world managers don't make decisions based
on the correlations discovered by economists in their studies of
controlled environments. Those are useful to see what the effects of
management decisions are, but don't confuse cause and effect. The
relationship between employee wages and profits didn't cause the
manager to make the decision as you have been arguing, it's just the
effect of the decision.

When you look around and the people standing in line are fuming for
having to wait too long for their taco, you hire more people. When you
look around and your employees are goofing off in back because there
isn't enough business to keep them busy, you fire some. Don't need
no charts and graphs for that.

[gnimbley]

That post above was really Bella, wasn't me. I swear.

[gnimbley]

But, anyway, if you're gonna throw centuries of study in economics out the window,

The laffer curve is centuries of years old?

Minimum wage is?

Roger, what is wrong with you?

::raps the good reverend on the head with his zen stick thingy::

The minimum wage is millenia old!



Of course, back then they called it slavery. You could do anything you
wanted to slaves, but you also had to provide shelter, clothing, food,
everything they consumed. And they were disposable, too.

Today you have lots of restrictions on what you can do to your slaves,
but you don't have to provide for them or their families anymore. Just
fork out the minimum wage.

Slaves are a lot cheaper nowadays.

[chaosgraves:agentoferis]

But, anyway, if you're gonna throw centuries of study in economics out the window,

The laffer curve is centuries of years old?

Minimum wage is?

Roger, what is wrong with you?

::raps the good reverend on the head with his zen stick thingy::

The minimum wage is millenia old!



Of course, back then they called it slavery. You could do anything you
wanted to slaves, but you also had to provide shelter, clothing, food,
everything they consumed. And they were disposable, too.

Today you have lots of restrictions on what you can do to your slaves,
but you don't have to provide for them or their families anymore. Just
fork out the minimum wage.

Slaves are a lot cheaper nowadays.

Have to provide?!?!? can you prove this?!?!?

[Prickly]

1. show me an employer who hires people to stand around and do
nothing because he already has enough people to do the work but thinks
if he hires more people he will make more money.

2. where did I say employers like to lavish money on their employees?
On the contrary, I believe I said that employers (mostly) like to exploit
their employees. (When I was an employer I gave employees annual
raises. If they were a good employee I kept them. If they were a
bad employee, I fired them. I paid a lot more than minimum wage.
As I was able to build business I hired more people. At the end, when
I sold, I let one person go because I didn't have a job for her
anymore. The rest went with the new employer or quit on their own.
Not once did I consider the marginal utility of employee/wage/etc.
in making a hiring/firing decision. Not once.)

You support using the government to force employers to pay cartain employees more. You also claim that hiring and firing decisions have nothing to do with whether or not you can afford to hire or fire an employee, strictly with whether or not you have work for them to do. If it were true that the cost of hiring employees had no bearing on the number of employees hired, and you feel that workers should be paid a lot more than they make now, I was wondering why you didn't simply pay your employees exorbitant salaries.

You may have rationalized your decisions differently, you may explain them differently now, but you made the same employment decisions an economist would expect you to make.

If someone had forced you to raise your employees' salaries to more than you would normally have paid them, you would have had to do at least one of three things: raise prices, cut costs (which, as I explained, cuts employment somewhere; if the costs you're cutting aren't your own employees, you're cutting out buying something from someone else, which means someone else loses their job for lack of work to do), or shut down.

3. Around here, several years ago, there was a shortage of "minimum
wage" workers and the local fast food restaurants were putting big
banners on the side of their sides of their buildings advertising signing
bonuses to get workers, and you know, amazingly, not one of them
raised prices. Fit that into your charts and graphs.

Which is further proof of one of the points that I made earlier, that the way employers treat employees is related to the workers-to-jobs ratio, and no amount of laws can change that. If you need more workers, you have to offer them something to pull them away from other employers. I'm promoting eliminating the minimum wage because it will expand job creation, and eventually lead to far less employee abuse once companies have to compete with each other to attract workers.

Seriously, Prickly. You are arguing academic economics and I am
arguing real life experience, and the two just don't fit together
neatly. And that is not arguing that "economics" is wrong. That's
arguing that some of the people who write economics texts have
their heads so far up their ass that they can't see what's going on
in the real world. Real world managers don't make decisions based
on the correlations discovered by economists in their studies of
controlled environments. Those are useful to see what the effects of
management decisions are, but don't confuse cause and effect. The
relationship between employee wages and profits didn't cause the
manager to make the decision as you have been arguing, it's just the
effect of the decision.

So, what you're saying is, you made the exact same decisions an economist would expect you to make, but for different reasons. So all my assertions (that forced increases in pay inevitably cause higher unemployment and higher prices) still apply, even if the people making the decision to raise prices or cut employment are doing so for different reasons.

When you look around and the people standing in line are fuming for
having to wait too long for their taco, you hire more people. When you
look around and your employees are goofing off in back because there
isn't enough business to keep them busy, you fire some. Don't need
no charts and graphs for that.

Which doesn't disprove my point at all.

[Guido Finucci]

You support using the government to force employers to pay cartain employees more.

Gah! How did you get this from anything anyone said?

I stopped reading after that. One thing though, you seem to believe that people are trying to disprove your points (not that you've actually offered any proof for them to disprove but we'll skip the argument about the metaphysical differences between science and philosphy for now). This is almost certainly not the case. I think that everyone gave up trying to address your arguments and are mostly trying to disillusion you. I suspect that this is futile.

[Prickly]

You support using the government to force employers to pay cartain employees more.

Gah! How did you get this from anything anyone said?

I stopped reading after that. One thing though, you seem to believe that people are trying to disprove your points (not that you've actually offered any proof for them to disprove but we'll skip the argument about the metaphysical differences between science and philosphy for now). This is almost certainly not the case. I think that everyone gave up trying to address your arguments and are mostly trying to disillusion you. I suspect that this is futile.

What exactly do you think minimum wage is? It's a law passed by government that forces employers to pay at or above a certain amount to employees. Doesn't take into account what changes they have to make to be able to afford it. Whether or not you think that force is justified, or that it will have its intended consequence without unintended side effects, if you can't see that any government restriction is a use of force, you're blind in one eye and can't see out of the other.

[Z³]

I dont care for this kind of debate, since I dont really give a rats ass about economics or sophism, but I would like to say that its nearly fucking impossible to even survive on minimum wage.

I cant imagine ever working for even less.

[Guido Finucci]

Whether or not you think that force is justified ... if you can't see that any government restriction is a use of force, you're blind in one eye and can't see out of the other.

So, in essence, what you mean when you say that Gnimbley (and I apologise if the capitalisation of his name is against Gnimbley's wishes; he need only mention it to me and I will chance my habits) supports the use of force is that he supports, in theory, the idea that groups of people should have a government. I mean, if any regulation by government exactly equates to a use of force then clearly anyone who isn't an anarchist (of a fairly pure form) advocates the existence of some for of government that will regulate to a greater or lesser extent, and by extension supports the use of force by that government.

I do wonder why you needed to mention this in a discussion about economics. It is that economics is a bit hard and you want to go a little wider in the discussion?

[gnimbley]

Whether or not you think that force is justified ... if you can't see that any government restriction is a use of force, you're blind in one eye and can't see out of the other.

So, in essence, what you mean when you say that Gnimbley (and I apologise if the capitalisation of his name is against Gnimbley's wishes; he need only mention it to me and I will chance my habits) supports the use of force is that he supports, in theory, the idea that groups of people should have a government. I mean, if any regulation by government exactly equates to a use of force then clearly anyone who isn't an anarchist (of a fairly pure form) advocates the existence of some for of government that will regulate to a greater or lesser extent, and by extension supports the use of force by that government.

I do wonder why you needed to mention this in a discussion about economics. It is that economics is a bit hard and you want to go a little wider in the discussion?

First, the use of capitalization in a gnome's name is non-traditional and
generates a huge fine from the gnomish government. On the other hand,
no one ever pays the fine, so you can do whatever you want, gUIDO.

Second, I am an anarchist. I just don't think anarchy is practical. Too
many people want more than their fair share (like everyone who lives in
America, including moi) for a true anarchy to survive.

Third, this is exactly the argument Prickly is expounding, that all
governmental regulation of economic activitiy is wrong. Unfortunately, if
carried to its logical extreme, it results in slavery, since economic control
equates to political control, and workers eventually become property.

Fourth, I am not totally untrue to anarchy since I see economic control as
being a form of political control. In order to achieve a better world we not
only have to loosen the control the political elite have on our lives, but
also loosen the control the economic elite have on our lives.

Unfortunately, what this means is we have to use one against the other.
We try to restrain the government from interfering in our lives, while
simultaneously using them to restrain the corporations.

Delicate balancing act. Everybody disagress on which restraints to retain,
which to eliminate. Prickley wants to get rid of minimum wage. I see that
as allowing the corporations to rape people more efficiently.

We can go around and around. In the end he's wrong because I say so.
Phfffttttt!!!!!!!!!!!

[gnimbley]

You support using the government to force employers to pay cartain employees more.

I didn't say that. I did not support paying "certain" empoyees more than
others, which is what you are implying. I supported the idea of forcing
employers to pay at least a minimum.

You also claim that hiring and firing decisions have nothing to do with whether or not you can afford to hire or fire an employee, strictly with whether or not you have work for them to do.

I also didn't say that. I said managers make decisions to hire and fire
based on the amount of work there is to do regardless of the minimum
wage laws, not whether or not they can afford to hire workers. A lot
of companies have more work than they can afford to hire workers for.
Some of them are crafts. Some of them are poorly run and therefore
will go out of business. Some are just slow to respond to changes. In
any case, if there is more work to be done than what a company has
hired employees for, another company will move into the market and
suck up the work. Sometimes that is good. Sometimes it is WalMart.

If it were true that the cost of hiring employees had no bearing on the number of employees hired, and you feel that workers should be paid a lot more than they make now, I was wondering why you didn't simply pay your employees exorbitant salaries.

According to you, I did pay my workers exorbitant salaries!!!!!!!!

You may have rationalized your decisions differently, you may explain them differently now, but you made the same employment decisions an economist would expect you to make.

Of course, because the economist looked at the results of my
decisions and said, "this is what he did." Just like I looked at the results
of the Kentucky Derby and said, "Smarty Jones won the race." What I
am saying in that the reason why I made that decision was based
on my analysis of the current work load and how many people I needed
to do the work, but on profit or the current state of employee
wages. In order to increase profit (and thereby to be able to pay the
employees - which included myself - more, I advertised, had sales on
some items, raised prices on others, introduce new products, etc., etc.
I didn't try to increase profits by hiring more minimum wage employees
in the belief that that would bring more business.

By the way, I ran a small business (25 employess at its peak) that
provide a service that required some professional expertise. We were
not a real market for minimum wage employees, like a WalMart or a
McDonald's. Therefore, my decision making may have been atypical.
However, I still believe the decision to hire is based on an assesment of
work available. As for why WalMart decides to open new stores amd
McDonald's decides to introduce new sandwiches and Nike decides to
run another ad, that is based on a desire for more profits. But that
has nothing to do with minimum wage laws.

If someone had forced you to raise your employees' salaries to more than you would normally have paid them, you would have had to do at least one of three things: raise prices, cut costs (which, as I explained, cuts employment somewhere; if the costs you're cutting aren't your own employees, you're cutting out buying something from someone else, which means someone else loses their job for lack of work to do), or shut down.

You left out 4. make less money. Believe it or not, this happens everyday
in business, and none of the three you mention usually happen. The
increased costs come through other mechanisms other than wages - oil
prices, other governmental regulation, price hikes, someone wrecking
a piece of equipment that has to be replaced, etc. - and usually
a company grins and bares it. If the costs are extreme, then one of the
three happens, but normally, none of the three do.

There is one other case I should mention, because it is happening to
friends of mine, and that is some asshole takes over and wants to
produce a winning balance sheet to show stock analysts, and starts
cutting employees right and left and reorganizing. This has nothing to
do with minimum wage laws. It has to do with greed. And they can do
this because reorganizing rearranges the work load. Whatever reason,
it is the shits.

3. Around here, several years ago, there was a shortage of "minimum
wage" workers and the local fast food restaurants were putting big
banners on the side of their sides of their buildings advertising signing
bonuses to get workers, and you know, amazingly, not one of them
raised prices. Fit that into your charts and graphs.

Which is further proof of one of the points that I made earlier, that the way employers treat employees is related to the workers-to-jobs ratio, and no amount of laws can change that. If you need more workers, you have to offer them something to pull them away from other employers. I'm promoting eliminating the minimum wage because it will expand job creation, and eventually lead to far less employee abuse once companies have to compete with each other to attract workers.

Yeah, have to compete for those 25 cent an hour workers by raising salaries to 30 cents an hour. Great improvement.

Seriously, Prickly. You are arguing academic economics and I am
arguing real life experience, and the two just don't fit together
neatly. And that is not arguing that "economics" is wrong. That's
arguing that some of the people who write economics texts have
their heads so far up their ass that they can't see what's going on
in the real world. Real world managers don't make decisions based
on the correlations discovered by economists in their studies of
controlled environments. Those are useful to see what the effects of
management decisions are, but don't confuse cause and effect. The
relationship between employee wages and profits didn't cause the
manager to make the decision as you have been arguing, it's just the
effect of the decision.

So, what you're saying is, you made the exact same decisions an economist would expect you to make, but for different reasons. So all my assertions (that forced increases in pay inevitably cause higher unemployment and higher prices) still apply, even if the people making the decision to raise prices or cut employment are doing so for different reasons.

Ah, so you abandon the argument that the primary reason management
make hiring and firing decisions is based on minimum wage laws. Good
porcupine. fluffy will be so happy. But no points for saying I prove your
point because you conceded one. All you are arguing is that since the
real world acts as it does, it proves your point because you drew an
inference from the real world in your argument. Bah. Others can and
do draw different inferences.

When you look around and the people standing in line are fuming for
having to wait too long for their taco, you hire more people. When you
look around and your employees are goofing off in back because there
isn't enough business to keep them busy, you fire some. Don't need
no charts and graphs for that.

Which doesn't disprove my point at all.

Yeah, but it proves mine.  

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I dont care for this kind of debate, since I dont really give a rats ass about economics or sophism, but I would like to say that its nearly fucking impossible to even survive on minimum wage.

I cant imagine ever working for even less.

Commie.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Alright, just so long as we're clear that the best response either gnimbley or Roger can come up with is "economics is wrong because I disagree with it and that's all there is to it", I'm satisfied.

TRANSLATION:  "I cannot refute any of the points made. so I will ignore them."