Luzinski's Gut wrote:Completely unprofessional and quite illegal. Unfortunately, SEALs are getting a really bad reputation within DoD for not being able to keep their pieholes shut, especially within SEAL Team Six.

I think people should stay far away from this clown claiming he was the shooter, he's going to be targeted by every Sunni extremist in the world.

drsmooth wrote:I imagine the current SEALS shenanigans are giving our General Luzinski's Gut a gutache

how long before a drone jockey starts taking public credit/movie rights for his/her role in snuffing targets

eh, it's probably already happened

TomatoPie wrote:Certainly, a state subsidy of the marginally skilled is better than subsidy by the employer, but that is hardly ideal, is it?

drsmooth wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:Certainly, a state subsidy of the marginally skilled is better than subsidy by the employer, but that is hardly ideal, is it?

A "subsidy by the employer" - ? what does that even mean? Every employer - EVERY employer - if it profits at all, profits from eliciting whatever it is that anyone it employs accomplishes in the relationship while compensating them for less than they "deserve". The "subsidized" party, if there is one here, is the enterprise's owner(s).

Not to pick on you, but whatever it is that you currently do for a living, you, personally, are probably "overpaid" - in the sense that you, personally, could, right now, be replaced with someone who would accept a lower wage AND who produce an acceptable if not superior work product, especially if fortified by effectively configured computing technologies.

You're not all that special.

It's only your employer's inefficiency - its failure to actually compete maximally - that enables you to keep stealing that paycheck you're given.

That applies to anyone and everyone here.

Much, maybe most, of every dollar you collect is essentially a bribe for your complicity in the goings on. You're rewarded more for your subservience 'skills' than for your functional abilities

Capitalism doesn't work if things were otherwise.

You're really got to come to terms with the fact that the crude modeling tools in your tattered econ 101 textbook deal with lab conditions that do not operate out here where flesh & blood humans live & work.

drsmooth wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:Certainly, a state subsidy of the marginally skilled is better than subsidy by the employer, but that is hardly ideal, is it?

A "subsidy by the employer" - ? what does that even mean?

TomatoPie wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:Certainly, a state subsidy of the marginally skilled is better than subsidy by the employer, but that is hardly ideal, is it?

A "subsidy by the employer" - ? what does that even mean?

If your labor is worth $6 an hour but the min wage says $8, then the employer is forced to subsidize your meager talents.

drsmooth wrote:But then markets, however free or regulated, are never perfect, are they?

drsmooth wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:Certainly, a state subsidy of the marginally skilled is better than subsidy by the employer, but that is hardly ideal, is it?

A "subsidy by the employer" - ? what does that even mean?

If your labor is worth $6 an hour but the min wage says $8, then the employer is forced to subsidize your meager talents.

The sentence of yours that I quoted is nonsensical.

Both "subsidies", to employ your vernacular, are "state subsidies". A tax credit is a different method of dealing with the same market defect that a minimum wage addresses. Neither is perfect. Even in combination they wouldn't be perfect.

But in your inverted conception, it would seem that practically every penny your employer squanders on you in the way of wages is a subsidy. Why should s/he commit to enriching you on a regular basis when in fact s/he could obtain the value of whatever actual skills you possess on a contract basis? Only your employer's imperfect competitive execution preserves you from busking on a streetcorner for your daily crust.

But then markets, however free or regulated, are never perfect, are they?

pacino wrote:

Luzinski's Gut wrote:Completely unprofessional and quite illegal. Unfortunately, SEALs are getting a really bad reputation within DoD for not being able to keep their pieholes shut, especially within SEAL Team Six.

I think people should stay far away from this clown claiming he was the shooter, he's going to be targeted by every Sunni extremist in the world.

drsmooth wrote:I imagine the current SEALS shenanigans are giving our General Luzinski's Gut a gutache

how long before a drone jockey starts taking public credit/movie rights for his/her role in snuffing targets

eh, it's probably already happened

It's unprofessional but they are not under an NDA once they leave, no? I'm not sure what's illegal here.

TomatoPie wrote:
It's hard for us to think of our labor as a commodity - it's so personal.

Your missing-the-point argument that my employer overpays me aside, there's no useful reason to compel an employer to pay above-market prices for labor than there would be for the lightbulbs

What is in over-supply is the marginally-skilled folks who want to earn big while working small

...if you have another serious skill (and especially one that requires social skills or cultural dexterity), then you have a powerful combination that makes you hard to replace/outsource. And if you can't do all that, enter the trades. I think plumbers and auto mechanics have a good ride ahead, although the mostly-computerized self-driving car thing may be a longer term threat to those making, selling, or servicing cars.

dajafi wrote:Fundamentalist objections aside, raising the minimum wage generally does much more good than harm. The idea that it's teenagers mostly drawing it is simply untrue in places like NYC, and prices aren't so sensitive that it kills jobs; in fact, the additional money circulated through the local economy has an aggregate job creating effect.

SK790 wrote:About half are 25 or younger.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2012.htm

i also don't see why it would be a bad thing to pay working teenagers more, as most teens who are working are working to save up money for college or their first major purchase(likely a car).

Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up about half of those paid the Federal minimum wage or less.

The typical minimum wage worker is not a high-school student earning weekend pocket money. In fact, 88 percent of those who would benefit from a federal minimum wage increase are age 20 or older, and 55 percent are women.
…
About 53 percent of all minimum wage earners are full-time workers, and minimum wage workers contributed almost half (46 percent) of their household's wage and salary income in 2011. Moreover, more than 88 percent of those who would benefit from raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 are working adults, and 55 percent are working women.

At the beginning of 2014, 13 states increased their minimum wage. Of these 13 states, four passed legislation raising their minimum wage (Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island). In the other nine, their minimum wage automatically increased in line with inflation at the beginning of the year (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington state).

As CEPR noted in March and April posts, economists at Goldman Sachs conducted a simple evaluation of the impact of these state minimum-wage increases. GS compared the employment change between December and January in the 13 states where the minimum wage increased with the changes in the remainder of the states. The GS analysis found that the states where the minimum wage went up had faster employment growth than the states where the minimum wage remained at its 2013 level.

When we updated the GS analysis using additional employment data from the BLS, we saw the same pattern: employment growth was higher in states where the minimum wage went up. While this kind of simple exercise can't establish causality, it does provide evidence against theoretical negative employment effects of minimum-wage increases.
…
Of the 13 states that increased their minimum wage in early 2014, all but one (New Jersey) are seeing employment gains. Furthermore, nine of the remaining 12 states are above the median for this period. The average change in employment for the 13 states that increased their minimum wage is +0.99% while the remaining states have an average employment change of +0.68%.

Ten years ago, San Francisco raised its minimum wage from $6.75 to $8.50 an hour, a 26 percent increase. Since then, it has gone up at regular intervals to its current $10.74 an hour, the highest big-city starting wage in the country.

The city has slapped other mandates on businesses, including paid sick leave and a requirement to provide health-care coverage or pay into a pool for uninsured residents.

What have the effects been on employment?

Almost none, according to economists at the University of California, Berkeley, who have studied San Francisco, eight other cities that raised their minimum wages in the past decade, and 21 states with higher base pay than the federal minimum.

Businesses absorbed the costs through lower turnover, small price increases at restaurants, which have a high concentration of low-wage workers, and higher worker productivity, the researchers found.
…
“Our data show that an increase up to $13 an hour has no measurable effect on employment,” said Michael Reich, a Berkeley economics professor with the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.
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Santa Fe allowed the phase-in of its 65 percent minimum-wage increase for businesses with fewer than 25 employees. For larger businesses, the minimum jumped from $5.15 to $8.50 an hour in 2004. (It now sits at $10.66.)

A study two years later by the University of New Mexico Bureau of Business and Economic Research found “no discernible impact on employment per firm.” Employment in the city actually went up slightly, and did better when compared with Albuquerque, which didn’t raise its minimum wage.

The study was done by Nicholas Potter, now a researcher at Washington State University. He said some businesses in Santa Fe did close and some said it hurt their competitiveness. But workers were overwhelmingly positive about the pay hike. And the fear of massive restaurant closures didn’t happen, he said, though the cost of eating out did go up some.

All the statistics here apply to those who would be affected by the proposed increase to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10. The analysis also includes a number of workers making slightly above $10.10, who, history suggests, would receive a raise if the minimum wage were increased.

Minimum-wage workers are older than they used to be. Their average age is 35, and 88 percent are at least 20 years old. Half are older than 30, and about a third are at least 40.

These patterns are somewhat new. In 1979, 27 percent of low-wage workers (those making $10.10 per hour or less in today’s dollars) were teenagers, compared with 12 percent in 2013, according to John Schmitt and Janelle Jones

They’re split fairly evenly between full-timers and part-timers. Most — 54 percent — work full-time schedules (at least 35 hours per week), and another 32 percent work at least half time (20-34 hours per week).

Many have kids. About one-quarter (27 percent) of these low-wage workers are parents, compared with 34 percent of all workers. In all, 19 percent of children in the United States have a parent who would benefit from the increase.
…
Most are women. Women make up 48 percent of the work force yet 55 percent of the would-be beneficiaries of the increase in the minimum wage.

Most are white, but minorities are overrepresented. Hispanic workers account for 16 percent of the work force but 24 percent of those who would be affected by the wage increase. For African-Americans, the comparable shares are 11 percent of the work force and 15 percent of those who would gain from the increase.
…
Their earnings are a big part of their family budgets. The average worker in this group brings home half of his or her household’s earnings; 19 percent of those who would get the raise are sole earners. Parents who would benefit from the increase bring home an even larger share of their families’ earnings: 60 percent.