Topic: [Poll] Should the minimum wage be raised? - page 2. (Read 4858 times)

Market is run by supply and demand.

If someone else can do a job for cheaper, business will use the cheaper labor.

It is difficult for some people to hear things the way they actually are. It is much better to think that people are following laws because they agree with them. Not because they are forced to do so under threat of being kidnapped and thrown in a cage.

I did just for kicks.  It'd be a very good lesson for people as to what the real effect of a minimum wage is.


Fair enough; the best solution is to stop interfering with the lives of individuals.  If a man feels he is worth $1/hr, so be it; if he feels he is worth $100/hr, so be it; who are we to tell him his "minimum worth"?  It assumes he is as an animal, or that we are as gods: either he is too stupid to make decisions for himself, or we are so beyond him we should dictate his wages.  People aren't animals, people can reason, and if a man reasons $1/hr as his ideal wage, so be it.  The only thing a minimum wage does is create unemployment, as anyone who is not worth $7.50/hr (or whatever has been decided) is not going to get to work, and thus cannot get the experience necessary to be worth more than $7.50/hr.  Now you've created a dependency class; this is fundamental in our welfare/warfare society, as these people will literally go along with whatever you're doing so long as you feed and clothe them.

The way you state it sounds very bias. Like the type of person that cares more about ideology than truly thinking through what the best solution would be.

well that I can agree with , thanks for your inputs

That reminds me of the unconditional income the Swiss had proposed a few months ago, as well as an European initiative with the same intention that failed to gather enough signatures to move forward. Also, things like these have been tested before, as in for example Mincome, in Canada. Too bad no one ever bothered to continue looking at it. 

The Green Party have something similar to this in their manifsto, they're calling it a citizen's income:

The great majority of jobs are already in the services sector; considering many of those could be easily automated tomorrow if we wanted, I'm not sure it would be possible to re-train everyone for others tasks anytime soon. And even then, re-train them to do what exactly? Official youtube/facebook like giver? Or for that matter, forum poster?

so what the idea of basic income and rise of wages? I believe that it's at least worth considering. Sooner or later we as a society will have to face the challenges created by the technological development and its effects on employment. Computerization, advancements in robotics and manufacturing and soon self-driving cars, the future is already here and jobs will be lost. It's true that the history teaches us that for every job lost due to a technological revolution thousands new are created but will it be the case this time as well? Basic income might just become a necessity to keep the economy from collapsing.

Very few. I could count only 6 YES votes out of 100+. Considering the fact that at least half of all the Bitcointalk users are Libertarians, that represents only a very small minority.

Whatever the result, the number would likely be higher if the poll values were realistic to being with... one might be libertarian/anarchist and still look to a gradual change in the system towards their ideal, even if just by freeing people from the misery they're in.

Sub poll:
   How many libertarians and anarchists voted "yes"?

That is true. When you go freelance, you probably still won't be able to quit your day job for a while until you build up your reputation. But there are benefits, including the fact that many freelancers don't need to commute.

I don't think most people grow up dreaming of being a McDonald's employee; but life happens, and especially if you have a family to feed, you might not have that many options of where to work. Often times this is true even for people with college degrees, sadly enough. And needless to say that going freelance isn't always an option, and when possible can still be a huge risk.

Education is being valued less less these days. But unemployment is also at record highs, as a lot of jobs are being moved to countries such as China and other Asian / African nations due to higher taxes.

While I can understand the disgruntlement of the fast food workers who staged a one-day strike not that long ago, I've always kinda assumed that community colleges and government-backed student loans existed for a reason. If nothing else, go freelance. If enough people get out of the fast food industry, places like McDonalds will basically be forced to either pay their workers better or automate the job.

On the contrary, it's the first time a central bank has been honest about it.  If you're having difficulty understanding what it actually says, there's a helpful column here that explains it in plain English.  Good day to you too.

You've just been feeding yourself central bank propaganda, the video I posted explains that's exactly what happens in a central bank and with our current economy, good day.

I reckon part of the problem is the ease with which capital can flow across national borders - it wasn't always thus.

In years gone by cheap labour could be imported - look at West Yorkshire for eg. and the mills, as recently as the 50's 60's. Today its easier and more profitable to take the mills to the cheap labour.



Further, and complimentary to the above, as soon as a company is "publicly" floated in todays world, and as soon as enough companies are so floated, it seems to me that control of the economy by the national Govt./citizens of the country is proportionately diminshed. And seeing as how the ownership of UK listed companies is extremely difficult to pinpoint, you have to ask the question, who owns and runs the UK economy ?

I've read the Bank of England paper explaining money creation, so I don't need a 30 minute youtube video to spoon-feed the concept to me, thanks.  I get how that works and agree that it's a problem that needs looking at.  However, wealth inequality is still an issue, even once you've sorted out the entirely separate issue of money itself.  

We'll forget the US for a bit, since I'm a Brit too.  The fact that we already have a minimum wage here demonstrates that you can force a company to pay their employee a certain amount and we didn't have to point a gun to their head to achieve that.  You'll have noticed an increase in the UK in things like zero-hour contracts.  This is a deliberate attempt to undermine the concept behind minimum wage.  There's also an increase in the number of people pushed into the 'Workfare' scheme which is another deliberate (and more direct) attempt to undermine the minimum wage.  Some companies are shedding their regular paid staff and taking on workfare claimants for a fraction of the cost.  It's actually causing unemployment, but the government get to fudge the figures because they class people on workfare as being in employment, even though they're technically working for unemployment benefit.  

Most of the companies utilising these two measures can easily afford to pay the current minimum wage, but if they have a way to increase profits, they'll happy take that path, even if it means driving an increasing number of people into poverty.  In the long term, this will be disastrous for the wider economy, but fantastic for the people who own those companies and can make a few extra million in profits.  If you say you don't support trickle down theory, you've got a funny way of showing it.  The minimum wage runs in direct contrast to the principles of trickle down, so if anything, you should be arguing for an increase like I am and speaking out against any attempts to undermine it, but instead you have this rather strange idea that the minimum wage is 'stealing', which doesn't actually make any sense.

Also, if a company can't come up with a sustainable business model that doesn't effectively rely on slave labour, it stands to reason they haven't got a good business model.  If your profits depend on paying peanuts for your workforce, you're going to have an unhappy and unproductive workforce.  It also stands to reason that if such workers are living under the poverty line, they're more likely to suffer with their health, which means more time taken off sick and more lost productivity.  This is what will continue to worsen if we carry on along the current path we're heading down.

I'm in a position where I'm fortunate enough not just to have a job, but one that pays above minimum wage and even earns me a little commission on top, so this is nothing to do with me wanting something for nothing or trying to steal anyone else's money.  I keep a close eye on the deteriorating standards of living in this country which are being whitewashed over by manipulated government figures while they try to leech more money from those who have the least.  Almost all the political parties in the UK support this right-wing neo-liberal farce of a system, which only serves to transfer wealth to the top.

As stated by this recent BBC article, the Office of National Statistics themselves have provided figures showing how inflation has eroded the value of pay over the last six years.  While earnings rose by 8.6% since July 2008, consumer prices rose by 16.9%.  It will be several years yet before real wages are back to the level they were before the financial crisis.  The Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that real incomes will not return to their 2009-10 levels until 2018 at the earliest.  And since the start of the financial crisis, real pay has fallen by a 10%.  That is said to be the biggest fall in any five-year period since the 1920s.  Is that really what you want to argue in favour of?