2016 Election Thread

mikecgrimes · February 4, 2016

bankruptcy laws exist for businesses.....

If you raise the minimum wage to $10, and you are a business owner and you can't make it work, then you should go out of business.

The only thing propping this economy up is businesses with low profit margins. You want the print shop on Main street in a town of 600 to shut down. You want the 4 high school kids who work there to be out of work. This is who the Democrat party is they have such an angry attitude that they don't care who they actually hurt so long as they feel like they hurt who they want to hurt. Gotta make a living wage, never mind the fact your dad is a farmer who us up at 4 AM along with 2 of your brothers and the only thing keeping the family afloat is the $8.75 an hour you make at Merl's print shop. Meanwhile Vern your 63 year old co worker just wants to help keep Mearl from having to shut down the business his grandpa built in 1912. Meanwhile Wal Mart and cub foods probably will be just fine at $15 an hour, they already have machines taking over the checkout lanes, at $14.30 an hour it becomes cost effective to have robots stock the shelves. But hey some random #'s that you aren't capable of interpreting suggest Seattle wasn't a complete disaster so lets continue to make otherwise agreeable wages illegal and assume nothing bad will ever come of it.

Minimum wage laws end up being so statistically insignificant that the negative effect never shines brightly, but they are nothing more then a law for the sake of having a law, and are just a symptom of the problem that is a do something legislative body. Why not raise it to a level 25% above the historic inflationary high? If there was actually a net positive effect why would that stop at the exact point of a "living wage" which is nothing more then an estimate.

DaveW · February 4, 2016

The only thing propping this economy up is businesses with low profit margins. You want the print shop on Main street in a town of 600 to shut down. You want the 4 high school kids who work there to be out of work. This is who the Democrat party is they have such an angry attitude that they don't care who they actually hurt so long as they feel like they hurt who they want to hurt. Gotta make a living wage, never mind the fact your dad is a farmer who us up at 4 AM along with 2 of your brothers and the only thing keeping the family afloat is the $8.75 an hour you make at Merl's print shop. Meanwhile Vern your 63 year old co worker just wants to help keep Mearl from having to shut down the business his grandpa built in 1912. Meanwhile Wal Mart and cub foods probably will be just fine at $15 an hour, they already have machines taking over the checkout lanes, at $14.30 an hour it becomes cost effective to have robots stock the shelves. But hey some random #'s that you aren't capable of interpreting suggest Seattle wasn't a complete disaster so lets continue to make otherwise agreeable wages illegal and assume nothing bad will ever come of it.

Minimum wage laws end up being so statistically insignificant that the negative effect never shines brightly, but they are nothing more then a law for the sake of having a law, and are just a symptom of the problem that is a do something legislative body. Why not raise it to a level 25% above the historic inflationary high? If there was actually a net positive effect why would that stop at the exact point of a "living wage" which is nothing more then an estimate.

Dude seriously what on earth are you talking about.

Couple things: as a small business owner you shouldn't be paying ALL of your employees minimum wage anyways, ideally you are already paying your employees a somewhat LIVABLE wage to begin with.

If giving said minimum wage employees an extra $2.50 an hour (btw: I think if you raise the minimum wage to $10, it should go up to $8.50 for the first 9 months, $9.00 for the next 6 months, then $10, to give everyone plenty of time to adjust) is really enough to shut your business down, then good riddance.

If I had a family business that had been around 100+ years like in your bizarre hypothetical, I certainly would hope I was a good enough businessman to figure out to run the business with an additional $100 a week expense on a full time minimum wage employee. Perhaps I would figure out a way to sell $100 more a week in goods by either: 1. Selling more. 2. Raising prices a bit. 3. Cutting back in needless expenses.

It happens all the time, you act like every small business in the world is going to fail because the minimum wage would go up a couple bucks in this scenario. That holds about as much water as your "Trump Supporters are all democrats" nonsense.

DaveW · February 4, 2016

i don't think it'll really start until NH is out of the way as well. NH isn't as silly and irrelevant as Iowa but it's still a bit wacky.

Yeah NH and Iowa are terrible cross sections of America as a whole:
Iowa:

93% White

66% Protestant

Under Educated

New Hampshire: 94% white

Poverty levels twice as low the national average

Income 20% more then the national average.

All these two contests show us is that:

Cruz does well in the undereducated/protestant group.

Bernie does well amongst whites under the age of 35.

Mike Sixel · February 4, 2016

I have no objection to any of that so long as you don't tell the church or even the cake maker what they have to do. Less laws not different laws.

No one has ever told a church what they can do, other than multiple marriages. No one has told the Catholics they are discriminating against women, and must ordain them. this is a red herring.

As for the cake thing, that's tougher, isn't it? Where is the line? Can they deny seating a black person? I don't think so.....so why can they deny serving a homosexual couple.

Mike Sixel · February 4, 2016

The only thing propping this economy up is businesses with low profit margins. You want the print shop on Main street in a town of 600 to shut down. You want the 4 high school kids who work there to be out of work. This is who the Democrat party is they have such an angry attitude that they don't care who they actually hurt so long as they feel like they hurt who they want to hurt. Gotta make a living wage, never mind the fact your dad is a farmer who us up at 4 AM along with 2 of your brothers and the only thing keeping the family afloat is the $8.75 an hour you make at Merl's print shop. Meanwhile Vern your 63 year old co worker just wants to help keep Mearl from having to shut down the business his grandpa built in 1912. Meanwhile Wal Mart and cub foods probably will be just fine at $15 an hour, they already have machines taking over the checkout lanes, at $14.30 an hour it becomes cost effective to have robots stock the shelves. But hey some random #'s that you aren't capable of interpreting suggest Seattle wasn't a complete disaster so lets continue to make otherwise agreeable wages illegal and assume nothing bad will ever come of it.

Minimum wage laws end up being so statistically insignificant that the negative effect never shines brightly, but they are nothing more then a law for the sake of having a law, and are just a symptom of the problem that is a do something legislative body. Why not raise it to a level 25% above the historic inflationary high? If there was actually a net positive effect why would that stop at the exact point of a "living wage" which is nothing more then an estimate.

Yes, the party's purpose is to hurt people. Geebus.

Mike Sixel · February 4, 2016

The only thing propping this economy up is businesses with low profit margins. You want the print shop on Main street in a town of 600 to shut down. You want the 4 high school kids who work there to be out of work. This is who the Democrat party is they have such an angry attitude that they don't care who they actually hurt so long as they feel like they hurt who they want to hurt. Gotta make a living wage, never mind the fact your dad is a farmer who us up at 4 AM along with 2 of your brothers and the only thing keeping the family afloat is the $8.75 an hour you make at Merl's print shop. Meanwhile Vern your 63 year old co worker just wants to help keep Mearl from having to shut down the business his grandpa built in 1912. Meanwhile Wal Mart and cub foods probably will be just fine at $15 an hour, they already have machines taking over the checkout lanes, at $14.30 an hour it becomes cost effective to have robots stock the shelves. But hey some random #'s that you aren't capable of interpreting suggest Seattle wasn't a complete disaster so lets continue to make otherwise agreeable wages illegal and assume nothing bad will ever come of it.

Minimum wage laws end up being so statistically insignificant that the negative effect never shines brightly, but they are nothing more then a law for the sake of having a law, and are just a symptom of the problem that is a do something legislative body. Why not raise it to a level 25% above the historic inflationary high? If there was actually a net positive effect why would that stop at the exact point of a "living wage" which is nothing more then an estimate.

US small businesses are not employing many new people. In the US, they tend to be sole proprietors. In Europe, they tend to have employees. I'm not sure (though I don't know) that the US is being "propped up" by new small businesses......I don't even know what "propped up" means. Sounds like another loaded word.

Mike Sixel · February 4, 2016

The only thing propping this economy up is businesses with low profit margins. You want the print shop on Main street in a town of 600 to shut down. You want the 4 high school kids who work there to be out of work. This is who the Democrat party is they have such an angry attitude that they don't care who they actually hurt so long as they feel like they hurt who they want to hurt. Gotta make a living wage, never mind the fact your dad is a farmer who us up at 4 AM along with 2 of your brothers and the only thing keeping the family afloat is the $8.75 an hour you make at Merl's print shop. Meanwhile Vern your 63 year old co worker just wants to help keep Mearl from having to shut down the business his grandpa built in 1912. Meanwhile Wal Mart and cub foods probably will be just fine at $15 an hour, they already have machines taking over the checkout lanes, at $14.30 an hour it becomes cost effective to have robots stock the shelves. But hey some random #'s that you aren't capable of interpreting suggest Seattle wasn't a complete disaster so lets continue to make otherwise agreeable wages illegal and assume nothing bad will ever come of it.

Minimum wage laws end up being so statistically insignificant that the negative effect never shines brightly, but they are nothing more then a law for the sake of having a law, and are just a symptom of the problem that is a do something legislative body. Why not raise it to a level 25% above the historic inflationary high? If there was actually a net positive effect why would that stop at the exact point of a "living wage" which is nothing more then an estimate.

If the FREE MARKET says Wal Mart should be the only remaining retailer.....that's what you get. With or without wage laws. Wal Mart, as has been shown over and over, is actually bad for local economies, because wages are so low that the employees can't make a living wage (like they could under mom and pop shops when they owned them) so many of those people are on the tax rolls now. A great example of how lower wages are not necessarily good for anyone but the wealthy.

ashbury · February 4, 2016

never mind the fact your dad is a farmer who us up at 4 AM along with 2 of your brothers and the only thing keeping the family afloat is the $8.75 an hour you make at Merl's print shop.

"Farmer". That's probably meant to evoke an image of several dozen acres being worked under wholesome good-ol'-fashioned family values. I'm pretty sure that's not how modern agribusiness operates anymore, or at least the families that do fit your profile are nearly irrelevant to feeding this nation. Unless maybe dad being a farmer and getting up at 4 means he's working for a conglomerate.

The world of Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations in the 1700s was relatively little removed from biblical times of extreme scarcity, where it was necessary for almost the entire population to work extremely long hours just to survive. Free market philosophy today, at least as usually discussed, has progressed very little from images of gruff but kindly shopkeepers, burly blacksmiths, and lots and lots of farmers struggling just to make ends meet.

The industrial revolution brought about at least two big changes, economies of scale, and logistics. The reach of a creative person was no longer limited to what he could build himself, or to the geography he happened to be born in. Marx and others attempted to put this new development into the previous context but they had no way of anticipating how rapidly things were still going to change further.

As scarcity began to be less of an overriding concern, we had the luxury to relieve certain groups of people from labor. The idea of the elderly "retiring" became a concept beyond one's family simply looking after you. Child labor was now viewed as repugnant. Leisure time for everyone became a norm when the 40-hour workweek was embraced. We're now at the cusp of something more profound.

Today, we are not yet at a mythical day when one person can provide the needs of all of humanity at the touch of a button. That person would simply own everything and the rest of us would survive at his discretion, at least under free-enterprise. But, it is true that, at least in the US and similar countries, we have moved in that direction, as our well-being no longer depends on every able-bodied adult working. A vast variety of middle class jobs have gone the way of the dodo bird - for example management roles are much fewer in the presence of enterprises like Walmart and Amazon.com which leverage the management they have much better - or in the financial world the same capitalist activities go on but are conducted by fewer and fewer people. It's almost surely better for society as a whole - it frees large numbers of people to do something better, although we have some trouble in saying exactly what. But it also results in "your services are no longer required" as well as a greater and greater concentration of wealth. Yet the system still makes it a moral imperative, "work, or you don't eat" - or at least, pure free marketers wish to make you feel guilty about accepting government assistance.

None of the economic theories being discussed in this election cycle really tackle how a moral society handles the concept of plenty, as opposed to scarcity. It's still too new to us as a species. Ultra-large corporations scare me just as much as Big Gubmint, and in this world everything of economic importance has become big. Meanwhile the dominant view of capitalism* in the US works basically only for the special case of a quaint Amish community (that's meant jokingly since the Amish have collectivist tendencies).

Arguments about minimum wage levels are unsolvable in this environment; I don't claim to have an answer. I'm convinced that pure market forces are not the answer. They can't be ignored either.

^{* For a good reminder of the difference between capitalism and free-enterprise, just watch a rerun of Shark Tank sometime.}

Brock Beauchamp · February 4, 2016

many words

Great post. In essence, we're moving toward a post-capitalistic age. Barring an apocalypse, it's almost inevitable. At some point in the relatively near future, we will have far more citizens than are needed to sustain the workforce because the workforce will be sustained by machines and small numbers of incredibly efficient humans (your idea of "plenty" over a former "scarcity"). We're already seeing the first signs of it with crude automation of basic tasks... That is only going to snowball in the coming decades and there's no stopping it. It doesn't matter if the minimum wage is $1/hour or $50/hour, the machines are coming. All one has to do is look at the (relatively good-natured) pissing contest between Google and Facebook over A.I. to see how quickly this is coming to a head.

Whether it will take 50 years to get there or 200, I do not know... But I do know that clinging on to ideas borne from the 19th century industrial age aren't going to fly. We need to look forward, not back.

That doesn't mean we throw everything out the window but it does mean we need to start closely examining which ideas will hold up in time and which ideas are no longer applicable to modern society.

Think about it this way: 40 years ago, the personal computer - for all intents and purposes - did not exist. Today, we can do most of our work from a 5" phone we carry in our pockets, right down to ordering damned near anything our hearts desire, paying for goods and services, and staying in touch with the world 24/7/365. Cars don't only drive themselves, they drive better than human beings. And these are basic consumer goods, not cutting-edge radical ideas just emerging out of skunk works around the world.

What will the world look like 40 years from now? The rate of technological advance is not slowing... If anything, we're only getting started.

To continue down this rabbit hole, think about the potential impact of automated semi trucks. According to a quick Google search, there are roughly 3.5m professional semi drivers in the US... That's one percent of the population. Not one percent of the workforce but one percent of the population of the country.

Alphabet/Google could probably build an automated truck tomorrow with the tech they have in-house. It wouldn't be the best driver in the world but it'd probably get by well enough. How far are we from putting those 3.5m people out of work? A decade? I'd argue two decades, tops.

And then what happens? Old capitalism ideas aren't going to solve the coming problems. Some of them will surely help but others will hinder our progress as a society. We shouldn't be so naive as to expect old practices to continue working as society continues to evolve at a rate never seen in the history of man.

Left to its own devices, pure capitalism would cause a worldwide revolution (the violent, ugly kind) in a matter of decades as 1% controls the money and power while the world is ravaged with an astronomically high unemployment rate followed by starvation, fall of governments, etc. because half the population is "simply no longer needed, thanks for your service".

USMCTwin · February 4, 2016

No one has ever told a church what they can do, other than multiple marriages. No one has told the Catholics they are discriminating against women, and must ordain them. this is a red herring.

As for the cake thing, that's tougher, isn't it? Where is the line? Can they deny seating a black person? I don't think so.....so why can they deny serving a homosexual couple.

Link to where someone denied seating a homosexual person? Also a red herring.

Brock Beauchamp · February 4, 2016

Link to where someone denied seating a homosexual person? Also a red herring.

That's not what he said.

DaveW · February 4, 2016

Link to where someone denied seating a homosexual person? Also a red herring.

The cake shop REFUSED to serve the homosexual couple, that is literally the same thing as denying them a seat at a restaurant.

USMCTwin · February 4, 2016

The cake shop REFUSED to serve the homosexual couple, that is literally the same thing as denying them a seat at a restaurant.

No. They actually had served them numerous times. What they refused is to bake a cake for a ceremony that they disagreed with. Totally different.

USMCTwin · February 4, 2016

That's not what he said.

Actually I quoted it.

Mike Sixel · February 4, 2016

Link to where someone denied seating a homosexual person? Also a red herring.

There were plenty of shops denying their services to homosexuals. Just like there are now with Muslims.....not at all a red herring.

Mike Sixel · February 4, 2016

No. They actually had served them numerous times. What they refused is to bake a cake for a ceremony that they disagreed with. Totally different.

Like I said, where is the line on denying your services? It is ok to deny making them food, but not sit them and serve them? Where is the line, that's actually what I asked in that post.....

USMCTwin · February 4, 2016

Like I said, where is the line on denying your services? It is ok to deny making them food, but not sit them and serve them? Where is the line, that's actually what I asked in that post.....

Should a homosexual baker be allowed to refuse making a cake that says "One True Marriage"? Should a black person be allowed to refuse making a cake for a KKK rally? Should starbucks be allowed to refuse catering to The Center for Medical Progress? Should Chick-fil-a be allowed to refuse catering to Planned Parenthood? Where do you draw the line?

Me personally I'm not okay with refusing to seat and serve someone, but I don't think I would want to be in a place that refused any of my business. I am okay with not providing services such as catering an event that you disagree with on moral grounds.

Willihammer · February 4, 2016

Dude seriously what on earth are you talking about.

Couple things: as a small business owner you shouldn't be paying ALL of your employees minimum wage anyways, ideally you are already paying your employees a somewhat LIVABLE wage to begin with.

If giving said minimum wage employees an extra $2.50 an hour (btw: I think if you raise the minimum wage to $10, it should go up to $8.50 for the first 9 months, $9.00 for the next 6 months, then $10, to give everyone plenty of time to adjust) is really enough to shut your business down, then good riddance.

If I had a family business that had been around 100+ years like in your bizarre hypothetical, I certainly would hope I was a good enough businessman to figure out to run the business with an additional $100 a week expense on a full time minimum wage employee. Perhaps I would figure out a way to sell $100 more a week in goods by either: 1. Selling more. 2. Raising prices a bit. 3. Cutting back in needless expenses.

It happens all the time, you act like every small business in the world is going to fail because the minimum wage would go up a couple bucks in this scenario. That holds about as much water as your "Trump Supporters are all democrats" nonsense.

It wouldn't put everyone out of business, but it would cost jobs and hours. You and others need to acknowledge that as a tradeoff before we can start weighing the costs/benefits.

The conversation has been very one-sided so far. "How can ANYONE live on $7.25 an hour, that's outrageous! Raise the min. wage to (pulls number out of ass) - $11!"

Mike Sixel · February 4, 2016

It wouldn't put everyone out of business, but it would cost jobs and hours. You and others need to acknowledge that as a tradeoff before we can start weighing the costs/benefits.

The conversation has been very one-sided so far. "How can ANYONE live on $7.25 an hour, that's outrageous! Raise the min. wage to (pulls number out of ass) - $11!"

You were the one asking us for a number.......

btw, if jobs are growing Seattle, but slower, do we KNOW jobs are lost, or maybe is it just that they grow slower? Because that article you posted said they were growing slower.....

Willihammer · February 4, 2016

"^{Ashbury's long post.}

Good post. Its worthwhile to step back and look at things in a historical context. You are wrong about one important thing: the middle class. As capitalism has gone global, poverty rates are at their lowest. The middle class Is stagnant here (where the baseline was highest to begin with), but its growing in in China and other developing countries.

Re: the challenge of coping with plenty, I think a lot of people including myself believe that's something each person has to grapple with, and not something a higher power should decide for them (including "the collective"). Lost too often in the current conversation is all the philanthropy and good that some (definitely not all) in the 1% are doing.

DaveW · February 4, 2016

The conversation has been very one-sided so far. "How can ANYONE live on $7.25 an hour, that's outrageous! Raise the min. wage to (pulls number out of ass) - $11!"

Cool it with the tone. If you actually re-read what I have said a couple times: I think there should be a $10 national minimum wage, and from there, cities and states can adjust their cost of living (i.e. LA, Seattle, Chicago, NYC, SF should be $15, duluth, etc should be $10 and MSP/Milwaukee should be somewhere int he middle) $10 an hour at least makes someone $400 a week (still, barely anything) but at least a couple paychecks should be able to afford someone rent/basic food in several parts of the country. Then ideally those same people can save even a tiny bit for mid to long term savings as well. That extra $100-$120 a week for people will make a big difference for them IMO (meanwhile it shouldn't effect the businesses much at all) By the way, nobody is saying definitely WHAT the number should exactly be, just that it should be a bit higher.

Yes, a couple jobs and hours might be sacrificed in the near term, but eventually the market will correct itself (bad businesses will go out of business) and better businesses will figure out how to run a better business.

DaveW · February 4, 2016

Should a homosexual baker be allowed to refuse making a cake that says "One True Marriage"? Should a black person be allowed to refuse making a cake for a KKK rally?

So a gay couple wanting a wedding cake leads us to a hate group wanting a KKK cake? Sweet slippery slope fallacy, bud. So gay marriage messages are the same thing as hate speech messages in your comparison? Does. Not. Compute.

Also I'd wager that 99% of KKK members wouldn't have the balls to approach a black baker and request such a thing anyways (unless they were in their hoods/garb) and surrounded by 30 of their knucklehead buddies.

Willihammer · February 4, 2016

Yes, a couple jobs and hours might be sacrificed in the near term, but eventually the market will correct itself (bad businesses will go out of business) and better businesses will figure out how to run a better business.

No, they will be lost permanently. Just like there is a permanent variance between unemployment and participation rates between China and the United States, and another permanent gap between the US and Europe. Raising the federal min. wage would push the US towards a higher, permanent unemployment rate.

Mike Sixel · February 4, 2016

Good post. Its worthwhile to step back and look at things in a historical context. You are wrong about one important thing: the middle class. As capitalism has gone global, poverty rates are at their lowest. The middle class Is stagnant here (where the baseline was highest to begin with), but its growing in in China and other developing countries.

Re: the challenge of coping with plenty, I think a lot of people including myself believe that's something each person has to grapple with, and not something a higher power should decide for them (including "the collective"). Lost too often in the current conversation is all the philanthropy and good that some (definitely not all) in the 1% are doing.

But the higher power gets to choose that we only eat if we work?

USMCTwin · February 4, 2016

So a gay couple wanting a wedding cake leads us to a hate group wanting a KKK cake? Sweet slippery slope fallacy, bud. So gay marriage messages are the same thing as hate speech messages in your comparison? Does. Not. Compute.

Also I'd wager that 99% of KKK members wouldn't have the balls to approach a black baker and request such a thing anyways (unless they were in their hoods/garb) and surrounded by 30 of their knucklehead buddies.

I almost left that example out because I figured someone would pick it up and run with it. Should have known better. Noticed you conveniently ignored all other parts of the arguments and questions. Speaking of red herrings.

Mike Sixel · February 4, 2016

I almost left that example out because I figured someone would pick it up and run with it. Should have known better. Noticed you conveniently ignored all other parts of the arguments and questions. Speaking of red herrings.

One of the great logical fallacies in the world is telling the person asking the question, they have to answer it first. We are saying there should be laws* against discrimination. You are saying it is ok to discriminate in what services you offer sometimes......so I asked, where is the line.

*even our founding fathers thought there should be laws......even if all laws are evil somehow.

Willihammer · February 4, 2016

But the higher power gets to choose that we only eat if we work?

To tweak a phrase from Winston Churchill, Capitalism is the worst form of economics, except all the others that have been tried.

USMCTwin · February 4, 2016

One of the great logical fallacies in the world is telling the person asking the question, they have to answer it first. We are saying there should be laws* against discrimination. You are saying it is ok to discriminate in what services you offer sometimes......so I asked, where is the line.

*even our founding fathers thought there should be laws......even if all laws are evil somehow.

I told you mine. Waiting on yours. Specifically should a homosexual baker be allowed to refuse service to a couple wanting a cake that says "One True Marriage"?

biggentleben · February 4, 2016

In this country, if you advertise a service, you have to be willing to provide it to anyone who request the service and is willing to pay the price you request. With catering, it is best to un-tie the catering from the actual bakery as a separate entity where you advertise specifically to the groups you are willing to serve. If you don't specify a certain group that you are selling your services to in your business model, you need to be willing to serve all, so yes, the homosexual baker would need to bake a cake for Westboro that says "God Hates Fags" if the bakery hasn't explicitly stated that it will not work with someone who is anti-homosexual. That's the basics on the whole issue. There really shouldn't be a slippery slope on either side, just some paperwork and intentional advertising. That intentional advertising very well may cost them business, but that's what would legally protect them.

Mike Sixel · February 4, 2016

I told you mine. Waiting on yours. Specifically should a homosexual baker be allowed to refuse service to a couple wanting a cake that says "One True Marriage"?

No. Religion is a protected right in this country.