Willihammer
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Everything posted by Willihammer
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Sam Holbrook helped him out quite a bit IMO.
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Tip pooling is common practice in the restaurant industry. Employers use service tips to subsidize kitchen and other positions. So when the min. wage went up, my employer simply cut the wages of those other positions, and offset them by re-allocating the tip pool. Overall their payroll cost is unchanged, only now any employees who hustled for tips (like me) saw a net pay decrease. I can only speculate how many employees across the state experienced the same thing. Its frustrating to go over these grounds again. The US is a great country, but its not perfect. IMO there are smarter ways to improve the standard of living for lower and middle class people, namely by letting them keep more of their pay and providing low cost loans, food stamps, hot lunch assistance, etc, than propping up prices in the labor market. I know a tax cut would have helped me out more than this stupid min. wage hike.
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Poverty doesn't begin and end with the min. wage. At the end of the day, the population is a bell curve and there's always going to be a set of people at the bottom who are their own worst enemy when it comes to finding a well-paying job. We all know those people. As I said earlier, I work a min. wage + tips job for a small business. When the min. wage went up last Sunday, I took about a $0.40/hr pay cut, due to management shifting around our tips pool to offset the added cost. Again, unintended consequences.
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Because if you can't meet payroll then you're going to take that risk. Clearly that's the calculus they've made that draws people across the border. And if your competitor gains an edge in payroll then ... its an example of unintended consequences when you monkey with the markets. And being short-sighted.
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Owners don't dictate wages, the market does. Labor is a market too. You can buy from whomever you want, but most people are going to buy the cheapest thing they can, and those are going to be sold by companies who keep costs (including labor) at a minimum. If you prop up the wage the by law, prices on goods will go up accordingly. So instead of hitting the 1% in the pocket (which is frankly, a populist, petty and childish goal), you're going to just shift the costs onto other consumers, ie. the middle class. Then there is the possibility of exacerbating other problems like illegal immigration. Why hire a citizen at $15/hr when an illegal will do the job for $5?
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Couple more tonight! Accurate too.
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Fair enough. Wages after inflation for single parent households are at zero growth. There are tax incentives, FHA loans, FAFSA loans and assistance programs that enter the picture at that point and change the final picture though. I know you said that its preposterous anyone be paid so low they qualify for government assistance, I disagree. I can get behind measures like what Kab is suggesting that look at how to improve the real spending power of lower income people by piling on more tax breaks and taking a longer view on things, and less short-sighted, populist proposals like a min. wage hike.
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First of all, I never said America is fantastic, that's a bit of a strawman. I was refuting this persistent idea that its somehow analogous to absolutist France which is clearly is not. America has plenty of room to improve. Its still a lot better than most alternatives.
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Brock you keep citing facts and then arriving at non-sensical conclusions. 1% growth after accounting for inflation, yes? That's real growth! Could be better, but the point stands. And what do you want, more jobs or less jobs? It amazes me how the left moans about corporations on the one hand, then when a plant shuts down or leaves town, they moan they don't have jobs. Well, if you decide you don't want jobs, then by all means prop up wages artificially and increase tax expenses on companies. Those jobs will go away quickly enough!
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Just stopping here to refuel on their way to Canada I'm sure. BTW its not just Mexicans.
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There are two things at issue here. One is the real wage of single-parent households, which has grown. Alebeit 1%, but that is growth. Secondly is the absolute picture of additional jobs, which has raised income a further 29% amongst those households. Overall that is a big win.
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This is an extreme viewpoint, I'm not sure how to even respond. Comparing the situation of ordinary Americans in 2015 to that of ordinary French in 18th century absolutist France is a disservice to the French. Honestly, we have people breaking into the country illegally to enjoy the opportunities here. I don't know what more needs to be said than that, really.
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Well, I know GDP is lousy in Europe where labor policies in Greece and other countries are very liberal. I won't pretend those policies are the only cause of the problem, I'm sure its a lot more complicated than that though. In general its unwise to pay expense which can be deferred, esp. at low interest. Raise taxes on the rich or raising the min. wage are costs which would be payable immediately but over the long term hamper growth.
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Do you really think the situation of ordinary Americans in 2015 is analogous to the peasants in absolutist France in 1700s? If so, why?
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That does explain a lot of the rise in the top quintiles, less among the bottom ones. And again, these are new jobs. More people joining the workforce, which a rising min. wage will hamper. The better approach is to provide tax credits and low interests loans and the like to lower incomes people, costs which can be deferred by bonding and borrowing.
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What Happened To Oswaldo Arcia?
Willihammer replied to Nick Nelson's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
If his instagram feed is any indication, its not booze/women/lifestyle. Pretty much 90% of the photos are of his kids. I would guess nagging hip injury. Maybe a stubborness about being coached, or a failure of coaching at some level. -
Yeah, I hope Buxton isn't given a scholarship. He has done well in the minors but as far as I'm concerned is clearly the 2nd choice to Hicks right now and probably Arcia and Rosario too. He needs to show he can hit AAA first IMO.
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Are we looking at the same graph? Again I see 4 groups of winners, including the middle and bottom ones. You might even say that it supports the trickle down thinking that was the basis for those tax cuts. I continue to be mystified as to why the left is so damn obsessed with how much other people make. After those tax cuts for the rich, the standard of living has only gone up. Wages have gone up, prices have gone down. This still is one of the best places in the world for a plebian to live. Maybe THE best.
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Brock, come on. We're not a colony or a feudal country. There is upward mobility in a free economy. Ironically, so much of the left's agenda, including raising the min. wage, would chip away at the freedom of the economy. I don't think that's really the bottom of it though. I suspect, and I could be wrong, there is some guilt or self-loathing at the bottom of it. I'm in the bottom part of that graph and I certainly don't feel wronged or sorry for myself. I think plenty of other people would agree. But the people who seem to be staunchest proponents of liberal econonomic policies seem to be pretty well off. I'll continue listening about why inequality is so terrible. I will try to listen with an open mind.
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I see 4 groups of winners. That the top 1% gained more than the rest, what is so damned abonimable about that?
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The intention is to shift profits from owners to workers, right? Because inequality? That is not how min. wage hikes play out. The costs are borne by the middle class (through the "tax" of higher prices) or the lower classes whose jobs will get cut. Or in my case, I work in the restaurant industry and our tips are pooled, those tips have simply been shifted around to keep costs the same. (Actually since I hustle for tips more than my co-workers, my earnings have actually gone down since the min. wage hike. The owners of my company are simply slicing off a larger share of my tips to pay other workers). It will not be a transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor (which is a dumb goal to begin with). It will just be shifting around costs between the 99%.
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You're really chasing your tail with the minimum wage. The notion that corporations will keep the same number of employees, pay them all a higher wage, and not raise prices (thereby reducing the real wages) is the sort of naive liberal idea that has me wishing the GOP were a viable alternative. Corporations are never going to just shift profits to workers while owners and shareholders just eat the costs. And this is coming from someone who works a min. wage (2nd) job btw.
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Rosario is really growing on me. Today was a microcosm of the things he brings to the table and yet frustrate you at the same time. Aggressiveness on the bases. Basically stole home when Escobar got himself into a pickle. The throw beat him, predictably, but he evaded the tag through some kind of ninja breakdance slide and scored. Aggressiveness in the outfield. He charged a liner to his throw-hand side that he probably should have backed off and played on a hop, only to scoop the ball on a short hop and held the runner to a single. It was a ball that could have gone for an inside the parker had he missed that scoop. Risky plays but he's so athletic, they both paid off. Edit: Oh and gunning down what's his name with a strike from right field. Then he lashed a 97 mph fastball from a sidewinding lefthander off the guy's butt. He's supposed to strike out on that pitch. There's a lot to like about Rosario. If he can hold a 100 OPS+ while running and fielding as he does, that's going to be tough for anyone else to beat. If he could only take a walk now and then he would be a slam dunk starter IMO.
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I agree the focus should be on solutions. Hard to do, I imagine, when the Republican base wants to defund Planned Parenthood. An entity we can probably credit for preventing thousands of abortions.
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Welp you can stick a fork in Ben Carson's candidacy https://drjengunter.wordpress.com/2015/08/12/ben-carson-did-research-on-17-week-fetal-tissue/
