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1 Indy GOP Refugee  Nov 22, 2014 4:41:12pm

Can you show me where the author can close a Page? We can unpublish but not close as far as I know. Sure it costs more to live in Manhattan and Los Angeles. That does not mean the discussion should be one sided. That’s an interesting concept to see get down dinged. Just another rather partisan moment.

2 goddamnedfrank  Nov 22, 2014 5:01:34pm

re: #1 Indy GOP Refugee

Can you show me where the author can close a Page? We can unpublish but not close as far as I know. Sure it costs more to live in Manhattan and Los Angeles. That does not mean the discussion should be one sided.

Load your page, it says “Comments are closed.” I presume you did that.

It’s undeniable that the increases in cost of living within cities like L.A. have vastly outpaced the rest of the country. The fact is that the buying power of the national minimum wage hasn’t even come close to keeping up. Your yourself characterized the Valley Hotel worker min wage increase as being the result of “unrestrained organized labor,” and tried to make it out as if those workers would now be paid far more than an inflation adjusted minimum wage would justify.

The problem with your argument of course is that those workers, by virtue of where they have to live, must deal with actual expenses that far outstrip both inflation and the national cost of living. In reality their new higher wage, which you clearly tried to characterize as controversial and much higher than the situation warrants, still doesn’t match the old 1968 national minimum wage when it is adjusted for both inflation and the current cost of living multiplier of the L.A. area over the national average.

3 Indy GOP Refugee  Nov 22, 2014 5:02:46pm

And as another example of crappy governance, this time at the state level see this new Page.

U.S. Lawmakers Shut Out Californians With Secret Water Deals LA Times
Read more at littlegreenfootballs.com

4 Indy GOP Refugee  Nov 22, 2014 5:12:24pm

re: #2 goddamnedfrank

Okay lets get this clear. I did not close out comments.

Now you are still missing my central point in pursuit of a related discussion. My central point is about the lopsided nature of the discussion in city council chambers.

Past that to address your point, well you are putting words in my mouth. You and some others i suspect. For a discussion about how the minimum wage should work well that would be another whole Page.

But for starters the problem is really the top heavy boomless recovery that is proclaimed as so wonderful… Has made the minimum wage suddenly the substitute for middle class wages. Because of a dearth of middle class waged jobs. That’s the amplifier here IMO. You can’t build the middle class or home ownership on the minimum wage.

For the record the downding is for so completely missing my point and putting words in my mouth to negative effect. Not cool.

5 lostlakehiker  Nov 22, 2014 5:29:03pm

It’s a tail-chasing errand to make minimum wages sufficient to support a family in any town or state.

Take it to the extreme: Aspen, Colorado. This is an insanely attractive place for outdoor recreation, and since it sits in an alpine valley, real estate that can be built on and served by roads and utilities is quite scarce. Prices are correspondingly high. Little cottages go for over a million, and houses that would count as middle class in Indiana are out of reach of decamillionaires.

What would the minimum wage have to be in Aspen to meet this “support” standard? No measly $50 an hour, that’s for sure. And if that wage were to become law, costs in Aspen would spiral yet higher and the minimum wage would have to be raised yet further.

What’s more, the federal government cannot fairly weigh the relative value of recreational opportunities, plain old money, decent housing, and a host of competing good things that money allows us to exchange. There has to be one minimum wage. That way, people in backwater dumps don’t get trapped there for life by wages that won’t let them get together even a deposit on an apartment in some mid-cost town. Or maybe they do, but not as thoroughly as would be the case with COL-pegged minimum wages.

6 The Vicious Fergushka  Nov 22, 2014 7:23:40pm

I believe comments for pages are automatically closed after one week. This is to prevent stalkers and trolls from attacking dead threads.

7 Indy GOP Refugee  Nov 23, 2014 7:40:35am

Well GDF you orchestrated a moment where I got heat for what I did not say and managed to take the attention off what I did say in a partisan display of misdirection. Well played.Got yourself all worked up over an old Page and blamed me for closing you out. Wrong and wrong.

8 goddamnedfrank  Nov 23, 2014 12:41:24pm

re: #7 Indy GOP Refugee

Nope, you said it. You were upset that nobody, not even the two council members who voted against it, spoke up against the minimum wage ordinance. You characterized that as “unrestrained organized labor” for a reason. You pointed out that the new wage exceeds the 1968 wage adjusted for inflation again for a reason. You left out both the local cost of living and the increase in worker productivity for a reason. It’s clear where you stand on this issue. You thought there should have been a debate because your clearly think there is a debate.

In any event this is exactly the kind of local economic control usually favored by conservatives. The idea that there needs to be only one minimum wage for the entire nation runs counter to the usual train of anti-federalist thought. I find it difficult to believe this sentiment is at all genuine, and hasn’t simply been crafted to suit the immediate need to opposing this specific action.

That’s why the attempt to shift the focus to the lack of middle class job growth and the impossibility of home ownership on a minimum wage job. It’s why LLH is quick with the notion that minimum wage should be the same everywhere and why you support that inane bullshit. Neither of you ever as how the person in the poor backwater is supposed to support themselves on minimum wage job experience after saving enough to move to the more expensive locale. Both notions help shift the focus away from the real struggles people who do work minimum wage jobs face every day. Instead you pitt the ephemeral notion of upwards class mobility against helping minimum wage workers immediately.

That’s why people gave you heat, because the entire line of argument is deeply detached from poor people’s quotidian reality, which is messed up.

9 goddamnedfrank  Nov 23, 2014 1:01:36pm
The minimum wage should have reached $21.72 an hour in 2012 if it kept up with increases in worker productivity, according to a March study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. While advancements in technology have increased the amount of goods and services that can be produced in a set amount of time, wages have remained relatively flat, the study points out.

The real question society faces is who benefits from technological progress. Why are we making business, industry, farming more efficient if most people don’t see any real benefits outside of maybe improved entertainment options.

I can see an argument that some of those increases in productivity came from investments in capital infrastructure committed by the wealthy, so they should see some benefit in order to invest further in the future. What I can’t abide is the current state of play where they take the vast majority if not all of the gains and leave the poorest workers with less and less buying power at the end of the week.

As it happens the average between a straight inflation adjusted min wage of $10.90 and a worker productivity adjusted wage of $21.72 would be $16.31. So if one is disinclined to adjust for local cost of living they don’t even have to. With this method we can arrive at an equitable minimum wage that still exceeds the one L.A. approved for hotel workers.

So yeah, I have a hard time seeing why the lack of debate at the council hearing indicated any kind of a problem, or how this can be characterized as “unrestrained organized labor.” The issue seems clear cut. In fact the only controversial things I can see is that the wage increase didn’t apply to all workers except possibly those like waiters who can supplement their incomes with tips, and that anybody voted against it at all.

10 goddamnedfrank  Nov 23, 2014 1:32:04pm

I need more edit time. Second paragraph in #8 should be the third. Also here’s the link for the quote in #9.

11 Indy GOP Refugee  Nov 23, 2014 3:20:02pm

The straw man here is burdening a call for a legitimate set of checks and balances with all the sins real or imagined or just temporary in the economy. It’s bullshit to run a government in a deliberately imbalanced way. That;s why the GOP Senate thing matters. And now I take heat over what you said I advocated in the original Page. Not what i actually advocated in that Page

Another straw man productivity. The minimum wage has never been tied to productivity. Not even inflation. Sometimes productivity falls, you want the wage to fall then? Or is this a one way connection?

You never saw me object to the recent increase Jerry brown supported. Nor did you ever see me support a removal of the minimum wage. You might be making some wrong assumptions about what i do advocate.

And for all the wonderful arguments that go for more money for the underemployed and the poor… The minimum wage is still not really the best solution. It’s poor to middle class upward mobility and stability in the job market at and above minimum wage. That’s what turns poverty around en masse. it’s been so long since that last real employment boom everyone left of center seems to forget how great that is. That’s what we need and that’s where the administration and the congress and the corporate world itself has failed us all. Miserably. where is the freaking boom? Wall street. Thanks for nothing.

No I’m not there to buy in so wholeheartedly with anyone as to advocate a complete imbalance at the policy level. Not the left, the GOP, the Dems, not the libertarians.

Show me where such an imbalance has worked out well more than short term if you can. Because taking this back around to what I really said, actually objected to might just matter in the end.

Oh and be sure to take in Lumberheads page about overtime. It’s illustrative of mobility and where that comes from.

12 goddamnedfrank  Nov 23, 2014 4:58:03pm

re: #11 Indy GOP Refugee

The straw man here is burdening a call for a legitimate set of checks and balances with all the sins real or imagined or just temporary in the economy.

That’s not a straw man. You clearly think there should have been more of a debate, I haven’t mischaracterized that. I provided counter points, and an argument agains the notion that a debate on this issue has two equally legitimate sides. It doesn’t. I don’t think that debate for its own sake is necessarily valuable, or that the two council members who voted against the ordinance but chose not to speak on its behalf robbed the people they represent of any meaningful checks or balances.

It’s bullshit to run a government in a deliberately imbalanced way.

This presupposes that there’s a legitimate or persuasive argument those who opposed the ordinance could have made. However they obviously felt it wasn’t in their interests to try and make it.

That;s why the GOP Senate thing matters. And now I take heat over what you said I advocated in the original Page. Not what i actually advocated in that Page

I simply disagree that nobody speaking against the ordinance robbed society of a valuable point of view. My opinion is that the arguments against increasing the minimum wage are intrinsically weak, for the reasons I’ve listed.

Another straw man productivity.

Again, that’s not a straw man. That was a counterpoint. A straw man would be presenting something as an argument you made, that’s not what happened. I specifically pointed out that you did not bring up worker productivity, and focused on inflation alone. Hence a counterpoint, not a straw man.

The minimum wage has never been tied to productivity. Not even inflation. Sometimes productivity falls, you want the wage to fall then? Or is this a one way connection?

The overall trend line in worker productivity has been one of near non-stop increase, and wages did in fact track very closely to productivity until the early seventies.

Also you haven’t actually presented any kind of principled argument for why there shouldn’t be a correlation between productivity and the labor of minimum wage workers. Clearly there’s been a disconnect over the last forty years or so, but there’s no reason why this should be the case, especially considering the almost constant increase in productivity over that time. Also, workers at every level already risk losing their jobs during economic downturns, so why shouldn’t they benefit from the dramatic increase in profits their labor has generated in the last several decades?

You never saw me object to the recent increase Jerry brown supported. Nor did you ever see me support a removal of the minimum wage. You might be making some wrong assumptions about what i do advocate.

I get it, you’re taking a principled stand about the lack of debate on the issue. Hence the “unrestrained organized labor” comment and insistence so far that the minimum wage should be tied to inflation but not productivity or cost of living. Maybe others and myself are drawing the wrong inferences here, but it’s objectively pretty easy I think to understand why they’re being draw.

And for all the wonderful arguments that go for more money for the underemployed and the poor… The minimum wage is still not really the best solution.

Okay, it’s one tool at our disposal right now. One that addresses the bottom line of the poorest workers in our society.

It’s poor to middle class upward mobility and stability in the job market at and above minimum wage. That’s what turns poverty around en masse.

I don’t really see how this is relevant, unless we’re pitting minimum wage workers against the notion of upward mobility. There’s no reason that one must come at the expense of the other. We can’t work on both independently.

it’s been so long since that last real employment boom everyone left of center seems to forget how great that is.

Seems like everyone right of center is ignoring it too. I see no meaningful attempts on the right to increase educational funding, job training programs or to reverse the subsidies and incentives that drove corporate outsourcing. Instead I see nonstop advocacy for policies that increase corporate profits at the expense of the middle and lower classes.

That’s what we need and that’s where the administration and the congress and the corporate world itself has failed us all. Miserably. where is the freaking boom? Wall street. Thanks for nothing.

Okay, still don’t see how this has any real bearing on the minimum wage debate.

No I’m not there to buy in so wholeheartedly with anyone as to advocate a complete imbalance at the policy level. Not the left, the GOP, the Dems, not the libertarians.

Show me where such an imbalance has worked out well more than short term if you can. Because taking this back around to what I really said, actually objected to might just matter in the end.

I’m not sure how exactly these issues of imbalance and the lack of upwards mobility actually inform whatever debate over the minimum wage increases you think should have occurred. My gut feeling is that this is all false equivalence, both in the issues and in the idea that there was anything valuable the L.A. council could possibly have heard from the ordinances opponents. The idea of the debate being intrinsically valuable as an exercise in a functional democracy doesn’t persuade me if nobody was willing to make the argument in the real world.

Oh and be sure to take in Lumberheads page about overtime. It’s illustrative of mobility and where that comes from.

Okay.


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