Individual perceptions

Rick wrote: Sorry I will never agree with you, oh well you won't ever agree with me. A deduction is not a giveaway and an expense is the opposite of a deduction. My point is that these big bad people hiring monsters are incentivized to invest and to hire and to innovate by being rewarded for those investment through a reasonable income tax and tax deductions that every business gets. As we are now so global, we have to compete with everybody else on the planet. That means in our own self interest, our businesses need to thrive in order for EVERYBODY to live better. You really think the poor will live better if the big businesses can only make what the government thinks they should make? You're about to see some job losses in our future due to the ACA and the extra costs to businesses. Businesses start making less, they start moving, and laying off, with less investing, and they stop risking as much capital into the economy.

No need to apologize. This country was founded on the principles of compromise and consensus building. That's the general thrust of what I post in The Courthouse. We may not ever agree on anything in total as you've stated. It won't be for lack of trying on my part. Whether or not we actually accomplish anything as a direct result of these discussions is something many have said will never happen. That being said, we can debate back and forth all day on the issue of semantics. I call it corporate welfare. You call it expenses and deductions. We're just coming at it from different perspectives.

Regarding the rest of this paragraph, I agree businesses need to thrive in order for EVERYBODY to live better (sounds kind of like "trickle down" economics to me). On the opposite side of that very same spectrum wouldn't it make even a modicum of sense to say that those at the so-called bottom of the economic ladder might also be better able to help those businesses to survive if they happened to have more disposable income to spend on those company's products? The government isn't the panacea. On that we do agree. But expecting companies at the very top to actually pay their employees a fair wage, instead of helping them go on the public assistance dole which ultimately costs you and me, isn't the answer either, in my opinion. Liberals have been accused, and probably rightly so, of wanting to re-distribute the wealth to those at the bottom of the income ladder. Conversely, can anyone justify the arguably obscene re-distribution of wealth to the top levels of corporate America in the form of CEO compensation, especially as regards the so-called "golden parachutes" they receive when either resigning, retiring, or getting their arses fired? Income inequality has demonstrably been proven to be a fact with the top 1% now controlling a disproportionate level of wealth than ever before while wages and earnings of the middle class and the bottom rungs of the ladder have either stagnated or fallen behind where they were back in the "good old days".

Rick wrote: That clown car in Washington needs to come up with a reasonable flat tax for all businesses that will actually attract foreign companies and keep ours here. And I wouldn't be opposed to only having deductions for hiring and It needs allow the trillion in off shore banks to come back at a very low rate... a small chunk of a huge pie is better than nothing, which is what we are getting now.

Not sure a flat tax is necessarily the only answer to this dilemma, but I agree, in principle with everything else.

Rick wrote: I know that all sounds insane to most liberals... I see this as my strongest disagreement with the left because I see all businesses big and small as job creators where as the left seems to think that government can create jobs. Well I guess they actually do... when they decide to give the real job creators more rewards than penalties for being successful.

Why do you think it sounds insane to most liberals? All businesses, big and small, ARE, in fact, job creators. As stated previously, the problem I see is when businesses, large or small, arguably take advantage of public assistance to enhance their own bottom lines. Businesses aren't the boogeyman. Government doesn't have to be the boogeyman. It's all in our individual perceptions, and in our willingness to work together to address the problems we've all identified in our own situations. I just tend to support a more "lenient", shall we say, bent toward the middle and working classes so they can also "enjoy" the fruits of what gainful employment may bring them by being able to live above a poverty level. That's all.

Rick wrote:

ZHawke wrote:

HEARTLESS wrote: I did, and researched all the names on About Us. Each one is listed as neo or new Keynesian economist (the economics of the Left). Like I said hardly a non-partisan research group.

Please provide a definition of Keynesian Economics as being economics of the Left. The definition I found says nothing about that whatsoever: www.businessdictionary.com/definition/Keynesian-economics.html

Come on now Z, are you really suggesting that the vast majority of Liberals in Congress don't bow to the throne of Paul Krugman, one of the biggest Keynesian liberal economists on the planet? There may not be a definition in a business dictionary that includes a political definition because economics is about numbers and how to increase them... it just so happens it fits better with leftist ideology.

That really isn't the issue, now, is it? The issue is a viable definition of both Keynesian economics and Neo-Liberal/Classical economics. You do have a penchant for deflection, don't you?

HEARTLESS wrote: ZH. you drink the Koolaid of liberal thought, I do not. Government isn't the solution to problems, but in most cases the cause.

I don't remember ever saying that government is the "solution to problems". That's your inference. I do not perceive government as such.

That being said, the overall purpose of government is something we could debate all day long into perpetuity without any reasonable conclusions to the issue.

Partisan? Non-partisan? All in the eye of the beholder......

equitablegrowth.org/research/exploding-w...ality-united-states/

especially the part that looks at possible remedies.

ZHawke wrote:

HEARTLESS wrote: So you don't believe in better wages for menial jobs?

Pretty twisted logic.

Here's another link supporting a raise in minimum wage: www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/2...sed-the-minimum-wage

You don’t help your argument by relying on biased articles like this, IMO. The statistical “analysis” there is pretty much garbage. If the article had been written by a 9th grader I might give them a “C” for effort. But I assume it was written by an adult and it just screams political hack. Let’s take a look…

The author looks at 13 states which increased the minimum wage around Jan, 2014. As the author mentions, only four of those states (Con, NJ, NY, RI) actually passed new legislation to increase the rate. The other nine states had automatic minimum wage increases based on inflation. Should they have even been included in his “analysis” since the minimum wage workers in those states had no net improvement in their standard of living? Also the author only looks at five months of unemployment data (Jan-May, 2014). Would raising the minimum wage have any effect that quickly? Unemployment tends to change very slowly. Don’t worry, I’m not just asking questions (though legitimate ones) and will soon give numbers.

The author’s main argument is that the 13 states had an unemployment improvement of 0.99% compared to the other 48 “states” (he includes DC) with no increase in minimum wage at 0.68% unemployment improvement. The data varies 2.95% to -.56% (3.51 range) so is 0.3% even significant? The author doesn’t address it.

The author does acknowledge that he hasn’t established causality, but he just brushes it off…

While this kind of simple exercise can't establish causality, it does provide evidence against theoretical negative employment effects of minimum-wage increases.

The problem is causality is very important. His data provides no evidence of anything unless he can at least give a strong verbal argument that an increase in the minimum wage will affect the unemployment rate in the positive direction in the next five months. And let’s be real, by far the main change in the unemployment rate over the last couple of years has been because we are slowly (very slowly) emerging from a major recession (since the author didn’t address causality, I won’t either). Maybe the minimum wage could have something to do with it, maybe not. We just don’t know from the article.

Now let’s look at some specific numbers. Using the author’s numbers (from the BLS as he states), the average state unemployment increase was 0.76% and the median was about 0.72%. Now, let’s look at the four states which passed new legislation to increase minimum wage and see how they did (the author didn’t provide all this info, but it was just four states so I looked up the rest).

For 2013, US inflation ran at 1.6% (I Googled it).

Connecticut increased their minimum wage by 5.5% but only saw unemployment raise by 0.11%.

New Jersey increased minimum wage 13.8% (highest in the country) but saw unemployment go worse by -0.56% (the worst in the country).

New York increased minimum wage 10.3% but unemployment only improved 0.54%

Rhode Island increased minimum wage 3.2% and saw an unemployment improvement of 1.28%.

So for the four states with the biggest increases in the minimum wage (all well above inflation), the average improvement in unemployment was only 0.34% which is less than half of the average and median unemployment increases for all states. And most significantly, New Jersey had the highest increase in minimum wage (13.8%) and the biggest decrease in unemployment (-0.56%) among all 51 “states” (including DC). Hey, Alabama has no state minimum wage and their unemployment increase was 0.76%! What does that "prove"?

So what did the largest minimum increases in the country accomplish in reducing unemployment for those states? Why didn’t the author mention any of that? If anything from the author’s article, I guess you have to conclude that it’s best to just increase the minimum wage with inflation only and don’t increase above inflation. But it’s still garbage.

In fact, I did my own “simple exercise”, using the author’s words. I took the author’s data and sorted it in alphabetical order by the name of the state. Then I selected the first 13 states (since he used 13) which were Alabama to Idaho. The average unemployment increase for those 13 “states” (again includes DC) was 0.98%. And the average unemployment increase for the other 38 states above Idaho was 0.68%.

WOW! Using an entirely different criteria I got almost the exact same result as the author did (he had 0.99/0.68%, but may be due to round-off). So I just “proved” it’s best to live in a state with an alphabetical name between Alabama and Idaho.

Garbage in, garbage out…


BTW, I could use the author’s five month unemployment data criteria with my own data to “prove” the Obama stimulus was a massive failure. The more we spent, the more unemployment went up. After we reached peak spending and spending was reduced, unemployment finally started to go down again (not just 5 months later but about 1.5 to 2 years after the peak which is even worse). But that’s another topic.

pineinthegrass wrote:

ZHawke wrote:

HEARTLESS wrote: So you don't believe in better wages for menial jobs?

Pretty twisted logic.

Here's another link supporting a raise in minimum wage: www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/2...sed-the-minimum-wage

You don’t help your argument by relying on biased articles like this, IMO. The statistical “analysis” there is pretty much garbage. If the article had been written by a 9th grader I might give them a “C” for effort. But I assume it was written by an adult and it just screams political hack. Let’s take a look…

The author looks at 13 states which increased the minimum wage around Jan, 2014. As the author mentions, only four of those states (Con, NJ, NY, RI) actually passed new legislation to increase the rate. The other nine states had automatic minimum wage increases based on inflation. Should they have even been included in his “analysis” since the minimum wage workers in those states had no net improvement in their standard of living? Also the author only looks at five months of unemployment data (Jan-May, 2014). Would raising the minimum wage have any effect that quickly? Unemployment tends to change very slowly. Don’t worry, I’m not just asking questions (though legitimate ones) and will soon give numbers.

The author’s main argument is that the 13 states had an unemployment improvement of 0.99% compared to the other 48 “states” (he includes DC) with no increase in minimum wage at 0.68% unemployment improvement. The data varies 2.95% to -.56% (3.51 range) so is 0.3% even significant? The author doesn’t address it.

The author does acknowledge that he hasn’t established causality, but he just brushes it off…

While this kind of simple exercise can't establish causality, it does provide evidence against theoretical negative employment effects of minimum-wage increases.

The problem is causality is very important. His data provides no evidence of anything unless he can at least give a strong verbal argument that an increase in the minimum wage will affect the unemployment rate in the positive direction in the next five months. And let’s be real, by far the main change in the unemployment rate over the last couple of years has been because we are slowly (very slowly) emerging from a major recession (since the author didn’t address causality, I won’t either). Maybe the minimum wage could have something to do with it, maybe not. We just don’t know from the article.

Now let’s look at some specific numbers. Using the author’s numbers (from the BLS as he states), the average state unemployment increase was 0.76% and the median was about 0.72%. Now, let’s look at the four states which passed new legislation to increase minimum wage and see how they did (the author didn’t provide all this info, but it was just four states so I looked up the rest).

For 2013, US inflation ran at 1.6% (I Googled it).

Connecticut increased their minimum wage by 5.5% but only saw unemployment raise by 0.11%.

New Jersey increased minimum wage 13.8% (highest in the country) but saw unemployment go worse by -0.56% (the worst in the country).

New York increased minimum wage 10.3% but unemployment only improved 0.54%

Rhode Island increased minimum wage 3.2% and saw an unemployment improvement of 1.28%.

So for the four states with the biggest increases in the minimum wage (all well above inflation), the average improvement in unemployment was only 0.34% which is less than half of the average and median unemployment increases for all states. And most significantly, New Jersey had the highest increase in minimum wage (13.8%) and the biggest decrease in unemployment (-0.56%) among all 51 “states” (including DC). Hey, Alabama has no state minimum wage and their unemployment increase was 0.76%! What does that "prove"?

So what did the largest minimum increases in the country accomplish in reducing unemployment for those states? Why didn’t the author mention any of that? If anything from the author’s article, I guess you have to conclude that it’s best to just increase the minimum wage with inflation only and don’t increase above inflation. But it’s still garbage.

In fact, I did my own “simple exercise”, using the author’s words. I took the author’s data and sorted it in alphabetical order by the name of the state. Then I selected the first 13 states (since he used 13) which were Alabama to Idaho. The average unemployment increase for those 13 “states” (again includes DC) was 0.98%. And the average unemployment increase for the other 38 states above Idaho was 0.68%.

WOW! Using an entirely different criteria I got almost the exact same result as the author did (he had 0.99/0.68%, but may be due to round-off). So I just “proved” it’s best to live in a state with an alphabetical name between Alabama and Idaho.

Garbage in, garbage out…


BTW, I could use the author’s five month unemployment data criteria with my own data to “prove” the Obama stimulus was a massive failure. The more we spent, the more unemployment went up. After we reached peak spending and spending was reduced, unemployment finally started to go down again (not just 5 months later but about 1.5 to 2 years after the peak which is even worse). But that’s another topic.

So, all of this to posit the minimum wage should not be increased? Please don't misunderstand me. I posted this link not as an article I "rely" upon. Rather, I posted it because it supports the idea - nothing more.

ZHawke wrote: So, all of this to posit the minimum wage should not be increased? Please don't misunderstand me. I posted this link not as an article I "rely" upon. Rather, I posted it because it supports the idea - nothing more.

Because it "supports the idea"? With that definition you can post any crap you want from the internet.

I ripped your posted article apart, and your response speaks volumes. And in a later post, you again supported the place you got that article from. Sure seems like you did rely on it.

Sure, I can say a whole lot more about the minimum wage, and I already did. But that's all I got from you, and with no details. So it's not worth my time anymore at this point.

So unless you can admit your posted article was garbage, or support it with details, then you are just a troll.

pineinthegrass wrote:

ZHawke wrote: So, all of this to posit the minimum wage should not be increased? Please don't misunderstand me. I posted this link not as an article I "rely" upon. Rather, I posted it because it supports the idea - nothing more.

Because it "supports the idea"? With that definition you can post any crap you want from the internet.

I ripped your posted article apart, and your response speaks volumes. And in a later post, you again supported the place you got that article from. Sure seems like you did rely on it.

Sure, I can say a whole lot more about the minimum wage, and I already did. But that's all I got from you, and with no details. So it's not worth my time anymore at this point.

So unless you can admit your posted article was garbage, or support it with details, then you are just a troll.

Thanks, but no thanks. I'll not go into the gutter with you.

The increase in jobs in these states is different in each state. There is no correlation between minimum wage and job growth.

HEARTLESS wrote: The increase in jobs in these states is different in each state. There is no correlation between minimum wage and job growth.

Maybe, maybe not. There are some who would debate that point from a perspective that with more disposable income to spend, those on minimum wage would put more back into the economy which, in turn, would place a higher demand on goods and services, which, in turn, would help businesses grow, which, in turn, would encourage them to expand their workforce. Pie in the sky? Not any more than "trickle down" economics when one thinks about it.

Edited to add: And the "disposable income" posit refers to income over and above what is needed to live on, no matter how small the amount.