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I just got my 401(k) booklet at work. It came with a nifty workbook to help me determine how much money I'll need to save to retire comfortably. Since the women in my family tend to live into their 90s, I'll need to have 1.4 million in the bank at retirement.
If I die early in retirement, my family loses money they would have had if I'd been less prepared. (Interesting side note, Americans for a Fair Estate Tax says the threshold is 1.5 million in assets while the IRS says 1 mil. Go fig.) Even if we keep the Estate Tax, the amount needs to go up A LOT.
As for the tipping, most of the gals I worked with were white trash druggies I wouldn't have trusted to work for a flat wage. Let's be honest, food service isn't a popular field. It's usually either something you do part time or because you can't do better. I like that cash incentive to make a waitress be nice to me. I saw what they were like behind the counter.
As for the minimum wage in general, I don't like it being confused with a living wage. Minimum wage is supposed to be the bottom dollar employers can offer without forcing people into sweatshop wages. I don't think the sixteen year old flipping burgers needs to earn a living wage, and I don't want to pay enough for my burger to give it to him. There should probably be a seperate living wage applied to other jobs that we as a society think people ought to be able to survive on. I don't know that I like the idea of telling people they should be able to support a family working menial tasks. It feels wrong somehow.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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AR: 1) One thing people keep forgetting to mention about the inheritance tax. You don't get taxed on the whole amount, just the amount over the minimum. In other words, say you have your $1.4 Mil. in investments. Even at the IRS's number, that $1 mill is not taxed. The .4 is heavilly taxed, but not that original 1 mil.
That minimum is going up, which explains the confusion, but will drop back to 1 mil in a few years.
The pro/con of estate taxes can be divided as follows. Pro Estate taxes look at very rich kids who have and will do nothing to improve society, and wonder why they should get millions if not billions of tax free dollars just because they were lucky enough to have rich parents. Con Estate Tax people argue, I work hard for my money to support my family after I'm gone. How dare you take it away.
I agree that the minimums should be raised, but I disagree that it should be abolished. Some semblance of an even playing field should be the goal of our government in my opinion. Besides, how many Paris Hilton's can any society support?
As for tipping, is it sexist? Do the pretty girls and pretty boys earn more money because they flirt, flash, or seduce customers? Is that behavior we should condone with law?
I still argue--Tipping = Capitalism. Forced Tips, Auto-tipping, or dependence on social norms for determining tips are Socialist. No tipping, but governmental regulated minimum wages = Communism.
No BB, not Autocratic or Dictatorial. Those are political systems. Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism are economic systems. Communism tends to be Autocratic and Dictatorial since if a Government thinks it can and should control your income, it usually thinks it can and should control almost everything else.
Finally, the debate about minimum wage tends to fall on who is making that minimum wage. If its teenage kids at McDonalds, we don't mind that they get small amounts because they aren't supporting their families. If its working parents, we believe they need to make a living wage.
Ok.
Do we enact a law to force people to pay more for parents than for single kids under the age of 18?
How many parents or people over 18 will find jobs then?
So the question is, do we aim the minimum wage at the people we hope are most likely to use it, or at those we know are most likely to need more money?
There is a lot of talk that minimum wage hikes reduce jobs, but has anyone checked to see if increases in the minimum wage would increase jobs, since people in need would not be needing two or more jobs to pay thier bills?
Finally there is the idea that we don't need to increase the minimum wage for people working menial tasks, since such tasks somehow "feels wrong" for someone with a family.
This is despite the common conservative demand that if you are an unemployed family person you should take any job, no matter how demeaning, to earn money to pay for your family. (I am not against that attitude. I am only pointing out that this attitude flies in the face of the attitude that working menial jobs is wrong for someone supporting a family)
There has been no increase in the minimum wage for 15 years or so. That means Joe took a job in the mail room in 1991 at the same rate that Mary takes a job today. Every year both get the same raise as they move up the corporate ladder. By the time they reach managerial level they were making $10.00/hr. Yet what Joe could buy with that $10 is much more than what Mary is able to buy when she reaches that level. Its not just 4% less, which may be average for inflation. Its 4% yearly. If Joe is able to invest his discretionary income, in things like health care, education, etc, he will be much better off than Mary, who has less discretionary income since inflation ate away at her money.
Finally, AR, what doesn't seem right to me is the dismissing of teen labor's rights. You are suggesting that the Inheritance Tax needs to keep up with inflation--so that the children of Millionares can rest easier, but don't say much of anything about the minimum wage needing to keep up with inflation, so the children of the middle class, who don't inherit their spending money, but who actually work for it, can rest easier.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:I still argue--Tipping = Capitalism. Forced Tips, Auto-tipping, or dependence on social norms for determining tips are Socialist. No tipping, but governmental regulated minimum wages = Communism.
How do you feel about the way we buy cars and houses or used goods? Personally, I resent the whole adventure. I pay what's on the sticker, and if I can't afford what's on the sticker, then I can't afford the item. I think that haggling is distasteful to extent of immoral. How does that fit into your scheme?
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:I think that haggling is distasteful to extent of immoral.
I intensely dislike haggling when I'm dealing with a corporation (like buying a car), but I don't mind it when I'm dealing with a person (like buying somebody's used guitar or buying their house).
I certainly wouldn't call it immoral.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Do we enact a law to force people to pay more for parents than for single kids under the age of 18?
If we did, companies would discriminate against parents.
quote:I think that haggling is distasteful to extent of immoral.
Really? I see nothing morally wrong with the negotiating process. I want a car that is listed for 2,000 and I offer 1,000 initially and we finally settle on 1,500 how is that a bad thing. Sticker prices on cars are put extra high with the expectation of negotiations.
One thought I had is this: minimum wage hikes will most likely raise product prices in industries with lots of minimum wage workers. Like Grocery stores and Walmart. These product price increases will most adversely affect the poor - which are the very people we are trying to help. There are many people that are poor and are on fixed incomes, many of whom are barely able to get by because of low prices on food and other essentials. If Walmart is forced to pay people more, its products will inevitably go up in price hurting people on minimum wage workers and especially people on fixed incomes.
Posts: 89 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Really? I see nothing morally wrong with the negotiating process. I want a car that is listed for 2,000 and I offer 1,000 initially and we finally settle on 1,500 how is that a bad thing.
Besides the incentive to be dishonest, which isn't a big deal and I, generally, I don't like talking in terms of incentives.
What I don't like is the process seems to invite a sort of opportunism, which I think is unbecoming in public or private affairs. It's a sort of snatch and grab, take what you can ethics which I find monstrously gross.
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Dan, I didn't know that about the estate tax. It's not as bad as I thought it was.
As for the wages, I suppose I am a bit dismissive of the teens. They work a crap job for a few years and leave it for something better. Why do they need a wage that keeps up with inflation? And how could employers afford it?
If a teen is working part time to cover insurance and a full tank a week, he can do that easily. $100 for insurance and $40 a week in gas is $260. Divide by 80 hours, and he needs to make $3.25 an hour - not counting taxes.
He probably can't swing a car payment on minimum wage, and it may not be as good as what someone got 15 years ago, but it's not a slave wage. To my understanding, that's the point of the minimum wage.
I agree people should do what it takes to help their families, but I don't think a minimum living wage is it. How many people will never bother to do better for themselves if they can make ten bucks an hour with no experience and no effort? Where's the incentive?
But my own bias would be that my pay becomes worth less as minimum wage catches up to it. My bank job and 3% a year is all down the tubes because a bunch of bleeding hearts think I ought to pay more for everything so some high school drop out can make almost as much as me. Maybe your job at the paper is safe, but I work service. Nicer service (no one's asked me about my panties at the bank) but service with service pay none the less.
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He should've given her the money separately. At least then the gift tax wouldn't have kicked in.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I think minimum wage should absolutely be raised. It's awful to decide that because a group doesn't have power, it is okay to pay as little as possible. Inflation means that the price of the burger has gone up but the wage of the person making it has not. That difference in price is going to the owner of the business, so the owner is getting richer while the person who makes the burger is getting poorer.
I am NOT a communist (my family owns a business and I have heard of the terrors of making payroll), but that's very unfair.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Every job pays as little as possible -- if a company could pay less to get the amount of work they need done, done, they would. Since most job's salaries are not dropping, this implies that companies need to pay at least what they're paying to get the work they need done, done. This seems counterintuitive, but it does follow (in general; there are always exceptions).
What if we raise the minimum wage so it is larger than inflation? Now we're stealing from the businesses in order to transfer money to the workers. Also, there is no good measure of inflation as applied to any subset of workers (inflation is not the same for everybody).
BTW, taking the burger example, prices don't work like that. Companies don't look at inflation, say "oh, inflation was 5%, I need to increase the price of all my products 5%". Instead, the raw material (possibly including labor) a company uses increases in price, and the company adjusts their prices based on those adjustments, and the buying power of profits decreases so a company adjusts prices to achieve the same real profits. This tends to be about the same across the economy because prices are typically almost exactly marginal cost. When there's 5% inflation, a $1 burger doesn't automatically go up 5%, it goes up enough to compensate for the increased prices of the inputs, and by the nominal profit increase necessary to keep real profits the same, meaning the company isn't making anything more on the burger -- now, if the worker isn't making more wages, he or she might be making less, but the number of tasks where only minimum wage is earned is actually very small, and those wages not going up reflects the marginal value of having someone doing that job being less than the minimum wage. But inflation does not cause increased real profit for companies (this is practically definitional; inflation is the adjustment in prices that doesn't affect real value).
I agree that someone earning the current minimum wage does not in most places have enough money to properly support him or herself in society, and that a person should have enough such money. However, the minimum wage is a bad way to go about achieving this, for reasons I've outlined above and linked to articles on. The best argument is from one of the articles, and I'll go over it here.
Any minimum wage increase is a transfer directly from companies that employ minimum wage workers to minimum wage workers, resulting in companies having to pay individual workers more than the value that they produce (since jobs in general all pay the least they can), creating market inefficiencies -- specifically, a surplus of minimum wage labor, meaning a lot of people who want work don't get it, a lot of companies that would hire at a lower wage don't, and the products involving minimum wage inputs have higher than optimal prices. Generally speaking, the transfer to minimum wage workers is the goal -- the intent is to give them sufficient income to live what is considered a minimally decent life.
However, a minimum wage increase is a bad way to achieve that goal. The best way to achieve that goal is to spread the transfer out around the whole economy (that is, have a general tax, then provide the money from that tax to those making too little in wage income), and not make those businesses employing minimum wage workers comparatively inefficient to other businesses (as that causes even more inefficiency in the general economy than the general tax). The general tax is a way to achieve the desired decrease in poverty with a smaller increase in the inefficiency of the economy. This is especially true because many of the companies employing minimum wage workers are providing products and services to minimum wage workers, so a direct transfer has to be quite large to compensate for its counterproductive effects on the standard of living for people on low wages.
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