Yeah, I know it's kind of beating a dead horse at this point, but I don't think I've ever seen an actual thread dedicated to this discussion on sep7.

In short, I'm against the minimum wage for various reasons that I could examine in deluge. Small businesses bearing the brunt of the damage, high costs of living, job losses etc etc. The main reason that I'm a big detractor of the minimum wage however, is that it takes away employee's bargaining power.

By artificially elevating the minimum wage, the labour market loses its ability to negotiate wages based on their skills and qualifications. For example, the fast food industry is notorious for compensating their workforce poorly, but there's a reason for that.

On average it doesn't take a whole lot of skill to lay meat patties on the grill, but by introducing the minimum wage, businesses are unable to discern between potential employees who have had previous experience in that field (and would be compensated more) than a person who has never worked in the fast food industry in their life. In other words, it would render people who are adept in the fast food industry unable to land a job with a wage correlated at market value, or make it significantly more difficult, based on their skill level.

Indeed, the Nordic countries are always used as the poster child for socialism and how successful socialist policies have become in Europe, but in reality, none of them have adopted a minimum wage system, and have instead, relied on the market to fix wage rates. The Scandinavian countries are in fact, some of the most capitalistic countries on Earth.

ThatGuyT does a great video on minimum wage and he posits his argument much more eloquently than mine.

I would like the minimum wage to raise in Greece since its well below the cost of life. Simply, a full-time job with a minimum wage isn't enough to pay a whole rent in most cases, let alone utilities. (Although, compared to the US, Greece is a state waiting for bankruptcy, and youth unemployment is still around 50%, without factoring in the people who are currently enlisted in the army for their military service)

Edit: Also those who are employed are either doing their practice, or are paid minimum wage and working full time or part-time, and most often they are bar, coffee-shop related jobs or even restaurants in tourist areas. Most of the people who work in stores as clerks and so forth are around their 30's and above. (It was a running joke some time ago that if you had a Master's degree in the UK? Then you will land a fitting cashier job at a chain store and be paid slightly higher than the minimum wage)

What's minimum wage in Greece right now?

I support a minimum wage because I don't trust companies to pay their employees a reasonable wage. It's in their best interests to pay employees as little as possible.

This, pretty much.

But on the other hand, the majority of employees make above minimum wage.

Still though.

Quote from: Not Comms Officer on April 07, 2015, 10:01:37 AM

But on the other hand, the majority of employees make above minimum wage.

And it's worth noting that this majority is 96% of the US workforce making more than the federal minimum wage.

That's because the federal minimum wage is pathetic. $7.50, I think? It hasn't increased since 2009. You could get paid $7.75/hr, qualify as "above minimum wage", but still be fucked because that's $16k before taxes.

It's in their best interests to pay employees as little as possible.

Which isn't true, since everybody selling their own labour would be on the minimum wage. . .

Quote from: Not Comms Officer on April 07, 2015, 10:21:25 AM

Hell, some friends of mine are renting small apartment for TWO THOUSAND dollars per month. That's 250 hours of working just to pay for apartment rent. Say nothing about food, electricity, transportation, etc.

If your apartment rent doubles a typical mortgage payment, it's time to get the fuck out of wherever you're living.

Depends entirely on where you're living. Even in the shittiest parts of Orange County, I'm looking at at least $1250/mo for a shitty studio apartment with bars on the windows and street parking only.

Quote from: Not Comms Officer on April 07, 2015, 10:21:25 AM

Hell, some friends of mine are renting small apartment for TWO THOUSAND dollars per month. That's 250 hours of working just to pay for apartment rent. Say nothing about food, electricity, transportation, etc.

If your apartment rent doubles a typical mortgage payment, it's time to get the fuck out of wherever you're living.

If you're renting, they average at around 2,500 dollars per month. For buying, it's between 800,000 and 1,200,000. And these are for average neighborhoods. I live in a good neighborhood, so my house cost around 1,500,000. Though the prices here have been exploding recently, so when my parents bought my house 20 years ago, it was around 300,000.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on April 07, 2015, 10:22:15 AM

Quote from: Mad Max on April 07, 2015, 09:59:58 AM

It's in their best interests to pay employees as little as possible.

Which isn't true, since everybody selling their own labour would be on the minimum wage. . .

Forgive my economic ignorance, but this sentence just doesn't make any sense to me. Selling their own labor?

Working for a wage. People who work via commission or some other payment method can obviously fall short of the mandated minimum wage.

But the point is that abolishing the minimum wage would only really affect the people at the very bottom who are currently working for the minimum wage, and even then not as badly as you think; wages are sticky, and incredibly difficult to cut. The solution to this, however, is to overhaul the welfare system along the lines of a guaranteed basic income for people earning nothing with a wage subsidy like the EITC for people earning below an acceptable amount.

That way, everybody's incentivised to work and nobody has to suffer from either exceptionally shitty wages or poverty traps.

But the San Francisco Bay Area is still #2 most expensive in the nation though.

Hue, you can thank SF's shitty rent controls for that.

I gave a blank vote. I figured at the time that Syriza wouldn't do anything, and that Samaras would set the country on fire and sell the ashes to Germany. Many people in my area voted Golden Dawn (roughly 30%) and then it was a disparity between New Democracy and Syriza. I also didn't feel like voiding my vote.

Quote from: Not Comms Officer on April 07, 2015, 10:33:56 AM

Did you vote for SYRIZA in the election last January?

I wonder what's gonna happen to Nea Dimokratia in future elections, since PASOK has practically been wiped from the electoral map after trading the position of running the government with ND for the past 40 years.

Quote from: ϟϟDASmlgREICHquickscopeϟϟ on April 07, 2015, 10:40:21 AM

Relevant question: when you people say that minimum wage should be a livable wage, do you mean I should be able to be fully employed at the minimum wage, own my own apartment, live by myself, and not have my income subsidized by welfare/ebt?

Own your own apartment? No. You should be able to pay rent somewhere.

That's what I meant...

Relevant question: when you people say that minimum wage should be a livable wage, do you mean I should be able to be fully employed at the minimum wage, own my own apartment, live by myself, and not have my income subsidized by welfare/ebt?

you should just be able to get by

if all that stuff is necessary for one to "get by", then yes
otherwise, not necessarily