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[Brakke]

Looks like a little bit of Friedman slipped in... I know those college business classes and economics courses spew that shit, but really those neoliberal policies are exactly why the economy took a big, long, dirty shit.

Economists don't even really have a consensus on why the Great Depression happened. There are easily hundreds of Ph.D. theses on the subject. Hard to see how you have this one figured out so absolutely.

I think his point is that giving cash directly to the poor is more efficient, since welfare payments are means-tested. The minimum wage is not. But I agree that the political realities make the minimum wage a much easier sell.

Sure the minimum wage is means tested: it's tested by your means to get and hold a job. But your point is sound.

 

[Manarola]

Few are directly affected, but most workers are in fact affected. Increasing the minimum wage should put upward pressure on most other wages.

You might see pressure on wages closely above the minimum wage, but not necessarily everyone else. Unless you are arguing that raising the minimum wage indirectly puts money into the economy - which is more of an empirical question, and even if its true I'm not sure how big the effect will be.

 

[devilhawk]

It went down 2 dollars in 1981? Hmm I wonder who would do such a thing. /sarcasm

Uh, no? It went up 25 cents. Inflation just outpaced it though.

 

[Klocker]

I'm a small business owner with a couple of part time employees and $7 is ridiculous.

people should be ashamed of themselves thinking it's ok to be paying people that

it should be $11. rising with inflation...the fact that these bastards couldn't even pass $10 disgusts me.

 

[Ol No Bones]

Good.

 

[speculawyer]

Well if you want to hear a weird annoying debate on minimum wage between a progressive and a far-out there libertarian.
http://majority.fm/2014/05/01/51-professor-walter-block-defends-libertarianism/

 

[Aylinato]

Economists don't even really have a consensus on why the Great Depression happened. There are easily hundreds of Ph.D. theses on the subject. Hard to see how you have this one figured out so absolutely.



Sure the minimum wage is means tested: it's tested by your means to get and hold a job. But your point is sound.

Unregulated market. No stop-gaps to prevent stock owners from hysteria causing a more exaggerating effects on the market. No guaranteed insurance for people(normal people) for banks who had invested all that money into the stock market. Years of in cutting of regulation that kept banking practices from praying on the middle class by Calvin Coolidge("champion of the free market") (should sound familiar to what both Clinton, Reagan, and GWBush did). Farmers had no subsidies for their crops so when hard times hit they wanted to keep production as high as possible, causing massive over farming which lead to the dust bowl because of the abuse on the environment. Factories closed down because banks were to afraid to make capital loans to keep them open, even if factories had a good return.


All sounds way too familiar for what we just went through.



Also we had no minimum wage so people couldn't afford to buy food.

 

[Zero Hero]

They gotta protect that 47% talking point.

 

[krae_man]

Uh, no? It went up 25 cents. Inflation just outpaced it though.

What he/meant to say was "it went down $2 between 1981 and 1990 adjusted for inflation. I wonder who would do such a thing"