ScarecrowES, on 08 June 2016 - 04:08 PM, said:
It needs to be noted here that industrial jobs, of the type around which the National Industrial Recovery Act was designed, are in no way minimum wage jobs. Just as it is today, those were real jobs for grown-ups. You weren't expected to earn a living wage mowing lawns and flinging newspapers. Nor would you have expected to earn a living wage pumping gas. Incidentally, those were not really considered jobs for grown-ups even in the time of Roosevelt, unless you actually also owned the business.
Today, the same types of jobs the NIRA concerned itself around do tend to pay $15 or more starting wages, and have career paths to well above $30. Skilled labor in the same industries can expect to make significantly more. Nowhere near the level of flipping burgers.
Well, I'm sure when you get out of whatever California hippy school you're in and put down the bong, you can join the real world and see how it really is. Go into the foreman's office in any factory in American and demand a $7 raise because some kid you know flipping burgers down the street now makes as much money as you, even though it's a much easier job. Know what he's going to say? That you're welcome to go and flip burgers then, because you're not getting squat just because someone else did. You don't work for McDonalds, but there's the door, if you want it.
The world doesn't work like that... your employer isn't forced to increase your wages just because someone else's employer increased theirs. The fact that someone else's status quo has changed doesn't mean diddly for YOUR "bargaining position."
Convenient stereotypes, but not a pot smoker, not from Cali, and I've been in the workforce for 12 years. I've worked jobs that require a Bachelor's degree and have a future, and I've worked jobs that require a body (brain optional) and might not be there tomorrow; and I've found that while there are differing learning curves, all require at least some training. After a certain point, turnover--when not built into the business model--becomes more burdensome than a wage increase.
Coincidentally, I'm wrapping up an accounting rotation at work and am being put on an HR rotation, and at my first HR meeting they announced that we are doing just this. That is, they are doing a retention salary increase for our blue-collar and "classified" (ie, semi-skilled) positions to bring it to on par with other local businesses. Blanket. Departments can deny the increase only if there are long-term documented performance deficits or if the increase would put them in the red. This includes some skilled workers like maintenance, but also our janitors and cafeteria workers. Because even though anybody can push a broom, it takes a while to learn the hallways and the domestic politics.
And both of the above examples require only basic labor market forces. If workers organize (like, say, fast food workers did), then they have more leverage and can demand higher wages too.
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Economics 101.
Here's some more wisdom... stop giving people at the top more money, expecting them to have it "trickle down" to the little guy. People at the top didn't get there by freely giving away their own money, and aren't going to start just because you give them more.
Companies that learn to squeeze more productivity from fewer employees when economic times are hard aren't going to hire more employees or pay them better when times are booming. Hence why we're in a better economy than we were in around the time of the first minor recession of the early 2000's, but we still haven't created as many jobs as there were before that recession hit. Better economy on fewer jobs.
In this we are agreed. Though I find terms like "higher GDP" and "higher stock index" to be more precise than "better economy," because there are many in the US who would not say it is better for them.
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When workers have more money to spend, the cost of goods and services goes up. It's called inflation. You can throw extra money at the lowest class, but the economy will be sure to push them right at the bottom again, because you haven't fundementally solved their problem. You've only given them a temporary boost to their bank account... one the markets will soon rectify... so sayeth history.
That's...not how inflation works. At least, it works like that but only in a closed economy. Take San Francisco housing prices. There is a limited supply of land. Salaries increase. Higher demand, static supply: price inflation.
But in a consumer economy where supplies are more liquid more demand doesn't necessarily mean higher prices. It might result in a slow overall increase in prices, but prices won't inflate to 200% to match the wage increases. As workers have the economic ability to buy higher quality, they eschew lower quality, whose price goes down. After a certain point, they might start buying cheap for savings, after which the low quality goods go up in price, the higher ones come down a bit due to lower demand, until the gap is once again slight enough that consumers are willing to shell out more for quality.
National inflation rates are also heavily influenced by personal and corporate debt, issuance of treasury bonds, and printing of money.
Also inflation has been considered a boon to the lower classes as they tend to have consumer (credit card, car, and mortgage) debt; as they pay down their debt the interest rate becomes less burdensome because the principal is lower than the new, inflated market value. Conversely the creditor stands to lose from inflation because of the risk that his interest rate doesn't beat the rate of inflation (one among many reasons that interest payments are always frontloaded in debt repayment plans). Not sure if I 100% agree with this argument but it is out there.
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