instead of raising minimum wage, why can't we just....

[Specop 007]

Theres this little thing called "Cost of goods sold". At some point, even while still profitable, it simply isnt worth the risk to stay in business.

Now to some extent we already do this. As much as people love to piss and moan and cry about farm subsidies trust me, they would piss and moan and cry a HELL of a lot more if food was actually appropriately priced to unsubsidized production costs.

 

[infoiltrator]

Does not work that way.
Tobacco is subsidized, soybeans, milk, anyway, concepts, intent, and results are mixed.
Food Stamps, and other such programs, are intended to replace begging and keep people healthy.
Begging and poor health cost a lot.

 

[dabuddha]

Greed...ever heard of it?

This. I'd rather earn $1000/hr than $10/hr. That way I get all the bitches 😀

 

[shortylickens]

Theres this little thing called "Cost of goods sold". At some point, even while still profitable, it simply isnt worth the risk to stay in business.

Now to some extent we already do this. As much as people love to piss and moan and cry about farm subsidies trust me, they would piss and moan and cry a HELL of a lot more if food was actually appropriately priced to unsubsidized production costs.

well, since the comes from tax dollars, I think its yet another thing that punishes productive people and rewards unproductive.

 

[mmntech]

i would trade it all to live in the high quality, serene lifestyle that NZ has to offer.
no joke.

Grass is greener, etc., etc.

Also, when have price controls ever worked the way they were intended?

Yep, I hear a lot of Americans say the say thing about Canada. Forgetting that even though we have "free" healthcare and a higher minimum wage, we have a higher cost of living. Housing, fuel, taxes, food, booze, books, are all more expensive.

Food was a big sector of the economy where price controls have actually made things more expensive. Wheat and dairy being the two best examples. Farmers have quotas and aren't allowed to sell their excess produce on the open market. Only to the wheat or dairy board, which only takes the quota amount. It was meant to help farmers but only bogs them down in bureaucracy. They actually just eliminated the wheat board not too long ago. The Conservatives want to eliminate the dairy board as well. Cheese for example is artificially expensive compared to the US. They was actually a cheese smuggling ring in Niagara that was recently broken up. Once the board is gone, it means farmers will be allowed to produce more. Which will mean more craft cheeses, more income, and richer variety at lower prices. It's a good example of where price control hurts consumers, and doesn't necessary help the beneficiary.

 

[mikeford]

The purpose of increasing minimum wage is to reduce the size of the active workforce, not make any real or lasting change to incomes. Raising minimum wage removes most of the people who are either unable or unskilled enough to make a higher wage. Its a shift in demographics placing more into government dependency, and semi skilled people into jobs formerly held by those with lesser skills.

Seems a bit cruel to me that politicians force the low skilled out of jobs, but once dependent on the government they become reliable voters for those handing out the money.

 

[Miramonti]

Amazon.com already did that.

 

[phucheneh]

Amazon.com already did that.

But they're still profitable.

It's always seemed slightly ironic to me that it basically takes someone with a metric fuckton of money to make goods available at a lower cost. Joe Schmo can't exactly go start a business as any kind of retailer and sell things at a competitive rate.

...or, well...he could. If the huge business that sells things 1% over cost didn't exist...and then we'd have lots of small business owners, and there would be more money spread among the middle class to justify the higher price of goods.

...until someone pulled ahead in the market and procured the means to put everyone else out of business. The problem is that we're already well past that. The 'winners' were determined before I was born; although yes, there is the odd statistical anomaly where some poor person manages to accomplish something.

Capitalism: Not really any different from a caste system, really.

 

[Train]

Wanna know a good way to lower the price of food? Make more food.

Somewhere in the ballpark of 30-50% of all the food the US produces ends up in the garbage. Making more would just cause MORE to end up in the garbage.

Now to some extent we already do this. As much as people love to piss and moan and cry about farm subsidies trust me, they would piss and moan and cry a HELL of a lot more if food was actually appropriately priced to unsubsidized production costs.

I would guess that any price-lowering effect farm subsidies had are long gone.

 

[IEC]

If you want "low" prices go check out supermarkets in Argentina to see how well (lol) government price controls work.

 

[Red Squirrel]

How about redesign the tax system and how about the government stops wasting money just because it's not theirs. The tax system as is is ridiculous.

You earn money. 33% of that is gone to the government right off the bat. You buy something, 15% (or 13 or whatever it is now days) goes to the government. You live somewhere, a couple grand per year goes to the government there too (property taxes) Oh a cottage? Oh, that's taxed too.

Now lets go back a little bit, back to that something you bought, which you were taxed around 15% on. The store that sold it to you has to pay property taxes too, and has to pay taxes whenever they buy something, and whenever they make money. That business is there to make money, so it only makes sense to pass the cost's to you or it would go bankrupt. So not only are you paying your own taxes but you're paying the taxes of every business you deal with. Now that business had to get those items from a supplier. Guess what, that supplier probably has a warehouse... they pay taxes on that too. Those costs had to be passed to the business or that supplier would go out of business. That supplier gets the items from factories... yep, those factories pay all sorts of taxes too.

So at the end of the day, that $100 item you bought was probably 80% tax money. I'm not even getting into all the other stupid taxes like gas tax etc... There's just way too many taxes and there's multiple taxation on the same event (ex: a purchase).

There needs to be one master tax system, perhaps income tax, but it needs to be the only tax. The money would then be properly distributed at the various government levels (federal, provincial, municipal). Yeah, they'd have to raise income tax to like 50-60% if they went with that system, but it would actually end up costing us less in the long run. The system as is simply serves as a way to hide the fact that we pay a ridiculous amount of taxes because it's spread out so thin and lot of those taxes we don't pay directly, someone else did, and we pay them. Governments also need to be held accountable for how they spend the money.

Does a city really need to spend 5 million dollars to redesign their new logo? Why not make it a contest that cost's 5 bucks to get into, and any citizen can design one. Pick the nicest one, give them half the money as a prize, and the prestige of knowing their logo was selected. Done. There has to be at least one person in a given city, province, or country that can design a logo. There is no need to outsource that stuff.

Do you really need to get a consultant and a 5 year study to find out if you should put a traffic light somewhere? That traffic light cost less than what it cost to find out if you need it.

I could go on and on about dumb things the government does. The municipal is what we tend to see the most, but there is SO MUCH dirt behind the scenes at the provincial and federal level that we don't see, or we only see the tip of the ice burg. Heck, look at the healthcare.gov site. That has corruption written all over it, somebody sucked somebody's dick for that contract to go through. (heck, any CGI contract... I don't know how anyone could deal with that company if their goal is a properly working product).

 

[alcoholbob]

The problem is government spending is driving up the price of goods and services since it isn't financed by tax dollars but by borrowed money and money printed out of the thin air, so more money is chasing the same number of goods and services.

As a result the minimum wage today is worth less than the minimum wage we used to have in the 1960s, which adjusted for inflation would be worth a $15/hour minimum wage today. So the moral of the story is, government spending sucks, mkay?

The keynesians think governments should just keep borrowing money, printing money out of thin air, to "stimulate the economy' when all it does is just make our standard of living lower and drive up the nominal cost of goods and services. Besides I don't think a Homeland Security that rivals the U.S military, billions of hollow point bullets, a NSA data center that collects all the info on the internet while simultaneously violating building codes and environmental laws, and businesses being crushed by the regulations of the Patriot Act is really "stimulating the economy." I call that "waste and a growing bureaucracy." And I don't even want to get started on the trillion dollar Joint Strike Fighter that was supposed to be cheaper than the F-22...

 

[alcoholbob]

..lower the price of everything? it makes sense to lower price of goods so that everyone has a fair chance to afford basic necessitities. companies would sell more, while keeping salaries low and stable. sounds like a win/win to me and and i don't even have a Harvard economics degree. thought?s

Well, the Federal Reserve doesn't want lower prices, that's why it's printing money like crazy to prop up asset prices in Housing and the Stock Market. You see the current paradigm of Modern Economics is Lower Prices = Bad, Inflation = Good, therefore printing money like Zimbabwe is the way to go in the 21st Century.

Most Keynesians actually cite falling prices (a consequence of recessions) as a drain on the economy. It's almost as if their idea of a utopia is if every American had to spend 100% of their paycheck on food and utilities.

No matter that the most successful and growing parts of the economy (like tech) are defined by their falling prices (electronics getting cheaper every cycle for the performance you get). Nope, sound money = bad, derivatives and leverage = good. These are the insane asylum residents running our economy.

 

[alcoholbob]

The purpose of increasing minimum wage is to reduce the size of the active workforce, not make any real or lasting change to incomes. Raising minimum wage removes most of the people who are either unable or unskilled enough to make a higher wage. Its a shift in demographics placing more into government dependency, and semi skilled people into jobs formerly held by those with lesser skills.

Seems a bit cruel to me that politicians force the low skilled out of jobs, but once dependent on the government they become reliable voters for those handing out the money.

Exactly, raising the minimum wage is no different than Zimbabwe printing money while enforcing price fixing. What happens if you print money and enforce price fixing? Well all the goods go into the black market, and there's nothing on the store shelves.

In the same vein, increasing the minimum wage while printing money for Wall Street Financiers while starving Main Street for capital just means less people will be working and more will be on welfare. The employers can't afford it, so they'll just hire less people.

 

[alcoholbob]

But they're still profitable.

It's always seemed slightly ironic to me that it basically takes someone with a metric fuckton of money to make goods available at a lower cost. Joe Schmo can't exactly go start a business as any kind of retailer and sell things at a competitive rate.

...or, well...he could. If the huge business that sells things 1% over cost didn't exist...and then we'd have lots of small business owners, and there would be more money spread among the middle class to justify the higher price of goods.

...until someone pulled ahead in the market and procured the means to put everyone else out of business. The problem is that we're already well past that. The 'winners' were determined before I was born; although yes, there is the odd statistical anomaly where some poor person manages to accomplish something.

Capitalism: Not really any different from a caste system, really.

Part of the reason is huge businesses benefit from economies of scale, so yes they can sell at a lower rate than Joe Schmo.

However that's a pretty small part, because there's a huge disparity in salaries between big companies and small businesses. Where it's really made up is the fact that many big companies don't really pay any taxes, due to crony capitalism. It varies by market--some of them due to deductions (like GE), some of them due to keeping money offshore so it doesn't get taxed (like Apple), and some of them are simply not paying taxes they owe and the IRS doesn't care (true of many government subcontractors, some of them technically owe hundreds of millions or billions but since they are government contractors, the IRS does not crack down on them.

But small businesses get cracked down by the IRS if they don't pay at their share, just like the IRS cracks down on patriot groups and libertarians, but ignores violations by government contractors. Just like the SEC cracks down on small banks and brokerages, but let's the real criminals on Wall Street go scott-free. So ultimately the difference is Crony Capitalism.

Capitalism, free markets, is not a caste system. Crony Capitalism, which merely has Capitalism in its name, is really just a form of Fascism.

 

[SlitheryDee]

So you go to a place that sells stuff and you tell them "You need to start selling stuff cheaper so people can afford it. You know...for the economy 'n stuff".

They reply "We'd be glad to sell stuff cheaper, but if we do we won't be able to pay our employees or the manufacturers of the goods we sell as much. Go tell the employees to work for less and the manufacturers to sell us stuff cheaper and you've got a deal".

So you go to the manufacturers. They tell you that they also have many employees and suppliers of the raw materials necessary to make their goods who would have to take less for their work and materials before the company can lower prices.

On it goes until you've worked your way down to the first guy to swing an axe at the tree that eventually becomes the armrest of the lay-z-boy you see at the store you started at. You've gotten him and all the others like him to agree to a 20% lower paycheck by making every expense they have 20% cheaper, which means you went to every other business they deal with and did the same thing with all their employees. The lay-z-boy is now 20% cheaper than it started out, but somewhere along the line the entire country, including you, had to agree to make 20% less money for that to be possible. You've done an enormous amount legwork and no one is closer to affording anything. Nice job

 

[Miramonti]

But they're still profitable.

It's always seemed slightly ironic to me that it basically takes someone with a metric fuckton of money to make goods available at a lower cost. Joe Schmo can't exactly go start a business as any kind of retailer and sell things at a competitive rate.

...or, well...he could. If the huge business that sells things 1% over cost didn't exist...and then we'd have lots of small business owners, and there would be more money spread among the middle class to justify the higher price of goods.

...until someone pulled ahead in the market and procured the means to put everyone else out of business. The problem is that we're already well past that. The 'winners' were determined before I was born; although yes, there is the odd statistical anomaly where some poor person manages to accomplish something.

Capitalism: Not really any different from a caste system, really.

I think your summary is similar to a quitter's mentality, one that considers all the good ideas already thought of.

Economies change, and no question there is an economy of scale factor that creates disadvantages for many others to compete against. However, all the successful businesses clearly are not already 'taken.'

Can big retail easily be conquered? No, you can't just start up a superstore. But you can specialize in something and you can also offer services that online stores can't compete with.

There are many self-employed people here and people who have started businesses. Supply and demand is a major factor in capitalism, and there will always be opportunity to 'supply' as well as opportunities to create and affect demand.

No question our theory of capitalism is quite different than its application, and it's a fairly multi-raped system on many levels, quite shamefully to some degree imo. But considering it to be a 'caste' system is imo a follower's mindset and not a trailblazer's, or an opportunist's, or simply a creative mindset of one who's willing to develop an idea and run with it. Or simply take an idea and improve upon it, of one's own or within a current business structure created by another. Caste systems don't allow for this.

 

[Rumpltzer]

Communism has failed so many times already.


I say we try something new; revolutionary.

1. Gather up all the poor people.
2. Give them a choice:
a. death
b. banishment to China or Mexico or Canada or one of the other third-world countries
3. Repeat as necessary

 

[Miramonti]

Communism has failed so many times already.


I say we try something new; revolutionary.

1. Gather up all the poor people.
2. Give them a choice:
a. death
b. banishment to China or Mexico or Canada or one of the other third-world countries
3. Repeat as necessary

I'm all in favor of running with this one.

In fact it should be put to a national vote.

then

1. Gather up all the people who voted in favor
2. Give them a choice:
a. death
b. banishment to China or Mexico or Canada or one of the other third-world countries
3. Repeat as necessary

 

[OverVolt]

Somewhere in the ballpark of 30-50% of all the food the US produces ends up in the garbage. Making more would just cause MORE to end up in the garbage.

This is perfectly fine. I personally don't waste much food. Restaurants waste a ton of food. That pig farmer featured on dirty jobs took the wasted restaurant food from Las Vegas and fed it to his pigs. He got an offer of $60mil for his farm after being featured on the show. He turned it down though.

There isn't as much waste as you think IMO. Lots of unwanted food ends up in soup kitchens as well.

Eating at restaurants isn't really the same as putting food on your table from the store. Those people aren't wasting 50% of it I promise 😛

I drove by a fast food joint one night and they had 27 burgers at closing because they made too many. The manager flipped out, heard her screaming from inside at the drive thru window. Restaurants are the ones wasting most of the food.

 

[Train]

This is perfectly fine. I personally don't waste much food. Restaurants waste a ton of food. That pig farmer featured on dirty jobs took the wasted restaurant food from Las Vegas and fed it to his pigs. He got an offer of $60mil for his farm after being featured on the show. He turned it down though.

There isn't as much waste as you think IMO. Lots of unwanted food ends up in soup kitchens as well.

Eating at restaurants isn't really the same as putting food on your table from the store. Those people aren't wasting 50% of it I promise 😛

I drove by a fast food joint one night and they had 27 burgers at closing because they made too many. The manager flipped out, heard her screaming from inside at the drive thru window. Restaurants are the ones wasting most of the food.

Umm ok. I didn't just make up a number by the way. Coming up with something you saw on a single episode of a reality show, and something you once saw at a burger joint doesn't register as far as a nationwide statistic goes.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/22/40-of-u-s-food-wasted-report-says/