05-09-2015, 08:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-09-2015, 08:41 PM by RolloTheGreat.)
(05-09-2015, 07:13 PM)dmcowen674 Wrote: I've moved 17 times and lived in 9 states chasing a decent job.
You are living what I'm talking about.
When you want to get ahead, or even just stay even, you do what needs to be done.
(05-09-2015, 11:33 AM)gstanford Wrote: In any case, money does nobody any good locked away in rich peoples bank accounts.
Paying low-income earners more allows them to go out and spend more, which in turn stimulates the economy, which is good for rich people.
Here's the problem with this Gstanford:
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/05/012005.asp
What guys like you ("just pay people more money and they'll spend it and all will be great!") always forget is the causes of inflation.
Higher wages contribute to both cost push and demand pull inflation.
Cost of goods sold rises with higher wages. Only way that does not raise prices is if owners and stock holders agree to less profit. So how does this help the economy for them? "Yay workers get more money and we get less"?
Demand pull inflation occurs when workers earn more and spend it, so as they do, owners and stock holders raise prices due to increased demand from higher supply of money. Put simply, if you pay everyone $100K it isn't going to be worth what $100K is when most people don't make it. Not to mention if you start paying the mail room guys $35K what about the lower office folk with more skills that already make $35K? Shouldn't they make $50K now to maintain value based pay? OK so we pay them $50K, what about the people already making $50, they need more now too.
Point being, you can pay people more, but supply/demand pricing and inflation will make their higher wages buy the same as what they used to.
The preferable situation is to have the situation we have where everyone has shot at "the good life", because the only alternative is "great, we're all kind of limping along" and no one has much incentive to try because the odds of making it are even lower and when you do, you just get to pay for more burger flippers.