by firestarter » Thu 03 Aug 2006, 10:46:12
Mogambo sez:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') read that the "movement" to increase the minimum-wage is heating up....But I will admit that people needing higher wages because prices are higher is a valid point, but that is not the issue, as sad a tale as it is. The real issue is why the prices are higher in the first place, making their erstwhile perfectly-satisfactory wages suddenly inadequate. So I casually ask the class the innocent rhetorical question, "Why do people need higher wages?"...Well, the place exploded in a simultaneous shout "Because things cost more, you stupid Mogambo moron (SMM)!" and then they all joined together to laugh at me!...The minimum-wage worker can't make ends meet now because things cost too much to be able to afford them. So (and here is where The Mogambo laughs and laughs and laughs (LALAL) at the sheer stupidly of mandating higher wages), businesses are now required, as a result of paying higher labor costs, to charge their customers higher prices to make up for it! Hahaha! Higher prices, caused by requiring higher wages, is the solution to higher prices? Hahahaha!...This is the genius of the electorate? Instead of stopping inflation by reining in the Federal Reserve, we are going to make the inflation situation worse by mandating higher wages? Hahahaha! What suicidal idiocy! It makes you wonder why anyone has any respect for democracy at all! Hahahahaha!
In this case I think the rise in the minimum wage will have a negligible impact on inflation in that even hamburger flippers are already compensated beyond the $7+ that the proposed increase calls for. Hell, ask your local undocumented worker, the next time he mows your lawn if he's chasing less than $7 an hour. You can rest assured he isn't.
In theory what Mogambo says about mandated wages and their inflationary effects is true only if existing wages are below the magical $7 an hour, which in most cases today they are not. What this $7 an hour wage mandate ultimately amounts too is political one-upsmanship for the Nov. election and not much more.