Sunday, June 29, 2014

No union would wait 5 years for $15 an hour (minimum wage)

I was shocked, going through salaries at Jobitorial and Glassdoor to find that most of the people I interact with at businesses I attend everyday are lucky to be making $400 a week. How is it possible for most of the American workers I deal with every day to live on such impossible to live on salaries? It’s like it’s one big Depression era workforce out there.
http://www.jobitorial.com/browse.php?Filter=A
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/AutoZone-Salaries-E610.htm

(Let’s get it straight: a true poverty line is about $45,000 for a family of three – if they have to pay for their own medical – which is about 40 percentile. Compute this from the minimum needs table (3-2) on p.44 of the 2001 book Raise the Floor – ignore the official federal guideline based on three times the price of an emergency diet; which some people still carelessly cite.)

This impossible American wage scale is some kind of emergency that cannot wait for five years for a couple of progressive locales to take five years to phase in a $15 minimum wage (and then five more for everybody else to sit around and wonder if they should phase it in). If a strong union were the active agent here it would not take five years to raise wages as long as in knew the money was there.

We’ve gotten over worrying about workers losing their jobs – let’s get over worrying about putting anybody out of business. Fortune magazine currently has an article explaining why Wal-Mart should not even lose stock share price if it voluntarily raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour (we should note w/o even other firms being forced to do the same, flooding Wal-Mart with newly flush customers).
http://fortune.com/2013/11/12/why-wal-mart-can-afford-to-give-its-workers-a-50-raise/

If the federal minimum wage jumped to $15 tomorrow, then, taxi fares would have to be raised a dollar a mile overnight all over the country. Otherwise all the terribly exploited foreign born drivers would jump ship overnight. Will the taxi business survive? The only difference will be an influx of new American born (including African American) drivers. Any progressive reason not to jump the fares right now? (Chicago fare almost 60 cents a mile below 1981 – adjusting for inflation; 50% per capita income increase since then.)

Currently 100,000 out of 200,000 (the latter my guesstimate) gang-age, minority Chicago males are in street gangs – wont work for Egyptian wages. That’s an emergency.

The ultimate social/political/cultural game change – the only possible economic and political rebalancing path – if of course legally mandated, centralized bargaining (ask James Riddle Hoffa).

Centralized bargaining seems the only labor market setup in history that — new theory here? — not exactly puts labor on the same bargaining power level in setting its pay as ownership; but more like puts labor on the same bargaining power level as ownership to set the price of the PRODUCTS with the CONSUMER.

In this setup the hidden hand — the ultimate arbiter of who gets what production — ends up being the wishes of the consumer (we are mostly all employees and consumers).

Imagine if early steam loom operators could have bargained — and not just with their employer but — with every employer at once. Not only would they have had a better life than the individual weavers who preceded them (who had had a good economic life) but they would have tested the max the consumer would pay for their product (with the alternate of cheap, what I call subsistence-plus labor, segregated from the consumer you never know how much consumers might have paid).

Instead, as we historically know, the hundred times more productive steam loom operators were reduced to feeding their families oat cakes three times a day because they could not afford wheat bread.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-English-Working-Class/dp/0394703227/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404222789&sr=8-1&keywords=history+of+the+english+working+class

PS. Forget the Koch brothers once we have the same number of lobbyists, the same aggregate amount of finance and 99% of the votes. It will be time to re-institute what Robert Kuttner calls financial repression, right down to confiscatory taxation — sold to a very eager to please Congress.
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It should be obvious to you ladies that legally mandated, centralized bargaining is the only way — in the world, in history — to go. Ladies are willing to talk about anything even if there is no immediate practical result — in any case ladies define practical as how the thing works (what “practical” means, no?).

No; not to gentleman.

Gentleman only want to talk — or THINK — about things they can practicably do something about. “Practical” to an — instinctively pack hunting, much more totally group oriented than he ever suspects — is defined by whether he may PRACTICABLY TALK about how the thing might work — gauged almost purely by what his hunting pack (of 300,000,000) is thinking already. Nothing more intellectually intimidating and mind freezing to a gentleman than a topic that is not currently topical.

All I can say is: Instinctive individual gatherers (and individual thinkers): rock your boys!
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Moan progressives moan.

I read everybody from Joseph Stiglitz to Nick Hanauer to David Kay Johnston, moaning about how the right monopolizes the national conversation with their silly big government and big deficit fobias. Whoa, Whoa, Whoaaa is us!

Progressives could completely dominate the national conversation tomorrow if they ever came up with true game changing issues — not phobias — that would capture everyone’s’ imaginations and make an opportunity to really educate the public to what is happening to them. The issues are of course as fast a jump as possible to the minimally survivable $15 an hour minimum wage (not the virtual/impossible $10 minimum of the present — see above) and the ultimate labor market AND political forum make over, legally mandated centralized bargaining.

YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO WIN (at first)! The scales will melt away from everybody’s eyes when you take the opportunity to teach them what they really need.

People don’t really sit around coffee shops and discuss what the deficit will be 40 years from now or whether big government is the problem — unless there is nothing else to distract them. And they don’t spend a lot of time discussing climate change or Wall Street re-regulation. Single payer would be great (win OR lose) but most people are covered and everyone was/is scared of Obamacare.

What else can I say? Individual gatherers: Rock your boys!

I was shocked, going through salaries at Jobitorial and Glassdoor to find that most of the people I interact with at businesses I attend everyday are lucky to be making $400 a week. How is it possible for most of the American workers I deal with every day to live on such impossible to live on salaries? It’s like it’s one big Depression era workforce out there. http://www.jobitorial.com/browse.php?Filter=A http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/AutoZone-Salaries-E610.htm
(Let’s get it straight: a true poverty line is about $45,000 for a family of three – if they have to pay for their own medical – which is about 40 percentile. Compute this from the minimum needs table (3-2) on p.44 of the 2001 book Raise the Floor – ignore the official federal guideline based on three times the price of an emergency diet; which some people still carelessly cite.)
This impossible American wage scale is some kind of emergency that cannot wait for five years for a couple of progressive locales to take five years to phase in a $15 minimum wage (and then five more for everybody else to sit around and wonder if they should phase it in). If a strong union were the active agent here it would not take five years to raise wages as long as in knew the money was there.
We’ve gotten over worrying about workers losing their jobs – let’s get over worrying about putting anybody out of business. Fortune magazine currently has an article explaining why Wal-Mart should not even lose stock share price if it voluntarily raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour (we should note w/o even other firms being forced to do the same, flooding Wal-Mart with newly flush customers). http://fortune.com/2013/11/12/why-wal-mart-can-afford-to-give-its-workers-a-50-raise/
If the federal minimum wage jumped to $15 tomorrow, then, taxi fares would have to be raised a dollar a mile overnight all over the country. Otherwise all the terribly exploited foreign born drivers would jump ship overnight. Will the taxi business survive? The only difference will be an influx of new American born (including African American) drivers. Any progressive reason not to jump the fares right now? (Chicago fare almost 60 cents a mile below 1981 – adjusting for inflation; 50% per capita income increase since then.)
Currently 100,000 out of 200,000 (the latter my guesstimate) gang-age, minority Chicago males are in street gangs – wont work for Egyptian wages. That’s an emergency.
The ultimate social/political/cultural game change – the only possible economic and political rebalancing path – if of course legally mandated, centralized bargaining (ask James Riddle Hoffa).
Centralized bargaining seems the only labor market setup in history that — new theory here? — not exactly puts labor on the same bargaining power level in setting its pay as ownership; but more like puts labor on the same bargaining power level as ownership to set the price of the PRODUCTS with the CONSUMER.
In this setup the hidden hand — the ultimate arbiter of who gets what production — ends up being the wishes of the consumer (we are mostly all employees and consumers).
Imagine if early steam loom operators could have bargained — and not just with their employer but — with every employer at once. Not only would they have had a better life than the individual weavers who preceded them (who had had a good economic life) but they would have tested the max the consumer would pay for their product (with the alternate of cheap, what I call subsistence-plus labor, segregated from the consumer you never know how much consumers might have paid).
Instead, as we historically know, the hundred times more productive steam loom operators were reduced to feeding their families oat cakes three times a day because they could not afford wheat bread. http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-English-Working-Class/dp/0394703227/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404222789&sr=8-1&keywords=history+of+the+english+working+class
PS. Forget the Koch brothers once we have the same number of lobbyists, the same aggregate amount of finance and 99% of the votes. It will be time to re-institute what Robert Kuttner calls financial repression, right down to confiscatory taxation — sold to a very eager to please Congress.
*********************
*********************
It should be obvious to you ladies that legally mandated, centralized bargaining is the only way — in the world, in history — to go. Ladies are willing to talk about anything even if there is no immediate practical result — in any case ladies define practical as how the thing works (what “practical” means, no?).

No; not to gentleman.
Gentleman only want to talk — or THINK — about things they can practicably do something about. “Practical” to an — instinctively pack hunting, much more totally group oriented than he ever suspects — is defined by whether he may PRACTICABLY TALK about how the thing might work — gauged almost purely by what his hunting pack (of 300,000,000) is thinking already. Nothing more intellectually intimidating and mind freezing to a gentleman than a topic that is not currently topical.
All I can say is: Instinctive individual gatherers (and individual thinkers), rock your boys!
*************************
*************************
Moan progressives moan.

I read everybody from Joseph Stiglitz to Nick Hanauer to David Kay Johnston, moaning about how the right monopolizes the national conversation with their silly big government and big deficit fobias. Whoa, Whoa, Whoaaa is us!
Progressives could completely dominate the national conversation tomorrow if they ever came up with true game changing issues — not phobias — that would capture everyone’s’ imaginations and make an opportunity to really educate the public to what is happening to them. The issues are of course as fast a jump as possible to the minimally survivable $15 an hour minimum wage (not the virtual/impossible $10 minimum of the present — see above) and the ultimate labor market AND political forum make over, legally mandated centralized bargaining.
YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO WIN (at first)! The scales will melt away from everybody’s eyes when you take the opportunity to teach them what they really need.
People don’t really sit around coffee shops and discuss what the deficit will be 40 years from now or whether big government is the problem — unless there is nothing else to distract them. And they don’t spend a lot of time discussing climate change or Wall Street re-regulation. Single payer would be great (win OR lose) but most people are covered and everyone was/is scared of Obamacare.
What else can I say? Individual gatherers: Rock your boys!
- See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2014/07/open-thread-july-1-2014.html#respond

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