The top 1% and the one to twelve ratio...

Tiddlypeeps

Permabear wrote: »

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You seem to be missing the point that it's the lesser of two evils.

Lets imagine a scenario where you have 100 unskilled workers. They all have jobs and there is no minimum wage. The wage these people are being paid is so low they need government assistance. Lets say for the sake of the analogy that they each earn €100 a week, but it costs €200 a week to survive. The government needs to pay out €10,000 per week to make sure that none of it's citizens starve.

A minimum wage is introduced, guaranteeing a worker at least €200 per week for full time hours. The government no longer needs to subsidise it's citizens who work full time. A side effect of this change however is that 10 people lost their jobs, the government now needs to pay them the full €200 a week so they can survive. This is fine tho because it now only costs them €2,000 per week to ensure none of it's citizens starve.

You also have the perk that it gives those 10 people enough free time to learn a new skills in order to get either another minimum wage job or to move further up the ladder. Without the minimum wage people would need to work so many hours to make ends meet that they have absolutely no chance to learn new skills to move up to better paid jobs. This is the main reason that social mobility in the US is incredibly difficult. In Ireland it's relatively easy.

The numbers in my analogy are totally made up, the big question is how many people would lose their jobs if a reasonable minimum wage is introduced. There are no examples of this ever having a catastrophic effect, ending up in a scenario that was worse than before. Blaming the minimum wage on Irelands current unemployment levels is pretty stupid seeing as the minimum wage was around for a long time with totally acceptable levels of unemployment.

It would be great if the only companies that paid unliveable low wages were the ones that genuinely couldn't afford to pay more. In an ideal world no minimum wage would be needed. Unfortunately this is not an ideal world, companies who are very profitable have no problem taking advantage of desperate people who don't have the bargaining power to demand better treatment. This costs the tax payer more and it causes higher levels of income inequality.

Permabear

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Tiddlypeeps

Permabear wrote: »

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I'm ignoring that because there is no substantial evidence that it's even a thing.

Permabear wrote: »

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You are very good at setting up strawmen, that is not what I was saying and you know it. Free time to upskill is an advantage of being unemployed. That is completely different to saying unemployment is itself an advantage.

Permabear wrote: »

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Third level education currently has the highest level of uptake even in Ireland, a very large number of those are mature students going back to reskill. This is one of the easiest countries in the world for social mobility, a fact that often puts us pretty high up any lists of best places in the world to live. Why does the back to education allowance even exist if, as you seem to be implying, nobody is using their time unemployed to retrain?

Permabear wrote: »

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I thought it was brought in earlier than that, but either way why bring it in at all if it was a non issue? Saying nobody was starving is irrelevant because we had a decent welfare system. How many people at that time needed supplementary welfare? Those people still count as being employed so won't drag the unemployment figures down. I'm not sure of the circumstances that led to that decision being made, but I would imagine it's likely the government weren't too happy supplementing the wages of employees of profitable companies.

Either way, blaming the minimum wage on something that happened almost a decade later is a pretty weak argument. Especially so because plenty of other countries with very different positions in relation to minimum wage suffered the same crash. There are plenty of much more plausible reasons for what happened in 2008.

Permabear wrote: »

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I'm not getting into an argument about weather you think it's right or wrong that a company should have to pay a living wage for a full weeks work or not. It's pure opinion so it would be a pointless argument, I'm just glad that my opinion on the subject is part of the majority in this country.

Permabear

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Tiddlypeeps

Permabear wrote: »

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/sigh

I don't see much point in continuing a debate if you are simply going to resort to acting childish. If you have had any real evidence for cost-push inflation you would have provided it instead of childish remarks. You can't because all that exists on the topic is wild speculation by some economists which can just as easily be dismissed by wild speculation by other economists claiming it doesn't exist.

I can look past one or two strawmen, but your entire debating tactics seem to solely depend on misrepresenting what the other person has said. I have no interest in engaging in endless replies stating that's not what I said. So have a nice day.

Permabear

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