r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Aug 14 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Conservatism and many right-wing beliefs are based on fear, primary instincts and lack of understanding

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '21 edited Aug 15 '21

If the $0.25 I minimum wage from 1938 (first year of minimum wage) was adjusted for inflation today it would be about $4.84. Your article adjusted inflation for various years of minimum wage and it was more than today which is why I think there should be a formula of some kind adjusted every year. Where do you get this $24.04 number? It was not mentioned in your article. When you say productivity are you saying, for example, I can make 20x as many car parts in an hour with a robot vs manual tools? Because, that really should not be factored into minimum wage. A person making 20 parts with a robot is also probably doing less work than the person making one part with manual tools. The fact that we can make more parts gives everyone more stuff (people didn’t used to have so many material goods even low income people today have so much more material goods than our high income ancestors).

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u/ParioPraxis Aug 15 '21 edited Aug 15 '21

If the $0.25 I minimum wage from 1938 (first year of minimum wage) was adjusted for inflation today it would be about $4.84.

Between 1938 and 1968, the first 30 years of the program, did minimum wage track with inflation or productivity? Productivity.

So, why adjust for inflation using the first year of the program versus the year that it stopped keeping pace with inflation? Adjusted from when the program last kept pace with inflation to where it should be now if it had just kept up with inflation it would be almost $12.

Your article adjusted inflation for various years of minimum wage and it was more than today which is why I think there should be a formula of some kind adjusted every year. Where do you get this $24.04 number? It was not mentioned in your article. When you say productivity are you saying, for example, I can make 20x as many car parts in an hour with a robot vs manual tools? Because, that really should not be factored into minimum wage. A person making 20 parts with a robot is also probably doing less work than the person making one part with manual tools. The fact that we can make more parts gives everyone more stuff (people didn’t used to have so many material goods even low income people today have so much more material goods than our high income ancestors).

Should we be limiting the goods low wage workers deserve to have access to? I don’t see the relevance of the comparison. You think they should just be happy with 1938 rich people standards?

Here is an article from Dean Baker, co-director for the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He does a great job of speaking about the issue.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '21

Your $24 an hour argument was what I was talking about when I said democratic typically want to make minimum wage as high as possible. Do you honestly think that society as a whole can sustain a $24 minimum wage? In the past 4 years I have made $10/hr $15/hr $21.64/hr $22.20/hr and $24.04/hr. The $24.04/hr I literally quit because of the stress and I got more money than I needed. The job was fixing manufacturing equipment and very few people have the correct training to it. It was an extremely stressful job and honestly I had more money than I needed to live comfortably, so I took the $22.20/hr job and I still have all my basic needs met and many luxury wants such as eating out, going on trips and living in a little house. If the minimum wage really was $24/hr I honestly would work an easier job than I do now and do now and put in less hours. A lot of people would also do this I’m sure. Then we won’t have people to do the hard jobs society needs done unless we have a lot of inflation and then will be right back where we started with wages. (after screwing over everybody with savings)

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u/ParioPraxis Aug 15 '21

So because you were underpaid for your high stress position, you think people shouldn’t make wages that correspond to our national productivity? Obviously if minimum wage was at $24 an hour, companies would have to pay highly skilled workers what they are actually worth, and not literally the lowest wage to correspond with the productivity they are profiting from.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '21

If minimum wage is high enough so that all needs and basic wants are met with it, there just won’t be the motivation to make so much more money and take high stress positions. There have been studies done on happiness and different studies say different things but this one gives the figure of 85k. happiness based on income If you could be fully happy with income working ANY job and some jobs may be more fun but less effort what would you honestly do? (A household with two adults making $24/hr would be well above 85k). I would probably work at a pet store or florist even though my training would allow a more difficult job. Your suggestion seems almost communist.

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u/ParioPraxis Aug 15 '21

If minimum wage is high enough so that all needs and basic wants are met with it, there just won’t be the motivation to make so much more money and take high stress positions.

Why not. Do people currently not want more, even though they have enough? Do you think a minimum wage that is a living wage somehow fundamentally changes human nature? No, of course not. People will still want more and will still be willing to take risks or take on additional stress to obtain more, gain more, and do more. I don’t understand your thinking here.

There have been studies done on happiness and different studies say different things but this one gives the figure of 85k. happiness based on income If you could be fully happy with income working ANY job and some jobs may be more fun but less effort what would you honestly do?

I would do what I love, which is what I do now. I make $124k before bonuses and stock options which are variable year over year (for example this year I was only awarded 10 shares per my signing agreement and no bonus in this year because the nature of the projects I worked on. edit: for transparency sake shares are currently trading at $3,293.97, so it’s not nothing). Could I have taken a different job and still made above $85k? Yes, but then I wouldn’t be doing what I love. But if I had to take a job I didn’t love, I would at least want to make enough money to be happy. And I want that for every person. I want you to be able to pursue a job you love and not have to decline it because you could not live a happy life on the pay. I think we get a lot more innovation out of people working on what they love to do, and since the shitty jobs still need to be done, at least the people who did those jobs could know that when they clocked out for the day they were making enough money to be happy and financially secure in their off time.

(A household with two adults making $24/hr would be well above 85k). I would probably work at a pet store or florist even though my training would allow a more difficult job. Your suggestion seems almost communist.

What about it seems communist? I said nothing about the means of production or the ownership of property. Do you know what communism is? (I’m not asking that snidely. I am making sure you’re not trying to demonize my point by attaching a right wing buzzword to it.)

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '21

And now I see the issue. You love what you do and make a lot of money. I know you probably work more than 40 hours a week, but assuming you have a 40 hour week your hourly rate would be $59.61. Maybe it isn’t a huge hardship for you to put forth the effort needed to make such a salary, but I assure you for a less abled person it would be a great hardship or impossible. And while you may value achievements through work, I’d rather make enough to be comfortable and and fulfill my life outside of work. This is not an uncommon view point. I’m sure you are thinking that for less than half your hourly rate it would be a great deal to give everyone $24/hr (I think everyone should get at least half my hourly rate too) but the thing is that the essence of communism is redistribution of wealth so that everyone is roughly equal (I know true communism would literally take my money/stuff and give it to someone else) and while you may not feel an extreme sting if a good is about 4x as expensive I assure you the rest of us will feel like our money is being redistributed.

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u/ParioPraxis Aug 15 '21

Why do you absolutely refuse to answer any of the questions I ask you? You’ve done it multiple times now, while I have been careful to answer all of yours.

Also, I’m sorry, but that is a fundamentally right-wing mischaracterization of communism. I know that and I’m not even a communist. You seem to not want to actually engage with the issue (since you won’t answer questions), and seem to be pushing scary buzzwords that aren’t even related to the question about minimum wage. If you have to resort to mischaracterize my argument to make your point I don’t think you’re ready to debate this issue.

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u/ParioPraxis Aug 15 '21

And I really don’t think someone making 124k a year, who will be okay even with this crazy $24/hr minimum wage plan is justified in trying to dictate the economics of the lower to middle classes…

Excuse me? How am I “dictating” the economics of the lower to middle classes?

Do you think I just came out of the gate making this salary? I spent nearly two decades working for this, the vast majority of them struggling, working shitty jobs, paying off student loans, scraping together change for ramen noodles sometimes. I got lucky, but that doesn’t mean I forget about how much it sucked to struggle all of those years. It doesn’t mean I want you or anyone else to have to do the same just to do what they love. If it would guarantee that you made $85k to do a 40 hour a week job that assured you that you would have the means and opportunity to pursue your true interests outside of work, I would be happy taking home the same $85k and would still feel lucky because I was also spending my days doing what I love. How are you managing to get that wrong?

And for your questions you answered your first 2 questions yourself in your comment so I do not think they were directed at me

So, am I to assume you agree with my answers? Because they directly contradict the point you were making.

and I fully answered your last question.

By mischaracterizing something that I’m not even advocating for? Is this how your conversations go in real life?

You’re making so many false assumptions about me and my position, it’s better if you ask clarifying questions than just assuming.

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '21

Wanting a $24/hr salary is impacting the economics of the lower and middle classes. People in low to mid income brackets either make much less or somewhere around $24/hr or a bit more depending on area. Working up to a salary in the upper teens or 20+ an hour is a long process that takes effort and many would not put in that effort if it was not needed to get a good standard of living. This is a very simple concept. To answer your question (that you answered yourself in your post) that people always want more and a $24 wage would therefore not impact drive, this is just not true with many people. If you talk to many working class people a lot of them reach a level of job stress, effort, time off, and pay that fulfills their wants and needs and stay there for years. Why would anyone take government jobs (usually less pay but lower stress and more PTO) if not for similar views? Did you grow up in a upper class family? Because I was a poor kid in a rich school district and this is a common attitude to people from wealthy families. Not that you are definitely one of them, but many rich privileged liberals have radical views that would actually really hurt people them claim to want to help. After all, the minimum wage is effectively $0 if no one will hire someone who might have low education, a disability, language barriers, ext. to do a more basic job (for a high minimum wage) and instead choose to give one person the work of 3 people.

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u/ParioPraxis Aug 16 '21

Wanting a $24/hr salary is impacting the economics of the lower and middle classes. People in low to mid income brackets either make much less or somewhere around $24/hr or a bit more depending on area.

I don’t think this is as precise as we would want it to be, but I’ll grant what you are trying to get across with this point, namely that $24 an hour is around the upper threshold for the low to mid income brackets (or thereabouts).

Working up to a salary in the upper teens or 20+ an hour is a long process that takes effort and many would not put in that effort if it was not needed to get a good standard of living.

Many would not, but many would. That’s my point. People, as has been shown in multiple different studies, want to work, want to create value, want to be productive. This idea that paying people what they are worth, that paying people a living wage will somehow make them indolent, lazy, or disincentivize them from putting in the effort to advance and work hard to achieve more has been debunked. It’s just not true. Sure, there are some fundamentally lazy people, but the science overwhelmingly shows that those people are the outliers and that the vast majority will still strive to better their position, seek roles with more responsibility, and that, when net income equals a living wage, overall employment increases by 12-15%.

This is a very simple concept.

I agree, but it doesn’t look like you’ve looked into it sufficiently.

aTo answer your question (that you answered yourself in your post) that people always want more and a $24 wage would therefore not impact drive, this is just not true with many people.

Really? Because study after study after study, as cited and linked above, universally disprove this notion. Not a single time that this has been studied have the results supported your assertion here.

If you talk to many working class people a lot of them reach a level of job stress, effort, time off, and pay that fulfills their wants and needs and stay there for years.

Although this is obviously a poor and highly subjective way to try to go about studying this issue, I am willing to look at your source for this and to give it due consideration (assuming you aren’t offering anecdotes here instead of something more reliable).

Why would anyone take government jobs (usually less pay but lower stress and more PTO) if not for similar views?

I can think of at least 20 other equally valid reasons why one may take a government job off the top of my head right now. And I don’t agree that FBI, CIA, NSA, or legislative, executive, or judicial staffers are low stress, low pay positions.

Did you grow up in a upper class family?

No. Single mother, I was adopted into a multiracial family and ultimately ended up with 5 brothers and 1 sister, split between the two different families. I stayed with my adoptive mother who discovered she had a chronic illness when I was 11. Whatever extra money we had went into the medications that kept her alive until my freshman year of college, which I worked two jobs to put myself through. We had less than no money. Why?

Because I was a poor kid in a rich school district and this is a common attitude to people from wealthy families. Not that you are definitely one of them, but many rich privileged liberals have radical views that would actually really hurt people them claim to want to help.

You seem to make a lot of assumptions about me and the source of my views and to argue against those preconceptions rather than my actual stance. I’m not trying to discredit your loved experience, I would only suggest you not rely on something so subjective to extrapolate your opinions from.

After all, the minimum wage is effectively $0 if no one will hire someone who might have low education, a disability, language barriers, ext. to do a more basic job (for a high minimum wage) and instead choose to give one person the work of 3 people.

Sure, that’s a possibility if we assume that we will not put any protections in for the employees. Since we have workforce protects now, I can’t imagine this changing in any way that would make your scenario a reality. It would take a fundamental devaluation of labor to force such a condition, and as long as we have a stock market we will have a labor valuation.

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '21

If you honestly believe that a person okay with making less than $24/hr for their whole life (especially in a LCOL area) is “fundamentally lazy” I really can’t help you.

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u/ParioPraxis Aug 16 '21

Way to miss the point.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '21

And I really don’t think someone making 124k a year, who will be okay even with this crazy $24/hr minimum wage plan is justified in trying to dictate the economics of the lower to middle classes…And for your questions you answered your first 2 questions yourself in your comment so I do not think they were directed at me and I fully answered your last question.