Don't cut yourself on all the edge on that Razor Leaf, Venusaur.

+1 Mendax. Seriously, our healthcare system in the UK is fantastic. I have been very ill over the past 18 months. I have had two major surgeries and one more minor operation. In total in the last 18 months I have spent over 7 weeks in hospital as well as having daily nurse visits for another 15 - 20 days outside of this. Plus medication, wound dressings, and other prescription items. Imagine how much this would have cost privately. Tens of thousands of pounds, that's how much. Instead I received it free at the point of use, paid for via my taxes - taxes which I consider more than reasonable and am happy to pay. And the quality of treatment and care I received was very good.

Emac, the data doesn't support your conclusions.

If a sensible increase in the the minimum wage increased unemployment, you'd see a correlation on the graphs provided.

There is none. Taking the idea to an absurd degree isn't an actual argument, its a distraction.

Address the data, or admit you made a claim that is contradicted by the data.

I shall clarify. I never said my time in the Corps paid for my college. Please cite a single instance where I did. You can't. As far as the family, even here I never claimed we were dirt poor. I lived in a typical middle class household. My mom was the office manager for the Butler County Republican party so I had friends of my family who were political figureheads but that didn't make us rich, just connected. As far as the community, it was a farming community. In the late 70s and early 80s, Liberty Township was a farming community. For our community, we were rich, but we weren't Indian Hill rich. Even Blue Ash and Fairfield (where I live now) were wealthier communities. Wealth is relative.

And every mention of attorneys has always been through my wife's family. I've mentioned numerous times that I married above my station I including pointing out that my brother in law is CEO of a company and my father in law had a PhD in Chemic Engineering.

Didn't you join the marines straight out of high school and go to college when you got out on the Montgomery GI bill?

You know I can't reference a citation because you post so much that it breaks the site when you try to to click your replies link. But I thought I remembered you discussing that in the context of your mother in law and her looking down on you for your lack of formal education

GI Bill was no more when I went In the Marines in 1984 and the Montgomery GI bill didn't cover those who enlisted prior to 1985. Look it up. And my Marine time was cut short by an injury such that I had student loans and scholarships for my two year education (mother in law doesn't consider anything less than a Bachelor's to be an education).

Oh, we'll that's bullshit then. Anyone who serves on our military should have their college paid for. I just assumed that's the way it was.

"Sacred digits is seems odd you would say "I didn't factor in...." Did you not read the article and realize the discussion revolved around what "the study factored in?" The study compared working a full-time minimum wage job to the welfare eligibility for a mother of two. Did you not understand the scope of the study? "

The study compared the money that could be made from a welfare package to the money that could be made simply from working, and found the second was lesser. HOWEVER. Many of the benefits being put together for the first group (the not working one) are also available to the second group (the working ones) so the disparity that the article cleaves to isn't there as much as it wants it to be. You can say "not working pays more than working ALONE", but the implication that this disincentivizes working does not take into account that many benefits could be carried on while you have a low paying job, making the total compensation package of working + welfare greater than welfare without working.

Except that working typically costs welfare on simple dollars alone. Few of the benefits of welfare are available to even minimum wage because the poverty level is about 65% of minimum wage. So all those benefits that one can get at up to 150% of the poverty level go away completely for a person working a full time minimum wage job.

Source:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/13poverty.cfm#thresholds

We were talking in the study about a mother of two. I did 40*52*7 to get a rough estimate, since $7 is the federal minimum wage (I'm pretty sure). That gets us to $14,560. $19,530 is the poverty level for a family of 3.

So apples to apples, you're incorrect.

$7.25 is federal minimum wage so $15,080 assuming somewhere that minimum is only federal but as most are under $9/hr or $18,720/yr, right at the edge. Add in the usual 10 hours per week OT at time and a half and even the $7.25 hits $20,735. So now she is debating between keeping the bosses happy or those few extra benefits and you have to add in the cosgt of daycare which is outrageous. She is still better off on welfare.

There is your apples to apples. Take into account what a full time job actually entails including the cost of child care which doesn't exist for stay at home welfare moms.

10 hours OT a week at a minimum wage job? Rare. Every minimum wage job I've ever had (and I've worked a few) caps you at 40. I've worked a couple where the manager would come and find you if you were approaching 40 and walk you to the timeclock. You're adding in a lot of numbers beyond the $7.25 40 hour week.

Minimum wage jobs must have changed since the mid 80s. I was always "asked" to work OT at Radio Shack and Waldenbooks when I was in college.

So detract that but still take into account the cost of daycare. I know several stay at home moms because daycare cost more than they make. Now in my middle class neighborhood, it is typically a family with both parents so they cam afford for the mom to stay at home and I. Fact need the mom to stay at home until the kids are in school full time.

There are programs for state subsidized daycare for low income families, especially single parent ones. When I was a foster parent, foster children are treated as a family of one with zero income, so they qualify for basically all benefits, and I'm therefore kind of familiar with the benefits available. We didn't use all the possible benefits, but we did use that one, and it enabled us to either send children for free to kind of low quality daycare or do a pretty reasonable co-pay on better ones. We had to prove the primary caregivers were working, which we were, and there it was.

Sacred Digits, why in the world would you assume that your simple equation of 40*52*7 invalidates or even begins to challenge the validity of a published study open to scrutiny by the entire public policy community? It's just nonsensical.

Because the study is comparing income from welfare alone to income from working alone and then drawing the conclusion that it isn't worth it to work because the welfare alone number is higher, however the truth of the matter is that there is a third possibility, which is income from work AND income from welfare, which pays more than welfare alone.

I know OT at Starbucks is highly frowned upon and is rare to get.

I guess you missed the direct correlation between unemployment and minimum wage increases in the Wall Stree Journal piece.
I didn't take the question to an absurd degree. You presented an article that claimed no relationship whatsoever which was easily refuted by my simple statement. This is the problem for advocates of minimum wage increases. They have to claim their is no unemployment effect at all, because if they admit the truth then their premise evaporates. The New York Times article from 1987 made the exactly the type of argument I did by claiming the minimum wage should be $0.00. The exact opposite extreme of my statement. So the New York Times and my own post aren't actual arguments according to you. Funny but no one made that claim about the Times argument which I have to admit influenced my own take.
the date in fact supports all my conclusions. Raising minimum increases labor costs for the firm in question. This produces three possible outcomes, 1- you lay off workers to maintain labor costs, you ignore increases in labor costs and raise prices to cover them which decreases your revenue, or three you eat the increase and decrease profit margin which endangers the survival of the firm. ]
The premise that rising labor costs do not increase unemployment is indefensible.

Too bad the actual data says otherwise.

Your 25 year old article basically says "This is true" without providing any evidence whatsoever.

Sorry. When I've got data, and you've got an assertion that contradicts the data....

The result is that you have no leg to stand on.

The article said that...

"Only 2.6 percent of full-time workers are poor, vs. 23.9 percent of adults who don’t work" and this lead to a conclusion that..."by providing such generous welfare payments, we may actually not be helping recipients." This is nonsense. Withdrawal of all welfare would see much higher levels of poverty in both working and non-working adults.

It is true that withdrawal of welfare would see people hungrier to get jobs but jobs do not magic themselves out of thin air. Withdrawing all welfare would also drive wages down particularly if you withdrew the minimum wage. Sure western countries could build economies based on cheap labour to rival china and India, but are they the kind of countries we want to emulate?

eMac makes a good point about sustainability, but as bob Marley once said a hungry man is an angry man. Do you want millions of hungry men on your streets? Be careful what you wish for, society would be fractured to its core under such a scenerio.

Maniac, your premise is completely contradicted by the facts. Lyndon Johnson established the modern welfare program administered by the federal government. Yet there are more people living before the poverty line today than when the program began in 1965.
As a matter of fact welfare progarms in the United States have led to higher levels of poverty. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that poverty climbs with a complete removal of welfare because it never occurred, yet we have concrete evidence that increased welfare spending does not reduce poverty. In fact we have almost 50 years of evidence of that effect.

Jack Klein I provided twice the evidence you did. You provided one article in support of your position and I provided two.
I not only have a leg to stand on I have two to your one. You also discount an article because of its age but you offer nothing to refute its argument. Do you have any idea how invalid your objection is.

No, your articles didn't provide any statistics, graphs, or any data whatsoever, other than to say "This is true".

Sorry, thats not actual evidence. Its like if I asserted there was a pink unicorn in my garage. Without proof, you'd be a little leery about believing me, yes?

I had a graph that puts unemployment rates next to minimum wage levels. If your assertion was correct, there would be increases in unemployment corresponding to increases in minimum wages. There aren't any.

Therefore, your point is invalid.

'Sure western countries could build economies based on cheap labour to rival china and India, but are they the kind of countries we want to emulate?'

Just a little history lesson - in the 1890s the US had cheap labour, high industrial production and lots of industrial accidents (with no insurance) it is they who are emulating you!

And things hanged in America because they were bad, several US governments (state and federal) changed laws which were part of leading to where you are today - but there was also people like H Ford, who raised wages for his workers because nobody could afford to buy the cars he was producing (well other than the rich) - increased consumption drives economic growth, increased minimum wage / welfare drives consumption - India, China (and now Indonesia) are running on export-lead growth; so while you buy their cheap goods they don't need to improve wages/conditions.

That may be one of the biggest impacts from the financial crash.

And @Emacs, what Jack already said, quality over quantity. Just because you linked two articles doesn't mean they weren't complete bullshit (i haven't read either so i can't tell)

And at - increased poverty since welfare was introduced - you do realise the correlation does not imply causation, right? It is possible that poverty in the absence of welfare would be even worse.

And lastly, you realise you're supporting the Marxist position - welfare is preventing the socialist revolution, people wouldn't just magically find jobs, but in the presence of America's super rich they would be very angry.

Jack, you can continue with your infantile, "my articles are right and your's are wrong bullshit" that you can see I didn't reduce myself too.
The point is there is actual evidence that raising the minimum wage, and you can't accept that because you are trapped in a paradigm that claims the minimum wage doesn't affect employment at all.
This argument was easily demolished by simply asking why the minimum wage wasn't $1,000. You couldn't answer this so you obfuscated.
The fact is the minimum wage does affect employment, and you can't admit this fact because it demolishes your whole position. The odd thing is that if you were familiar with the unemployment-minimum wage debate at all you would realize that your position was demolished decades ago.
By the way "you didn't have a graph." An article on the internet had the graph. You seem quite incapable of making an argument on your own.

So you can't address the actual data, so you went to ad hominem attacks.

Classy. Let me know when you want to have a real discussion based on facts and data and not just random claims without any backup of facts or data.

And if my position was demolished, citation needed.

So you ignore the conflicting arguments in the pieces I posted, and falsely claim ad hominem attacks after you engaged in them.
Let me know when "you" have an original thought.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-04/can-we-pay-a-minimum-wage-that-makes-everyone-rich-.html

Emacs, based on the title of that article, is it relevant to the discussion?

That seems to ask, "can we make everyone rich?" as opposed to "can we prevent poverty"

I might even ask whether it is the moral obligation of the oppressed to fight for freedom (like the american revolution) and if so, should those in poverty not justly fight the system which apparently can't be bothered helping them escape poverty? If the market does NOT offer jobs which pay enough to afford services, is revolution not a moral obligation?