• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Welfare Pays More Than Minimum Wage In 35 States

Dirty Penguin

Dirty Penguin

Master Of Ceremony
Curious George said:
You seem to be suffering from the delusion that a person made this money for his or her self. Rather, the system enabled this person to make such monies and should contribute to the society on which they are dependent.
Click to expand...

Where's Obama...with his "You didn't build that" phrase.... Seems fitting in this scenario considering the wealth most have today was/is a result of the collective.
 
Falvlun

Falvlun

Earthbending Lemur
Premium Member
Revoltingest said:
What I object to is claiming that Tea Party types oppose welfare for the poor, but favor it for the rich, without providing any evidence of such people. I'm highly skeptical that such a person exists in significant numbers.
Click to expand...

When people say "welfare for the rich", they are generally equating corporate tax loopholes or the super low taxes on the super rich with "welfare", since it is like government writing these businesses or people a check. Conservatives-- or other people who support such legislation-- obviously wouldn't consider it welfare.

Thus, yes, it is unlikely that you would hear the same person say that they oppose welfare for the poor but support it for the rich.

What they will say is that they oppose certain (actual) welfare programs, like food stamps, but also say that they oppose any sort of increased taxation of the rich. And yes, I think we can agree, that these sorts of people do exist in significant numbers.
 
Falvlun

Falvlun

Earthbending Lemur
Premium Member
9-10ths_Penguin said:
Papers aside, I think it helps to consider the underlying assumption of this idea that raising the minimum wage will lead to an increase in prices: that the market will tolerate a raise in prices and that business owners/managers realize this, but - for some unknown reason - they decide not to do this until the minimum wage is raised.

If the market will bear the price increase, then why wouldn't they raise prices already? Are these businesses not worried about maximizing profit?
Click to expand...

This is a great point.
 
Revoltingest

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Falvlun said:
When people say "welfare for the rich", they are generally equating corporate tax loopholes or the super low taxes on the super rich with "welfare", since it is like government writing these businesses or people a check. Conservatives-- or other people who support such legislation-- obviously wouldn't consider it welfare.
Thus, yes, it is unlikely that you would hear the same person say that they oppose welfare for the poor but support it for the rich.
What they will say is that they oppose certain (actual) welfare programs, like food stamps, but also say that they oppose any sort of increased taxation of the rich. And yes, I think we can agree, that these sorts of people do exist in significant numbers.
Click to expand...
Anyone who calls low tax rates "welfare" is playing a word game. Welfare is to take money from a taxpayer, & give it to the recipient. Low tax rates are just less money taken from the taxpayer than higher rates would. Tax rate structure is a different issue from the give-aways we see to politically connected companies, ie, they don't just pay low rates, the gov gives them money, eg, bail-outs, Solyndra. So let's avoid straw men who supposedly say something using unconventional definitions, but aren't trotted out for me to actually see.
But this is getting far afield from the problem posed in the OP wherein a person's compensation is greater under welfare (& not working) than from working for a living.
 
Falvlun

Falvlun

Earthbending Lemur
Premium Member
Revoltingest said:
Anyone who calls low tax rates "welfare" is playing a word game. Welfare is to take money from a taxpayer, & give it to the recipient. Low tax rates are just less money taken from the taxpayer than higher rates would. Tax rate structure is a different issue from the give-aways we see to politically connected companies, ie, they don't just pay low rates, the gov gives them money, eg, bail-outs, Solyndra.
Click to expand...

Of course you don't agree with defining it as such. It's generally a liberal analogy.
 
Revoltingest

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Falvlun said:
You are many things, but I wouldn't consider you a liberal. But yes, word games.
Click to expand...
I am a classical liberal.
Since the term "liberal" includes both us & leftists, it's more specific to say "leftist",
since they seem unified in wanting higher taxes on business & the wealthy.
(Note: Other than as a party name, the term "libertarian" here on RF includes socialists
& social conservatives, so the small "l" word doesn't work well. I'm also a minarchist".)
 
Sunstone

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Curious George said:
Did you read your study?
Click to expand...

Of course! I am, after all, not a conservative.:p

(just teasing)

It suggested prices did increase to accommodate minimum wage but that increase had a negligible increase on inflation.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's essentially what they are saying. You are aware, of course, that inflation is pretty much defined as a general increase in prices?

What do you make of this:

"The estimates from these studies cover a relatively wide range, suggesting that a 10-percent increase in the minimum causes overall prices to rise somewhere between 0.2 percent and 2.16 percent, with most estimates falling below 0.4 percent."

Here is a paper, in conclusions they conclude again that cost of minimum wage increase is passed mostly to consumers.
http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf
Click to expand...
I'll read it and get back to you on it.
 
Curious George

Curious George

Veteran Member
Sunstone said:
Of course! I am, after all, not a conservative.:p

(just teasing)

Yes, that's essentially what they are saying. You are aware, of course, that inflation is pretty much defined as a general increase in prices?

What do you make of this:

"The estimates from these studies cover a relatively wide range, suggesting that a 10-percent increase in the minimum causes overall prices to rise somewhere between 0.2 percent and 2.16 percent, with most estimates falling below 0.4 percent."

I'll read it and get back to you on it.
Click to expand...

Yes, I am aware of what inflation is, but as your study pointed out, the increase in price to pay for the wage increase is negligible to inflation because it is a small percentage. But, there is still an increase in price which shifts any burden from the employer to the consumer. However if this only amounts to a .001 increase thenit is dwarfed by the.026 inflation.
 
Shermana

Shermana

Heretic
It doesn't endorse that causation among the "Suggestion". It's a corrolation that doesn't necessarily include other factors.

Finally, we find that prices of fast-food
meals increased in New Jersey relative to
Pennsylvania, suggesting that much of the
burden of the minimum-wage rise was
passed on to consumers. Within New Jer-
sey, however, we find no evidence that prices
increased more in stores that were most
affected by the minimum-wage rise. Taken
as a whole, these findings are difficult to
explain with the standard competitive model
or with models in which employers face
supply constraints (e.g., monopsony or equi-
librium search models).
Click to expand...
 
esmith

esmith

Veteran Member
My system says "Adobe Reader could not open 'njmin-aer.pdf because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged (for example it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded)
 
Sunstone

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
esmith said:
My system says "Adobe Reader could not open 'njmin-aer.pdf because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged (for example it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded)
Click to expand...

Thanks!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top