i think we can safely say at this point that any money i make from here on out--IS MY MONEY! very nice. it's been awhile since i actually got to make my money. oh and no more avoiding bill collectors, tho it would be fun to say "ya know what? you caught me, you send someone to my front door and i'll give them the last of it. ... yup, seoul... korea... no, no, you don't have to fly, i think you can just drive through north korea. yeah, they'll pretend like it's a big deal, but just keep driving."
of course i get out of debt just as the us economy seems to be tanking. perhaps this latest recession will get people to seriously consider a living wage idea. imagine if people actually had enough money for food AND shelter... ya know, without taking loans they can't pay back. oh well. i decided to stay at my company for another year anyway, and while the country's economic fears didn't have anything to do with it, mine certainly did. i...i just don't want to go back to living right below the poverty line. i like being able to buy things i want. i like being able not to worry about what'll happen if i get laid up for a month. in america, i have to work more than 40 hours a week just to be broke. let me repeat that- i can put in a full work week and still owe somebody money.
granted, it's not like i'm making bank over here, and it's not like every month i don't see the 23 and 24 years wishing they hadn't blown through $2,000 in less than 30 days, but they are spending it like it's nothing. just because we make 2,200,000 Won a month doesn't mean we are actually millionaires. thankfully i've been poor enough not to go crazy when i start getting money. of course now that i am living comfortably money wise, i need to find one that let me relax once in awhile. next year, if the economy really does fall flat and this all is the same old fear mongering, luke's looking for a university job outside of seoul- like busan, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
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5 comments:
Gaahhhhh! My family is super smart about a great many things, but as Luke has demonstrated, they fall flat when it comes to economic policy. The problem with creating a living wage is that it creates a price floor on labor. Companies have a downward sloping demad curve for labor, just like a demand curves do. The thing is this: when the minimum wage is raised, the absloute demand for labor goes down.
Well, why is that? It happens because labor follows classic economics in that people will supply more labor as companies pay more for labor; and in keeping with classic economics, companies will demand less labor. So, it holds that if the government mandates a new minimum wage, it increases the price of labor, so companies demand less labor.
Here is a better way to think about it: the local McD's pays $2,500 a month in wages. It pays it managers $1,000 in a salary, and the high school students $1,500 at $7.50 an hours. This would mean that the high school students work 200 hours. If the government set the minimum wage at $10 an hour, the following would happen: they store would pay $2,500 a month. What happened? The high schoolers would work 150 hours and the managers, being on salary, would pick up an extra 50 hours.
Now, why would a McD's do that? Simple, the owners need a certain rate of return to make to have the store open. Assuming that the store couldn't raise the prices on the burgers, and other costs stay roughly the same, the owners have to pay the same amount in wages to keep the margins at the same level.
A living wage is a nice idea in principal, but fails in practice; such is the lot of the lefties.
Later,
B
it should be noted that this arguement is just a thought experiment:
there is already a floor on wages: $5.15 per hour. they raised it 10 years ago. what happened? people didn't lose jobs; prices went up to compensate. so John Edwards wants to raise the mimimun wage to $7.50... ok, in 10 years time, i think it's safe to safe that 7.50 will go as far as today's 5.15. which isn't very far, at 5.15 you can expect a full time worker to make $12,360 in a year- which is what, $2000 LESS than the poverty line?
so luke, you ask, why would a living wage be any different? a living wage takes the poverty line into account. at 30% above the PV, in most places the living wage would be $9.00-10.00 if the cost of living goes up, so does the amount of money our lowest employees make.
ok luke, you say, maybe that takes care of natural inflation as well as price gouging, but what about that mcdonald's brian talked about?
that mcdonald's is going to have to raise its labor budget by 80-100%.
holy shit, luke, holy shit!!! how is that mc'ds suppossed to make any money now? $10 value meals? nope, that kind of thinking would only cause the LW to go up. instead, we don't we look at what happens when we pay people more money: they tend to spend it. GWB wants to give americans $600 each to put back into the economy- what would happen if we had that $600 every month to put into the economy? demand for products would go up. hopefully enough to counter the brian's fear of the lowered demand for workers. that mc'ds might make LESS per hamburger it sells, but will sell MORE hamburgers- that is assuming of course that people eat at mcdonald's because they want to, instead of feeling like they have to.
so yes, this plan would hit the service industry hardest of all, i think, and if your company is relying on low labor costs over quality or service to make sales, then yes- it'll go under. the mcdonalds and wal-marts of the us will be hurt...but isn't that what we want? for quality stores to succeed, where cost-cutters fail? plus don't we want to be able to afford to shop at the quality stores?
p.s
no matter what you say about my economic policies, it's still smart to try to live somewhere where the grass is green and the girls are pretty, right?
right?
Christ, I wrote an awesome rebuttal to your last comment, but it didn't post. Anyway, you're wrong.
No, Luke, I do not have a Laptop yet. You would think that 10 years of prompt payment of preimums to State Farm would get me some prompt service on replacing my stuff; sadly, this is not true. But I will soldier on.
Later,
B
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