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    WoeIsMe76Hamilton Nolan
    12/13/13 11:15am

    I dont get why someone who works at a fast food place deserves this much money. There are plenty of people who are employed in worthwhile positions, have a college degree and make less than $15/hr.

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      BilllingtonWoeIsMe76
      12/13/13 11:17am

      even a kindergartner would see the outrageous flawed logic in this post.

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      SteadysoulWoeIsMe76
      12/13/13 11:18am

      because lacking a degree shouldn't mean that you don't deserve a living wage.

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    WizardGlick222Hamilton Nolan
    12/13/13 11:18am

    A friend of mine summed this up perfectly:

    If you can't afford employees who live indoors, and eat, then maybe you shouldn't be in business. (Or hire robots.)

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      PercyChuggsWizardGlick222
      12/13/13 11:31am

      They CAN afford employees. They just don't pay them because they know if someone doesn't like their $7.25 an hour and walks out the door, they can find 30 more people to take that position. One of the factors involved in what someone makes is how easy or hard it is to replace them. McDonald's workers are pawns to them.

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      GasPoweredStickWizardGlick222
      12/13/13 11:51am

      Those robot leeches will inevitably clamor for more WD-40 and lug nuts. It's a vicious circle.

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    Steve_Buscemi's_OrthodontistHamilton Nolan
    12/13/13 11:18am

    On a side note (because I am dumb and do not know), why couldn't you turn welfare into a massive Public Works program (i.e. put unemployed able-bodied people to work cleaning up local neighborhoods, parks, etc)?

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      NightoftheLivingDeadSeaScrollsSteve_Buscemi's_Orthodontist
      12/13/13 11:21am

      Because the parks would get cleaned in a day (taking away from the people who are actually paid to do so) and then you'd still have unemployed people looking for something to do with the rest of the week?

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      cepalgSteve_Buscemi's_Orthodontist
      12/13/13 11:29am

      You mean some kind of Administration to Work towards Progress on unemployment? The government acting as Employer of Last Resort? Using the army of the unemployed to rebuild crumbling infrastructure, and oh by the way incidentally give a whole lot of the unemployed job training and networking opportunities?

      Totally unprecedented idea. It'd never work.

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    toolongdidntreadlolHamilton Nolan
    12/13/13 11:11am

    PEOPLE AREN'T PEOPLE, PEOPLE ARE JUST RESOURCES AND TOOLS. LIKE GAS, OR LIKE COWS.

    PLOW AND DIE. SHUT UP.

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      Grinding My Geertztoolongdidntreadlol
      12/13/13 11:26am

      I'll just leave this delightful animated video here.

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      Brocobamatoolongdidntreadlol
      12/13/13 11:50am

      Yes, only rich people are actually people. Poor people are commodities. Ugh..

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    peppermintmonsterHamilton Nolan
    12/13/13 11:17am

    I think they're overlooking a huge potential resource here. A lot of these minimum-wage battles are centered around workers in the fast food industry. Why can't the working poor offset the welfare money spent on them by volunteering to be butchered and made into meat patties? The government could use the money that would otherwise go into welfare benefits as a subsidy to the fast food industry to offset the cost of paying their workers.

    McDonald's would save money on meat and on labor, it's win-win!

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      apeshapedmanpeppermintmonster
      12/13/13 11:20am

      That was swift.

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      Leprechaunpeppermintmonster
      12/13/13 11:29am
      GIF
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    dwaynemcgintyHamilton Nolan
    12/13/13 11:20am

    If you start a family while working for the minimum wage then you are not super smart.

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      NightoftheLivingDeadSeaScrollsdwaynemcginty
      12/13/13 11:35am

      Ehhh. Stuff happens. Besides, no place is it written that the whole of the populace is smarter or better than working at a place like McD's, but they're sure as hell still people. So... basically, how smart do you have to be to live like a human being?

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      CeeCee1dwaynemcginty
      12/13/13 11:39am

      and if someone started a family then lost their job and had to work minimum wage? you're not that super smart either.

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    EatTheCheeseNicholsonHamilton Nolan
    12/13/13 11:28am

    This is stupid. The consensus among economists is that raising the minimum wage currently wont have large adverse effects. The work of David Card, Larry Katz, etc. This proposal would be laughed out of any academic conference and shut down at any peer reviewed journal, and he knows it. So, to the paper of last resort for these types, the WSJ.

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      marauderEatTheCheeseNicholson
      12/13/13 12:07pm

      People agree the minimum wage doesn't have very large adverse effects on unemployment, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that Feldstein's proposal might be welfare-improving in general equilibrium.

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      EatTheCheeseNicholsonmarauder
      12/13/13 12:13pm

      Leaving aside my issues with general equilibrium (Mantel-Debreu, dude), it seems sort of unlikely to me that this could be welfare improving. In a Pareto/Kaldor-Hicks sense? The number of people that own their own businesses or substantial capital is pretty small relative to the general population.

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    TruthHamilton Nolan
    12/13/13 12:03pm

    Maybe I'm misreading this, but isn't he saying that if you make $7.25 an hour and earned income currently eats into that $10000 in welfare benefits, the person would be better off if the person still received welfare benefits and slightly reduced their wage?

    For example, you can either get $10000 ($5/hr) or $7.25/hr. If you take a job that pays $5/hr and still received that $10000 welfare benefit, you would boost the worker's pay to $10 an hour.

    I mean, that's a good thing right? Worker gets paid more and it doesn't hurt companies (i.e. no justification for layoffs). The welfare program then sets a guaranteed floor on income.

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      pupmeowTruth
      12/13/13 12:19pm

      You are misreading this.

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      Truthpupmeow
      12/13/13 12:37pm

      I just read his article in the wsj. It actually looks like I didn't misread him. He assumes that you're getting the $10000 no matter what and if you're willing to let half of the benefits eat in to the minimum wage, the worker will be better off. It additionally incentivizes employers to hire more because they aren't paying as much.

      It's an interesting concept. If we're going to use a social safety net either way, we might as well not set a higher barrier to entry for people seeking jobs.

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    DolemiteHamilton Nolan
    12/13/13 11:19am

    Wow, so our tax dollars just go directly to corporations, who then give us a few scraps to subsist on. Hell, why not just build dorms behind Walmart and McDonalds where people and their families live. Whenever workers are needed, an alarm sounds in their room. When they get off from their 12 hour shift, they are provided with 2 combos and 2 happy meals. At Christmas, they get an extra toy in their happy meal for the children. They are paid in McTokens, which they can use at the McStore, where you can buy a McShoe for 100 McTokens (you earn 2 McTokens per hour).

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      All Hail The Big CatDolemite
      12/13/13 11:42am

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Mitt Romney extol the virtures of Chinese women living in dormitories surrounded by barbed wire fences at one of Bain's factories during his run for president?

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      DolemiteAll Hail The Big Cat
      12/13/13 11:46am

      I'm pretty sure he did. I have no idea why conservatives bash countries like China continuously. Those countries aren't big on workers' rights or pay, environmental protections or anything. It seems to me they'd be a conservative paradise.

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    Clutchman83Hamilton Nolan
    12/13/13 1:12pm

    Okay, just going to posit a question here. Does anyone working a minimum wage job actually have job skills meriting a higher pay? It seems every time minimum wage is increased the cost of everything goes up so isn't transitioning into an existing higher paying job more beneficial as a whole? You don't have to work at Walmart or McDonald's forever people.

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      brenttbenttClutchman83
      12/13/13 4:31pm

      So people with less than average IQ and unable to learn valuable tech economy skills should just be treated like disposable wage slaves? You make an asinine assertion that people working at these jobs don't have to work at these jobs; if that was the frakkin case they wouldn't be working at those jobs because those jobs suck and only a masochist would remain there willingly. More importantly, currently around 4 out of 5 employees at these wage slave jobs are supporting families and not teenagers earning spending money. Somebody has to work these jobs. What's your great solution when everybody working at MacDonalds and Wal-Mart get better jobs and there's nobody left to work those shitty jobs? Higher wages to attract people to do those jobs? I knew you were a closet socialist.

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      Clutchman83brenttbentt
      12/13/13 5:01pm

      Dude, chill. We live in a capitalist society. If you don't have skills to perform a job than that's it. Bummer. Also you apparently don't know what a socialist is.

      Here's the bottom line of what I am saying. If you boost minimum wage, costs go up so $9 an hour isn't really much of a raise because everything costs more. It also erodes the value of everyone else's paycheck because the guy making $15 an hour is probably not going to get a raise just because minimum wage went up. They still will be faced with cost inflations. I worked minimum wage in the past and guess what? I made choices about my lifestyle because of my income level. I lived with roommates, used a lot of coupons and made damn sure not to make any babies! I also learned skills at work like customer service, attention to detail, good work ethic. I applied those skills and experience to a resume and applied for better jobs, see where this is going? Guess what, I make a helluva lot more money now! Entry level jobs in our economy have never been living wage jobs. Just raising the minimum wage won't change that.

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