quote:

---

Statistics Canada reported recently that the earned income of the "average" Canadian -- the so-called median income -- was the same in 2004 as in 1982. After we subtract inflation to keep the purchasing power of a dollar roughly constant, it turns out that median income, before taxes, did not rise at all over those 22 years. Yet during that same time the Canadian economy grew, in real per capita terms, by more than half. But only the very well-paid - those above the 90th percentile of the income distribution - saw any significant increase in earned income; and the higher up the earnings ladder, the greater the growth. What has been going on?

---

http://tinyurl.com/2x7dtg

The article goes on to pose the question that if this is so, why hasn't there been more public outcry about it?

Also, I think it's because different people are at different points. So different people are at different stages in their working career than they were in 1982 (if they were working at all then), so they don't see the difference personally.

Despite the fact that I am a working class radical who from an early age- and we're talking a long time ago- rejected as simplistic the various Marxist notions of class consciousness which I was steeped in as I came of age... I'm still left wondering, at the very least, why so MUCH compliance. Etc.

Enough preface on my perspective. The article is a good starting point.

I think Michelle hit the nail on what is probably the biggest item- even if we're going nowhere in terms of social mobility, most of us make more money, and generally have an easier time doing it as we get older. For a generation now, more people fall off that 'natural escalator'- but even with that dose of reality, the bulk of us do better at least from youth to middle age; and enough to matter do better all the way into retirement.

That right there would account for a huge amount of absorbing what would otherwise be impossible for people not to notice.

Statistics are one thing. But what people experience, and as they experience it, trumps all. It also trumps what they say.

IE, grumbling and populist understandings the rich get richer and people not likeing that- which is widely understood- should be taken with a big dose of salt. If people grumble but pretty readily accept, you have to record the vote with the feet.

And the vote with the feet, when all is said and done, comes out as 'its OK' and 'its still OK' despite what we've known for some time about the flat incomes for decades, layered on top of difficulties and downsliding for an ever increasing minority [let alone what goes in the world outside our picture windows].

Like I said, I think Michele's observation accounts for a lot- probably the most.

But there's more. The article obliquely touched on an aspect that economists never review systematically. What precisely is bought with that flat income? The measure of the typical 'basket of goods' folks buy tends to be flat also.

But what about the qualitative measure of that basket of goods? Remember, productivity is steadily rising- things are cheaper to produce [so far]... so where does that gain go?

In the ideal world, given flat incomes, productivity would go into us working less. But this is capitalism- fat chance.

So instead, in the developed world it goes into bigger houses, bigger and faster and flashier cars, gadgets that do more, vacations farther from home... and so on.

Same basket of goods and services, as measured by the economists. But not by any means the same, when measured qualitatively.

Doesn't take rocket science to figure that the bulk of us doing average [not including the significant minority going backwards] are going to experience this as MORE... on top of the natural 'more experience' we get from moving up the gradual generational escalator.

Those I think are the main quantitative/qualitative interfaces for the toiling masses of the developed world. I personally started noticing them over 20 years ago and they coincide with my personal shift of emphasis from looking at class to paying more attention to environmentalism and consumerism. [Not that the latter weren't already important to me.]

[ 06 January 2008: Message edited by: KenS ]

This is mostly a new observation for me, and there's a dotted line to classic Marx.

For what goes on with the rich- especially the super rich very top of the pyramid, the article again obliquely touches on this, but doesn't quite go there.

Add in globalization. So you have the very top dogs as well as running much bigger operations, they are much further removed from the rest of us in every way. They aren't just far richer than us, they are locationaly / experientally removed from us even in this age of global and instant cmmunications.

They have both the power, and the remove, to skim off even proprtionally more for themselves... and to do it more in obscurity than was the case say with our railroad and steel barons of 100 years ago.

Marx, or neo-Marx, comes in with the flip side of how the rest of us both are disciplined by and experience market and social forces.

Marx had the famous theory of the absolute immiseration of the toiling masses- first agriarn and then the new and growing industrial proletariat.

And this was that what the masses got for their work would remain depressed at survival level- with capitalists appropriating the surplus. And this was easily understandable in classical economics of Smith and friends.

We know this turned out to be not true at least in the direct and simple way it was formulated.

But if you take away the "immiserated" part, and add in that through various means the masses are able to accrue a good dose of the benefits of the overall growth of the wealth in absolute terms... there may be a lot to what Marx was saying.

At least in terms of general insight- I for example think pursuing even variations of the mechanics Marx looked at is a debilitatting distraction.

But as an insight at the macro level, it's another matter.

It's just possible that when the working class- or the popular classes together- achieve a certain level of prosperity... that whatever the exact mechanisms... they will get stuck there.

And remain stuck even when and if the super rich recover from one of their periodic crises and take off to new heights. As the article points out, they've been marching on smartly for several decades now, while the rest of us have been plateaued for 30-40 years.

I'm going to jump to an anecdote. I am a carpenter who some time ago made the naive mistake of going into business as a contractor. My motivations were design-aesthetic oriented- I wanted to build what I liked. I had no idea how brutal goin into busines is, and I wanted out not long after, but I worked it out.

Where I did that, and after I worked it out, I happened to have a very collegial relation with fellow contractors with similar life experiences... including 60s radical politics.

So we had that common background plus the common struggles all small residential contractors face. When you survive the early years, it wasn't easy, it was a drain on the family income, you watched many others who didn't make it at all [and watch them still coming in].

We knew we were doing well enough to not have complaints. [Including the couple of us who had been union carpenters and still hadn't got back to our old incomes, though overall we were probably doing as well... not to mention that union work had for some time stopped being full time and all year.]

The amazing theing was that despite having fairly different companies, and organizing them differntly, and changing how we organized them, going smaller, or going bigger.... our net real incomes were all similar and remarkably flat ever since we had struggled and 'made it'.

When I moved back to Nova Scotia I wasn't interested in starting a business again. Not surprisingly I first went to work for someone with similar experiences... again,even including the age and 60s radical politics [there really are a lot of us you know, and distributed everywhere].

This guy had a few times bigger company than I or any of my colleagues back in Michigan had. I didn't work for him long, which meant that when we remained friends it was easy for him to talk about how much he really made [never clear cut for small business people, easily obscured and with lots of reasons to keep it that way, but once you've been at it a while, you know].

And wouldn't you know it- he had the same basic real income as all of us back in Michigan had. And it had been that way for over a decade, from when his company was small... and not changing as it got larger and larger and LOOKED from the outside to be more profitable. Same real income for him all along, and no significant decrease in time he spent on it which is what he was looking for.

That's just an anecdote. And it is illustrative only.

I have only the vaguest hunches what the mechanics might be, but I think on the aggregate level the masses of us- be we union or non-union workers, or self employed, or the vast majority of small employers who make the same incomes as the rest of the 'popular classes'.... face some kind of market-based and social mechanism that keeps us collectively plateaued.

If the bulk of us were actually pushed down, there would be some kind of reaction- but the bulk of us manage to stay the same... and my hunch is that there are identifiable mechanisms that strongly tend to us neither going down or going up no matter how well 'the economy' as whole or the super rich are doing.

[ 06 January 2008: Message edited by: KenS ]

[ 06 January 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Michelle:
Because people don't understand that they're worse off now than they were then.

Also, I think it's because different people are at different points. So different people are at different stages in their working career than they were in 1982 (if they were working at all then), so they don't see the difference personally.

For example, I was earning minimum wage in 1990. Now I am earning much more. So I don't feel like I've been staying static since 1982. But the person who has replaced me at the minimum wage level is likely much younger than I am, so they have no personal experience to compare it to, so they don't realize that their spending power is the same or perhaps even lower than mine was (I think $6 back when I was earning it in 1990 goes a lot further than $7.75 does now), they don't have my experience to compare it to, so they think it's just normal.

---

Great answer, Michelle.

There is also the otherside of the coin. And that is that the working and middle-classes, and their parties, have bought into the arguments of the parties of those who benefit most from the current status quo.

That is to say all debate is along the frames of reference - taxes, productivity, trade, investment, free markets - that are set by the right wing parties. And that has allowed the centre to shift.

The Scandanavian countries have even higher taxes and programs and post good results. However there isn't a clamour to head Canada in that direction, and the NDP don't talk about it much.

[ 06 January 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

But there is also a problem with spouting a number without context.

In the 10 years between 1992 and 2002, government spending, as a per cent of GDP, was reduced 10 per cent. So even if we accept your number, in 1992, 40% was 40 cents on the dollar. By 2002 it was 36 cents. (Here's a source).

What would it be now?

In fact, the federal government says all program spending is even less.

Are you saying that despite all the cuts across the board, in the last 10 years Canada's social program spending has doubled?

[ 06 January 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

[ 06 January 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

quote:

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Peter J. Nicholson: What happened in the late 1970s to cause the top incomes to start increasing so strongly?

---

Class struggle against working people, by the class of bosses, blossomed over the last 25 years. It's obvious and unmistakable and there is plenty of data - including the Globe and Mail article - to demonstrate that. To paraphrase the author of the article, there is a curious absence of acknowledgement of class struggle in his article. Privatization, deregulation, and limb-severing cuts to social spending are the holy trinity of the offensive, to borrow from N. Klein.

quote:

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Nicholson: The trends suggest that the neo-conservative movement that gained strength in the U.S. after the stagflation of the 1970s, and amid growing concern over the excesses of the welfare state, may have created a social and political environment more tolerant of winner-take-all behaviour.

---

"More tolerant" ? Get real. It was class warfare, pure and simple. And it is still going on.

The folks over at Monthly Review (MR) have been looking at this issue for some time now. One such example is from Michael Yates:

http://monthlyreview.org/1107yates.htm

More Unequal: Aspects of Class in the United States.

Yates's article is by no means the only one on this topic and those interested in this subject would benefit by doing a bit of a search over at MR for more of the same.

The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other US periodicals and newspapers are looking at this issue ... likely from the point of view of how to slow down the resistance to this social warfare on working people. But they are interested nevertheless.

Another point that is essential to add when discussions of class struggle comes up is the following. Michael Dawson, the author of The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life, has some important insights on this issue that should not be ignored.

quote:

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Despite what neoclassical economists may tell us, people do not have an inherent, insatiable desire to consume without end. Rather, the desire to possess and consume must be created. The purpose of The Consumer Trap is to analyze how this desire is manufactured, by whom, and for what purpose.

Dawson goes to the source of the disease, big business and its marketing apparatus, and analyzes how the consumer trap is carefully set both to ensnare and infect its victims, to ensure that the rich get richer and that power remains in the hands of the powerful. Dawson bases his analysis in large part on the writings of corporate marketing specialists themselves and shows that they are quite frank about their purpose: to generate profit by manipulating people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

---

How big is this industry? This is a trillion dollar industry. How's them apples?

http://www.monthlyreview.org/0204york.htm

Manufacturing the Love of Possession

This would be a great book for rabble book lounge ... if anyone is interested in reviewing it.

quote:

---

Dawson argues that the purpose of marketing is to perpetuate the capitalist system and its concomitant inequalities. ... Big businesses in the United States now spend well over a trillion dollars a year on marketing. This is double Americans’ combined annual spending on all public and private education, from kindergartens through graduate schools. ... The extraordinary sum of money spent on marketing belies widespread claims that people make their own decisions largely free of corporate influence. ... Dawson is entirely correct when he writes, “[M]odern corporate marketing is, in the final analysis, an instrument for preventing the democratic governance of large-scale economic institutions and the big decisions that they make”

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Some great FN leaders saw this long ago ...

quote:

---

In 1877, speaking at the Powder River Conference, Chief Sitting Bull of the Lakota nation said of the European invaders who were destroying his people and their way of life, “[T]he love of possession is a disease with them.”

---

quote:

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In fact there is a consciosness. Disparity is the elephant in the room actually, there's a consciousness of disparity. Specifically people are put of by the fact that it's harder for young people to get established and start a family.

---

Do you think there is anything in my ramble that much contradicts what you say here?

I agree with the above and the rest of that post. And my understanding would be that we don't say anything mutually exclusive of each other.

I didn't say it explicitly in my post- and I'll find out if I've given a different impression- but I would agree that class conciousness is still very much with us.

We obviously agree- as obviously would many trade unionists among others- that the working class won a lot indeed.

The left tends to look at it as a question of class conciousness versus 'bought off'. But many of us would argue that it is not either or. Instead it's 180 degree: class conciousness and bought off.

So my rambling discourse would be only about the back end of that- the 'bought off' part. And more specifically to the questions posed in the article: why still bought off when the popular classes are at best kept stagnant while the super rich get richer [and while increasingly all and any of us are individually at risk of being suddenly bumped out of the 'bought off'?

Narrower point first:

quote:

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Just one thing Kens. Tradesmen have made it into the middle class. That's the modern situation.

---

At least 75% mythology.

To some degree this could be said of unionized tradespeople- and I'd quibble with even that: both on income and other criteria.

It is absolutely untrue of most non-unionized tradespeople, who there are more of and whose proportion increases.

And there is no neat division at all. People go from one to the other as required for many reasons. Much of the time I have been a highly experienced tradesperson who when a non-union employee makes a bit less overall than the lowest and unskilled scales of public sector workers [with few exceptions]. Are all of them "middle class" too?

[ 06 January 2008: Message edited by: KenS ]

quote:

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The graph indicates provincial and federal spending total 30%. The municpalities are another 8% for 38%. One has to watch the definitions as program spending usual excludes payment of interest on the debt. At one point this was 5% of the GDP.

---

Yes, the graphs which don't at all add up to the OECD numbers which are 20 per cent in 1995.

And if Canada was to spend on social programs at just the OECD average, again as a percentage of GDP, they'd be spending another $47 billion dollars a year. That was in 2003.

And who's middle class in Canada? In 2005, the median earned income across Canada was $25, 500($24, 500 for all Canadians with an income).

And next to the U.S. in a comparison of richest nations, Canada owns the second largest lowly-paid, low skill non-unionized workforce. We also have one of the highest child poverty rates among developed nations.

[ 06 January 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

For example, we have ten income earners. Two people earn a million dollars a year each while eight of them each earn $200 dollars a year. The mean average income in this case is $200, 100 dollars. Eight of them would like very much to earn $200, 100 dollars, but that's just not happening.

The median earned-income, otoh, would be $200 dollars. This paints a clearer picture of what's happening at the mid point of incomes. At least 50% of them earn no more than $200 dollars/year.

$200 $200 $200 $200 $200 ($200) $200 $200 $200 $1M $1M

In this case, median is not distorted by averaging in all of the incomes to come up with some figure that doesn't mean anything to anybody.

[ 06 January 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

The latter half of the 1990s was a
period of strong economic resur-
gence and steady population growth.
Household income in Toronto has declined over
Despite these gains, household income
the past two decades. In 2000, Toronto’s median
in Toronto was lower in real terms in
household income stood at $49,345
2000 than it had been in both 1990 and
1980, and only slightly higher than it
had been in 1970. Using data from the
Census over the past 20 years, this bul-
letin presents a broad overview of the
changes to household income that have
occurred in Toronto and its surround-
ing communities. It examines how the
income of Toronto households com-
pares to households in other large urban
centers; trends and patterns of change
across the GTA; the growth in income

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug:

http://tinyurl.com/2x7dtg

The article goes on to pose the question that if this is so, why hasn't there been more public outcry about it?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
Fidel I don't trust your income figure. The average wage in Toronto is something like $20 an hour.

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quote:

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Originally posted by rural - Francesca:
Toronto Income stats

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Freakin' CEO's skew the stats, don't think the poorest of the poor don't live in large cities.

[ 06 January 2008: Message edited by: RevolutionPlease ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
Fidel I don't trust your income figure. The average wage in Toronto is something like $20 an hour.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fidel:
And who's middle class in Canada? In 2005, the median earned income across Canada was $25, 500($24, 500 for all Canadians with an income).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martha (but not Stewart):

Question: does the $25.5 figure include teenagers working part-time for movie money?

---

Yes, and it would include the 1.2 million adults in Ontario earning any wage rate less than $10 dollars an hour. This is in Dalton McGuinty's Liberal Ontario, a Canadian province with about half a million children living anywhere below the poverty line. Ontario is home to the highest number of children living in poverty than any other province or territory.

quote:

---

Originally posted by RevolutionPlease:

Wow, no links and everything.

---

http://www.toronto.ca/business_publications/indicators.htm

Nov. 2007 Wages are

........Average Median
416 $21.84 $18.72
GTA $22.19 $19.08

Fidels 24.5k must be per capita or some thing

[ 07 January 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by KenS:
Iand .

Much of the time I have been a highly experienced tradesperson who when a non-union employee makes a bit less overall than the lowest and unskilled scales of public sector workers [with few exceptions].

---

Real Politics is people screaming "I'm hard done by" at their elected representative.

[ 07 January 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

[ 07 January 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

[ 07 January 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:

Real Politics is people screaming "I'm hard done by" at their elected representative.

---

And with their second phony majority dictatorship in Toronto(22% of the eligible vote propping them up) McGuinty's Liberals can pretty much ignore Ontarians' voicing real concerns for another four years. We need electoral reform to convince politicians not to take 52% of voters for granted while completely ignoring the other 48% of jaded voters.

quote:

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Fidels 24.5k must be per capita or some thing

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Median income is the income which half of workers make more than and half make less. In 2004, half of Canadian workers made less than $25, 500 dollars.

[ 07 January 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
Fidel I don't trust your income figure. The average wage in Toronto is something like $20 an hour.

---

I don't believe that for a second.

P.S. I love the "teenagers working part-time for movie money" thing. Yeah, because not all teenagers have parents with disposable income to give them to go to movies or get stuff that their friends have. So instead of their parents choosing between buying groceries or giving their kids an allowance, their kids go out and work part-time (and probably do worse in school as a result) so that they can actually have a social life. Gosh, that's just frivolous, isn't it, teenagers wanting to be able to socialize with their friends outside of their home? I guess they really don't count as "workers" do they? Certainly not "deserving" ones!

[ 07 January 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

quote:

---

(1) the decline of unionization in the U.S., as competitive pressure reduced labour's bargaining power, particularly in manufacturing; (2) trade liberalization and the globalization of labour supply, in some combination of cheap imports, outsourcing (notably to India and China) and immigration; and (3) a sharp increase in demand for the skills needed to handle new technologies, particularly related to computers - so-called "skill-biased technical change."

---

Looking at this, one might think that a large increase in investment in public education might be all that is needed to get the trend going in the other direction, though with some time lag between action and consequence.

quote:

---

By Michelle:
But the person who has replaced me at the minimum wage level is likely much younger than I am, so they have no personal experience to compare it to, so they don't realize that their spending power is the same or perhaps even lower than mine was (I think $6 back when I was earning it in 1990 goes a lot further than $7.75 does now), they don't have my experience to compare it to, so they think it's just normal.

---

$6 in 1990 is the same as $8.39 today in terms of cost of living. I assume you are not talking about Ontario because the minimum wage in 1990 was $5 and it is $8 now, beating inflation by 15%. The minimum wage is slated to increase to $10.75 by 2010, at that time it will be up about 45%, inflation-adjusted, since 1990.

An interesting note in Nicholson's article which I hadn't thought of before -- inflation is measuring only cost of living, while we also consider our purchasing power in terms of other 'necessities' that aren't measured.

In 1990, a new computer cost between two and three thousand dollars. Last year I bought a home system from Dell for $300 with free delivery. That means a computer today, which is far more useful and for most people essential, costs 90-93% less (inflation-adjusted) as it did then. Nicholson also mentions cell phones and LCD televisions.

According to this, minimum wage went from $5.40 in 1990 to $6.85 in 1995. It doesn't say when in 1990 that it was $5.40, but I'm assuming that was the pre-NDP rate, and that as soon as they got in during 1990, they raised it right away.

[ 07 January 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

quote:

---

In 1990, a new computer cost between two and three thousand dollars....

If you are poor, of course, none of this matters. I suspect most people who can't afford cost of living actually own a cell phone, an LCD television, or a computer. But the majority of Canadians have at least some disposable income. And this is something Nicholson is suggesting: perhaps most people perceive themselves to be doing relatively better than they are, because their disposable income is stretching further on these luxury and utility items than before.

---

I was saying something very similar. I knew my posts were kind of long, and they were a while back. On the guess that they were not read and/or forgotten, I'm going to repeat a relevant excerpt:

quote:

---

The article obliquely touched on an aspect that economists never review systematically. What precisely is bought with that flat income? The measure of the typical 'basket of goods' folks buy tends to be flat also.

But what about the qualitative measure of that basket of goods? Remember, productivity is steadily rising- things are cheaper to produce [so far]... so where does that gain go?

In the ideal world, given flat incomes, productivity would go into us working less. But this is capitalism: fat chance.

So instead, in the developed world it goes into bigger houses, bigger and faster and flashier cars, gadgets that do more, vacations farther from home... and so on.

Same basket of goods and services, as measured by the economists. But not by any means the same, when measured qualitatively.

Doesn't take rocket science to figure that the bulk of us doing average [not including the significant minority going backwards] are going to experience this as MORE... on top of the natural 'more experience' we get from moving up the gradual generational escalator.

Those I think are the main quantitative/qualitative interfaces for the toiling masses of the developed world.

---

The distinction I would make with Proaxiom's point to make reference to 'luxury or utility' items. The distinction of what heppens with poor people and working class with declining or stressed incomes is already explicit.

The main point is what is going on with folks 'doing OK' and above, and how they relate to it.

And that's why I referr to a comprehensive 'basket of goods and services'.

Certainly additions of computers and cell phones, Xboxs, and ATV's for that matter... are all part of it. But its seamless with the necessaities. Your house is a necessity- but it's a fact that on aggregate people live in more luxurious houses.

Paradox of paved paradise notwithstanding: the crackebox semi's on postage stamp lots with maybe a spindly 'tree' in a butt ugly subdivision- but the houses are bigger and there's more in them. And the cars, and...

quote:

---

Originally posted by Michelle:
I remember quite clearly that in November 1990, the year I started working full-time, minimum wage was $6 per hour. Our boss didn't pay above minimum wage, and the only time I got raises were when the minimum wage went up - which, thankfully, it did a couple of times in the space of two or three years because the NDP was finally in government.

---

Interesting. The source I found was the National Welfare Council, which perhaps has erroneous data (link is to a pdf).

quote:

---

Originally posted by KenS:
knew my posts were kind of long, and they were a while back. On the guess that they were not read and/or forgotten...

---

I actually did read it but it wasn't clear to me you were saying the same thing. I think I understand a bit better now.

quote:

---

In the ideal world, given flat incomes, productivity would go into us working less. But this is capitalism: fat chance.

---

What you attribute to capitalism would more correctly be called consumerism. People continue to work longer hours even as their productivity increases because they want more stuff. It has become part of our culture.

One thing I enjoy keeping up on is psychological research into happiness. One thing seems clear now: people are stupid when asked to predict what will make them happy. Everyone seems to think that having more money to buy more expensive goods will make them happier, when in reality most people would be better to take up a new hobby or a sport, or spend more time with family and friends.

This is a neat point about minimum wage vs inflation stats. Cost of living is a continuous increase, while minimum wage goes up in jumps and starts, depending on the disposition of the government of the day.

So if you want minimum wage to look poor against inflation, you compare today to 1995 when Rae was defeated and Harris came to power (Harris didn't raise it at all). If you want minimum wage to look good against inflation, you compare today to 1990 when Rae was elected (Rae raised it every year). This is statistical cherry-picking.

What we really need to do is figure out a good level where minimum wage earners can reasonably live, then set it there and have it automatically index to inflation every two years or so.

That way minimum wage only has to enter public debate if somebody can put forward a good argument that the initial fixed level was flawed. We don't have to go through the same tired debate every time governments get distracted for too long and it gets out of whack to cost of living.

[ 07 January 2008: Message edited by: Proaxiom ]

quote:

---

I actually did read it but it wasn't clear to me what you were saying.

---

Oh. Stung to the quick.

But I long ago suspected I missed the boat with those posts. Anyone else want to try again reading them?

[And I did change the quote above. More than poetic license. But the actual words do say that.]

quote:

---

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the ideal world, given flat incomes, productivity would go into us working less. But this is capitalism: fat chance.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What you attribute to capitalism would more correctly be called consumerism. People continue to work longer hours even as their productivity increases because they want more stuff. It has become part of our culture.

---

In correct. The minimum point would be that they are about both capitalism and consumerism. But I would go further and argue that to chalk them up to consumerism is misleading.

It is about capitalism. Capitalism is a system that is at a minimum heavily prejudiced against the 'option' of applying productivity gains to the provision of simpler and more useful goods, such that people would realize productivity gains in things like more time spent with family and on non-work activities.

It's no coincidence they 'spend' their discretionary power on expensive toys that occupy them in the discretionary time they do have, and that there is an assumed psycological need for such toys.

No coincidence that people know they are going to have to work 40 hours plus anyway.

No coincidence it takes exceptional personal skills and discipline- even among green oriented lefties- to be a family that is able to prosper with one average income in the family.

Marxists don't have the answer. They think these non-coincidences are inevitable, and don't rigorously concern themselves with the 'ghost in the machine'.

Social, psychological and cultural understanding is very much required- but they are not as you would argue ['consumerism'] the mechanism itself.

But I will agree that they are absolutely essential components for understanding first how the ghost in the machine works; and secondly for constructing a politics and social activism capable of convincing people they have an interst in throwing off the chains. [Even if we weren't killing the planet.]

[ 07 January 2008: Message edited by: KenS ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Proaxiom:

What we really need to do is figure out a good level where minimum wage earners can reasonably live, then set it there and have it automatically index to inflation every two years or so.

---

aaahhhhh but what is "reasonable"?

Paying for rent and food - yes
New car every two years - maybe not (but that's greener than driving a 10 year old beater)
afford hockey for 3 kids - who can do that???
Xbox under the Christmas tree - for some not reasonable, for my son - exceptionally reasonable (still didn't happen )

So who would get to dictate what is "reasonable?"

Those on minimum wage should be able to then afford the maximum RRSP contributions - but what if they elected not to make them *gasp*

If you live in a city - no car for you there's public transit - rural people we'll let you earn enough to buy a hybrid!

This is an online discussion about this very topic with:

Dr. Nicholson is inaugural president and chief executive officer of the Council of Canadian Academies, a group dedicated to science advice in the public interest.

Opening question:

Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: Welcome, Dr. Nicholson, and thanks for joining us today to take questions from the readers of globeandmail.com.

I'd like to start by asking why you think there isn't a bigger outcry among ordinary Canadians about the growing income disparity that you describe in your essay?

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Originally posted by Proaxiom:
The minimum wage is slated to increase to $10.75 by 2010, at that time it will be up about 45%, inflation-adjusted, since 1990.

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$10.25 by March 31, 2010

That will be enough to pull two incomer-earner families working 80 hours/week above the poverty line as it is defined today.

A lower limit used internationally is two-thirds of the median income, which would make living wage just under $11/hr today. ~~$11/hr would be the rough equivalent of minimum wage purchasing power of 25 years ago. France, Italy and Britain all have minimum wages that are closer to this level than all Canadian provinces. And in practice, several Northern European and Scandinavian countries have minimum wages at this level set by collective bargaining.

One in five Canadian workers earns less than $10 dollar an hour, and more than half of them are over the age of 25. High child poverty rates in Canada are real. To frame the minimum wage debate as being just about teenagers is misleading.

[ 07 January 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Fidel:
A lower limit used internationally is two-thirds of the median income, which would make living wage just under $11/hr today. ~~$11/hr would be the rough equivalent of minimum wage purchasing power of 25 years ago.

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Setting the minimum wage based on relative measures rather than absolute is a bad idea.

It's still nonsense to define poverty using calculations that have high-income earners as an input. What my neighbour earns has no bearing on whether I am earning enough to pay for clothes and food.

How about we define the poverty line as the border between the lowest and second-lowest quintiles of earners? Then 1 in 5 people will live in poverty. Always. A mathematical certainty. Statscan LICOs work similarly.

Perhaps a reason for not using relative measures to set minimum wage that you'll like better is this: when real incomes fall during recession, the minimum wage would also fall.

rural-Francesca pointed out the problems with determining what is reasonable in terms of setting it based on needs, because needs vary so much between situations. Recognizing that minimum wage is a blunt instrument, it has to be used as part of the broader social safety net. It won't be able to help everybody on its own.

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The curious absence of class struggle

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Second choice- and better than debating minutae- is what 'wedges' might be used to get class conciousness- or whatver it is or you want to call it- precolating.

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If we can increase the number of people coming out of school with specialized skills -- the kind that can't effectively be outsourced -- then not only do you have more people working in higher-paying jobs, but you reduce the labour pool for lower-paying job making employers have to worry more about employee retention.

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This is an overly technicist approach. But it's the right idea. Education and 'opportunity development' should not only be free, it should be 'proactive'. We should be working towards comprehensive programs of putting the 'the tools of life' into citizens hands... so that they can choose, etc.

Including kids and adults looking at things like this: why is it that kids from the 'upper middle class' and up can take a general old liberal arts degree, and without even being handed an opportunity through family connections, they can go out and get higher incomes than the kids who come out of the professional programs that are tickets for higher incomes?

What do we work for?

What do I want and what skills are going to help me get it?

If I like learning new things, what types of jobs or companies are the best for ongoing multi-faceted training?

And on and on.

Boil that down. Give it a moniker. Make it a rallying cry even before the programatic details of a political pary's program are out there.

A direct and subversive attack on the 'hooks' of consumerism and dependency- but framed around universal aspirations in our society.

quote:

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Originally posted by Proaxiom:

Setting the minimum wage based on relative measures rather than absolute is a bad idea.

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I think there are a number of things wrong with using absolute poverty as a measure. Christopher Sarlo of the rightwing Vancouver make-believe think tank wrote about absolute poverty measures, and most anti-poverty groups in Canada refuse to take his report on poverty measures seriously. Even Sarlo's MBM's are set relative to consumption of other Canadians.

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How about we define the poverty line as the border between the lowest and second-lowest quintiles of earners? Then 1 in 5 people will live in poverty. Always. A mathematical certainty. Statscan LICOs work similarly.

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Why not just decide that no one will have an income that is, say, less than half of median? Here's a micro example with ten workers and $20 loonies an hour the lofty median wage rate:

$10 $10 $12 $15 $19 ($20/Hr Toronto effect) $21 $30 $35 $50 $1,000

... it's mathemagical, I know. And imagine this is true on a national scale but with a lot more numbers in the set. This way no one ever lives in relative poverty as long as everyone's wages increase wrt inflation. Ever.

It's not true that relative poverty must always exist according to some cruel Darwinian law of math which says we must shovel the lion's share of national income to the top 1% of fat-cats or else. If one thing is true, according to Nicholson, real median income in Canada didn't change from 1982 to 2004. Apparently more than just those income earners in the bottom quintile failed to gain in lockstep with corporate CEOs and banksters in the uppermost decile. Still, no one is saying that LICOs should even be the definitive measure for all poverty and certainly not recommending Sarlo's absolute measures.

[ 08 January 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Why not just decide that no one will have an income that is, say, less than half of median?

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Which is a more important goal, making sure everyone is able to afford the necessities of life, or narrowing the income distribution curve?

If the former is more important than the latter, then why would you gear policy toward the less important objective?

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Still, no one is saying that LICOs should even be the definitive measure for all poverty and certainly not recommending Sarlo's absolute measures.

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The right way to measure something depends on how the measurement will be used. There are reasons why minimum wage should be based on the cost of essential goods and services, rather than on what other people are earning.

In defining poverty, it again depends on what you want to do with the numbers. If the intention is to compare poverty levels over time in order to gauge the effect of government policies, then it's simple to see why a relative measurement doesn't work -- it doesn't tell us whether people are getting better or worse off, which is usually the attribute we are most concerned with.

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If one thing is true, according to Nicholson, real median income in Canada didn't change from 1982 to 2004.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
P.S. I love the "teenagers working part-time for movie money" thing. Yeah, because not all teenagers have parents with disposable income to give them to go to movies or get stuff that their friends have. So instead of their parents choosing between buying groceries or giving their kids an allowance, their kids go out and work part-time (and probably do worse in school as a result) so that they can actually have a social life. Gosh, that's just frivolous, isn't it, teenagers wanting to be able to socialize with their friends outside of their home? I guess they really don't count as "workers" do they? Certainly not "deserving" ones!

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Michelle, I think that you misread me.

I never once asserted that there is anything frivolous about teenagers wanting to earn money part-time, in order to socialize with their friends. I would be curious to know which part of my post suggested that I had this view. Indeed, earning money part-time was how I was able, in the not too distant past, to socialize with my friends outside the home.

Nor did I ever assert that teenagers working part-time for social money don't count as "workers", or not as "deserving workers". I would again be curious to know which part of my post suggested that I had this view.

My point was merely statistical. As a teenager working summers and part-time, I earned roughly $5K per year. If we are looking at median earned income as a measure of how well-off people are, then it can be misleading if we include workers, such as my recent self, whose income is supplementary to food and shelter provided by their parents.

In any case, in many families there isn't just one income, so it's just as relevant to count a teenager's 5K per year as it is to count an adult's income in a house with two or three incomes.

When I was a teenager, I lived on my own with a full-time minimum wage job, and had two roommates, one of whom had a part-time minimum wage job. It was our combined income that paid the rent, not mine, not theirs.

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Education and 'opportunity development' should not only be free, it should be 'proactive'. We should be working towards comprehensive programs of putting the 'the tools of life' into citizens hands... so that they can choose, etc.

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The question for me is, to what end? I think one reason why class consciousness is being lost is because the goals of any class movement have been conflated with the raison d'être of the ruling classes.

In other words, if we are fighting poverty to enable the defined poor to spend more time shopping for salad shooters, why do I care?

But I think I'd say forget trying to develop calss consciousness- at least in the ways we have always thought of it.

I don't think it's even appropriate- let alone feasible before our planetary home croaks on us.

I like the 'tools of life' expression as well. In my opinion, we need a serious reformation of the public school system to focus on these.

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Part of teaching people the tools of life would be a critical capacity to make realistic assessments about where they stand.

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One of my largest gripes with public education is that it completely ignored critical thinking skills. By the end of Grade 7, kids should understand basic logic and its application to argument. It is astonishing to me that kids can get to university and be introduced to this for the first time.

Related to this, though, is my other large gripe: kids aren't taught the value of self-education.

I interview dozens of candidates a year, because my group always has open positions. There's always one thing I zero in on that I have found reliably separates the wheat from the chaff: what do they do that's not for school or work. For most candidates the answer is: not much.

I get excited when I hear something like this: "A while back, I took an interest in X. I did some reading on X from books and the Internet, then I got some ideas and started working with X by doing Y. Y didn't end up working out because of some problems, but that led me to Z, and here's how Z worked..."

quote:

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Originally posted by Proaxiom:
Which is a more important goal, making sure everyone is able to afford the necessities of life, or narrowing the income distribution curve?

If the former is more important than the latter, then why would you gear policy toward the less important objective?

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Well technically there is no such thing as absolute poverty in rich countries, not compared with subSaharan Africa or in those little-mentioned countries of Central America a few day's drive from Texas, and Haiti, and where widespread grinding poverty has become a permanent feature of third world capitalism. Otoh, we do have homelessness and grinding poverty right here in Canada as we export finite fossil fuels and raw materials to the imperial master nation at a frenzied pace.

But why compare ourselves with countries where absolute poverty is typical of third world capitalism? Why set the bar so low here in bastion of capitalism where we have unparalleled natural wealth being siphoned off by transnational corporations and a vicious empire more dependent on oil and gas than any other? Why not compare ourselves with other advanced democracies that have made real progress toward eliminating child and adult poverty and while maintaining economic competitiveness at the same time? It's hard to promote economic competitiveness when the other 60% of unemployed Canadian workers can't access EI supports or even job training funds. It's difficult to rate in the top ten for economic competitive growth index when people spend all their time worrying about paying the rent and feeding the kids instead of focussing on finding and doing meaningful and productive work.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Wow. Okay, I was wrong. I still find it hard to believe, but I guess the CEOs skew it upwards.

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:

er, Michelle - the GTA Median is $3 dollars less. There are lots of people that earn this amount of money.

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That's wonderful. Everybody head for Toronto?

[ 08 January 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
In any case, in many families there isn't just one income, so it's just as relevant to count a teenager's 5K per year as it is to count an adult's income in a house with two or three incomes. ...

It's the same in a home where a teenager is earning money for clothes or socializing. If that teen's parents don't earn enough to cover the rent AND the teenager's social needs, then the teenager IS working to help with household expenses. Because without that teenager's income, the household couldn't pay for both the rent AND the teenager's needs.

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Well, my parents did earn enough to cover food, shelter AND modest social needs; but they believed (and I agreed) that it would be far better for me to earn my my own social money. This is not, I believe, uncommon.

Maybe I can make my purely statistical point as follows. Consider two households:

Household 1 (with triplets!):
Parent 1 makes $100K per year
Parent 2 makes $95K
Teenager 1 makes $5K
Teenager 2 makes $5K
Teenager 3 makes $5K

Household 2:
Parent 1 makes $20K
Parent 2 makes $25K
Teenager makes $5K

Note:

Median income of Household 1: $5K.
Median income of Household 2: $20K.

Toronto Recreation Fees

A proposal to hike user fees for many of Toronto's 52,000 recreation programs will actually give the city's poor more opportunity to use them, Mayor David Miller says.

So we make the middle class pay more, lots more, and that enables more 'poor' people to qualify and get it for free.

I'm not sure whether I'm middle-class or not based on my income - I guess probably I am. But it's usually a pretty tight squeeze right now for me to pay for swimming lessons and such. If they double the fees, I'm not sure I can afford it.

As for the "welcome program" they're talking about - you have to be making VERY little money to qualify. So if you're one of those people who make a little above their cut-off, then you're probably making just enough to survive, and you likely can't afford $100 every eight weeks for swimming lessons. (They currently cost $48.)

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The minimum age for working in Ontario is 14 years for most types of work. However, 14- and 15-year-olds are not to be employed during school hours unless they have been excused from school attendance in accordance with Regulation 308 of the Education Act. Some regulations specify higher minimum ages for certain types of work, as follows:

* Underground Mines: 18 years
* Construction: 16 years
* Window Cleaning: 18 years
* Logging Operations: 16 years
* Factories or Repair Shops: 15 years
* Stores, Offices or Arenas: 14 years.

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labour.gov.on.ca

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
It's interest while Child poverty in the Greater Toronto Area is at 23% you do not very often see people younger that 16 working part time jobs.

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The report, funded by the privately endowed Metcalfe Foundation, lists a litany of barriers to self-reliance. It starts with welfare, which deducts 50 cents for every dollar earned the moment a person on welfare gets a job. Other social supports such as public housing and subsidized child care are also often slashed as income increases, leaving those on welfare little incentive to move ahead.

"Working-age social assistance recipients in Ontario, especially those who are public housing residents, live with disincentives," the report says. "The more they earn, the more they lose benefits; when they tell the truth, they are penalized."

As a result, programs encourage non-reporting, discourage work and perpetuate abject poverty, it says. Stapleton, who hopes his report will help shape the McGuinty government's poverty-reduction strategy, says the situation is particularly perverse for children turning 18 in poor families.

He recounts Toronto Mayor David Miller's fury in 2005 when, after encouraging large companies to hire disadvantaged youth, parents told their sons and daughters to turn down job offers. The reason? Any income these youth earned would trigger automatic rent hikes in the families' subsidized housing and cuts to welfare cheques.

"These kids were caught in a tangle of social policies that made it worse for both themselves and their parents if they took advantage of opportunities such as Miller's initiative," says the report, entitled "Why is it so tough to get ahead? How our tangled social programs pathologize the transition to self-reliance."

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The report, funded by the privately endowed Metcalfe Foundation, lists a litany of barriers to self-reliance. It starts with welfare, which deducts 50 cents for every dollar earned the moment a person on welfare gets a job. Other social supports such as public housing and subsidized child care are also often slashed as income increases, leaving those on welfare little incentive to move ahead.

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The report, funded by the privately endowed Metcalfe Foundation, lists a litany of barriers to self-reliance. It starts with welfare, which deducts 50 cents for every dollar earned the moment a person on welfare gets a job.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Canada is below the OECD average wrt social spending as a percentage of GDP, somewhere under 18%. Since 1995, social transfers to provinces have been reduced considerably by tens of billions of dollars. And it coincides with the 1991 bailout of private banks and privatization of the remainder of our money supply and issuing of credit.

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Before Spain's Popular Party government was thrown out, Spain was one of the lowest income countries in the EU, and Galbraith attributed it to low incomes affecting higher unemployment levels, as an example. According to Galbraith, more inequality gives rise to higher unemployment levels and less competitive economies overall.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
For example, I was earning minimum wage in 1990. Now I am earning much more. So I don't feel like I've been staying static since 1982. But the person who has replaced me at the minimum wage level is likely much younger than I am, so they have no personal experience to compare it to, so they don't realize that their spending power is the same or perhaps even lower than mine was (I think $6 back when I was earning it in 1990 goes a lot further than $7.75 does now), they don't have my experience to compare it to, so they think it's just normal.

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Percentage of employees who were paid minimum wage: 4.3

Percentage of minimum-wage workers who were
- working part-time: 59.2
- between 15 and 19 years old: 44.5
- students living at home: 33.2
- heads of a household with children under 18: 5.4

I'm just then confused because retail and tourism is a huge employer in my community and they are all minimum wage/15 hour week wages.

The cities are better off than the rural areas and my own pet idea is making the minimum wage in cities higher than it is in rural areas. Say $12.

A 2003 figure from Statistics Canada is that there were 1.6 million Canadian workers at $8 or less.

[ 12 January 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:

The cities are better off than the rural areas and my own pet idea is making the minimum wage in cities higher than it is in rural areas. Say $12.

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wwwwhhhhhaaaaaa?????

the cities are better off so we should make the wage higher in the city????

lack of transporation makes rural poverty issues a greater challenge in rural areas, so families have to buy a car and therefore the cost of living is still high.

there is no affordable housing...ok there is none anywhere, but there is also no rental properties

I think a $10 minimum wage in rural areas is doable and in fact the Ontario government is going for $10.25 in three years. Boosting minimum wage would put worst employers out of business but the customers just move down the street to the competition. This would make them busier and be all around more rational.

Thank you for the points that in rural areas you need a car and there is no rental accomadation.

[ 12 January 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

If you have a payroll that has 40 hour work weeks then you get a tax break, rather than a tax break for being under 26 hours.

Yes we have a lot more 'ma & pa' business for whom a $10 wage is going to be a massive challenge.

But if you look at retail, and the big box market, no one is employing more than 26 hours.

Having benefit programs also help!

and I'd like a pony .......

We need infrastructure funding that is needs based not competition based.

The Clean Water Act has created considerable hardship for municipalities - and I can say that because I have a meeting in Walkerton on Monday - I KNOW the water crisis - as it created regulations with no funding to assist.

The downloading to the municipalities services such as Ontario Works and ODSP puts the burden on property taxes rather than income taxes. What a great way to further victimize people in poverty - blame them for increases in property taxes!!

We need decent roads to keep what manufacturing we have - but there's no funding.

We need high speed Internet in all areas of our communities, because our teens can't download from You-tube - ok little off priority there - but our businesses are challenged by the lack of high speed.

We have incredible opportunities coming from within the Rural community with events such as [URL= http://www.hicktech.com ]HICK Tech[/URL] How Information Connects Knowledge, working within our community's capacity, working to improve, on our own.

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Increasing the minimum wage would have essentially no effect on poverty. Far, far better would be direct transfers to those in poverty.

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But what about millions of adult workers in Canada who earn anywhere less than $10 dollars an hour, hmmmm?

Yes, and raising the wage floor is not the NDP's sole approach to raising living standards for the poorest in Canada. It's got to be a multi-faceted approach that is proven to work in the same countries Stephen Gordon loves to point to as models for efficient taxation.

Direct transfers are basically Stephane Dion's Liberal Party promise for alleviating poverty in Canada. And we know full well what happens to phony-baloney Liberal Party election promises. Ssssscrew the Liberals, they had their chance and bllllllllew it!

[ 13 January 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Austria's minimum wage ranges from $9.04 to $10.54 an hour CAD

Belgium $11.38 CAD

French minimum is $12.46 CAD an hour

Irish minimum is $13 CAD per hour

Luxembourg's mini is $13.58 CAD(unskilled) and
not less than $16.31 CAD for skilled workers

Netherlands $11.61 CAD

Switzerland $12.23 CAD (unskilled)

U.K. $11.98 CAD expected this year for over 22's

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Originally posted by Fidel:
[QB]Lots of good things grow in Liberal Ontario. And so does child poverty after minimum wages are frozen for eight years!

QB]

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
Thanks for the point of view.

As a small "p' pol I wonder about conditions outside of Toronto. You are suggesting infrastructure and reversing the downloading of social costs would be rural issues. That seems to be good sense and doable.

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Rural Poverty

This is a thread I started that speaks specifically to the challenges of rural poverty and its relationship with infrastructure.

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Originally posted by rural - Francesca:
, I graduated from university during 'Ray days'. No jobs for me!!!

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Ontario's was the highest minimum wage in the country by 1995. A few people took some Ray days off. It was the tail end of a nation-wide Mulroney-induced recession from the 1980's. Meanwhile, Mike Harris laid off 10 thousand nurses, slashed welfare rates, and borrowed $35 billion to pay for tax cuts for rich friends of the party. The Canadian economy began to turn around by 1994, but Ontario threw hundreds of thousands off welfare roles in the late 90's. It was disasterous for poverty in this province. The Liberals have not raised welfare rates significantly since Harris cut them, and we have 1.3 million workers earning less than $10 dollars an hour, about half of them are over the age of 25.

What we have in this province under the McGuilty Liberals an infrastructure deficit carried over from the 1990s, a lack of job training and skills developement of all kinds, and what amounts to low wage slavery and highest total number of children living anywhere below poverty than any other province.

And Liberal B.C. owns the highest percentage of children living anywhere below poverty.

It's a national disgrace!

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
Fidel, very interesting about European minimum wage. Is that easy to look up? I would like to have the source on hand.

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What I did was make monthly incomes hourly ones based on our standard 40 hour week, 166.66 hours per month, or 2000 working hours per year standard. And there are currency converters online. Notice that some of the Euros are monthly minimums for which incomes shall not be less than.

[ 13 January 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by rural - Francesca:

ummm errrr Liberals in Ontario have only been in office 4 years, and you can't tell me the hellish years under Harris we're better. And just to make the disillusionment complete, I graduated from university during 'Ray days'. No jobs for me!!!

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Originally posted by rural - Francesca:
Instead of just going for the raise, why not added minimum hour incentives.

If you have a payroll that has 40 hour work weeks then you get a tax break, rather than a tax break for being under 26 hours.

Yes we have a lot more 'ma & pa' business for whom a $10 wage is going to be a massive challenge.

But if you look at retail, and the big box market, no one is employing more than 26 hours.

Having benefit programs also help!

and I'd like a pony .......

We need infrastructure funding that is needs based not competition based.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Another point: Would our two oldest political parties consider freezing rents and prices of groceries for eight long years amid an affordable housing shortage?

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
The problem with Stehpan Gordon's arithmetic is that it deals with just minimum wage. There are a lot of people just above minimum wage, at $8 or less. A $10 dollar minimum wage would catch more people.

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The problem with Stehpan Gordon's arithmetic is that it deals with just minimum wage. There are a lot of people just above minimum wage, at $8 or less. A $10 dollar minimum wage would catch more people.

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I've made this point a number of times with him he just doesn't get it. It is also worth noting that those getting exactly the minimum wage are more likely to be teenagers or other part-timers, whereas older or full-time employees might earn within the range of $8.50-$9.50. That is the range that many people working for temp agencies make and due to lack of regulation many people also end up working for years through temp agencies making crap wages while the agency makes a mint, a whole new method of exploitation.

[ 13 January 2008: Message edited by: N.R.KISSED ]

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
So what?

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They were living wage jobs.

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Originally posted by Erik Redburn:
That too is a good point, as well as another illustration on how numbers can be misused. Higher minimums might also push up the lower end of the wage scale somewhat (much to the horror of the Chamber of Commerce no doubt) and allow a slightly more liveable bottom floor for those in greater danger of disemployment than the average economist, helping to free the labour part of the market equation from the heavy grip of bad employers. There's more than one good reason for minumum wage laws.

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Could someone please come up with a source for this factoid? I've spent a lot of time looking through this literature, and I've seen nothing that could substantiate it. In this paper, the authors conclude

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we may either be understating or overstating the redistributive benefits of the minimum wage, depending on the relative importance of disemployment effects relative to spillover effects. Since most of the existing empirical evidence suggests that neither effects are particularly large, we think that the most sensible approach is to ignore the distributive impact of disemployment and spill-over effects

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In other words, there may be some spillover effects. But they are small, and pretty much counterbalanced by the (equally small) negative effects on employment.

[ 13 January 2008: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]

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Originally posted by N.R.KISSED:
I've made this point a number of times with him he just doesn't get it.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
So all those Euro-Scandinavian countries, and where poverty rates are lower than Canada's, are wasting their time with wage floors higher than $10 and $11 Canadian dollars an hour.

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:

Pretty much - market income inequality in Sweden is pretty much the same as it is in the US. The heavy lifting is done by their system of transfers to low-income households.

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I think countries more successful than Canada at reducing child and adult poverty do not rely on transfers to low-income families alone, which, coincidentally, happens to be what Dion's Liberal Party is proposing - the Liberals, a party that can't keep its own MP's hands out of the public cookie jar, have suddenly come up with a poverty reduction plan consisting of transfers only amid a housing crisis and discriminatory EI system since Paul Martin. Our UBC people can write all the prose they want about minimum wage floors, but they have no actual hands-on experience with reducing poverty in Canada.

At least the low wage advocates are off of the argument that higher min wages cause massive layoffs due to real world evidence that it does not. So what have they got left besides niggling on behalf of low wage philanthropists and McJob economy? This just in: There are alternatives to flexible labour markets

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Minimum Wage – Backgrounder
Who makes less than $10 an hour?

Almost 25% of Ontario workers are paid wages of $10 or less. 31% of women workers and 38% of women
of colour receive poverty wages compared to only 18% of men. 41% of immigrants of colour earned $10 or less.

Aren’t low wages just a problem for young workers?
The majority of low wage workers, over 55%, are full time workers aged 25 to 64 years.

Isn’t low-pay temporary?

72% of women and 27% of men who were low-paid in 1996 were still low-paid in 2001

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What is the percentage of unionized labour in Sweden? USA?

Because I think that is an excellent point for any poverty reduction plan in Canada. I think our stoogeocrats should consider reversing the 175 repressive pieces of labour legislation passed between 1982 and 2006. Intervention on behalf of employers to that degree has no place in a free market.

[ 13 January 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Disposable income is much more equal, thanks to the transfers.

[ 13 January 2008: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
So what?

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