A Year Later: Seattle Min. Wage Increases =/= Price Hikes

Tax it don't prevent it. Tax at purchase, annual and at sales.


And that is coming from Sydney resident.

I'm just not sure that US real estate still wouldn't be the safest place to keep your money, even with the higher cost.

I just want to stop them from buying up residential houses, and leaving them empty. Housing prices are skyrocketing where I live, and their are still houses empty for 5 + years now sitting empty all over the place.
 
I'm just not sure that US real estate still wouldn't be the safest place to keep your money, even with the higher cost.

I just want to stop them from buying up residential houses, and leaving them empty. Housing prices are skyrocketing where I live, and their are still houses empty for 5 + years now sitting empty all over the place.

We are introducing a tax on vacant properties in Australia. It seems like its going to cost about as much as it raises so i am not a fan.

My idea would be for interest repayments to only be tax deductible if the property is rented.

But really biggest international issue is no one trusts the long term value of the yuan. If Chinese investors are willing to pay incredible taxes to get security of investment I think we should be gracious enough to accept them.
 
Tax it don't prevent it. Tax at purchase, annual and at sales.


And that is coming from Sydney resident.
Jim-Carey-Lets-Put-Another-Shrimp-on-the-Barbie-Dumb-and-Dumber.gif
 
is seattle producing the goods that are sold in those retailers that have a higher minimum wage? or are they importing them from cheaper parts of america/the world where they can still produce things at a lower cost due to lower minimum wage?

if seattle retailers are only selling stuff that is produced in seattle (produced at a higher price because of the higher cost of labor in seattle) yet are still able to keep prices down, then i am convinced.
if they are just importing shit from overseas where the products are made with cheap labour or farmed produce from the midwest where there is still a lower minimum wage, then i am not convinced. in fact if it is the latter, then i would be convinced that a higher national minimum wage would only promote importing MORE things from out of the US and having lest "made in USA" products being sold.
 
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Minimum wage hiking would only increase automation and rig the market in favor of industries that require less labor and are better at exploiting people.

Isn't that great though? Onward to the singularity.
 
Isn't that great though? Onward to the singularity.
lord knows automation only suddenly appeared recently because of all this talk about wages and hasnt been a continuous thing for like 100 fucking years. industry and businesses have ALWAYS automated at the earliest opportunity. No business on this planet is looking at robots and automation like "we'd do it but dealing with Bubba and Tyrone is just so much more appealing, we'd only automate as a 'last resort' wink wink"

the nano-second a robot can do your job, you're toast. no matter what the industry was. If they discovered a way to automate a talking pile of human shaped garbage that burns money and randomly starts wars, we wouldnt even need to vote anymore.
 
You probably should have done a better job looking into this before making a ridiculous thread claiming no downside. It's only been that for a few months, and when the increase was only 68 cents it still made employment plummet. Like everyone said, many companies can't just add more expenses without any more coming in; they'll hire fewer people and demand more of the people they do hire unless they raise prices to pass the added cost to the customers. Seattle was already one of the most expensive cities in the country, and now there are more unemployed people living in such an expensive city.

Those assholes even made 2 different "minimum wages" based on the business. Good luck, Seattle, keep it up and have fun becoming the next Detroit.



http://nypost.com/2016/03/12/how-the-15-wage-is-already-killing-seattle-jobs/
Seattle passed its $15 law in June 2014. Starting last April, it raised the minimum from $9.32 (the state minimum wage) to $10 for certain business, $11 for others.

Increases to $12, $12.50 and $13 an hour began taking effect for most employers this Jan. 1. The jumps will continue until the minimum hits the full $15 an hour in 2017 for some before it’s universal in 2019.

Yet even the early impact is harsh.

The AEI study, worked up from Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly surveys, shows that, between April and December last year, Seattle saw the biggest employment drop in any nine-month period since 2009 — a full year into the Great Recession.

The city unemployment rate rose a full percentage point.

Before the minimum-wage hikes begin, Seattle employment tracked the rest of the nation — slowly rising from the 2008-09 bottom. But it started to plunge last spring, as the new law began to kick in.

Furthermore, Seattle’s loss of 10,000 jobs in just the three months of September, October and November was a record for any three-month period dating back to 1990.

Meanwhile, employment outside the city limits — which had long tracked the rate in Seattle proper — was soaring by 57,000 and set a new record high that November.
 
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Too funny. In the middle of the article they say prices haven't increased because they need to stay competitive and then they promptly say they've reduced hours, staff and service levels.

Great trade off.

Also, the minimum wage hasn't been fully implemented except for the largest employers with no benefits...so no one knows what the final result will be. Pretty poor article to draw any sort of conclusion at this point.
 
Minimum wage hikes are an incredibly horrible idea, and will impact the working poor in a worse fashion than any other class of society, by far.

Can someone tell me why on earth basic Economics isn't taught as part of standard High School curriculum in the USA? This absurd notion, alongside the astonishingly simplistic idea of manufacturing being a solution to employment and growth, are akin to suggesting a biblical Ark-theory of biology ... no one with any degree of education can take them seriously, and yet they persist in popularity among the general population.
 
the nano-second a robot can do your job, you're toast. no matter what the industry was. If they discovered a way to automate a talking pile of human shaped garbage that burns money and randomly starts wars, we wouldnt even need to vote anymore.

Change that to read:

"the nano-second a robot can do your job CHEAPER THAN YOU CAN, you're toast. no matter what the industry was."
And you would be right on-point.

Know what would make them cheaper?

Higher wages.
 
is seattle producing the goods that are sold in those retailers that have a higher minimum wage? or are they importing them from cheaper parts of america/the world where they can still produce things at a lower cost due to lower minimum wage?

if seattle retailers are only selling stuff that is produced in seattle (produced at a higher price because of the higher cost of labor in seattle) yet are still able to keep prices down, then i am convinced.
if they are just importing shit from overseas where the products are made with cheap labour or farmed produce from the midwest where there is still a lower minimum wage, then i am not convinced. in fact if it is the latter, then i would be convinced that a higher national minimum wage would only promote importing MORE things from out of the US and having lest "made in USA" products being sold.

Does it matter?

We are a retail economy, not a production economy.

This is why the proper response to the objection of paying burger flippers 15$, is "when is the new factory opening"?
 
Does it matter?

We are a retail economy, not a production economy.


This is why the proper response to the objection of paying burger flippers 15$, is "when is the new factory opening"?
the US doesn't have a farming industry that brings in billions of dollars and that supplies millions of peoples with jobs?

it doesn't currently manufacture anything?
 
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Change that to read:

"the nano-second a robot can do your job CHEAPER THAN YOU CAN, you're toast. no matter what the industry was."
And you would be right on-point.

Know what would make them cheaper?

Higher wages.
automation will ALWAYS be cheaper because you dont have to recruit, train, and replace a machine. the savings accumulate over a time period, not in a single quarter. A machine that cost 700 million dollars will almost immediately get bought to replace a pool of workers that only cost a company 50 million a year because businesses that like to succeed think long term gains and not short term earnings. When automobile manufacturing started switching to machines it took almost a decade for them to pay for themselves.
labor cost are the biggest thing that tightens profit margins. automation immediately loosens that.
 
the US doesn't have a farming industry that brings in billions of dollars and that supplies millions of peoples with jobs?

it doesn't currently manufacture anything?

Sure, we manufacture plenty.

It isn't where the majority of the jobs are. Retail is.

I would say an economy is defined by its largest sector.
 
Sure, we manufacture plenty.

It isn't where the majority of the jobs are. Retail is.

I would say an economy is defined by its largest sector.
i don't care how the american economy is defined. i'm interested as to how a higher national wage would affect the people who work in farming/manufacturing jobs. which is why i brought up my point asking if this would just promote more importing goods from out of the country. so to answer your original question...yes, it does matter if this promotes retailers getting there products from non-US manufacturers because it will also put many americans out of jobs.

so, does a higher national minimum wage encourage retailers to get more products from out of the country where the price different will be even greater to american made/grown products?
 
Minimum wage hikes are an incredibly horrible idea, and will impact the working poor in a worse fashion than any other class of society, by far.

Can someone tell me why on earth basic Economics isn't taught as part of standard High School curriculum in the USA? This absurd notion, alongside the astonishingly simplistic idea of manufacturing being a solution to employment and growth, are akin to suggesting a biblical Ark-theory of biology ... no one with any degree of education can take them seriously, and yet they persist in popularity among the general population.

Was it really bad for the poor the first time we created it? Since we did, we have increased it a handful of times I believe. You cant tell me the poor kept getting it worse and worse every single time up until now.
 
is seattle producing the goods that are sold in those retailers that have a higher minimum wage? or are they importing them from cheaper parts of america/the world where they can still produce things at a lower cost due to lower minimum wage?

if seattle retailers are only selling stuff that is produced in seattle (produced at a higher price because of the higher cost of labor in seattle) yet are still able to keep prices down, then i am convinced.
if they are just importing shit from overseas where the products are made with cheap labour or farmed produce from the midwest where there is still a lower minimum wage, then i am not convinced. in fact if it is the latter, then i would be convinced that a higher national minimum wage would only promote importing MORE things from out of the US and having lest "made in USA" products being sold.

Imports are imports imo.

You can't compete with China for lower wages.

Tax payer welfare should not be supporting unprofitable business that is so inefficient it can't pay its employees enough to survive.

Made in America is good because it supposedly means profitable for America, when the tax payer funds the workers it usually means the opposite.
 
That article is a year ago. Is the unemployment worse now, or getting worse? especially for the minimum wage bracket.
Employment is actually up in the areas outside Seattle, which likely means people that were canned in the city now have to take jobs with an added huge commute to the places outside the city that can afford to hire them.

Of course it is the MW jobs that have been cut, but it wouldn't matter if it wasn't. If someone has put in a few years of work to get up to $15 already, you now have to pay them more as well because they aren't going to burn several years of raises and promotions just to be making the same as some new hire with no work experience, but what usually happens is they just clip out the bottom people and add duties to the existing workers.
 

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