Comments by "Mat Broomfield" (@matbroomfield) on "The $15 Minimum Wage Is Turning Hard Workers Into Black Market Lawbreakers" video.

"Low wages in any industry is the byproduct of supply and demand of labor." No, not any more. Low wages are also a result of the fact that the wealthy have rigged the system by buying politicians, ensuring that all the laws are in their favour. In no reasonable society wouldcompanies be allowed to pay so little that everybody else has to subsidise the employees.
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And what if you're just too dumb to EVER earn that stuff? What if car wash worker is the BEST you can aspire to be? You don't deserve healthcare?
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Nonsense. Companies will ALWAYS do whatever they can to reduce costs. When labour is paid minimum wage they STILL try to get more out of them and automate. Automation is the future and wage laws do not hasten that because corporations NEVER had any loyalty. Pay disparity is at record highs. Are miniomum wage laws responsible for that? No. Companies like McDonalds and Walmart pay their workers so little that they literally need welfare to survive. That's money paid by YOUR taxes. You are literally paying your taxes to help these companies make more profit.
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I appreciate your calm opinions but I disagree. I didn't say that one's income had to be EQUAL to the cost of one's basic needs. Indeed, I was suggesting (perhaps not clearly enough it seems) that it is the SURPLUS beyond one's basic needs that determines standard of living. You seem to be implying that I was talking about subsistence which I was not. You go on to talk about our standard of living being higher than at any time in history but when has that NOT been the case? Standard of living is ALWAYS compared against the standards of the day, not how the cavemen lived, or people at some other arbitrary point in the past. Wages are not the primary driver of inflation. Wages in America have been almost stagnant for decades yet inflation has continued which is precisely why people's wages in real terms are worth far less. Inflation is driven by many things but the two primary causes are when demand exceeds availability (demand pull), and when material or energy prices rise and increase manufacturing cost (cost push). Higher wages can factor INTO cost push but are not a major cause in the US. You say that production is the primary driver of goods and services, by which I presume you mean production VOLUME. I think that is also simplistic. Oil is produced by the billions of barrels yet prices remain high. I realise you say "All other things being equal" but that's like saying "provided I don't die of something, I'm going to live forever!". All other things are NEVER equal. Demand is also massively important. If I produce a trillion Penny Farthing cycles, the cost per cycle will be high because nobody wants penny farthings. I'm curious - you suggest that this also applies to services. Can you provide an example where this is the case? If there are a million car washes, that drives the cost down to consumers TEMPORARILY, but the markets ALWAYS auto level whether labour pay is regulated or not because there's too much supply and insufficient demand (back to that demand pull.) I'm unsure why you're talking about price controls. I am not talking about the price at which you sell, simply the cost of labour required to produce it. So far as Europe and most civilised countries are concerned, if you cannot afford to pay a living wage and still sell your goods, then you should not be in business. Things cost a certain amount to make. We are willing to to pay a certain amount for them, and that's how commerce works. Global markets with lower costs of living and lower employment standards complicate that (which is why I think every government should apply the same standards to foreign suppliers and labour). You also say that companies pay a minimal wage because the system is in place that allows them to do that. That sounds awfully like Trump suggesting that he is smart because he's a tax evader or a car thief claiming that they only steal cars because cars have doors that allow them entry. If social safety nets did not exist, then what? Well, you'd have car washes full of Venezualan workers who live 20 to a house to keep the costs down and can afford to earn $4 an hour, and low skilled US workers would be jobless.
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I don't believe you are being honest if you think that most people are well off. Many people are working three jobs - not because it's fun, but because it's the only way to make ends meet. America has some of the higest levels of poverty in the civilised world, and that definition includes going to bed hungry. As many as 100 million Americans - a third of the population lives in poverty. In 2011 15 million FAMILIES were living on less than $2 a day before assistance. Ironically, as well as large amounts of food, obesity arises because of cheap calories . You talk about the rising standard of living but it reflects the changing nature of society. When I was a kid, having a phone and a TV were considered luxuries. Nowadays, there are plenty of places where it's essential to own a car and not having a smart phone will soon be disabling. this applies particularly in rural areas where poverty is also at its highest. You say that it's not how much you earn but the spending power that gives you. That's a fair point, and you back it up by pointing to all the cheap stuff you can buy. Again, a fair point If the goal of life was to fill your life with cheap stuff. Unfortunately, rent, rates, utilities are NOT cheap stuff - they're essentials. There's no Chinese kid working in a sweat shop to knock 50% off your rent. Yeah, you can buy a phone for $50 or 40 inch TV for $300, but if your rent and utilities take up 95% of your income so what? I'm sure you've heard the statistic that 90% of Americans would be wiped out by a $500 emergency. And that's not counting the inevitability of medical costs at some point. Are you seriously trying to argue that food stamps actually INCREASE the price of food?! Ridiculous. Stores don't price their goods simply to accommodate people on welfare, and what welfare recipient would shop at the more EXPENSIVE store given the choice? And where is the logic in increasing your prices for those families who are least able to pay? I agree with you wholeheartedly that there is a catch 22 situation for people who genuinely want to break their dependence on welfare because there is a wide band of income where working does not improve your finances. This is an argument for smarter welfare policies such that even if you only earn a dollar, you don't immediately get a full dollar deducted from life-saving assistance. But I don't see the relevance to assuring a minimum wage. A reasonable day's pay for a day's work is not welfare, it's fair recompense. If a man working a 40 hour week cannot afford to pay his reasonable bills, then something is seriously wrong. This is not reliance on government programs. Quite the opposite. The reliance comes from a laissez faire (sp?) approach to pay. And I didn't say that every country should have the same labour regulations. Simply that suppliers to US companies should be held to the same ethical standards - safe work, no child labour, a living wage. The US should not mitigate its own poverty problems by exploiting the third world. And yes, I know that Sowell would doubtless point out that having a desperately bad paying job is better than having no job for these people, but is that SERIOUSLY how low we're going to set the bar? By that standard, having cancer in 90% of your body is better than 100% right?
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"So if we raise the minimum wage to $150/hr, we'll all be rich, right?" Moronic sarcasm. There is a threshold above which raised income does not contribute to the economy. The wealthy take their huge salaries and invest it - often offseas or in shares which does nothing but harm the economy. The poor pump 100% of their income back into the economy, the middle class pump a high percentage. Ensuring that they are earning a living wage does indeed, provably aid the economy.
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There's a threshold for techtonic activity before an earthquake occurs. It doesn't mean that anyone knows what it is. There's a threshold for subprime lending before it crashes the stock market. It doesn't mean that anyone can point to a precise total value. There is almost certainly a fuzzy formula that factors in cost of living and ability to meet basic expenditure and disposable income. No disposable income means all industries that depend upon that income suffer a revenue decrease. As wages stagnate (decrease in real terms) and ever more people move from the middle class towards poverty, the only parts of the economy that can continue to flourish are essential services, lending, and industries which are not dependent upon consumer input such as the stock market. The latter two have finite limits before even THEY are vulnerable to instability and recession. Nobody is suggesting that it be illegal to employ low SKILLED workers. Only that they be paid a living wage. I don't know where you got your definition of economic activity, but by definition, any activity of the economy is "economic activity". The stock market has neither production OR consumption but is a massive exemplar of economic activity.
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What determines standard of living is the amount of income relative to the cost of one's needs. If ALL businesses in a given industry have to pay the same cost for labour, then the cost of that service may have to rise, or just maybe the business will have to accept a little less profit. Amazon makes billions by underpaying its workers and selling at just above cost as does Walmart. For the vast majority of human history, this was not the way that business was transacted but now there is an ever increasing expectation of shareholder profit. Ok, not for a carwash, but if the cost of getting your car washed AND paying a reasonable wage is $30, that's what the cost is. So then that car wash may go out of business because the customers won't pay it, but those entrepreneurs are still going to go somewhere and when they do, they'll become employers at a fair wage. And with less car washes in business, the others will be sustainable. Part of the problem is that CONSUMERS, especially in America, have been taught that it's their RIGHT to have everything, from anywhere in the world, at the minimum possible cost. Then they have the temerity to complain that their shoes are made by child labour. This is the complete logical extension of this philosophy. Except Nike doesn't even sell their shoes cheap.
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In fairness, the effort required to DO a job is not the issue. The issue is how many other people can actually do it. Manual labour may be physically exhausting but 95% of the population could do it with no training. It's the fallback when you lack the skills to do anything else.
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You're a fucking idiot.
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I notice that not a single one of these employees is American. So what you're saying is if you hire illegal labour from countries where people have formerly lived in squalor and abject poverty, regular poverty is an upgrade? It's terrible the way that paying people too little to actually live on has been outlawed huh?
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