【Ξｎｉｇｍａｔｉｃｏ】
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Let's take a closer look at what just happen in Spain...
3 months ago, the minimum wage was somewhere around 810€ if I recall correctly.
Then the gobernment rised the minimum wage to 900€. When this happen, the Bank of Spain started warning that companies would not be able to pay their employees and many companies would have to close, being unable to be solvent.
What happen was quite the opposite of what the Bank of Spain predicted... while it's true that we're on summer and the employement rate increases during summer, the unemployement rate did still drop even lower than it usually does rather than increase.
In fact, most companies are employing people above that wage, like common salaries for low class jobs usually range from 1000€ to 1200€.
So, I can conclude that this comic is a complete lie. Period.
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@enigmatico
See you actually just proved my point.
I agree that everything you just said probably happened. It also does NOT accurately describe WHY minimum wage is bad. Since you didnt bother to ask me what opinion I held, and instead you made a few assumptions, you got it all wrong.
In short you totally missed both why minimum wage is bad as well as the intent I had by posting the meme. Which is why you should try to engage people and listen to them first, then draw your conclusions second. Otherwise youll be so lost in your own confirmation bias you wont make a useful argument. I mean hell you just thought you debunked an argument of mine which wasnt the argument I was making in the first place. So case and point there.
@alexa@fedi.absturztau.be
A free market works because of competitivity. You want to hire the best people in order to be the best company, so you have to offer better salaries than the other company. In theory, this works. But in the practice, this doesn't completely work as many small companies will exploit the fact that they can hire for whatever money by offering low salaries, completely breaking the economy by making a lot of the population not being able to spend enough money to consume.
What a minimum wage does, when done correctly, is to ensure that every company pays a salary that ensures every person can afford to spend a little bit of money, even if it's just a little. In practise this also has it's flaws since a lot of companies perform tricks to avoid these wages but the reality is most companies are still able to hire over the minimum wage while still giving some marging for competition if they so desire.
@enigmatico
I know you werent saying minimum wage is bad. What im saying is you totally missed what the comic is saying, or at least, what I meant by the comic when i posted it. No where does the comic claim it would overall decrease the employment rate, or anything of the sort. What it shows is a person hiring someone more qualified. But someone is still getting hired.
So thats how you missed the pint, you assued the comic was saying "minimum wage increases the nations overall unemployment rate".. .it is not saying that at all.
Would you like to ask me what the meme is actually saying and my intent by posting it? I'd be happy to answer at which point we can actually begin the conversation (because until now its been you responding to something I never said because you assumed i was saying something I didnt).
@alexa@fedi.absturztau.be
> "I can hire someone who can also bartend for that price"
Like "this price is too high so I'm not hiring you and hiring someone else who can do more work for the same price"?
That's actually not how it works. At least in the EU because everything is unionized and everything has a price. There is always what we call the 'B' economy but that's illegal.
Maybe in America where the market is more neoliberal these kind of things happen but not here. You want someone to bartend, you hire someone to bartend. If you want that someone to do something else, that's a different activity. For something as simple as cleaning or something anyone can probably do it. but the point is, you can't hire someone to do two jobs at the same time.
Not only it wouldn't be legal but it's inefficient anyways.
@enigmatico
Wel if they dont hire you and hire someone else, someone still got hired. So the unemployment rate wouldnt go down. So why would your counterexample which relied heavily on employment rate be relevant to the point...
Since your not going to ask me and just going to keep telling me how your right about an argument being made, let me just jump in and tell you what was meant.
What is being said in the meme is "If i have to pay more money I will hire people who are worth more money. I'll hire the same number of people, ill just make sure they are more skilled".
Sohow would that represent in the statistics so we can test if the meme is true. Well none of what you posted is relevant. Unemployment rate overall doesnt matter. What you would have to look at is how the unemployment rate correlates to the minimum wage in a state, and then compare that across demographics at different skill levels.
For example you could in theory see a situation where by raising the minimum wage 10% of all people without high school diplomas would get fired and replaced by the same number of people who happen to have a university diploma. If this were the case the unemployment rate would be exactly the same, but the intended effect of helping the poor would not be the result. The poorest people just become poorer, they all loose their jobs, and the not-so-poor people become richer, they all get more jobs. Despite this being undesired on the outside it would look exactly like the example you described.
Thus why your arguing against something totally unrelated to what the meme is actually saying.
So now that we know your example was debunked and not relevant let me ask you, based on what you now know what sort of data can you use to get an objective answer?
@alexa@fedi.absturztau.be
> Something totally unrelated to what the meme is actually saying
I don't want to be mean but perhaps you should get off your meme culture and start watching the world with your own eyes instead of relying too much in your memes to culturize yourself. Memes are created by people with dubvious interests in an attempt to manipulate people.
But hey, if you want to be one of them, go ahead.
> If i have to pay more money I will hire people who are worth more money. I'll hire the same number of people, ill just make sure they are more skilled
How much does skill cost according to you? Many companies do instruction and they actually teach their employees in order to get new ones. But what you are describing would happen regardless of wether there is a minimum wage or not simply because why can I not ask for someone who can do more or better for less?
That has nothing to do with minimum wages. That's greed and it's as old as history.
@enigmatico
I am literally a research scientist who does actual first hand research on topics including this.
Like seriously, if you think im just responding to meme culture or being manipulated you have to check yourself. I personally am not one to ever use my credentials to tell someone they should trust what I say. I dont want you to do that all. But when your clearly getting emotional and making this personal when you are clearly WAY off the mark, I think it shows you need to check yourself right now. Argue against my points, sure, but if you attack me personally its just immature.
I will treat you respectfully but only if you do the same. I am not seeing that right now but if youd like to continue this please be more respectful and I'd be happy to continue.
By the way would you like to actually see the data to back up my last post. I can cite peer-reviewed scientific journals on most any assertion I make. Like I said I'm a scientist so most of my knowledge on this topic comes from, well, accepted science.
@alexa@fedi.absturztau.be
@enigmatico
No while I do work in economic fields some of the time I wouldnt say I "work in economy" I do hard research, peer-reviewed. To me a scientist is anyone capable of publishing in peer reviewed scientific journals.. but most of my work is not in economics. When I work in economics it is to assist other scientists who need a data analyst to help them run the numbers. The most accurate title for me is "Data Scientist" thats my technical title anyway. Its a great profession because I get to co-author papers in many different fields, economics is just a big one.
@alexa@fedi.absturztau.be
The problem about economy is that it works around 'interest' and 'interest' is quite an abstract term, so it can be impredictable and sometimes, what people things might work, doesn't actually work. It happens even with science most of the time. Except you can't prove anything in economy because of it's volatile and unpredictable nature.
Unless you can read everyone's mind at the same time in order to determine what's going to happen next.
@enigmatico
I really dont care what YOU want to call me. But I am literally called a Data Scientist and Research Scientist by pretty much anyone who is a scientist. It is literally in my job title (the one I linked to on wikipedia by the way).
@alexa@fedi.absturztau.be
I'm just saying that 'memes' are little pieces of missinformation and that economy is not rocket science, so things like "a minimum wage will make companies hire people that can do things better or more things" is a little bit inaccurate when that's going to happen regardless because companies want to be competitive for the minimum ammount of expenses possible.
It happens at consumer level too when consumers look for products that can do more for the lowest amount of money possible.
@enigmatico
How about instead of assuming we just look at the data?
@alexa@fedi.absturztau.be
@enigmatico Wanna know how scientists do it?
@enigmatico There are lots of different ways
@enigmatico
You told me lots of things that you believed, you talked a lot, you will have to be more specific
@alexa@fedi.absturztau.be
@enigmatico
How is it you already have an opinion of my data and yet I have given no indication what data I even had to present. You literally just went on this long rant about thing you imagined I'd say that I'd never say. You have no CLUE what data I have or what points I' made or even what opinions I hold. You've proven that because everything you said that you imagined me saying are things that I would never agree with..
@alexa@fedi.absturztau.be
@enigmatico You have basically just been arguing antagonistically with a figment of your imagination for about half an hour without me even once expressing my opinion... 
And then what happen? Well, it's price is almost $9000 again, about to reach it's previous peak. What a come back that nobody expected! Probably thanks to Facebook's cryptocurrency, but who cares? It happens.
So you show me a comic with Simpson characters and tell me "this is how economy works" and I tell you "no it's not". Then you tell me "this meme says the truth" and I tell you "memes are lies from people with interests and this doesn't work like this because of this reason". And then you tell me "But I'm talking about something else", and then I tell you "That's going to happen either way", and then you come and tell me "I'm a scientist I know what I'm talking about" then I'm obviously going to tell you in a polite way "no, you don't". And then you claim I'm not saying clear things, I'm just saying what I think not stating data, and I'm not going to care because economy is volatile and if you can predict when is Bitcoin going to crash again and how low will it stand that time, I might believe you, but trust me, you won't nail it. Simply because you lack of a crystal ball.
By the way, the "machine learning" and "AI" algorithms you mentioned earliers? I am the guy who makes those algorithms actually work. And I know how unreliable can they be, specially with such volatile data.
@enigmatico
There is a test we do to see how "predictable" something is. But you dont appear to be listening so....
@alexa@fedi.absturztau.be
@enigmatico
I also never even said much of anything about economy as a whole yet. You have spent so much time talking all I have done is respond to the things you assume I said I never said. I never actually once got a chance to SAY anything of my own opinions yet to you, let alone have you respond to them.
Basically all your responses are just passive agressive attempts to belittle me for an opinion I havent even expressed yet (because I havent been asked or given a chance to really talk with you about my opinions yet).
Like I offered to show you data and walk you though it and explain to you why I think what I think. But you keep going on about arguments I havent even made. like dude. ask try to understand what im saying before you try to tell me why I'm wrong, please.
@alexa@fedi.absturztau.be
@enigmatico
And seriously, you can stop trying to belittle me in your responses. I am certainly not trying to talk down to you (and if you felt that way I'm sorry) so if you want me to continue engaging you please dont do it to me.
@alexa@fedi.absturztau.be
And don't get me wrong, economy can be quite complex and economists deserve some respect, but come on, I can clearly tell you're just trying to impose your voice by making your own figure bigger here... which I'm not saying you're not, I'm just saying that economy doesn't work like that.