Minimum Wage Increase: Support or Oppose ?

[OptimusPrime]

You mean that having a private entity control our entire currency is a bad thing?

It's worse than that. It's a private entity with a government sanctioned monopoly. If there were a hundred competing private banks issuing different money without any government power behind them we would be much better off than we are.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

It's worse than that. It's a private entity with a government sanctioned monopoly. If there were a hundred competing private banks issuing different money without any government power behind them we would be much better off than we are.

Somehow, I think that sounds much more appealing in theory than it would be in practice.

 

[UncleDrew]

I don't mean to be crass, but your experience with college doesn't mean college isn't worthwhile, you just chose poorly when you chose your degree if you can't find a job with it. Colleges will tell you anything to get your money, it's up to you to research whether or not it's actually a good investment to get X degree.

I also said an education OR a skill. CNC machinists are a good example of skilled labor that is in demand and decent paying. There's a lot of good jobs out there for people with 2 year degrees also. I started with one before I went on to a higher degree and I made $18 the day I graduated from Stark State, with only about $8k in student loan debt. I picked something in high demand with the ability to make more money and move up with a more advanced degree, and that's exactly what I did. It's a great, cheap option for people who want to better their lives financially.

Poor people can even do trade skills and technical college for free on the governments dime. It's up to them to make the decision to do it though. The only poor people I have any real sympathy for are the disabled, everyone else only have themselves to blame and they have the power to change their situation if they want to. Screw the rest of us by jacking up minimum wage? Sorry but I worked hard to be where I am, I don't want to be knocked down a few pegs because people who work at dollar general want a big raise.

Umm, you don't want to be knocked...but you are claiming I work at a Dollar General? Fuck you, seriously. It's retail, a high end company where I live that comes from Minnesota, not anything as low as Dollar General. I am offended you even had the thought that I work with that. I, too, have worked hard to be where I currently am...that is why I am so upset about my situation. I didn't mean it to be anything personal for me and sound selfish about it. I do apologize for it coming off as that.

 

[UncleDrew]

I can get behind $10 an hour but I'm arguing against $15 an hour because that's what the poll in the thread stated.

Give everyone $15 an hour and everyone with a low paying job suddenly has more money in their pockets but everything will start costing more to make and prices will increase and it will make money worth less. Poor people are still poor, and people like me making in the > $20 but < $30 range go from middle class to the upper part of the lower class.

No thanks.

This is exactly what I was trying to say in my previous posts! Someone who has the knowledge and experience is getting the same pay as a newly hired employee? That's bullshit, yes. NO thanks to it. What also irritates me is that it's fast food workers that feel they should be making $15/hour...really? What makes them more important than everyone else?

 

[Coyote850]

I worked in a factory for 20 years to get up to $15/hour. And some people think they deserve $15 right outa high school. Fuck you, earn it. All the $15 min wage would do is skyrocket inflation, you really think companies paying $10-12 are gonna eat the cost increase?

 

[gourimoko]

I worked in a factory for 20 years to get up to $15/hour. And some people think they deserve $15 right outa high school. Fuck you, earn it. All the $15 min wage would do is skyrocket inflation, you really think companies paying $10-12 are gonna eat the cost increase?

???

We'd be raising the minimum wage largely due to inflation as well as diminished purchasing power. $1 today is not a $1 20 years ago as you put it. $15 from 1994 would be equivalent to $24 today; keep that in mind when you think back on history. We're not talking about giving people tremendous amounts of wealth, or giving them $24-25/hr salaries which would've been the equivalent 20 years ago.

Again, I'm not for the measure as stated; I think $15 is far too high for unskilled labor, but I do support the idea of a minimum wage that is at least in line with inflation (to avoid a hidden monetary tax on the poor).

 

[Ohdang]

Umm, you don't want to be knocked...but you are claiming I work at a Dollar General? Fuck you, seriously. It's retail, a high end company where I live that comes from Minnesota, not anything as low as Dollar General. I am offended you even had the thought that I work with that. I, too, have worked hard to be where I currently am...that is why I am so upset about my situation. I didn't mean it to be anything personal for me and sound selfish about it. I do apologize for it coming off as that.

Chill out, I wasn't talking about you. I had no idea you even worked in retail. I used Dollar General as an example of the least skilled job I could think of off the top of my head that if the people who worked there all of a sudden made $15 an hour how catastrophic the impacts for people similar to me would be.

 

[Ohdang]

I agree with you in theory gour, but my concern with the whole thing comes from greed. Say that everyone working minimum wage gets a bump to $10/hr. Let's say for arguments sake that's a $3 raise. Let's say a number of the slightly higher paid workforce gets upset about not making more money and companies say to them well we can't afford to give everyone $3 extra per hour, but we can give you $1. Now costs for labor are up across the board and it's chipped away at the profits a little bit. Do I think companies will accept this and be happy they have employees that are a little better off now? Shit no, if they cared about their living conditions they would have paid them a little more in the first place. They raise prices, profits eventually return to normal, people have more money but everything costs more. Did it really help?

This may not happen they way I envision it, but it seems pretty damn likely to me. In that scenario poor people are still poor and not quite poor people are getting closer to poor. The problem as I see it is the profits at all costs, pay huge executive bonuses for high profit culture in America. That will cancel out minimum wage increases via inflation every time, in my opinion. Unfortunately I don't even know what to do about it. I'd like to live in a society where everyone is prosperous, but how? The way it stands now your best bet is to better yourself and become valuable in some way to command higher salary while unmotivated, unskilled people stay poor. Don't be the guy who's unmotivated or unskilled, or in some cases has a skill people don't feel is worth paying for.

 

[Cavsfan1985]

People are taking what they make to personal, like the amount you make makes you better then someone else. Who cares if it took you 10 years to make X and now minimum wage is X? Worry about yourself and make yourself more attractive to make more money.

 

[southernflyer]

There are plenty of fast food workers in Orlando making higher than minimum wage at casual fast food places like Burger Fi, double digits at the minimum. The difficulty for most of the workers at McDonald's is that they can't get jobs there. It isn't a "push a color-coded button and wait for the beep to tell you it's done job". The employees actually have cooking skills. My friends who are servers at casual chain restaurants (Outback, Chili's) make on average $12-$20 an hour depending on area of town and seasons, but it is a more demanding and fast-paced environment than "would you like an apple pie"?

I would prefer an automatic minimum wage/ social security adjustment based on inflation, but the CPI and CPI-U rates are convoluted based on 1) seasonally adjusting and 2) the "weighting" of goods, much like the Dow Jones Industrials. Having a set of fixed items to measure (X loafs of bread, X pounds of chicken/beef, X dozen of eggs, 1 hour of car repair, X kWh/ month of electricity, X gallons of regular unleaded, average rent/mortgage for 1,000 sq. ft. apartment/house, etc.) without the seasonally adjusting and weighting would show inflation to be much higher than the 2.0% annual rate that the BLS put out for the January-June 2014 period. That won't happen because 1) the government would have to pay out more in retirement/disability benefits and 2) interest rates would skyrocket for businesses and government, and the Treasury department shows the Federal government is already paying ~$440 billion in interest payments on the debt this year (foreign and intra-governmental), or about 1 out of every 6 dollars it takes in as income. Raising rates will balloon that figure to over $1 trillion a rear by 2014 according to CBO estimates.

That $15 an hour still won't get you far when that occurs.

 

[Tornicade]

I agree with you in theory gour, but my concern with the whole thing comes from greed. Say that everyone working minimum wage gets a bump to $10/hr. Let's say for arguments sake that's a $3 raise. Let's say a number of the slightly higher paid workforce gets upset about not making more money and companies say to them well we can't afford to give everyone $3 extra per hour, but we can give you $1. Now costs for labor are up across the board and it's chipped away at the profits a little bit. Do I think companies will accept this and be happy they have employees that are a little better off now? Shit no, if they cared about their living conditions they would have paid them a little more in the first place. They raise prices, profits eventually return to normal, people have more money but everything costs more. Did it really help?

This may not happen they way I envision it, but it seems pretty damn likely to me. In that scenario poor people are still poor and not quite poor people are getting closer to poor. The problem as I see it is the profits at all costs, pay huge executive bonuses for high profit culture in America. That will cancel out minimum wage increases via inflation every time, in my opinion. Unfortunately I don't even know what to do about it. I'd like to live in a society where everyone is prosperous, but how? The way it stands now your best bet is to better yourself and become valuable in some way to command higher salary while unmotivated, unskilled people stay poor. Don't be the guy who's unmotivated or unskilled, or in some cases has a skill people don't feel is worth paying for.

then the next year when minimum wage goes up again they would have to do the same thing over.. tying the income to inflation forces the company to eat the cost. plus youll have more companies generating more sales.

This is where business models that count employees as capital and no just expense comes into place.

raising mininum wage and tying into inflations sets ground floor for expectations of the quality of american life.

outsourcing, wealth distribution and many other issues with the us economy isnt expected to be addressed by this.

yes there will be an initial adjustment on cost of some services and goods but this is healthy inflation.

stagnation of the mininum wage has not slowed down inflation . I dont get this ideology that everyone should have to pay the cost of inflation except the guys who make the most money.
The late seventies were riddles with inflation . it had nothing to do with minimum wage

back to human q tips questiopn of why minum wage should be kept at a specific level.

The government has a mjor impact on inflation. whether its financing their programs or paying debt or bailing out banks

this puts the responsibility of the government to regulate minimum wage in relation to inflation.

Theres something vitally wrong where 25 %to 40%(depending on the metric used) is no better off than a minimum wage worker of 1968.

this is not acceptable and raising min wage and tying it to inflation is a start.

this is a basic principle the us economy was built around and has been fighting for over 200 years. one the has been lost and needs to be found again.

 

[Sumac13]

Last year, Center for Labor Research & Education at UC Berkeley published an interesting report on the public cost of low wage jobs. (There is a link to a PDF document on the web page referenced for the Full Report.) Here is the executive summary of the report:

Fast Food, Poverty Wages: The Public Cost of Low-Wage Jobs in the Fast-Food Industry
Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of enrollments in America’s major public benefits programs are from working families. But many of them work in jobs that pay wages so low that their paychecks do not generate enough income to provide for life’s basic necessities. Low wages paid by employers in the fast-food industry create especially acute problems for the families of workers in this industry. Median pay for core front-line fast-food jobs is $8.69 an hour, with many jobs paying at or near the minimum wage. Benefits are also scarce for front-line fast-food workers; an estimated 87 percent do not receive health benefits through their employer. The combination of low wages and benefits, often coupled with part-time employment, means that many of the families of fast-food workers must rely on taxpayer-funded safety net programs to make ends meet.

This report estimates the public cost of low-wage jobs in the fast-food industry. Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the other public benefits programs discussed in this report provide a vital support system for millions of Americans working in the United States’ service industries, including fast food. We analyze public program utilization by working families and estimate total average annual public benefit expenditures on the families of front-line fast-food workers for the years 2007–2011.1 For this analysis we focus on jobs held by core, front-line fast-food workers, defined as nonmanagerial workers who work at least 11 hours per week for 27 or more weeks per year.

Main Findings

• More than half (52 percent) of the families of front-line fast-food workers are enrolled in one or more public programs, compared to 25 percent of the workforce as a whole.
• The cost of public assistance to families of workers in the fast-food industry is nearly $7 billion per year.
• At an average of $3.9 billion per year, spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) accounts for more than half of these costs.
• Due to low earnings, fast-food workers’ families also receive an annual average of $1.04 billion in food stamp benefits and $1.91 billion in Earned Income Tax Credit payments.
• People working in fast-food jobs are more likely to live in or near poverty. One in five families with a member holding a fast-food job has an income below the poverty line, and 43 percent have an income two times the federal poverty level or less.
• Even full-time hours are not enough to compensate for low wages. The families of more than half of the fast-food workers employed 40 or more hours per week are enrolled in public assistance programs.

 

[Zog]

This may have been brought up previously but I have not seen it discussed. At what pay point do McDonald's, BK, etc., go to basically a kiosk ordering system, where the customer walks in, enters their own order on a touchscreen system, pays via that system, and sits and waits for their food? At some point that becomes cheaper for the fast food restaurant to install and run than an employee.

Basically my point being that the "survivors" may end up making more money, but I think there are going to be a lot of people who lose their jobs because they get replace by machines.

 

[Tornicade]

This may have been brought up previously but I have not seen it discussed. At what pay point do McDonald's, BK, etc., go to basically a kiosk ordering system, where the customer walks in, enters their own order on a touchscreen system, pays via that system, and sits and waits for their food? At some point that becomes cheaper for the fast food restaurant to install and run than an employee.

Basically my point being that the "survivors" may end up making more money, but I think there are going to be a lot of people who lose their jobs because they get replace by machines.

yes and truck drivers get replaced by robots and computers control all the road systems.

Im not sure what impact this has on minimum wage which in either scenario should be 90% of the poverty level for a family of four

 

[QuadrupleDouble]

That's not necessarily a bad thing. People fear innovation and machines taking their jobs, but they actually benefit the economy.

I remember hearing an economist speak one time about the telephone operator. At one point, every call you made had to be physically connected by a human operator. They thought the machines coming in would mean fewer jobs and terrible for the economy. Well the machines came in and took over and a lot of operators lost their jobs, but at the same time more jobs were created and the phone industry grew. Technology is not a bad thing for jobs. Looking back, it would have been foolish to try to save the phone operator's job, or the wooden wheel maker when rubber tires came around, or Paul Bunyan and Babe when that guy with a chainsaw and train came to town.

I see the same thing here. Yeah, an $8/hr employee is no longer needed, but now you have manufacturing, design, engineering, software programming, and maintenance of these machines. Someone has to manage the user experience too. You probably create more and better jobs. That guy who was fucking up your order now has to gain new employment skills.