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Minimum wage. Should it be $15?


mustang guy

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Worth is the wrong word... you are paid what you AGREE to. Every day you show up for work is a day you agree to your pay.

 

This is a beautiful quote.  Collective bargaining is meant to allow workers to get paid what they agree to get paid.  Oh boy, anathema to the management, even though their salaries and benefits are also negotiated....

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You guys can decry CEO pay all you want, but it doesn't do any good, won't make a difference. McDonalds for example, they employ 1.7 million people. The CEO makes $8.75 million. You could take away his entire salary and distribute it to the burger flippers, and they would make an additional $5. PER YEAR.

 

 

 

I realize that in most of these situations the lowest employees will not be getting rich and may not even feel a significant impact; however, I'm not certain on where you obtained the numbers in your post. Although, I think you may be looking at the total employees in McDonald's corporation and all of the franchise operations (not owned by McDonald's corp) combined. 

 

I'm reading the annual report on Form 10-K for the year-ended December 31, 2014 and the "number of employees" disclosure indicates that "the Company's number of employees worldwide, including Company-operated restaurant employees, was approximately 420,000 as of year-end 2014."

 

 

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63908/000006390815000016/mcd-12312014x10k.htm

 

 

The year the CEO made the $8.75 million, McDonald’s also spent $6 billion on share repurchases and dividends that year and was instrumental in forming the lobbying efforts industrywide to freeze the minimum wage.

 

Also, I think you may be looking at old CEO salary information from 2011.  Here is the public disclosure of the last three years since public companies are required to disclose the top five highest paid.

 

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63908/000119312515125315/d853131ddef14a.htm

 

 

Paid compensation:

 

Donald Thompson CEO

2014: $7,288,578

2013: $9,496,664

2012: $13,751,919

 

Peter J. Bensen CFO

2014: $2,794,296

2013: $3,599,644

2012: $7,331,690

 

Douglas Goare President McDonald's Europe

2014: $2,905,321

2013: $3,919,408

2012: $4,508,723

Edited by Fjd
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OK to you society should have no sense of basic fairness.  Then you stray into pulling someone down which is not the premise at all.  We may as well go back to separate but equal and other forms of societal discrimination since there is no fairness or morality.  Keep your foot down on other's necks before they show you what their idea of pulling themselves up may be.

So, you've got two people working at the same company:

1. Somebody who goes to college, studies their butt off, climbs the corporate ladder, dedicates a large part of their life to an organization, actually offers a significant tangible return on investment, and otherwise relentlessly works their butts off trying to keep everything together and the wheels churning at the company. They have sacrificed a ton to get to where they are.

2. "You want fries with that?"

Your idea of fairness seems to be that these guys should be paid the same.

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I'm not certain on where you obtained the numbers in your post.

Type in the basic questions like "how many employees does McDonalds have" and Google displays an answer in the top left. I just didn't feel the need to study it in more depth.

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Your idea of fairness seems to be that these guys should be paid the same.

 

Wrong.  I never said that or even implied it.  It boils down to a simple economic concept, which has repercussions for our society.  Do we pay as little as possible while then subsidizing through taxes the difference?  Or do we remove the subsidization which brings its own consequences, one of which is that now workers will refuse to work for the little being offered?  Why should some companies who pay many very little get subsidized over other companies which cannot due to the nature of their businesses?

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I'm not certain on where you obtained the numbers in your post.

Type in the basic questions like "how many employees does McDonalds have" and Google displays an answer in the top left. I just didn't feel the need to study it in more depth.

 

 

 

I took my numbers from the Form 10-K that was certified by the CEO and CFO under Federal Securities Laws.

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Your idea of fairness seems to be that these guys should be paid the same.

 

Wrong.  I never said that or even implied it.  It boils down to a simple economic concept, which has repercussions for our society.  Do we pay as little as possible while then subsidizing through taxes the difference?  Or do we remove the subsidization which brings its own consequences, one of which is that now workers will refuse to work for the little being offered?  Why should some companies who pay many very little get subsidized over other companies which cannot due to the nature of their businesses?

Part of the issue here is lifestyle choices. Again, two people, works for the same company:

1. My wife, who worked at Wal-Mart for $4.25 an hour. She put herself through law school doing this, unloading tractor trailers full of junk all night.

2. My ex, a single mother who has multiple kids from multiple fathers out of wedlock who she needs to support. She's not really a go-getter, and doesn't want more hours because she'd lose her earned income credit and who knows what else. On a good year she might make 5 figures. Maybe.

One of these was subsidized by the government. The other wasn't. Both are lumped into the same class for some reason, when liberals try to justify this stuff. Just because a low'ish paying job is available and somebody agrees to do it, doesn't automatically mean they're making up the difference by leaning on the government.

Unfortunately this is a little worse now because of inflation. The Obama economy has diluted everyone's spending power somewhat.

Edited by MetropolisLakeOutfitters
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One of these was subsidized by her husband I suspect.  And why you want to keep bringing politics into an economic discussion is a window into your brain.   Yes  lifestyle choices are made every day, I agree completely with you on that.

Edited by oldtimer
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Good example just opened up locally. There is a jump park, basically a bunch of trampolines. Kids can pay like $20 to jump for an hour which isn't exactly something everybody can do all the time. The thing is though, there are A LOT of younger people working there for a small area. Probably 10 or so. I imagine they make maybe $8 an hour. Probably open 10 hours a day. That's $800 a day in salaries, which means maybe $1,000 a day including payroll taxes.

We're talking about just about doubling this out of the blue, and expecting parents from a rural'ish area to be fine with a very significant price hike to cover it. I can't see it happening, they'd go belly up.

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And why you want to keep bringing politics into an economic discussion is a window into your brain.

I realize that's a forbidden thing somewhat around here so sorry for that, but to be honest, this entire thing is political, the whole debate is driven by one party. The areas who have implemented this are primarily controlled by one party. The governors and mayors who are pushing it are from one party. Seattle. New York. San Francisco. These are all associated with one party. The media outlets who push the idea aren't exactly Fox News. Just a guess but I'm thinking most likely the workers who are most vocal about wanting this typically vote in the same fashion. Sorry to sound like it did but I don't think that politics and the $15 minimum wage can be separated, it's too one sided.

Edited by MetropolisLakeOutfitters
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There is some very good research being done about how societies rise and fall throughout history using a very simple analogy of bunnies and wolves. In the early stages of society everyone is a wolf, working, hunting, surviving with a social structure with widely accepted and solid set of values and morals. It kind of fits with the subject matter here.

Because the society is young and vulnerable much emphasis is placed on rules that promote survival. The pack is first and foremost concerned with survival. Food is hard to come by so waste is not tolerated. Not just waste of food, but waste of resources – including unnecessary mouths to feed. The pack must cull its own in order to save itself. Therefore, unproductive pack members of any sort are frowned upon and abandoned – the pack has no resources to spare on them. But also, the pack knows that it must procreate to survive; to raise more wolves inside of the same social structure. Families, with a mother and father that mate for life, are considered paramount to raise and teach the young wolves how this all works.

After following these methods for a time the pack becomes more and more successful and can expand. Multiply. Life becomes easier; better. Soon the unproductive pack members, those that are unproductive for various reasons not of their own accord, are tolerated and cared for since resources are more abundant and easier to come by. Charity can be introduced. Now there is more time to focus on things that entertain and not just things that need to be done to survive.

Time goes by. Because of the hard work and dedication of the wolves the pack can afford more charity. Values and social structure within the pack become less restrictive. More of the unproductive types are tolerated. Times are good and food is abundant – the storehouses are full. There is time for the finer things in life.

Eventually, the pack is now not only supporting and tolerating unproductive members, it is supporting laziness. Rabbits have been bread into the pack. These are wolves that never had to work for a meal. Never knew what it was like to have to go hungry, they just went to the storehouse and ate to their fill.

Rabbits see no need for the old structure. Families become less important and the young are not taught about the old way. There is no need for the rabbits to take a mate for protection or to provide what they need to survive or to raise young. They multiply quickly with multiple partners because the storehouse is endless. The storehouse does it all for them. Thus, they take the previous hard work and social structure of their early ancestors for granted.

The pack has reached its apex. Because it has forgotten about social structure and its solid set of values it begins the inevitable decent into decay and collapse. Just as all the packs throughout history have done. None of the rabbits care about social structure or the importance of family – the storehouse is still full from the sacrifices of earlier generations, but most of the wolves have been bred out. Only a few who were taught what the pack had to go through when it was young are around, but the rabbits outnumber them and ridicule them for their beliefs.

Who is going to re-fill the storehouse when it becomes empty after the rabbits have taken all they can take?

The moral as it relates to this topic, I think, is that nobody is entitled to anything. And so nobody can demand to be paid more than what they are worth just because society wants all the bunnies to be more equal.

Edited by Bella
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OK to you society should have no sense of basic fairness.  Then you stray into pulling someone down which is not the premise at all.  We may as well go back to separate but equal and other forms of societal discrimination since there is no fairness or morality.  Keep your foot down on other's necks before they show you what their idea of pulling themselves up may be.

So, you've got two people working at the same company:

1. Somebody who goes to college, studies their butt off, climbs the corporate ladder, dedicates a large part of their life to an organization, actually offers a significant tangible return on investment, and otherwise relentlessly works their butts off trying to keep everything together and the wheels churning at the company. They have sacrificed a ton to get to where they are.

2. "You want fries with that?"

Your idea of fairness seems to be that these guys should be paid the same.

 

 

I would like to see training, education, and jobs for the person frying fries and flipping burgers so they can move to a better job and make room for the person trying to make their way through college (or whatever they are working towards) while frying fries and flipping burgers.  Trying to force the pay higher doesn't help either individual in the end.  

 

Companies can offer paths of entry and individuals who are willing and able can forge their own paths as well.  

 

There is a certain percentage who are UNABLE to take care of themselves.

There is a certain percentage who are UNWILLING.

 

As a society I would like to take care of the UNABLE.

As a society I would like to "encourage" the UNWILLING to become willing or be allowed to wither away.  I can see some gray areas in between so it isn't that simple.  It seems hard to help the UNABLE without letting some of the UNWILLING to sneak through.  

 

 

 

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I believe that since the 1980s studies show that CEO compensation in the United States has outpaced corporate profits, economic growth and the average compensation of all workers. Between 1980 and 2004, Mutual Fund founder John Bogle estimates total CEO compensation grew 8.5 percent/year compared to corporate profit growth of 2.9 percent/year and per capita income growth of 3.1 percent. A 2006 article in Bloomberg News, titled "Letter From Washington: As U.S. rich-poor gap grows, so does public outcry" actually indicated that "by 2006 CEOs made 400 times more than average workers—a gap 20 times bigger than it was in 1965." Of course, as a general rule, the larger the corporation the larger the CEO compensation package.

 

:emotion-21: :emotion-21: :emotion-55::emotion-21: :emotion-21:

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There is some very good research being done about how societies rise and fall throughout history using a very simple analogy of bunnies and wolves.

 

Eventually, the pack is now not only supporting and tolerating unproductive members, it is supporting laziness.

 

 

Is this research published in any respected journals?  The caricature presented using bunnies and wolves seems to be more of a personal view or judgment that could be driven by stereotyping, personal bias or personal experience. 

 

The issue of obsolete has been continually dealt with a lot over time in fiction.  Here is an example from another thread where an old television show discussed the obsolete person.

 

 

 

 

"Romney Wordsworth stands trial for the crime of being obsolete"

 

post-4542-0-70500000-1446683189_thumb.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

Great episode and that old, obsolete Wordsworth sure did psychologically torture the Chancellor.  I believe that I just may be seeing a few parallels in this thread. 

 

 

 

 

 

Then there is always Logan's Run and the "renewal sanctuary" for those over 30.  

 

 

_ logans-run-carousel.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

And who can forget Soylent Green?

 

 

_ soylent.jpg

 

 

 

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post-36163-0-53860000-1446852046.jpg

Edited by Fjd
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I find it interesting that in the 1970's Peter F. Drucker (during this time, a well-respected American management guru) had endorsed the 20 to 1 ratio for CEO to median worker in sustaining robust growth. Up until this time the U.S. was very prosperous with this 20 to 1 ratio, yet, look where we are today. A survey of the S&P 500 index companies, during 2012 the compensation received by the CEO was 354 times that of the median of the rank-and-file worker and look at the general downward trends in prosperity.

 

:emotion-21:

 

Did Peter ever update his book, The Concept of the Corporation?

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