Minimum wage. Should it be $15?

[Woofers and Tweeters]

I have a friend who has been in this country for 3 years now, moved from Mexico, and is on the path to citizenship. This guy is working 3 jobs, 2 of them in restaurants, one in a convenience store, in order to make ends meet. Contrast that to the girl Cavuto interviewed, who wants free college and $15 an hour minimum. My friend seems to have a better handle on real world math and economics than she does. He knows that when one first enters the job market one starts at the bottom. He knows that if one cannot find a job that pays enough so one can reach his goals, one can work more hours, and he's willing to work. Who do you think will wind up being successful? I'll bet on the guy that's setting goals and is willing to work

 

The idealist's error is in not considering the costs of such an entitlement, which will be substantial. Costs will rise, taxes will go up, inflation will increase. As far as a $15 minimum wage the net effect will be that the $15 will be worth less, and the economy will be weakened. Seems a high price to pay considering the overall negative results that will ensue.

 

Who was it that said a democracy will be successful until the people figure out that they can vote money out of the public treasury? It appears the USA is at that point now, and it's sad. I'm astonished at the attitudes of some of the younger generation. They want the pie in the sky, but they don't know what it costs, they don't want to pay for it, and they don't want to work for it. If America is to remain great it will be because of immigrants like my friend, people who recognize the opportunity this great nation of ours offers, people who are willing to start on the bottom rung of the ladder of success and climb to the top. People who are willing to work hard and earn what they get have long been the backbone of America and will be the future of our country.

Franklin said something similar to that....but what did he know 

[Jim Naseum]

Yeah, 50 years ago these we're jobs for kids saving for a car. Now that all the adult jobs have been shipped offshore, this is the crap job left for adults trying to live and raise a family. Have any of you actually seen these people or do you breeze by them like they are ghosts you can't even see.

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Shipped offshore because of LABOR RATES. It's now happening in China. They are offshoring to cheaper labor countries.

You keep saying that greed is a new thing. THAT IS A FALSE STATEMENT. You saying it doesn't make it true. Business people have been down right ruthless, keep prices as high as the market will stand, labor as low as it will retain workers and try to put the competitors out of business. Companies are in business to make a profit. The larger the profit, the better for investors' retirements.

Have you or Dave answered: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH EVERYONE ELSE'S PAY WHO WAS MAKING ~ $15/HR? The ones who EARNED their way up from $7.50 to $12, the ones who EARNED the $16, are you going to bump their pay up by 100% or only give them a $7.50/hr raise? Several people have asked this. Please feel free to ignore this again. What about the tougher jobs where a factory already pays 15, then someone can quit to work at an easier job for the same pay?

Sorry Dave's Burgers went out of business. They are great people. Sorry that they depleted their nest egg to keep people working while keeping cost down.

1. I didn't say greed was a new thing.

2. I answered your question about the pay off others in post 771. I gave a direct, explicit, definitive answer. Read more carefully, please.

3. Now, I have a question for you. How do you inform yourself on economic issues? What are the sources of your information, and what do you study? Which economists do you follow? What business press do you follow?

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I did read post 771. What are you going to do with the vacuum created by not upping the pay to those who already earn the same amount you want minimum wage to be? What do you think people who work harder, should and did earn more are going to do when their pay is equal to an entry level's pay.

You are searching for an answer to a problem that doesn't exist. The minimum wage has been here for 75 years. It has been raised time and time again and it always goes smoothly without the problem you at suggesting. The economy is amazingly elastic, and flexible.

Do you know there is even a famous parable, offered by the most famous preacher in history, about this very subject. It's generally called The Parable of the Laborers. It's rather interesting.

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[Woofers and Tweeters]

Black Friday is here. There is 100% of stuff sold on that day. What % of that stuff is 100% Made in the USA?

[Woofers and Tweeters]

 

 

 

 

Yeah, 50 years ago these we're jobs for kids saving for a car. Now that all the adult jobs have been shipped offshore, this is the crap job left for adults trying to live and raise a family. Have any of you actually seen these people or do you breeze by them like they are ghosts you can't even see.

Sent from my SM-T330NU using Tapatalk

Shipped offshore because of LABOR RATES. It's now happening in China. They are offshoring to cheaper labor countries.

You keep saying that greed is a new thing. THAT IS A FALSE STATEMENT. You saying it doesn't make it true. Business people have been down right ruthless, keep prices as high as the market will stand, labor as low as it will retain workers and try to put the competitors out of business. Companies are in business to make a profit. The larger the profit, the better for investors' retirements.

Have you or Dave answered: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH EVERYONE ELSE'S PAY WHO WAS MAKING ~ $15/HR? The ones who EARNED their way up from $7.50 to $12, the ones who EARNED the $16, are you going to bump their pay up by 100% or only give them a $7.50/hr raise? Several people have asked this. Please feel free to ignore this again. What about the tougher jobs where a factory already pays 15, then someone can quit to work at an easier job for the same pay?

Sorry Dave's Burgers went out of business. They are great people. Sorry that they depleted their nest egg to keep people working while keeping cost down.

1. I didn't say greed was a new thing.

2. I answered your question about the pay off others in post 771. I gave a direct, explicit, definitive answer. Read more carefully, please.

3. Now, I have a question for you. How do you inform yourself on economic issues? What are the sources of your information, and what do you study? Which economists do you follow? What business press do you follow?

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I did read post 771. What are you going to do with the vacuum created by not upping the pay to those who already earn the same amount you want minimum wage to be? What do you think people who work harder, should and did earn more are going to do when their pay is equal to an entry level's pay.

You are searching for an answer to a problem that doesn't exist. The minimum wage has been here for 75 years. It has been raised time and time again and it always goes smoothly without the problem you at suggesting. The economy is amazingly elastic, and flexible.

Do you know there is even a famous parable, offered by the most famous preacher in history, about this very subject. It's generally called The Parable of the Laborers. It's rather interesting.

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another duck, dodge, smoke and mirrors

[sheltie dave]

When I started in the workforce, the minimum wage was $2.23 an hour. Despite all the raises I have received over the years, I have never seen anyone laid off because I, or anyone else, had just received a raise.

 

There is a strange dichotomy here that is the bottom end of the iceberg....what is a living wage? To me, it represents the money needed to be self sufficient in a bare bones apartment, with enough money to pay all your non frivolous bills, and have enough money to pay for needed insurance, save a couple hundred every paycheck, and have the money to advance your station by pursuing further education.

 

The lack of a living wage ensures that we will always have an underclass in poverty, dependent on government handouts to survive life.

 

You could flip this argument by waving a wand and suddenly putting 45% of the workforce back into unions, or back to the 10 hour a day, six or seven day workweek we had until the late 1800s. Every single change that has happened to better workforce life has been portrayed as the end of the business world as we know it, yet everything still is here.

 

The question I ask is this - who has benefited the most in the last twenty years, executives or the common worker? If it is not hard to double the pay of management, why not the workers that actually produce the profit? Hmmm, let's see how much a board member of McDonald's and WalMart gets paid each year..

 

Wow, some of y'all should check out some of these figures.

[muel]

 

Wow... lot of promotion going on at that site! Sounds like a sales pitch. Even so, their numbers mentioned are less than 15 bucks.

If raising the minimum wage to 15 is good then why not $20? ...or $30? or 50??!! Think how fantastic that would be? Think of ALL the money that would be pumped back into the economy?!

Sarcasm aside... I am afraid that the end result is not going to be as great as folks hope.

 

The Minimum Wage Myth Busters

http://www.dol.gov/minwage/mythbuster.htm

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Why not $20, $30, or $50? Easy. Because those numbers would throw the system out of balance the other direction. Layoffs would slow new spending, which would lower production, which would create more layoffs. That's called deflation, and it ends in depression.

The reason it's appropriate to raise the minimum now is that the system is out of balance the other way. Minimum has not kept up with productivity gains, and that is depressing spending, and shifting too much income to the highest brackets (0.5%).

Once more, it's all just a matter of tuning a dynamic system for maximum performance. And all economists define that as about 4% annual growth. That's nirvana for the economy and makes everyone happy. If you get there and half the population is in poverty, you've done a bad job with balance. If you get there and all capital is depleted, you've also done a bad job.

This is not hard to learn. One or two texts on economics will be sufficient to understand both micro and macro economics in the USA.

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What's poverty?

 

I would argue that where there is an extreme that we could all agree on (deprivation of food, shelter, water)

 it is actually mostly psychological and social.

Not to say that there isn't an actual scarcity of resources.  There will never be enough to go around to everyone's satisfaction.  This is often based on what you see or you perceive others having that you also want.  

Edited November 17, 2015 by muel

[Travis In Austin]

Just like I said before---Henry Ford took a lot of flack for raising the hourly wage to 5 dollars per hour at his company so they could afford to purchase $850.00 cars. All of the supposed experts said this was stupid but it turned out to be a fantastic move. Then in the 60's the unions got the wages going upward and we had the American middle class supporting the entire planet. The experts were wrong again.

JJK

$5 an hour? Henry Ford? I don't think so. You may want to go back and check your facts on that.

I think you will also find that the raise had nothing at all to do with creating a workforce that could afford to buy his product. It was to cut the turnover and training time of the labor force and avoid downtime from people walking off the job.

In other words, he raised wages in order to decrease costs. The Ford raise is a case study that is taught in business schools all across America, or at least it was when I went, as an example of when raising wages can actually result in lower overall labor costs.

The raise was not automatic, it was partly, or mostly, a bonus. The employees had to meet many conditions. One of which was to have to open their homes to inspection by Ford representatives.

[Travis In Austin]

2015 POVERTY GUIDELINES FOR THE 48 CONTIGUOUS STATES AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

PERSONS IN FAMILY/HOUSEHOLD POVERTY GUIDELINE

For families/households with more than 8 persons, add $4,160 for each additional person.

1 $11,770

2 $15,930

3 $20,090

4 $24,250

5 $28,410

6 $32,570

7 $36,730

8 $40,890

[Nismo]

I'll keep my answer short & pithy: No.

[Travis In Austin]

Just like I said before---Henry Ford took a lot of flack for raising the hourly wage to 5 dollars per hour at his company so they could afford to purchase $850.00 cars. All of the supposed experts said this was stupid but it turned out to be a fantastic move. Then in the 60's the unions got the wages going upward and we had the American middle class supporting the entire planet. The experts were wrong again.

JJK

For starters, it was $5 per DAY not per hour

The $5-a-day rate was about half pay and half bonus.

Sorry, I didn't see someone had already caught this.

[Woofers and Tweeters]

I agree that the system it totally screwed. I agree that it would be great to have a lot less people on the dole. This screwing has been happening for a long time. The Federal Reserve is one that screws every tax payer. I agree that it is a mess that CEOs and other board officers receive so much. They get almost as much as ball players and a lot of other sports figures. I don't see anyone claiming that we should take money from the players to pay the water boy, bat boy and concession people more. 

 

Raising the minimum wage isn't going to stop the absurd pay receivers at the top. Raising the minimum wage to levels of the ones who produce more and get paid more, without raising those producers too will have ill effects. It would be similar to giving everyone in school a B or a C. Just go ahead and give them all As, that way they can get a better job - that will be better for the economy, right? 

 

Why not look at ways of lowering the cost of goods and have it made here without robotics? Because it's not that easy. Business owners are keeping prices so consumers buy theirs, otherwise you buy the competitors. Business owners know that it's worth $100k for every job that can be eliminated while maintaining the same or better productivity. Business owners would love to not pay shipping, be the first to market rather than on a slow boat from china and would be willing to PAY MORE. They don't / can't due to labor costs. It is sad to see so much imported, that is consumer driven. 

 

Again, I agree that it would be great to have a lot less people on the dole. 

Again, I agree that the system it totally screwed. The reason ball players and board of directors are payed so much is because they bring in a lot of money for the sport or the company. Don't like it? Stop going to the games and boycott the goods. 

[JJkizak]

 

Just like I said before---Henry Ford took a lot of flack for raising the hourly wage to 5 dollars per hour at his company so they could afford to purchase $850.00 cars. All of the supposed experts said this was stupid but it turned out to be a fantastic move. Then in the 60's the unions got the wages going upward and we had the American middle class supporting the entire planet. The experts were wrong again.

JJK

For starters, it was $5 per DAY  not per hour

 

The $5-a-day rate was about half pay and half bonus.

 

 

Sorry about that embellishment. Going back in time is tedious at times getting the facts straight.

JJK

[Woofers and Tweeters]

Just like I said before---Henry Ford took a lot of flack for raising the hourly wage to 5 dollars per hour at his company so they could afford to purchase $850.00 cars. All of the supposed experts said this was stupid but it turned out to be a fantastic move. Then in the 60's the unions got the wages going upward and we had the American middle class supporting the entire planet. The experts were wrong again.

JJK

For starters, it was $5 per DAY  not per hour

 

The $5-a-day rate was about half pay and half bonus.[/size]

 

Sorry about that embellishment. Going back in time is tedious at times getting the facts straight.

JJK

No sorry needed. Besides, it's not like anyone here is going to come up with a solution. We can't even agree on cables lol

[Jim Naseum]

Don't like it? Stop going to the games and boycott the goods.

That's one possible answer to conditions you don't like, but surely not the only answer. In the USA, the more common response is, "like it, or change it!"

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[Jeff Matthews]

 

Don't like it? Stop going to the games and boycott the goods.

That's one possible answer to conditions you don't like, but surely not the only answer. In the USA, the more common response is, "like it, or change it!"

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In other words, "Screw all the other people who like it."

[muel]

I believe the slogan was, "love it or leave it."

Not much of a solution except for population control.

[Jim Naseum]

Don't like it? Stop going to the games and boycott the goods.

That's one possible answer to conditions you don't like, but surely not the only answer. In the USA, the more common response is, "like it, or change it!"

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In other words, "Screw all the other people who like it."

That's often the result, yes. I know there are many fans of dog fighting, for example. And we just say, "well screw you."

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[Jim Naseum]

Isn't that the way we were all educated? Like it or change it? Maybe that was only my generation.

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[Jeff Matthews]

 

 

 

Don't like it? Stop going to the games and boycott the goods.

That's one possible answer to conditions you don't like, but surely not the only answer. In the USA, the more common response is, "like it, or change it!"

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In other words, "Screw all the other people who like it."

That's often the result, yes. I know there are many fans of dog fighting, for example. And we just say, "well screw you."

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Does your opinion change if the activity is gay sex?

[DrWho]

 

d one of the problems I have with this mindset is that it implies a person's value is related heavily to their production capability.

 

Nothing draws this point more dramatically than comparing a 20 year old  ball player making  $5,000,000 a year and a 20 year old ACTIVE duty soldier making $19,000. 

 

 

I'm guessing you're probably a soldier, so you're probably uncomfortable with that reality. Those in a position where they feel they have more significance to the society tend to be upset when the dollars don't follow...

 

But the reality is that which the ball player provides is more valuable than the soldier....we're an entertainment / service focused culture. It's no different than the medieval times - we just don't have moats and castles anymore to make it more visually apparent.

 

The crazy thing is I think that pay difference is exactly where it needs to be based on the cultural values...