Minimum Wage increase?

[ArcadiaGP]

It entirely depends on the kind of job. I can say from personal experiences I've been at employed at places that were better than average in these regards to where raises were nonexistent. I recently left a job where even the most exceptional employees can only get a 2% raise at the absolute most. Hightailed it out of there as soon as I got a better job that actually cared about employee retention.

That's what the free market comes down to: Choice. Let employers bad choices cause potential employees to go elsewhere. The employer can either fail, or step it up and be competitive.

 

[jamil]

Do you suppose the wages of the lowest paid workers has that much affect on inflation? Compared to say, money supply, availability of goods, worker productivity, etc?

The subject is the $15/hour minimum wage increase in Seattle. Specifically, mrjarrell favors "living wage", presumably some amount much larger than the current MW, and tied to inflation. Because, you know. If you oppose something you should definitely do more of it. The current minimum wage isn't that impacting now, and I even stated that we're almost to the point where it is meaningless, which is a defacto kind of way to get rid of it. Just do nothing.

Are you're arguing that $15/hour or whateverthehell is a "living wage", with increases tied to inflation, would have no wage push inflationary effect at all?

Increased wages only support inflation when there are insufficient goods to purchase with those wages. Are you going to argue that the lowest paid workers have such purchasing power that they can affect this balance in any real way?

Depends on who you read.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

The subject is the $15/hour minimum wage increase in Seattle. Specifically, mrjarrell favors "living wage", presumably some amount much larger than the current MW, and tied to inflation. Because, you know. If you oppose something you should definitely do more of it. The current minimum wage isn't that impacting now, and I even stated that we're almost to the point where it is meaningless, which is a defacto kind of way to get rid of it. Just do nothing.

Are you're arguing that $15/hour or whateverthehell is a "living wage", with increases tied to inflation, would have no wage push inflationary effect at all?



Depends on who you read.

I'm not arguing a specific number at all. That's well above my level of expertise.

 

[MuddyINGOGirl]

I have to agree $15/hr is excessive for a MINIMUM wage. If you hope to get paid that sort of money for the most part you have secondary education and/or put in work and/or hours that justify that sort of pay. But at the same time who can survive on $7.25/hour?I don't find the current minimum wage allows a minimum level of subsistence.

I have also lost hope almost entirely in the ideal that "better work=better pay". At a previous job during my yearly review (3 yrs in) my manager told me that they were forced to change my job performance scores to a lower number because they wanted to give other people a raise. I worked my a$$ off for that place and yet was still making minimum wage. So no I don't believe for one second that all minimum wage employees deserve the minimum wage pay. Unfortunately, we don't live a perfect world where pay is based on the work we put in. So for those of us with good jobs/successful businesses-let's all be grateful.

 

[Joe G]

It entirely depends on the kind of job. I can say from personal experiences I've been at employed at places that were better than average in these regards to where raises were nonexistent. I recently left a job where even the most exceptional employees can only get a 2% raise at the absolute most. Hightailed it out of there as soon as I got a better job that actually cared about employee retention.

And that's how the market works. You, through your own hard work, made a change that worked for you. Current job wouldn't pay you for what you thought you were worth? Find another one that will.

I find it hard to believe that those who believe everyone (productive or not, skilled or not) deserves these higher wages would feel the same if they worked their azzes off and were paid the same as the guy next to them who doesn't.

Guarantee Muddy above doesn't see how it's fair for those who aren't working as hard to get the same or more than ones who really ARE worth more than the current minimum. Hope she takes her good work habits and finds an employer who values that with better pay. I'm sure there are plenty who will, while her current boss will be stuck with the lazy azzes who got the raise but lost the hard worker.

 

[Lex Concord]

Needs to be $0.00.

$0.00 is too high. If people want to pay you to do things you need done, who is the government to dictate otherwise?

Some might imagine purple. If you are one of them, you are projecting.

 

[terrehautian]

I have to agree $15/hr is excessive for a MINIMUM wage. If you hope to get paid that sort of money for the most part you have secondary education and/or put in work and/or hours that justify that sort of pay. But at the same time who can survive on $7.25/hour?I don't find the current minimum wage allows a minimum level of subsistence.

One minimal wage job does not equal survival. Survival means doing what you have to do to survive. If all I could get was minimal wage jobs, I would have a couple. I don't think there should be a minimal wage increase. If I can get to college (with no help from my parents) financially, anyone can. It might mean student loans, but if you have a skill, you earn more. If you skill is flipping burgers, you have no skills. I worked minimal wage jobs through college to survive so I can earn a better wage. I do earn a much better wage then current minimal wage, but if it was to go up I fully expect my hourly wage to go up by that same amount.

The issue is that the costs of products will go up by a high amount if it does go up.

Lets say you own a local steak place that gets steaks locally.

That farmer has to raise a cow.
That cow has to be feed so the grain elevator is going to want more money for their product to pay for their workers.
The person who transports that cow to the meat locker is going to want more (if there is that person).
The butcher is going to want more for its service since they have to pay workers more.
Then the guy who owns the steak shop has to pay its workers more because they want more (the hostess, the bartender, the cook, the busser, the dishwasher).
Then the local steak place has to pay payroll and if they have someone do it, they will want more to pay for their employees.

 

[Twangbanger]

Based on what? You don't like the idea so you reject it, or you've actually read some history of the FLSA of 1938 and the era? Protection of children and allowing them to go further in education was certainly part of it. Wage protection for adults was very much a part of it as well. Go back to the era and look at the laws that were passed. Child labor laws weren't passed alone. They were passed in conjunction with minimum wages and other reforms for the work place on maximum hours, etc. FLSA wasn't the first such law, there were regional or state laws and there were federal attempts that SCOTUS had struck down...

I've no interest in proving I'm a better history scholar of the Labor Movement than you, and the intentions of people in 1938 do not matter to this discussion. You started by suggesting that if people were opposed to 11 year-olds working in factories, yet were also against $15 Minimum Wage, they are somehow inconsistent or hypocritical in their position. I pointed out that sane people, today, correctly see the child labor laws as being primarily (in _their_ view) about child exploitation. You seem to be making some kind of clumsy case that if you're against child labor or unlimited immigration, you have already tacitly accepted the principle of wage protection per se, and have no dry-ground left from which to oppose $15 for burger-flippers (and if you do, you simply do not understand the "history of the labor movement" and need to be ejumacated until you "think right"). I simply call BS on that. I told you what _my_ interest was in opposing child labor, then you proceeded to argue and said, "No, THIS is your interest in opposing child labor...it's not child exploitation, it's wage protection, and here are facts from 1938 that prove it." Again, 1938 is not a factor in my position. If this all boils down to an issue of wage protection, for you, fine. But don't put words in other folks' mouths and claim they're in the same boat as you. I reiterate - the only person here advocating government intervention in the voluntary interactions of consenting adults, purely for purposes of wage protection, is you.

...Then how does a nation such as Qatar maintain a workforce that's 75% immigrants? Simple. Visas for the workers. When you're done working you go home. Where's the burden? If you truly believe in an unfettered free market, part of that is the ability of goods, services, and labor to enter and exit with no barriers, including political. It works so well you can hire an Indian block layer or brick mason for about $150 USD a month. They don't even bother to use cranes or fork lifts to get the block up to the 3rd or 4th story, because labor is so cheap its sounder economically to have a few Indians will pulleys bring them up on pallets. There system is WAY closer to free market labor than ours...Of course that also shows one of the downsides of higher wages. The incentive to mechanize and automate jobs when human labor is too expensive. I freely admit its not all ups with no downs, and have from the beginning of this thread and in many others...

Ah, ok. I see we're finally getting down to the real "Silence of the Lambs" issue with you, on this topic. You, a nice person from a nice labor-union family (yes, Claire?), joined the military, and were brought face-to-face with the horrors of the Monarchical, Sharia forced-labor camp that is Qatar. You were chilled by the conditions those nasty, rich, Muslim monarchs subjected their workers to, weren't you, BBI? It clashed with your fair-wage upbringing, yes? You ran, and you ran, but you couldn't get that image out of your mind could you? And you said to yourself, "This, THIS, is what those rich fundamentalist Republicans back in America would eventually subject ALL of us to, if they could get their unfettered, laissez-faire capitalist way," didn't you?

So you see...we can both play this "putting words in your mouth" game, can't we?

...What is the result of a negotiation when one side has all of the power? You take what they give you. The top percentage of folks are in a better position, those with unique skills, education, talent, etc. but by definition most people are average. Average people are easy to replace. It doesn't take much skill to do most of the jobs, numbers wise, are economy produces. Retail, transportation, manufacturing, these are generally unskilled or semi-skilled slots. If you read Adam Smith's books (the whole "Invisible Hand" supply/demand thing that's quoted in every economic text book ever) he puts forth the argument that a man's labor absent any special skills or requirements is worth the money required to live for him, his wife, and two children to live long enough to replace him in the work place. That's it. That's "what the job is worth." Your economic value as labor is solely your replacement value, which would be even less today as many families have both parents working. If that's what you believe you want for this country, keep pushing for the abolition of any protection for workers, busted unions, etc.

All anybody said in this thread is that they don't think the government arbitrarily inserting itself into voluntary transactions to force a $15 wage for burger-flippers is good policy. You think it is. Where did all this crap about "abolition of any protection for workers, busted unions, etc." come from? Is it the Silence of the Lambs talking through you again, BBI? When you came back from Qatar, did the Koch Brothers try to take your passport at the border and enslave you? In three more thread-pages, are you going to be accusing the anti-$15 Burger Flipper people of secretly wanting Sharia Monarchy, Stoning, and indentured servitude? I'm really interested to hear your thoughts about what we're going to advocate next (Insert photo of Gene Wilder in purple suit here >>>>__).

Do you suppose the wages of the lowest paid workers has that much affect on inflation? Compared to say, money supply, availability of goods, worker productivity, etc? Increased wages only support inflation when there are insufficient goods to purchase with those wages. Are you going to argue that the lowest paid workers have such purchasing power that they can affect this balance in any real way?

Well, two-thirds of American GDP is consumer spending, and we're constantly reminded that 99% of the public is flea *****, financially. When an incremental additional dollar gets spent on a product or service, the product or service cannot tell whether that dollar came from a rich person or a poor one. If a bazillion burger flippers got their wages doubled tomorrow, and went out and upgraded their phone data plans or signed up for more expensive Cable TV service (not unlikely ways for them to spend that extra money), do you seriously believe that will not exert significant demand pressure on the price of those services? Phone data plans aren't expensive because a small number of rich people pay ten thousand dollars a month for them. They're expensive because bazillions of ordinary schmucks are willing to pay $200 a month to play Flappy Birds on their lunch break and ask their buddies "whazzup?"

 

[Thor]

A big part of the problem with minimum wage arguments in America is that we really don't have 'poor'. Our poor have cell phones, drive cars, generally live in houses with electricity and running water, they have television and cable services. They are not 'poor', they just aren't as comfortable as they want to be for the amount of work they are willing to put out.

Nobody owes you anything, nothing, not a dime. You get what you can sell your skills for...if you don't have many you don't get much.

 

[MisterChester]

A big part of the problem with minimum wage arguments in America is that we really don't have 'poor'. Our poor have cell phones, drive cars, generally live in houses with electricity and running water, they have television and cable services. They are not 'poor', they just aren't as comfortable as they want to be for the amount of work they are willing to put out.

Nobody owes you anything, nothing, not a dime. You get what you can sell your skills for...if you don't have many you don't get much.

The poor shouldn't be spending their money on things like you said. Watching someone use an EBT card to pay for food and then pull out an iPhone 6+ to answer a call is just bad money management.

 

[ArcadiaGP]

The poor shouldn't be spending their money on things like you said. Watching someone use an EBT card to pay for food and then pull out an iPhone 6+ to answer a call is just bad money management.

Difference is... these people think having a 4G smartphone with unlimited data should be a constitutional right.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

I've no interest in proving I'm a better history scholar of the Labor Movement than you, and the intentions of people in 1938 do not matter to this discussion.

That pretty much says what I need to know. You don't know, but are willing to just guess and assume and base your arguments on that. I'll not bother with your silence of the lambs and other overwrought arguments.

As for your assumptions of how I grew up, I think you'd be surprised. My mother gave my sister and I away as infants. I didn't know I *had* a sister until I was in my 30's and my grandmother let it slip. My "well to do union labor family" were both farm laborers, well Mom apparently delivered newspapers as a side job, and lived in a two room house. My grandparents took me in, but couldn't afford two babies so my sister went up for adoption. I got to meet, and live with, both sets of grandparents over the years. I lived with my dad's parents, who went bankrupt and literally lost the farm when I was 5. We moved into a house that my granddad built out of scrap lumber, saw mill slabs, and used windows and doors. No running water, and at first no electricity. We heated with a wood stove. We got a telephone in 1986, and it was a big deal for us. Now, on the other hand was my mother's dad. Union machinist for GE, and firmly middle class. He didn't work any harder, probably less hard. He wasn't any smarter. They were both veterans (WWII and Korea). Neither had a high school diploma. Both were semi-skilled blue collar workers. That match up to the little BS story you concocted in your head?

Now, let's look at why I was actually overseas. I did join the military, but I was in between the desert wars. Too young for Desert Storm, already out when 9/11 happened. I did what everyone told me would make me successful. I went to college, I got into IT, and I started at the bottom. I worked a help desk, I moved up over 3 years until I was in business process management, and the next step was network administration. I'd used my GI Bill (Socialism, I'm sure), mortgaged my own home, etc. to get my credits and pay the THOUSANDS of dollars that taking the certification classes and tests cost at the time. I got my Microsoft and Cisco certs. Then the Indians came. The tech worker visa floodgates opened, and salaries plummeted. My investment was now so watered down that it would take years to recoup my investment, and cut my salary prospects in half (literally in half) for years to come. A formerly $50k/yr position became a $25k/yr position...and salaried. Well gosh, just go to another company then, make your new contract, blah blah blah. EVERYONE IS HIRING INDIANS, WTF am I going to go? Tech bubble bursts, Microsoft diploma mills pop up, and you take whatever your employer offers because you have zero pull in negotiations.

So I went overseas as a security contractor. I paid off my debt and started over. The ONLY reason I had that option is because of the military. If I'd been born with any number of disqualifiers for military service, I'd have been stuck.

So, yes. I've seen what the unfettered free market of labor brings. Head on down to Mexico and get away from the tourist areas. Travel a bit. Yes, I've had some economics and business education. Theory is nice, and when you can see it play out in the real world, it strikes you and sticks with you. I would rather a nation as wealthy as ours doesn't have people living in shacks with no electricity and running water while they are working. Obviously some here think that's ideal. We'll have to disagree, but I won't argue further unless you want to bring some facts to the table.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

I have to agree $15/hr is excessive for a MINIMUM wage. If you hope to get paid that sort of money for the most part you have secondary education and/or put in work and/or hours that justify that sort of pay. But at the same time who can survive on $7.25/hour?I don't find the current minimum wage allows a minimum level of subsistence.

I have also lost hope almost entirely in the ideal that "better work=better pay". At a previous job during my yearly review (3 yrs in) my manager told me that they were forced to change my job performance scores to a lower number because they wanted to give other people a raise. I worked my a$$ off for that place and yet was still making minimum wage. So no I don't believe for one second that all minimum wage employees deserve the minimum wage pay. Unfortunately, we don't live a perfect world where pay is based on the work we put in. So for those of us with good jobs/successful businesses-let's all be grateful.

This does happen. And it happens at all pay levels.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

A big part of the problem with minimum wage arguments in America is that we really don't have 'poor'. Our poor have cell phones, drive cars, generally live in houses with electricity and running water, they have television and cable services. They are not 'poor', they just aren't as comfortable as they want to be for the amount of work they are willing to put out.

Nobody owes you anything, nothing, not a dime. You get what you can sell your skills for...if you don't have many you don't get much.

My boss is from Mexican, up here on a temporary work assignment. He made this very same comment to me not so long after I met him.

 

[mrjarrell]

Don't these idiots know that they are damaging the economy?

Report: Target Raising Minimum Wage For All Workers To $9 Per Hour ? Consumerist

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Don't these idiots know that they are damaging the economy?

Report: Target Raising Minimum Wage For All Workers To $9 Per Hour ? Consumerist

Assuming full time employment that's probably reasonable. $18k a year certainly isn't a bounty, but its enough to live on and try to go to Ivy Tech type schools or a trade school and work your way up.

Some folks here seem to assume that a minimum wage is a push for equality for all workers. That misses the mark. Some imbalance is desirable. You want to have an incentive to move up to the middle class. What you don't want is people trapped and unable to move up. Not everyone will take that opportunity, and of course many poor people will stay poor because they'll waste their disposable income, but some will and that's why this is the land of OPPORTUNITY.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

My boss is from Mexican, up here on a temporary work assignment. He made this very same comment to me not so long after I met him.

It's absolutely true. We have the wealthiest poor people in the world, no doubt. The question is, is that a bad thing? Do you WANT the US to have significant parts of the population living in houses without electricity, running water, television, etc? How does that affect a nation that's ran be an elected representative democracy when swathes of voters have no electricity? Where do they get their info on candidates? Is that a good thing? What's the infant mortality rate among our poor and their poor? Is that a good thing?

 

[actaeon277]

Don't these idiots know that they are damaging the economy?

Report: Target Raising Minimum Wage For All Workers To $9 Per Hour ? Consumerist

Businesses are allowed, or should be allowed to set their wages.
What is the problem?
If they decide their business plan can afford it, and that it's needed to keep workers, then THAT IS THEIR DECISION.

If you decide someone deserves $100 to cut your grass, that's between you, and the person you hire.
What about if you want to pay someone $12, and I make you pay them $50?
If it applies to others, then it should apply to everyone.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Businesses are allowed, or should be allowed to set their wages.
What is the problem?
If they decide their business plan can afford it, and that it's needed to keep workers, then THAT IS THEIR DECISION.

If you decide someone deserves $100 to cut your grass, that's between you, and the person you hire.
What about if you want to pay someone $12, and I make you pay them $50?
If it applies to others, then it should apply to everyone.

Then it's up to me if I still want to hire that person.

 

[RockofStrength]

It's absolutely true. We have the wealthiest poor people in the world, no doubt. The question is, is that a bad thing? Do you WANT the US to have significant parts of the population living in houses without electricity, running water, television, etc? How does that affect a nation that's ran be an elected representative democracy when swathes of voters have no electricity? Where do they get their info on candidates? Is that a good thing? What's the infant mortality rate among our poor and their poor? Is that a good thing?

So...like people from paupers to kings lived for 6,000+ years? I get that electricity, running water etc are marvelous things and I'm certainly not looking into giving them up any time soon, but lacking them doesn't convert you into the stereotypical Dark Ages villager.