So, do unions hate the military, or just freedom?

[dross]

Here's how you tell if you're underpaid: If you quit, your employer will be unable to find someone with your qualifications for your compensation.

Here's how you tell if you're overpaid: There are people with your qualifications who will work for less than you're being paid.

 

[ar15junkie]

I do see many lazy co-workers take there hours and do almost nothing. They don't last long or travel to the next project. They are the ones still waiting to a hiring call that may never come. Just don't judge all workers as lazy just because they are union either.

That is the problem though. Everyone looks at the lazy ass and says, thats what a union is about and because you're union you're paying the price for the lazy ass. Additionally, unions need to be reasonable. I can understand them trying to protect the jobs of their members but on some occasions, when those members legitimately screw up they need to be sent packing because the only thing the union accomplishes by saving the job of a screw off is to drag you and the other hard working union members through the mud.

 

[Raoc]

As much as I hate unions, I think its pretty clear that he got fired because they were setting up for a rally at which Obama was going to be present and he had a shirt that said "George H.W. Bush". Yes it is stupid, but I don't think it has anything to do with a hate of the military, so much as the Bush family, or republicans in general.

 

[printcraft]

They are attempting to ruin the new "Hobbit" movie too.

Filmmaker Peter Jackson warns shutdown of The Hobbit movies

 

[Bigum1969]

Here's how you tell if you're underpaid: If you quit, your employer will be unable to find someone with your qualifications for your compensation.

Here's how you tell if you're overpaid: There are people with your qualifications who will work for less than you're being paid.

 

[irishfan]

Here's how you tell if you're underpaid: If you quit, your employer will be unable to find someone with your qualifications for your compensation.

Here's how you tell if you're overpaid: There are people with your qualifications who will work for less than you're being paid.

I never really thought that the people who work at McDonalds and Wal Mart were overpaid until this post

 

[cordex]

Pet Peeve being a firefighter/paramedic and a union member I have a few things to say about this. It is not artificially inflating because you put a card into your wallet. Being the service you provide for your community you should expect your community to support people that deal with their problems. Public Safety Unions do great things for their communities. All we ask is we can provide for our family's. Keeping good quality people is part of it.

Feel entitled much?

 

[steveh_131]

I never really thought that the people who work at McDonalds and Wal Mart were overpaid until this post

Well I am glad Dross was able to educate you on the free market then.

 

[Eddie]

Pet Peeve being a firefighter/paramedic and a union member I have a few things to say about this. It is not artificially inflating because you put a card into your wallet. Being the service you provide for your community you should expect your community to support people that deal with their problems. Public Safety Unions do great things for their communities. All we ask is we can provide for our family's. Keeping good quality people is part of it.

Until Paramedics face reality and get involved ( like nursing did ) they will always be a bastard child. The easiest way is to get a union started and unite. Your community can afford to support emergency services. There are tons of ways to support them

Emergency services in general are hard to compare to traditional unions. A union negotiates with management. Management can look at their profit margin, estimate the costs of raises and other benefits and sit down and negotiate with a union as to what share of the profits they are willing to give to the union to obtain labor.

With emergency services there is a budget set by one branch of the government that a different branch gets to spend. That budget is fairly set in stone. There isn't a profit margin, just a number of dollars that can be spread around and its usually based on the past year's budget.

The taxpayers in general don't look at the services they receive and compare them to the taxes they pay. If you ask a taxpayer what sort of emergency response he would like to receive if he or a member of his family were injured you would likely hear something like "I want a pair of surgeons to land on my front lawn in a helicopter." On the other hand if you ask a taxpayer what level of service they want to pay for to serve the public as a whole and their response will likely be closer to "A guy on a bicycle with some band aids."

 

[dross]

I never really thought that the people who work at McDonalds and Wal Mart were overpaid until this post

Your confusion stems from your mistaken idea that you have some inherent ability to determine what someone's labor is worth.

Here's just one of the ways that attitude hurts people.

If I have a business, I might need some things done, simple things like emptying trash and sweeping. I do those things myself, because the cost of hiring an employee at minimum wage is more than I want to pay. I save the money by adding an extra few hours to my week.

Now let's say a guy comes along who asks for a job. He just got out of jail and has no skills. He's living with his sister down the street. He says he just needs a job and he'll work for anything. I determine that it's worth it to pay him $2.00 per hour and no more. If I have to pay more, I'll just do it myself.

He jumps at the offer because he can't get a job anywhere else due to his lack of skills and his criminal history.

Unfortunately, we are both barred from this win/win situation, because someone, somewhere has determined that I'd be exploiting him if we made this voluntary deal that benefitted us both.

Another example: I want to open a shoe factory. I look at all the available places I can open one, and determine that a small town in South America fits the bill perfectly. Not only does it meet MY needs, but the people in the area are starving. I get my shoes made for a dollar a day per employee, and the people in that area get an economic boost of many times over what they have now. I'll employee hundreds, and hundreds of children's bellies will have food in them every night where they didn't before.

Unfortunately, we are prohibited from this win/win situation because someone, somewhere has determined I'd be exploiting them. I don't get my shoes made as cheap as I could, and those people continue to starve.

That's the danger of your lack of understanding that Wal Mart employees can be overpaid.

 

[ATOMonkey]

Indeed, the minimum wage turned out to actaully be a regressive tax.

All it did was increase the cost of goods that were consumed in large part by the poor.

Oooops....

 

[dross]

Pet Peeve being a firefighter/paramedic and a union member I have a few things to say about this. It is not artificially inflating because you put a card into your wallet. Being the service you provide for your community you should expect your community to support people that deal with their problems. Public Safety Unions do great things for their communities. All we ask is we can provide for our family's. Keeping good quality people is part of it.

Until Paramedics face reality and get involved ( like nursing did ) they will always be a bastard child. The easiest way is to get a union started and unite. Your community can afford to support emergency services. There are tons of ways to support them

How can a community tell if they're paying their emergency service workers too much or too little?

Can the community hire and retain the number of qualified workers it needs for the compensation it is offering? When a job comes open, do they have a reasonable number of qualified workers from which to choose? If so, compensation is about what it should be.

Do they have hundreds of qualified applicants for every open position and very little turnover? Probably paying too much.

Is it difficult to find and keep qualified workers? Probably paying too little.

It really doesn't have much to do with the value they bring to the community. For instance, try running your community without the guy who pick up the trash. You'll notice real quick if they don't do their jobs.

 

[irishfan]

The lack of understanding is people not realizing that the more our pay is driven down then the less a person has the ability to purchase products. Yes, it can in a very slow and draining manner lower a product cost but we don't see that in our "free market." Also, the more we have businesses not paying a living wage you will still see people living on the goivernment hand out programs. I don't agree that unskilled assembly people should get paid $25 an hour but minimum wage or near it makes it impossible for people to make it without some help somewhere.

 

[dross]

The lack of understanding is people not realizing that the more our pay is driven down then the less a person has the ability to purchase products. Yes, it can in a very slow and draining manner lower a product cost but we don't see that in our "free market." Also, the more we have businesses not paying a living wage you will still see people living on the goivernment hand out programs. I don't agree that unskilled assembly people should get paid $25 an hour but minimum wage or near it makes it impossible for people to make it without some help somewhere.

This is incorrect. The constant pressure on salaries and prices downward does not hurt our standard of living, it improves it. That downward pressure is what has raised our lifestyles to the point where the average working class person lives a much better life than the average upper middle class person 100 years ago.

If we only look at certain jobs, it looks bad. But that's assuming the same people are in entry level jobs ten years down the road. Not true. People move through those jobs in general.

One of the beautiful facts of this country is that the people in the bottom income bracket today are more likely in ten years to be in the top bracket than they are to still be in the bottom bracket.

Most poor people have one thing in common: They're young. There is very little pervasive poverty in this country and when you find it you tend to find drug or mental problems at its root. People start out at Wal Mart at $6.00 an hour, two years later they're at $10.00 an hour, and most of them have moved on and are making more somewhere else.

Price and wage downward pressure improve PRODUCTION, which leads to a higher standard of living for everyone.

 

[ATOMonkey]

As always Dross, very succinctly put.

 

[Eddie]

The lack of understanding is people not realizing that the more our pay is driven down then the less a person has the ability to purchase products. Yes, it can in a very slow and draining manner lower a product cost but we don't see that in our "free market." Also, the more we have businesses not paying a living wage you will still see people living on the goivernment hand out programs. I don't agree that unskilled assembly people should get paid $25 an hour but minimum wage or near it makes it impossible for people to make it without some help somewhere.

But minimum wage presupposes that the business has extra cash just laying around. Businesses spend a considerable amount of time tinkering with their profit margin to operate as efficiently as possible. Artificially tinkering with the cost of labor cuts into that margin. Raising the minimum wage means that the businessman has to cut expenses to keep turning a profit. (If he doesn't turn a profit there is no point being in business.) Things like rent and the cost of materials often can't be cut so the cut has to come out of payroll. If you have 20 employees at $8.00 an hour your payroll is $6,400 a week. (Really about 7,300 with UI and SS) Raise minimum wage to $9 an hour and that same payroll will now only support 17 workers because the increase in minimum wage didn't magically put more money in the business accounts. Guess how the businessman solves that problem? Yep, minimum wage increase means that three people lose their jobs.

 

[dross]

But minimum wage presupposes that the business has extra cash just laying around. Businesses spend a considerable amount of time tinkering with their profit margin to operate as efficiently as possible. Artificially tinkering with the cost of labor cuts into that margin. Raising the minimum wage means that the businessman has to cut expenses to keep turning a profit. (If he doesn't turn a profit there is no point being in business.) Things like rent and the cost of materials often can't be cut so the cut has to come out of payroll. If you have 20 employees at $8.00 an hour your payroll is $6,400 a week. (Really about 7,300 with UI and SS) Raise minimum wage to $9 an hour and that same payroll will now only support 17 workers because the increase in minimum wage didn't magically put more money in the business accounts. Guess how the businessman solves that problem? Yep, minimum wage increase means that three people lose their jobs.

If minimum wage were a good idea, why not make the minimum wage $10 per hour, or $15, or even $20? After all, it would raise everyone's standard of living and they'd be able to by more goods, right? Heck, let's just make it $100.00 per hour and we'll all be in the top 5%.

It doesn't work for the same reason that you can't pull up on your pants and float yourself up to the top of a building.

The principle is the same even if you try to float yourself up by one inch using that method. It won't work.

What people fail to realize is that economic effects are not arbitrary and able to be controlled or even understood by one person. They must be adhered to like the laws of physics. They can't be cheated. Minimum wage is an attempt to cheat that only hides the problem.

 

[ar15junkie]

So really the only time of benefit from raising the minimum wage is from the time between the when the first increased paycheck is delivered to the employee and the business realises its losing money and raises prices.

Of course businesses know about the increase before they make the payroll checks so this time probably never occurs.

Also, if the goods now cost more because of the wage increase wouldn't the tax collector also see more taxes paid? The goods now cost 1.00 more @ 6.00 and the state gets 7% of that whereas before they got 7% of 5.00

Additionally, everyone who earned above minimum wage before the increase now has to pay more for goods supplied by minimum wage employers so their money don't go as far either.

 

[Blackhawk2001]

So really the only time of benefit from raising the minimum wage is from the time between the when the first increased paycheck is delivered to the employee and the business realises its losing money and raises prices.

Of course businesses know about the increase before they make the payroll checks so this time probably never occurs.

Also, if the goods now cost more because of the wage increase wouldn't the tax collector also see more taxes paid? The goods now cost 1.00 more @ 6.00 and the state gets 7% of that whereas before they got 7% of 5.00

Additionally, everyone who earned above minimum wage before the increase now has to pay more for goods supplied by minimum wage employers so their money don't go as far either.

Actually, the only benefit to the minimum wage is to the politician who promises to raise it.

 

[ar15junkie]

Actually, the only benefit to the minimum wage is to the politician who promises to raise it.

Agreed, that too.