are you for minimum wage increase?
- Thread starter $tinkle
- Start date
but kerry doesn't vote how he says he will....if he says rais it...it will stay the same..or drop
i think to beat inflation everyone should take a 5% or something drop in pay....and then addjust the sales prices as well.
I know thats impossible but it would make this stupid thing we call money have smaller numbers.
Then again i don't realy give a crap about it in the long run
i think to beat inflation everyone should take a 5% or something drop in pay....and then addjust the sales prices as well.
I know thats impossible but it would make this stupid thing we call money have smaller numbers.
Then again i don't realy give a crap about it in the long run
"no one who works 40 hours a week should have to live in poverty"
Sounds reasonable to me. Then again, I'm a commie by most peoples standards...
But seriously, I have no truck with people wanting something for nothing but if someone works a 40 hour week they should get a living wage. If they don't what incentive is there?
Why is it anti-small business in particular?
Edumakate me: How is a minumum wage increase a bad thing? How does that negatively affect me, Mr Joe Taxpayer? Is the general premise that it drives up labor costs, thus causing big businesses to send jobs overseas?
world socialist comes to mind
let's say you have a mom & pop store (hardware or whatever, NOT a franchise). You pay out min wage (or some offset) today, but next year you pay - i don't know - 15% more for same widgets sold (don't have kerry's numbers handy). What do you do? I don't mind paying 15% more for brads, but if i'm going to rebuild my deck, a few hundred dollars is beyond a line in the sand. Increasing prices will drive customers to HomeDepot - or worse yet for larger projects - overseas.
I think gov't subsidies & payroll taxes add to the whole mess, but i'm not well-versed in those to opine.
(EDIT to fix broken link)
Minimum wage increases only serve to increase prices. People that make minumum wage are no better off afterwards, and the rest of us just took it in the behind.
Sends jobs elsewhere and increases the cost/price of products. Your Big Mac Value meal may soon cost $4.99. I am guessing that most minimum wage jobs are service oriented, so places like grocery stores will just try more automation like self check out areas to reduce the costs. Smaller places will not benefit from such things and could become less competetive. Over all there will be better paid minimum wage workers but there will be fewer of them potentially increasing unemployement.
This is a basic idealogical divide. If you are in favour of a fully free market and no government regulation then you will probably see it as a bad thing. It will either raise prices or reduce profits, however there is a limit to how high prices can rise before profits will fall anyway.
Of course the same logic says that people with more money will spend more money so more product will be sold which will offset some of the increased expense.
Personally I don't see why people should be exploited to further increase the profits of large businesses. I would be in favour of increased corporation tax on a sliding scale of profit, a minimum wage, perhaps with subsidies/grants available for small businesses.
I could go a lot further but basically I would not stop at a minimum wage.
And yeah, I am a socialist, but that link didn't work ($tinkle's post).
Of course the same logic says that people with more money will spend more money so more product will be sold which will offset some of the increased expense.
Personally I don't see why people should be exploited to further increase the profits of large businesses. I would be in favour of increased corporation tax on a sliding scale of profit, a minimum wage, perhaps with subsidies/grants available for small businesses.
I could go a lot further but basically I would not stop at a minimum wage.
And yeah, I am a socialist, but that link didn't work ($tinkle's post).
To me minimum wage is to establish an artificial 'starting place' for wages. It is not meant to be a living wage because you shouldn't stay at a level (preformance-wise) where you would depend on it.
It should be a wage you earn for maybe a few months while you educate yourself and work your way into something where you can make a living.
It should be a wage you earn for maybe a few months while you educate yourself and work your way into something where you can make a living.
I agree, but as long as people are fighting for jobs, companies can afford to pay workers as little as possible because there's always somebody willing to work for minimum wage. Its not in the interest of WalMart or McDonalds to pay non-skilled workers anything more than they have to. Like-wise, its also not in the interest of mom and pop stores. Raising the minimum wage seems pretty useless to me still though. The more money that hits the streets, the more things are going to cost. Closing the gap between non-skilled positions and skilled positions when it comes to money is a bad idea IMO, because it breeds laziness....but thats just me.
this implies welfare should be abolished, or at least greatly reduced (can i say that?).
the SF Examiner had an article a couple of weeks back covering the newly raised min wage. Man, that city is whacked. It's like another planet, where you have to say "celebrate" (or some conjugate) every other sentence.
on topic highlight:
the rest sews the seeds of class warfareWorkers [readocialists] won the right to one of the highest minimum wages in the nation last November when San Francisco voters passed Proposition L, despite protestations from businesses that they would be forced to lay off staff and raise prices.
That would be that way it is supposed to work... But in actuallity many employers pay minimum wage to start....and keep paying it for years until the employee leaves for something better. The type of employer that pays minimum wage is usually not the type of employer that offers careers. To them employees are just a resource. The average MBA Business owner could care less about offering anything called a living wage. To most Americans the poor are those icky folks you see waiting for the Bus the last time you had to go to the city, or who screwed up your order at Mickey D's so you had to report him/her to the Manager. Come on N8 do you really care about those silly poor folks who can only get a job at 7-11 and get payed minimum wage. Do you frequently associate with folks who make minimum wage? Not just know them but actually hang out with and spend time with them??.......jdcamb
Hey, maybe you guys should export your poor to Asia where you can pay them even less, and export your low-paid jobs to ex-pat Americans?
There are just too many employers that will only pay minimun wage though. It is like Chris Rock said;
"There are people who would like tog et rid of minimum wage. But we have to have it, because if we didn't some people would not get paid money. They would work all week for two loaves of bread and some Spam. "
I do not see minimum wage as a "real" issue. I see it as an appeal to the nations poor and well-intentioned. Already, many of the nations largest employers, companies such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot keep their employee schedules at less than 40 hrs./week so that they do not have to pay benefits. An extra $.50 per hour isn't going to make a bit of difference when you are paying $400/month or more out of pocket for health insurance.
This isn't a rant. I would expect any politition to support minimum wage. Its an easy issue to support because lately it does/costs so little. Minimum wage is already so far below a realistic living wage that I don't think it will make much of a difference.
This isn't a rant. I would expect any politition to support minimum wage. Its an easy issue to support because lately it does/costs so little. Minimum wage is already so far below a realistic living wage that I don't think it will make much of a difference.
Raising the minimum wage helps decrease the burden on the welfare system, it HELPS small businesses compete with big ones, it encourages legal immigration, and it reduces the income gap. It DOES cause inflation but there is still a significant relative increase in spending power for those recieving the higher wage. Also, we are at no risk of over-inflation right now. Interestingly (and this is a new phenomenon/theory so it's not set in stone) it may trigger a considerable boost in consumer activity as teenagers make up a large portion of modern min wage workers. Unlike most earners, teenagers dump more than 90% (maybe 95%, I can't find a source right now) of their earnings directly back into the economy within 6 months.
I think it's a good thing, to a point. Like most measures, moderation is key, unless we're in desperate times.
I think it's a good thing, to a point. Like most measures, moderation is key, unless we're in desperate times.
i'm making far above the minimum wage now, working full time, and i still can't see how people save up enough pay for college themselves. (parents hooked me and my sister up, and besides, ivies have need blind admissions and quite good financial aid. but most places don't.) if i had to do it on my own i'd either have to sacrifice my education, delay it a lot, or end up with massive loans. not cool.
By definition earning minimum wage mean "making as little money as legally possible.
Yes, one would hope hope that it would be a starting point and you would move up from there. But let's face it. There are some people who really will never be anything more than dishwashers, chamber maids (etc). And there are some people just lack the mental capacity to be "skilled labour".....many of these people seem to post on Ridemonkey....I'd love to name names, but i digress...
But just as a matter of principle, in supposedly the richest nation in the world, when one makes as little money as legally allowed, that amount should keep you above the poverty line.
Yes, one would hope hope that it would be a starting point and you would move up from there. But let's face it. There are some people who really will never be anything more than dishwashers, chamber maids (etc). And there are some people just lack the mental capacity to be "skilled labour".....many of these people seem to post on Ridemonkey....I'd love to name names, but i digress...
But just as a matter of principle, in supposedly the richest nation in the world, when one makes as little money as legally allowed, that amount should keep you above the poverty line.
i can see that for the short term, but like most steady-state equations, you'll have to rob peter to pay paul. Ok, i'm just a little suspicious of glib offerings like that. nothing against you, it just seems too trivialized.
then where do the small business owners who claim it hurts them have it wrong?
...which in turn reduces the incentive to go to school to chase after the gold ring (for some). If the income gap is say - $20k/yr for being a locksmith at $12/hr (greater delta from increase in min wage for this type job) vs a dental hygenist for $25/hr (probably not going to be impacted much from wage increase), do i want to incur student loan debt which might take 10 yrs to pay off when i could be putting a "measly" $500/yr into some retirement vehicle? All the charts from fidelity/smith barney/et al, say the worker has a leg up.
stupid kids
then you start a punk band & vandalize starbucks
Okay, you can't have it both ways... on the one hand you're arguing that inflation cancels out any positive effects. On the other hand you're arguing that it hurts businesses (we disagree on which ones, but I'll get to that later) and consumer spending power. You need to make up your mind. Is there an effect, or is there not?
Like I said, inflation DOES occur as a result of min wage increases, but not in the same proportion as the wage increase... thus giving minimum wage earners relatively more spending power. This lasts for YEARS. At our current inflation rate, we're talking 4 years or so for the planned increase... 2-3 if you assume a bump in inflation that results. Do you need it be decades before it stops being "short term?"
The closer minimum wage is to a living wage the easier it is to get off of welfare, and the less likely people are to fraudulently stay on welfare when they're capable of work. That point is not arguable. What is arguable is whether raising the minimum wage makes it closer to a living wage. I'm looking for a reasonable argument for why it does not.
They're not economists. All they see is their costs increasing (which WILL happen). They don't see that so will WalMart's and McDonald's... stores that rely on proportionately more minimum wage (if not illegal) labor. Big chains have an advantage on almost EVERY front (overhead, fixed costs per shelf space, cost of goods, etc.) the one thing they don't have is skilled labor and attention, which is what small business owners rely on. A minimum wage increase improves their relative position, because it decreases their skilled labor rates on a relative scale. They only see their absolute position.
Look harder and you will find that it's the large chains (especially fast food, supermarkets, and department stores) that most adamantly oppose min wage increases.