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Rise of Minimum wage?

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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby stahrgazer on Tue Feb 19, 2013 3:53 pm

Night Strike wrote:
Funkyterrance wrote:It seems as though a number of people are forgetting the fact that if someone doesn't perform their job up to expectation you can fire them. The minimum wage is meant to reflect what is a reasonable bottom limit to what someone can survive off of. This is the point that I personally am driving at more than anything.


Every single person who is hired costs more to the business than the wage they get paid. And if they do fire them for anything other than for-cause, the unemployment taxes they have to pay contribute to paying that laid off employee.


Not to mention legal fees for the attorneys the company has to hire when the guy/gal who wouldn't pull his weight after the company spent 6 months to a year trying to teach the dude how to pull his weight, decides to sue the company claiming this or that wrongful termination.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby BigBallinStalin on Tue Feb 19, 2013 4:29 pm

Funkyterrance wrote: It seems as though a number of people are forgetting the fact that if someone doesn't perform their job up to expectation you can fire them. The minimum wage is meant to reflect what is a reasonable bottom limit to what someone can survive off of. This is the point that I personally am driving at more than anything.


Yeah, but that's not the point of the minimum wage, and this position ignores the unintended consequences.

There are many other programs which supplement people's incomes*; raising minimum wage is unnecessary--yet for some reason it's still done. Why? To maximize votes and Party Approval as well as justify bumping up union wages. That's pretty much it.




*
Mr. Obama didn't even tell the whole story about parents raising a family on a minimum-wage income. A full-time minimum-wage worker earns roughly $15,000 a year. But that worker also receives a cash supplement from the earned income tax credit of roughly $5,000, and many states provide benefits on top of that to reward working. That doesn't count government benefits like food stamps, Medicaid, child care and more. According to data from the Employment Policies Institute, about two of every three minimum-wage workers also get a raise within one year.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 14712.html
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby BigBallinStalin on Tue Feb 19, 2013 4:33 pm

thegreekdog wrote:
Nobunaga wrote:There is probably no law more popular and less questioned by liberals than minimum wage laws. Tell a liberal that you are opposed to minimum wage laws, and he or she will look at you as if you are a heartless ignoramus. Iā€™ll bet you could not find a single liberal who has the least degree of doubt about the wisdom and effectiveness of minimum wage laws. Being in favor of minimum wage laws gives you the satisfaction of thinking youā€™ve done something good even if the actual results are harmful.

Liberalism is about feeling good about yourself. It is public policy based on self-indulgence. In liberal never-never land, intentions are all that matter. Intentions are the be-all-and-end-all of public policy choices. Results be damned.

There are people who would like to work for $4 an hour, and there are employers who would like to hire them for that wage. However, for them to enter into such a transaction is a criminal act. Some far-away clueless politician has arbitrarily decided that $4 an hour is not fair and not enough to live on.

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/1 ... mum-wage/1
The clearest evidence for the damage done by the minimum wage laws is the unemployment rates for teenagers, particularly minority teenagers. Today the overall unemployment rate in the U.S. is 7.9 percent. For those 16-19, the rate is more than twice as high (20.8 percent) and for black teenagers the rate is more than four times as high (37.8 percent).

... But think about it - high unemployment rates help Democrats. The fact that blacks are harder hit is only a bonus. It represents political opportunity for them. Is the introduction of a higher minimum wage and the resulting increase in unemployment not intentional?


Actually, think about this

thegreekdog in another thread wrote:http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm

(1) In 2011, 73.9 million American workers (which eliminates all non-workers) age 16 and over were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.1 percent of all wage and salary workers. So that eliminates 40.9% of workers.
(2) Among those paid by the hour, 1.7 million earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 2.2 million had wages below the minimum. Together, these 3.8 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 5.2 percent of all hourly-paid workers.
(3) Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly-paid workers, they made up about half of those paid the Federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers paid by the hour, about 23 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 3 percent of workers age 25 and over.

There are a lot more relevant statistics in the website. But what the above and the other statistics tend to show is that raising the minimum wage, on its own, will affect a very small portion of the population, a lot of whom cannot vote and a lot of whom are not taking care of themselves, much less a family. So, why do we care so much about minimum wage again?


I don't think Democrats care about minimum wage for any reason other than that their main voting constituency and their main donors have wages tied to minimum wage. Ultimately, the minimum wage is not enough for someone to live on if that person only works a 40 hour week. When I made close to minimum wage ($9.25 an hour baby), I worked about 60 hours a week and still had trouble buying enough beer. But that's irrelevant because no one who takes care of themselves works a minimum wage job for 40 hours a week. If those people existed in any great number, don't you think the Democrats would be trotting those poor bastards out?

Now, if minimum wage was raised to $21 an hour, maybe we'd have something to talk about.

Here, let's even look at this website's explanation:

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/08/156458470 ... lp-or-harm

Now let's parse out some quote:

According to the Economic Policy Institute, if Harkin has his way and the minimum wage was actually raised to $9.88 an hour, it would increase wages for 30 million Americans ā€” 10 percent of the country.


Harkin estimates that his minimum wage increase would mean about $25 billion more for GDP, 100,000 more jobs and 28 million Americans would get a raise.


Margaret Lewis


She makes minimum wage in Illinois ($8.25 an hour). She makes $18,000 a year. That means she works 2,181 hours or about 42 hours a week. Do you feel sorry for her? If so, why? What if you make $10 an hour and work 60 hours a week? Could she get another job? Could she get a different job making more money? Does she receive any other compensation apart from her work? Does she get money from the federal or state governments (the answer should be yes to both)?

Further, is Mr. Harkin or the Economic Policy Institute just talking about people like Margaret Lewis or they talking about others? Based on the federal government's own data, they must be talking about people other than just those that make minimum wage.

From the Economic Policy Institute:

Economic Policy Insitute wrote:Increasing the federal minimum wage to $9.80 by July 1, 2014, would raise the wages of about 28 million workers, who would receive nearly $40 billion in additional wages over the phase-in period.2


According to the federal government only 1.7 million people earn minimum wage. What gives? Oh yeah...

Economic Policy Institute in a buried footnote wrote:3. These data, and the data presented throughout this issue brief, include directly affected workers (those who would see their wages rise because the new minimum wage would exceed their current hourly pay) and indirectly affected workers (those who would receive a raise as employer pay scales are adjusted upward to reflect the higher minimum wage).


Those "indirectly affected workers" are who the Democrats are going after.

So, if people want to have a discussion about raising wages for people making over minimum wage, that's fine. Let's have that discussion. Let's not have this fake discussion about the horrible minimum wage laws. I mean for f*ck's sale, NPR couldn't even find some poor bastard making FEDERAL minimum wage; they had to find someone working 42 hours a week making $8.25 an hour (a dollar over the federal minimum wage).

EDIT - By the way, I find this sort of journalism by NPR to be disgusting. It is completely misleading if one does not understand the underlying data. NPR should be ashamed honestly.


I wonder how a politician could influence the type of stories that NPR produces.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby PLAYER57832 on Tue Feb 19, 2013 6:43 pm

stahrgazer wrote:Another problem with "minimum wage" is similar to a problem with some education systems.

It's like "Pass/fail" rather than a scale of "A to F" - those who work really hard and well won't get as recognized because those who're just shuffling by, one half-step ahead of a pink slip, are being paid so much. "Just bodies" are okay in some aspects, but not as okay as having folks who really want to work hard; "minimum wage" takes away some of the incentive to work really hard.

and as I said, similarly, some folks argue against schools that want to go to a pass/fail type standard as not sufficiently recognizing high achievers.

That argument might apply if we were talking about something other than the basic minimum wage it takes to live upon.. and if employers were not allowed to offer a higher wage.

The real truth is that many managers and supposedly "professional" people work a lot less hard than most minimum wage workers.

The part most of you miss is that folks right now are recieving well above minimum wage.. it just happens to come in the form of entitlement subsidies at YOUR expense instead of for work done for an employer who either is making a profit ... or doesn't need to be in business anyway.

AND.. funny how you all seem perfectly happy to "justify" why a CEO should make millions... but its perfectly OK for someone working hard at their job to make only $7.50 an hour or less.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby PLAYER57832 on Tue Feb 19, 2013 6:46 pm

According to the federal government only 1.7 million people earn minimum wage. What gives? Oh yeah...

Economic Policy Institute in a buried footnote wrote:3. These data, and the data presented throughout this issue brief, include directly affected workers (those who would see their wages rise because the new minimum wage would exceed their current hourly pay) and indirectly affected workers (those who would receive a raise as employer pay scales are adjusted upward to reflect the higher minimum wage).


Those "indirectly affected workers" are who the Democrats are going after.


Uh.. try again. The minimum wage figure includes only those making $7.35 an hour or the equivalent much lower wage allowed for tipped jobs. Anyone making $7.36- $8.99 would see a pay increase if the minimum wage were increased.

I mean seriously... you could at least think about the data you folks post!
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby Juan_Bottom on Tue Feb 19, 2013 9:52 pm

I've fired at least a hundred people before. Probably more.... I dunno, but not a single person ever sued. Furthermore, I've personally signed my name to deny unemployment benefits to a dozen people, and my company never had to hire no damn lawyers as a result. The bottom line for me, as with a lot of you, is that if someone is apathetic or a bad worker, you just fire them and move on. And I live/work in the great blue state of Illinois. All this fear of firing people is unfounded. Now, I personally don't have a single problem if someone is doing their best but they are struggling. In fact I'll help carry their weight. But I wont carry a lazy or apathetic worker. The minimum wage isn't tied into laziness.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby kentington on Tue Feb 19, 2013 10:52 pm

Juan_Bottom wrote:I've fired at least a hundred people before. Probably more.... I dunno, but not a single person ever sued. Furthermore, I've personally signed my name to deny unemployment benefits to a dozen people, and my company never had to hire no damn lawyers as a result. The bottom line for me, as with a lot of you, is that if someone is apathetic or a bad worker, you just fire them and move on. And I live/work in the great blue state of Illinois. All this fear of firing people is unfounded. Now, I personally don't have a single problem if someone is doing their best but they are struggling. In fact I'll help carry their weight. But I wont carry a lazy or apathetic worker. The minimum wage isn't tied into laziness.


In California it is a bit worse than that. It is not easy to fire people even when they deserve it. We have had someone who lied on their resume and cost the company a lot of money, taking a machine completely apart for a small repair, and still convinced the court to give unemployment. It wasn't the only incident with this guy either.

The only two cases I can think of where we didn't have to give over unemployment was when a guy kept falling asleep on running machines, machines that were on not treadmills, and a guy who took a vacation that was denied the request.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby tzor on Tue Feb 19, 2013 11:24 pm

PLAYER57832 wrote:AND.. funny how you all seem perfectly happy to "justify" why a CEO should make millions... but its perfectly OK for someone working hard at their job to make only $7.50 an hour or less.


Well I have never "justified" why a CEO should make millions. IMNSHO, those who do should not and those who do not should. Let's be honest here, a large company could not care less about the so called "minimum wage," as it is always lower overseas. Let's also understand that the question of "minimum wage" is also avoided by the use of illegal workers. In both cases the result is the same; the person could have a job at level X, but that job isn't available as it was given to someone else at a lower level and the poor worker can't take advantage of that so he doesn't get paid anything.

Furthermore, the whole question of the "minimum wage" cannot be taken apart from the fact that we are up our necks in the "welfare state." The person who makes a minimum wage is also entitled to a bucket load of additional benefits, worth far more than even a modest increase in the minimum wage might grant. I forget the exact links to the study but there were some cases where you could literally double the income of a single mother and she would wind up with less net pay as a result.

There are certain laws in the universe that you can't mess with; conservation of energy, gravity, and the law of supply and demand. If you want to increase the wages of all, you need to increase the demand of people wanting people to work for them while keeping the supply of laborers constant. Increasing wages while unemployment is still high is like getting energy from nowhere or living on a mountain of Upsidasium.

(I can't believe I had to google it to make sure I got the spelling right; if you don't know what that is, ask Borris Badenough. He might tell you to ask Natasha.)
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby Night Strike on Wed Feb 20, 2013 1:42 am

PLAYER57832 wrote:AND.. funny how you all seem perfectly happy to "justify" why a CEO should make millions... but its perfectly OK for someone working hard at their job to make only $7.50 an hour or less.


Working hard does not mean one automatically deserves a drastically higher wage.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby PLAYER57832 on Wed Feb 20, 2013 8:14 am

tzor wrote:
PLAYER57832 wrote:AND.. funny how you all seem perfectly happy to "justify" why a CEO should make millions... but its perfectly OK for someone working hard at their job to make only $7.50 an hour or less.


Well I have never "justified" why a CEO should make millions. IMNSHO, those who do should not and those who do not should. Let's be honest here, a large company could not care less about the so called "minimum wage," as it is always lower overseas. Let's also understand that the question of "minimum wage" is also avoided by the use of illegal workers. In both cases the result is the same; the person could have a job at level X, but that job isn't available as it was given to someone else at a lower level and the poor worker can't take advantage of that so he doesn't get paid anything.
Which is Precisely why major unions are now for immigration reform instead of opposed, because the threat of deportation seems to make people endure a LOT. This whole bit of "I'll just go overseas" is a bit of a red herring. Companies don't because there are a LOT of benefits to staying in the US. But, they want to take those benefits and not offer a return to the lowest ranks.

Also, we need international tax reform.. that, too, would stop some of the loopholes that allow companies to shift profits and avoid paying taxes.

tzor wrote: Furthermore, the whole question of the "minimum wage" cannot be taken apart from the fact that we are up our necks in the "welfare state." The person who makes a minimum wage is also entitled to a bucket load of additional benefits, worth far more than even a modest increase in the minimum wage might grant. I forget the exact links to the study but there were some cases where you could literally double the income of a single mother and she would wind up with less net pay as a result
.
EXACTLY why we need a rise in minimum wage... and some welfare reform as well. Welfare is supposed to be a bottom line hold over for people who have NO work, not a supplement so companies can get by with paying too low of wages.

Oh, and when I say "welfare reform", I mean REFORM, not just cuts. But we need a few other changes. HIdden in that "poor single mother" garbage are a LOT of moms who are getting nice, fat checks from their kid's fathers and yet not having to claim it as their income. THAT all needs to end. Child support should be listed as the child's income, put on the Mom's EZ or 1040 form and then taxed just as if it were her income, becuase it effectively is. It should not be counted as part of the father's income. Worse, if she has multiple kids from multiple fathers, then she tends to get even more because the father has to fork over a somewhat higher percentage usually for that one child than for more than one. We reward bad behavior and penalize people who choose to be responsible.


tzor wrote: There are certain laws in the universe that you can't mess with; conservation of energy, gravity, and the law of supply and demand.

Oh please, the idea of supply and demand is not a "law of the universe".. or rather what you types like to claim is "supply and demand" utterly ignores the fact that the earth is a dynamic system with very serious limits that cannot be ignored. You cannot just "econimic" yourself more gas.. not matter how much you try to claim you can. Raw petroleum in the form we are used to using is not being produced any longer. Alternatives might be encouraged to come about, but we have failed miserably in that becuase the impact of rising oil prices would be "too harsh". And investing in research is now no longer something popular--- neve rmind that most industries in existance today can than government research for their existance.

You cannot just "economic away" things like pollution or global warming. You can use economic tools to manipulate things toward a solution, but that requires a concerted effort of intelligence intstead of folks thumbing their noses because they have money and power and most 'ologists don't... and so in their world are stupid dumbasses.


tzor wrote: If you want to increase the wages of all, you need to increase the demand of people wanting people to work for them while keeping the supply of laborers constant. Increasing wages while unemployment is still high is like getting energy from nowhere or living on a mountain of Upsidasium.

Not at the bottom. If your theory were correct, we would not have slavery or people working in extremely dangerous conditions or other abuses.

Laws are not to control honest and decent business people, they are to keep the nasty jerks from being so abusive and getting advantages over the more honest folks.

Laws are ALSO for seeing that people gaining from other people don't pass on the risk and damage onto others. When employers say "its OK to pay $7.35 because that person gets medicaid, housing subsidies, etc, etc,... it means WE, not he is paying for that employee.. and we are not gaining more than a few cents, not even generally a real income tax because most of the money in that business will be classed as "investment" or written off in various ways.


A basic minimum wage sets the field in an honest way. No one denies that it takes more than $7.35 an hour to get by. Pretending it is OK to do so means you are supporting the welfare state, not opposing it.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby thegreekdog on Wed Feb 20, 2013 8:58 am

PLAYER57832 wrote:
According to the federal government only 1.7 million people earn minimum wage. What gives? Oh yeah...

Economic Policy Institute in a buried footnote wrote:3. These data, and the data presented throughout this issue brief, include directly affected workers (those who would see their wages rise because the new minimum wage would exceed their current hourly pay) and indirectly affected workers (those who would receive a raise as employer pay scales are adjusted upward to reflect the higher minimum wage).


Those "indirectly affected workers" are who the Democrats are going after.


Uh.. try again. The minimum wage figure includes only those making $7.35 an hour or the equivalent much lower wage allowed for tipped jobs. Anyone making $7.36- $8.99 would see a pay increase if the minimum wage were increased.

I mean seriously... you could at least think about the data you folks post!


Are you fucking kidding me? Seriously? You're going to say that I need to think about the data I post? What data have you posted? I posted data and provided a link to the BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS website... a government organization! I posted links to NPR and to the Economic Policy Institute; two organizations who are apparently in favor of raising the minimum wage.

And I'll I'm asking is for the debate to be about what it is actually about and not some fake crap that morons are spoon fed about how poor people like Margaret Lewis are going to live when that is not what the issue is. There are two issues at play:

(1) People like Margarat Lewis - She works a 40 hour a week job and gets paid one dollar above federal minimum wage. NPR couldn't even find a person making federal minimum wage. They couldn't find a person making federal minimum wage who also works more than 40 hours a week. While I have sympahty for Ms. Lewis, she is not one of the 1.7 million "hard working people making federal minimum wage."
(2) What shoud we really be discussing? What we should really be discussing is whether workers whose wages are tied to minimum wage via union agreements should have their wages raised. Because that's what this is about. Let's see where Senator Harkin gets his campaign contributions.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby BigBallinStalin on Wed Feb 20, 2013 9:50 am

I've read that if one earns minimum wage, one can also apply for a tax credit which boosts one's average income an extra $2.00 per hour, so even those on minimum wage aren't actually earning minimum wage.

We must ask: how much is enough?
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby patches70 on Wed Feb 20, 2013 10:07 am

BigBallinStalin wrote:We must ask: how much is enough?


Silly Hue-mon, it's never enough.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby stahrgazer on Wed Feb 20, 2013 4:46 pm

BigBallinStalin wrote:I've read that if one earns minimum wage, one can also apply for a tax credit which boosts one's average income an extra $2.00 per hour, so even those on minimum wage aren't actually earning minimum wage.

We must ask: how much is enough?


I really think the more valid argument is already posted: Which folks who have a full-time job make ONLY minimum wage?

Or are the minimum wage workers those who work part-time, maybe because of school? It's also possible that there are part-time workers who would like full time - I'm one of those. In my case, my part-time job pays me more than minimum wage but I'd still like full-time.

There are, of course, some companies who keep only part-time workers and pay them only the minimum wage and I'm sure those folks would like to bust into a 40-hour a week job that pays a little more. Can't blame them.

But raising the minimum wage isn't going to help those part-timers who'd like full-time make ends meet, it'll make it worse because the cost of their bread, milk, and everything else will rise by a higher percentage than the approx. 27% minimum wage rise that's been proposed.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby tzor on Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:48 pm

PLAYER57832 wrote:Which is Precisely why major unions are now for immigration reform instead of opposed, because the threat of deportation seems to make people endure a LOT.


No that is not the reasons why "major unions" are for immigration reform. Major unions are for anything that increases membership because all they care about are dues.

PLAYER57832 wrote:EXACTLY why we need a rise in minimum wage... and some welfare reform as well. Welfare is supposed to be a bottom line hold over for people who have NO work, not a supplement so companies can get by with paying too low of wages.


Welfare reform needs to be made so that it is never economically stupid to work more. There are a number of factors involved here, but one of the important ones has to be self esteem and another is a positive worth ethic. Therefore it is not the "minimum" wage that is important but the progression of the wage beyond the minimum that is important. It really does take two to tango; you need a worker who wants to work and an employer who thinks that the worker is worth a little more each and every day.

PLAYER57832 wrote:
tzor wrote:There are certain laws in the universe that you can't mess with; conservation of energy, gravity, and the law of supply and demand.

Oh please, the idea of supply and demand is not a "law of the universe"..


Yes it is and your example is illogical. I'm not suggesting that you can "economic" anything. I'm saying the opposite. Prices are that which balances the forces of supply and demand. The supply (in this case laborers) has to be matched with the demand (employers). The more the supply costs, the fewer will want it (and in a free market the cost of the supply will go down as a result) while you can reach the opposite in which case everyone wants it and they have to out bid each other to acquire the limited supply.

Thus if you want to increase the wage you either have to reduce the supply of labor (not likely unless you are totally evil) or you need to increase the demand of labor.

PLAYER57832 wrote:You cannot just "economic away" things like pollution or global warming.


Is that an admission that a "carbon tax" would never actually do what people say it would?

PLAYER57832 wrote:
tzor wrote: If you want to increase the wages of all, you need to increase the demand of people wanting people to work for them while keeping the supply of laborers constant. Increasing wages while unemployment is still high is like getting energy from nowhere or living on a mountain of Upsidasium.

Not at the bottom. If your theory were correct, we would not have slavery or people working in extremely dangerous conditions or other abuses.


Slavery is not a common thing and requires both the force of government and or the complete ignorance of a large population of the people.

Most extremely dangerous occupations are well paid.

PLAYER57832 wrote:Laws are not to control honest and decent business people, they are to keep the nasty jerks from being so abusive and getting advantages over the more honest folks.


It would be nice if that were so.

PLAYER57832 wrote:A basic minimum wage sets the field in an honest way. No one denies that it takes more than $7.35 an hour to get by. Pretending it is OK to do so means you are supporting the welfare state, not opposing it.


We look at this issue from two opposite sides of the same coin. We both want people to be paid well. You propose a high minimum wage. I argue that a high minimum wage would prevent people from getting the minimum wage in the first place. It is the first rung of the ladder. I want a person to be able to use it to climb to the next higher level of the ladder. I want people to earn more than the minimum wage and I want employers to want to pay people more than the minimum wage. Anything else results in too many unintended consequences.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby Serbia on Wed Feb 20, 2013 8:08 pm

Eliminate minimum wage!!!1!1! eleventy111!
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby Juan_Bottom on Wed Feb 20, 2013 10:50 pm

This thread is bananas. I've gotten the impression that nobody other than player and myself make less than $25K a year, or aren't CEOs of big dumb companies. Because why would you vote against yourself? Unless you only buy American products so you can feel good about yourself, but you want to pay the cheapest price so you want to keep workers down.... or if you live off of fast food and can't afford to pay more for Burger King.

What would Utah Philips think of all of you? You should feel ashamed.
Also, serious question too - did any of you learn about American Labor History in high school or college? It seems like nobody here ever talks about history when discussing these topics, and everyone on the other side of this debate is pro big business. I feel like that's treason.

Why shouldn't Union workers make more money anyway? Union workers are not overpaid; you are underpaid. Fair wages do not bankrupt a business, poor management is what ruins a business. Each time a Unionized company fails, the Union gets blamed. But each time, as with GM and Hostess we see that the unions make repeated concessions to help the company do better. There's absolutely no reason to be anti-union at all, America is a Union, and look how strong we are. Some of our favorite American institutions are Unionized, like Hershey, Doritos, Pepsi, Coke, Keebler Cookies, Old Spice, Miller High Life, and Budweiser. Our teachers, police officers, paramedics, and firefighters are unionized.
Eric Liu, a popular lecturer and internet author said "Unions lift wages for non-union members by creating a higher prevailing wage. Even if you aren't a union member, your pay is influenced by the strength or weakness of organized labor. the presence of unions sets off a wage race to the top. Their absence sets off a race to the bottom." He's absolutely correct, because while worker pay peaked the same time that the minimum wage did, it's been on the decline ever since, as have Unions. While we had a strength of Unions in America, we all made more money at our jobs, and the economy was healthier.

Why shouldn't college students earn more money? Don't these poor bastards already get hammered enough?

If a business is successful, shouldn't they share that success with the ones who actually created it?

Of course you're not going to find many people working full time for minimum wage. Most of the businesses who hire workers for minimum wage suppress workers hours to less than 35 a week. They also hire teenagers, because only teenagers will work for shit wages with shit hours at a shitty job. That doesn't make the practice good, nor does it make the massive profits of companies like McDonalds or Wal*Mart ingeniously American. It's organized greed perpetrated at your expense. In Australia, for example, fast food workers make $16 an hour. Our ridiculous fake "fair" minimum wage works to protect big business profits only. Our minimum wage remains well below the rate of inflation. Adjusting for inflation the minimum wage should be $10.55 an hour. Now, how many American's work full time for less than $10.55 an hour? A bunch, I'm guessing. For example, according to southernstudies, the majority of construction workers in Texas work 40 hours a week, yet 52% of them live below the poverty level.
Slave wages will do nothing to help the worker or the economy.

Why shouldn't minimum wage be tied directly to inflation? FDR said, quite emphatically, that "No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to it's workers has any right to continue in this country." And remember who FDR was.... the guy who took over during the Great Depression. And again I say that our living wage is $10.55 an hour.
When the minimum wage peaked in 1968, America was in the mist of it's longest period of growth, ever. Unemployment averaged somewhere around 5%, which is similar to the 90s. The economy was robust and healthy. As Henry Ford said, if you want people to buy your shit, then you need to pay people enough to buy your shit. And that's the bottom line.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby Night Strike on Thu Feb 21, 2013 1:51 am

Juan_Bottom wrote:Because why would you vote against yourself?


Because raising the minimum wage punishes those of us who have worked to educate ourselves and work in degree-dependent fields since we won't be seeing any pay increases from the increase in minimum wage. All it does is devalue the work we're currently doing while simultaneously raising our prices for everyday goods. Exact same thing goes for those people who have worked long enough to earn raises to be comfortably above minimum wage: their wages aren't going to increase just because minimum wage increased.

If people want to make more money, then they either need to work their way up or find a better place of employment. They don't get to run to the government and beg them to mandate pay increases.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby Nobunaga on Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:50 am

I read that a minimum wage of $19 and some change / hour would put everyone on an even keel and provide those struggling with a living wage.

It seems high, but that was the calculation that netted an annual $35,000.

I'd like to hear supporters of the minimum wage (and increases to it) tell me if they think this would be a good level of minimum? And why / why not.

Thank you.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby tzor on Thu Feb 21, 2013 8:10 am

Juan_Bottom wrote:This thread is bananas. I've gotten the impression that nobody other than player and myself make less than $25K a year, or aren't CEOs of big dumb companies. Because why would you vote against yourself? Unless you only buy American products so you can feel good about yourself, but you want to pay the cheapest price so you want to keep workers down.... or if you live off of fast food and can't afford to pay more for Burger King.


First of all, I don't recall you know who posting on this thread lately and no thread is "bananas" unless he posts on it. :P

Second, I'm too lazy to want to pay the cheapest price. And I don't generally eat from fast food restaurants. My aunt and uncle lives off of the dollar menu but that's another story.

Third, while I do not have children I know enough young adults to know how hard it is for young adults to get a starter job in the first place.

It's the third part that motivates me. I see the youth and the minority youth unemployment rate. It's too damn high. I'm opposed to anything that might cause that to go up.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby thegreekdog on Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:17 am

Juan_Bottom wrote:This thread is bananas. I've gotten the impression that nobody other than player and myself make less than $25K a year, or aren't CEOs of big dumb companies. Because why would you vote against yourself? Unless you only buy American products so you can feel good about yourself, but you want to pay the cheapest price so you want to keep workers down.... or if you live off of fast food and can't afford to pay more for Burger King.

What would Utah Philips think of all of you? You should feel ashamed.
Also, serious question too - did any of you learn about American Labor History in high school or college? It seems like nobody here ever talks about history when discussing these topics, and everyone on the other side of this debate is pro big business. I feel like that's treason.

Why shouldn't Union workers make more money anyway? Union workers are not overpaid; you are underpaid. Fair wages do not bankrupt a business, poor management is what ruins a business. Each time a Unionized company fails, the Union gets blamed. But each time, as with GM and Hostess we see that the unions make repeated concessions to help the company do better. There's absolutely no reason to be anti-union at all, America is a Union, and look how strong we are. Some of our favorite American institutions are Unionized, like Hershey, Doritos, Pepsi, Coke, Keebler Cookies, Old Spice, Miller High Life, and Budweiser. Our teachers, police officers, paramedics, and firefighters are unionized.
Eric Liu, a popular lecturer and internet author said "Unions lift wages for non-union members by creating a higher prevailing wage. Even if you aren't a union member, your pay is influenced by the strength or weakness of organized labor. the presence of unions sets off a wage race to the top. Their absence sets off a race to the bottom." He's absolutely correct, because while worker pay peaked the same time that the minimum wage did, it's been on the decline ever since, as have Unions. While we had a strength of Unions in America, we all made more money at our jobs, and the economy was healthier.

Why shouldn't college students earn more money? Don't these poor bastards already get hammered enough?

If a business is successful, shouldn't they share that success with the ones who actually created it?

Of course you're not going to find many people working full time for minimum wage. Most of the businesses who hire workers for minimum wage suppress workers hours to less than 35 a week. They also hire teenagers, because only teenagers will work for shit wages with shit hours at a shitty job. That doesn't make the practice good, nor does it make the massive profits of companies like McDonalds or Wal*Mart ingeniously American. It's organized greed perpetrated at your expense. In Australia, for example, fast food workers make $16 an hour. Our ridiculous fake "fair" minimum wage works to protect big business profits only. Our minimum wage remains well below the rate of inflation. Adjusting for inflation the minimum wage should be $10.55 an hour. Now, how many American's work full time for less than $10.55 an hour? A bunch, I'm guessing. For example, according to southernstudies, the majority of construction workers in Texas work 40 hours a week, yet 52% of them live below the poverty level.
Slave wages will do nothing to help the worker or the economy.

Why shouldn't minimum wage be tied directly to inflation? FDR said, quite emphatically, that "No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to it's workers has any right to continue in this country." And remember who FDR was.... the guy who took over during the Great Depression. And again I say that our living wage is $10.55 an hour.
When the minimum wage peaked in 1968, America was in the mist of it's longest period of growth, ever. Unemployment averaged somewhere around 5%, which is similar to the 90s. The economy was robust and healthy. As Henry Ford said, if you want people to buy your shit, then you need to pay people enough to buy your shit. And that's the bottom line.


I would like to thank Juan for talking about the actual issue (unlike Player, I might add).

My response to this is that if union workers don't want their hourly wages tied to minimum wage, they should have demanded that their high priced attorneys draft agreements that did not tie hourly wages to minimum wage. I'm not anti-union. I'm actually very much pro-union. I think it's a form of capitalism or democracy for workers to organize and fight for higher wages. So, the unions have my blessing to go after higher wages in agreements with their employers. Go for it!

And just to be clear, from the SEIU website:

$917 = Median weekly earnings in 2010 of union members.


http://www.seiu.org/a/ourunion/research ... igures.php

That's $47,684 a year.
That's $22.95 an hour (assuming a 40 hour work week). $22.95 an hour is well over federal minimum wage, state minimum wage, and the "living wage" in a city like Philadelphia (according to MIT). And that wage does not count other benefits of being in a union, like for example health insurance benefits.

So yeah, you should be in a union if you can, but union workers are making a living wage and more. So don't feel sorry for them.

In the great state of New Jersey, teachers make on average $61,830 a year. That's $1,545 a week. That's $38 an hour assuming a 40 hour work week AND that the teacher works every week of every year (which usually doesn't occur). $38 an hour is well over federal minimum wage, state minimum wage, and the "living wage" in a city like Newark (according to MIT). And that wage does not count other benefits of being in the union, like only paying 6% or so of your health insurance costs (that number used to be much lower).

http://www.teachersalaryinfo.com/averag ... ersey.html

So yeah, you should be in the teachers union in New Jersey if you can, but New Jersey teachers are making a living wage and more. So don't feel sorry for them.

And lest you think otherwise, I'm not denigrating unions. Good for the SEIU members. Good for the New Jersey teachers. Great job. Keep fighting the fight. But don't expect me to feel sorry for you.

By the way. Juan, Player - you guys should probably look into this union thing. You could double your salaries!
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby BigBallinStalin on Thu Feb 21, 2013 2:57 pm

Nobunaga wrote:I read that a minimum wage of $19 and some change / hour would put everyone on an even keel and provide those struggling with a living wage.

It seems high, but that was the calculation that netted an annual $35,000.

I'd like to hear supporters of the minimum wage (and increases to it) tell me if they think this would be a good level of minimum? And why / why not.

Thank you.


Sauce plz.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby Juan_Bottom on Thu Feb 21, 2013 8:40 pm

$38 an hour sounds ok to me. Probably a little low considering teachers are one of the most important resources that we have, and teachers in other industrialized nations are paid more to work less hours than ours. Japan is one that comes to mind.

I have no problem with the wages paid to Union workers, it's the rest of us who should be getting raises. Like Utah said, it's the workers who really own the company.


Night Strike wrote:Because raising the minimum wage punishes those of us who have worked to educate ourselves and work in degree-dependent fields since we won't be seeing any pay increases from the increase in minimum wage. All it does is devalue the work we're currently doing while simultaneously raising our prices for everyday goods. Exact same thing goes for those people who have worked long enough to earn raises to be comfortably above minimum wage: their wages aren't going to increase just because minimum wage increased.

If people want to make more money, then they either need to work their way up or find a better place of employment. They don't get to run to the government and beg them to mandate pay increases.


Greed

tzor wrote:
It's the third part that motivates me. I see the youth and the minority youth unemployment rate. It's too damn high. I'm opposed to anything that might cause that to go up.

The minimum wage in Australia is $16.43 American. They have a 5.3% unemployment rate. In the 60's, when our own minimum wage was quadruple what it is now, unemployment was around 5%.
Corporate douchebags tried to use similar arguments about costs to produce goods being too high and being unable to afford to hire more workers to prevent child labor laws, safety inspections, fair wages, overtime, fire escapes, and all sorts of stuff. But experience shows that none of their arguments hold any weight; it's just greedy old bastards lying to protect their obscene profits.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby tzor on Thu Feb 21, 2013 10:06 pm

By the way, I saw an interesting thing on Facebook today from one of my favorite Star Trek (TOS) actors. I decided to do some research. Australia's minimum wage. Note there are conversion factors to consider. 1 AUD = 1.03 USD

Basic argument

The national minimum wage acts as a safety net for employees in the national workplace relations system to provide minimum rates of pay for employees not covered by awards or agreements. National minimum wage orders are made by the Minimum Wage Panel of the Fair Work Commission.

Australia's minimum wage is $15.96 per hour or $606.40 per week. Generally, employees in the national system shouldn't get less than this.

An employee's basic rate of pay depends on such things as their age, job classification and what industrial instrument they're covered by (e.g. a modern award, pre-modern award, transitional Pay Scale, workplace agreement and so on).

The minimum wages received by employees in the national workplace relations system are reviewed by the Fair Work Commission annually, with any adjustments taking effect from the first pay period on or after 1 July each year.


BUT NOTICE THIS EXCEPTION ...

National minimum wages for apprentices, juniors & trainees

Special national minimum wages have also been set for trainees, apprentices and juniors who are not covered by any other award or agreement. These apply from the first pay period on or after 1 July 2012.

For junior employees, the minimum rates are:
Under 16 years of age $5.87
At 16 years of age $7.55
At 17 years of age $9.22
At 18 years of age $10.90
At 19 years of age $13.17
At 20 years of age $15.59.
For apprentices, the rates are:
Year 1 of apprenticeship $10.22
Year 2 of apprenticeship $12.08
Year 3 of apprenticeship $14.87
Year 4 of apprenticeship $17.65.


So young adults and people with little job experience are not forced out of the workforce because of their age/experience. Employers cannot abuse them because their wages increase with time (as does their skills). With these two exceptions, one can easily increase the minimum wage while keeping youth unemployment low.
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Re: Rise of Minimum wage?

Postby thegreekdog on Thu Feb 21, 2013 10:31 pm

Juan_Bottom wrote:$38 an hour sounds ok to me. Probably a little low considering teachers are one of the most important resources that we have, and teachers in other industrialized nations are paid more to work less hours than ours. Japan is one that comes to mind.


Unforunately for teachers, many people can be and want to be teachers. Also, unfortunately for young teachers, older teachers are virtually unfireable. I guess you can blame unions Juan. Hard to negotiate salaries higher when you have 5,000 future teachers waiting in line.

I need some more data, preferably not partisan, that shows that higher minimum wages mean higher wages for all means no substantial increase in the price of consumer goods. That's a lot of stuff.
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