[JayCT]

Originally Posted by BobNJ1960

But is better than nothing for those without 21st century skill sets.

Is it? So you think that it is okay for a company to take advantage of the poor? With that logic we should cut the minimum wage to $5 per hour or eliminate it completely so companies could employ twice as many people.

I do not agree. This is the reason that the minimum wage was implemented in the first place, as well as pretty much EVERY labor law we have. You can't trust companies to what is best for their employees. Many care too much about their bottom line. Without these laws we would still be a third-world country with sweat shops and vast overcrowded ghettos. Does anyone really want that? I don't. Jay

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by JayCT

Is it? So you think that it is okay for a company to take advantage of the poor? With that logic we should cut the minimum wage to $5 per hour or eliminate it completely so companies could employ twice as many people.

I do not agree. This is the reason that the minimum wage was implemented in the first place, as well as pretty much EVERY labor law we have. You can't trust companies to what is best for their employees. Many care too much about their bottom line. Without these laws we would still be a third-world country with sweat shops and vast overcrowded ghettos. Does anyone really want that? I don't. Jay

By your logic, we should hike the minimum wage to $100/hour so everybody is upper middle class.


There's a public policy dilemma here. What we want is to have people performing to their potential. At a minimum, that means actually being engaged in K-12 education so the vast majority of 18-year-olds have a baseline where they can be trained to perform 21st century jobs. Read at grade level. Speak and write grammatically correct and coherent paragraphs. Basic arithmetic and math skills. Then you become an adult and need to do the basic work things we all have to do like show up on time, get your work done, and don't be disruptive in the workplace. If you have the potential and don't perform to it, it shouldn't be up to society to prop you up. On the flip side, a fraction of the population isn't ever going to be able to get to that level. Forest Gump is not going to be able to handle calculus or read with comprehension at grade level. You don't want to penalize those people for performing at their level of potential. I'm all for paying Forest Gump a living wage bagging groceries. I'm less enthusiastic about having to pay someone who does the bare minimum to avoid being fired that wage for extremely mediocre work. If you jack up the minimum wage, nobody is ever going to hire those people.

[JayCT]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

By your logic, we should hike the minimum wage to $100/hour so everybody is upper middle class.


There's a public policy dilemma here. What we want is to have people performing to their potential. At a minimum, that means actually being engaged in K-12 education so the vast majority of 18-year-olds have a baseline where they can be trained to perform 21st century jobs. Read at grade level. Speak and write grammatically correct and coherent paragraphs. Basic arithmetic and math skills. Then you become an adult and need to do the basic work things we all have to do like show up on time, get your work done, and don't be disruptive in the workplace. If you have the potential and don't perform to it, it shouldn't be up to society to prop you up. On the flip side, a fraction of the population isn't ever going to be able to get to that level. Forest Gump is not going to be able to handle calculus or read with comprehension at grade level. You don't want to penalize those people for performing at their level of potential. I'm all for paying Forest Gump a living wage bagging groceries. I'm less enthusiastic about having to pay someone who does the bare minimum to avoid being fired that wage for extremely mediocre work. If you jack up the minimum wage, nobody is ever going to hire those people.

Except I am not the one espousing this logic. The point is employers need to pay all its employees a reasonable wage that they can live on. I do not think that they should have to rely on public assistance to live (wfood stamps, Medicaid, etc.) because their employer is too greedy to pay them a reasonable wage. That costs you and me in the taxes we pay as well as what we pay for things.

I agree with you about educating our children for the 21st Century and not wanting to pay those that do not work to their potential but how do you reward those that are doing their best which happens to be “bagging groceries”? It is a dilemma we need to address. Jay

[CTartist]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

By your logic, we should hike the minimum wage to $100/hour so everybody is upper middle class.

I am an Independent Centrist. So the following statement is not about political philosophy but math and fairness.

In the minimum wage debate many Republicans say "so we should raise the wage the minimum to $100" to try to show the Democrats as "crazy liberals". That is an extreme. So is paying the lowest wage workers what the mid-rage workers make but.......

There should be a correct and fair minimum wage based on MATH which neither party seems to want. This tells me BOTH parties are using this issue for political purposes, of course. Frankly $15.00 seems like a wage that is just picked out of the air because it's too clean cut and perfect. But how about if we did something like this.

Take the median per capita salary each year and make the minimum wage say 60%* less than that. So the per capita income is now $60,200. Then if higher cost areas want to have a higher minimum wage (like CT) they can do that. This way it is tied to actual mathematical figures and not a parties political philosophy.

So $60,200 per capita ($28.92 an hour) NOW...... at 60% less, a full time person would make $24,080 and the minimum hourly wage would be $11.57.

So right now the minimum wage is $7.25 (woefully inadequate) but $11.57 seems kind of fair to me.

*Just guessing on the 60% but I would love to see UN-biased mathematicians come up with a fair figure that could be changed every year based on the per capita figure. Of course this idea is too logical and does not fit either party so it would never be done in this day and age.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by JayCT

Except I am not the one espousing this logic. The point is employers need to pay all its employees a reasonable wage that they can live on. I do not think that they should have to rely on public assistance to live (wfood stamps, Medicaid, etc.) because their employer is too greedy to pay them a reasonable wage. That costs you and me in the taxes we pay as well as what we pay for things.

I agree with you about educating our children for the 21st Century and not wanting to pay those that do not work to their potential but how do you reward those that are doing their best which happens to be “bagging groceries”? It is a dilemma we need to address. Jay

That's not how it works.



Say I'm a widget manufacturer. I'm competing against another widget manufacturer in Flyoveria, Alabama. Their per-unit cost of goods sold is $10.00. My per-unit cost of goods sold needs to be $10.00 or I can't compete. My options are to pay my labor a wage where my product is competitive or shutter the factory and move it to a lower cost place. If you mandate a $20/hour wage and Flyoveria, Alabama is paying $8.50, I have no choice but to move my plant. This has nothing to do with "fairness". It's a global economy. If you want to get paid $20/hour, you have to have $20/hour worth of labor productivity. Kind of by definition, unskilled workers don't have that productivity edge which is why places like Connecticut focus on high skill/high comp labor. If you don't have the 21st century job skills, you're relegated to the service sector. If labor costs are too high, people will get their services elsewhere. It's why retail is dying. If the fully burdened cost of an entry level clerk in retail is $40K, that has to be passed on to the customer. Everyone flees to online retail where the unit labor cost is much lower. Employers in the service sector choose to automate rather than pay the $40K. If you mandate a $15 minimum wage and full benefits, a very large slice of those jobs will simply vaporize.

[BobNJ1960]

Originally Posted by JayCT

Is it? So you think that it is okay for a company to take advantage of the poor?

It is much better than nothing. A great training wage for unskilled workers to get their feet wet in the job market. If they fail to build skill sets beyond that, it is not up to business to pay beyond Fair Market value.. Minimum skills merit minimum wages.

[BobNJ1960]

Originally Posted by GeoffD;55039977)


. [B

If you want to get paid $20/hour, you have to have $20/hour worth of labor productivity. [/b] .

[Samantha830]

Hasn't this thread gone off topic, or "run its course" now? It's not about Stop N Shop anymore, it's a discussion on minimum wage.

[JayCT]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

That's not how it works.



Say I'm a widget manufacturer. I'm competing against another widget manufacturer in Flyoveria, Alabama. Their per-unit cost of goods sold is $10.00. My per-unit cost of goods sold needs to be $10.00 or I can't compete. My options are to pay my labor a wage where my product is competitive or shutter the factory and move it to a lower cost place. If you mandate a $20/hour wage and Flyoveria, Alabama is paying $8.50, I have no choice but to move my plant. This has nothing to do with "fairness". It's a global economy. If you want to get paid $20/hour, you have to have $20/hour worth of labor productivity. Kind of by definition, unskilled workers don't have that productivity edge which is why places like Connecticut focus on high skill/high comp labor. If you don't have the 21st century job skills, you're relegated to the service sector. If labor costs are too high, people will get their services elsewhere. It's why retail is dying. If the fully burdened cost of an entry level clerk in retail is $40K, that has to be passed on to the customer. Everyone flees to online retail where the unit labor cost is much lower. Employers in the service sector choose to automate rather than pay the $40K. If you mandate a $15 minimum wage and full benefits, a very large slice of those jobs will simply vaporize.

First I am not advocating a $15 minimum wage with full benefits. Never said anything close to that and that was not what my comment was about. We cannot allow businesses to pay whatever they want or do what they want because, as history has shown, businesses take advantage of workers. There are good reasons we have labor and minimum wage laws. If a company can’t compete while paying their workers a reasonable wage (whatever that is) under safe, reasonable working conditions, then they should just not be in business.

The current minimum wage in Connecticut is $10.10. That works out to $21,008 per year ($10.10 per hour X 40 hours per week for 52 weeks). That is hardly an amount a single person can live on these days let alone a family. Jay

[ryanthegoldengod]

I've never heard anyone argue we should make the minimum wage $100 per hour. That is a textbook straw man argument.

You shouldn't get rich as a grocery store cashier but you should be able to make ends meet. Especially since these companies have the money. They just prioritize shareholders (who are less productive than any cashier) through stock buybacks over their own employees.

If you are a CEO, your own employees probably can't get you fired. But investors can. So let's call this what it is: cowardice.