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A friend of mine works in a fast food restaurant and he tells me there are just tons of applicants nearly every day. Many are just completely desperate and just beg for work. Another post talked about over a thousand applicants for 35 jobs. It's tough out there.
Lets say they eliminated the minimum wage and employers could pay anything they wanted. They could pay $1 an hour if they thought workers would accept it. After the market place adjusted without a minimum wage to influence the equation, how low could wages go before the typical employer of low skilled poorly educated staff just could not find and retain it's workers? (Remember, under this situation,there is now no minimum wage so every employer could pay as low as the marketplace allowed.)
What is the point though?
Like right now for most businesses the demands for their product or service is low. So employers have less reason to employ for that reason. They will hire to meet demand. But to suggest that they would/should also then pay so low simply to increase their profit sounds rather Dickinsonian, if that's the term.
Those FF restaurants won't be hiring more workers if demands don't kick up. Could they hire a few at less than minimal wage? Possibly, but these are essentially zero margin benefit workers. So there is little point.
Depends what the perks are. If the fast food industry provided transportation, food and housing they could practically have there very own slave plantation.
A friend of mine works in a fast food restaurant and he tells me there are just tons of applicants nearly every day. Many are just completely desperate and just beg for work. Another post talked about over a thousand applicants for 35 jobs. It's tough out there.
Lets say they eliminated the minimum wage and employers could pay anything they wanted. They could pay $1 an hour if they thought workers would accept it. After the market place adjusted without a minimum wage to influence the equation, how low could wages go before the typical employer of low skilled poorly educated staff just could not find and retain it's workers? (Remember, under this situation,there is now no minimum wage so every employer could pay as low as the marketplace allowed.)
It would vary with local unemployment rates amongst low skilled workers. In urban areas, rates above 20% , even in a good economy, are hardly rare.
We should be focusing less on the wage, and more on eliminating what is essentially lifelong unemployment amongst that population.
There would have to be a simultaneous tightening up on public assistance.
now that would create more government jobs, maybe higher wages and still no credible increase in GNP. The real issue is about productive work. Lots of education and degrees doesn't mean skilled either to produce or to survive. Of course, we can always return to "eliminate poverty by letting poor people starve".
now that would create more government jobs, maybe higher wages and still no credible increase in GNP. The real issue is about productive work. Lots of education and degrees doesn't mean skilled either to produce or to survive. Of course, we can always return to "eliminate poverty by letting poor people starve".
That's how it is in the vast majority of the world. We are one of the few countries that actually spend so much time and resources on the poor. In most places the poor are walled off and left to starve and die of diseases.
now that would create more government jobs, maybe higher wages and still no credible increase in GNP. The real issue is about productive work. Lots of education and degrees doesn't mean skilled either to produce or to survive. Of course, we can always return to "eliminate poverty by letting poor people starve".
See, I disagree. Several years ago, I was asked to work on a project for a government public housing organization. One of the aspects of the project was interviewing roughly 100 residents of the development.
The results were interesting. Roughly 50% were there due to some unfortunate circumstances. House fire, laid off from a job, divorce. That 50% were actively enrolled in programs such as job training or actually had part time jobs while they looked for full-time work.
The other 50%? I was astonished at how they were so cavalier about doing literally nothing all day but watch television and game the system. They didn't take advantage of job programs. They literally would wait for the check to arrive in their mailbox and, if they needed extra cash, they would go out and mow a lawn or do some day labor in exchange for under-the-table payments. They made no bones about it.
The first 50%, I'd give them all the help they needed. The second 50%? Cut 'em off without a dime.
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