How about a "relative" minimum wage? (Corporate Profit, unemployed, interstate)
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Your thoughtful proposal solves zero of my concerns. The raw, basic, fundamental, inescapable fact is that when the price of something goes up, less of it gets used. If you raise the price of low-skill labor, less of it will get used. Jobs will be destroyed. This is a cruel trick to pull on those least able to afford it.
I have the same concerns that many have about CEO pay--maybe a couple hundred instances in our land of 300 million people--but the vast majority of workers are paid the market value of their labor. Some union workers enjoy above-market-wages but we have seen this is not sustainable. No one is paid below-market wages, since workers can simply go to the employer with the better offer. But if people are working under the best conditions any employer is willing to offer, they ARE receiving an equitable wage.
Your version of "equitable" is to pay less to those who deserve it, and pay more to those who have not earned it. This is in no sense equitable.
It is unfortunate that so many of us have not figured out how to be sufficiently valuable to the rest of society to earn a living wage. A decent society will provide for those who need it. Only an ignorant society would throw that social burden onto the backs of the employers who provide the paychecks for over 100,000,000 people in the US.
This is all completely false. The "raising the minimum wage will destroy everything" myth is a scare tactic pushed by conservatives to scare people into voting against themselves. As mentioned, the minimum wage has been raised many times with no ill effects. The entire purpose of the original enactment of the minimum wage was to ensure EVERY American earns a LIVING wage. If the minimum wage can't do that, then we may as well not have it all.
Thanks to Reaganomics, wages have been stagnant for 30 years and everyone but the 1% are paying for it. These "job creators" you all speak so highly of would be more than happy to treat us as they do their factory workers in China. If we continue to allow them to hoard the money and not pay their employees their fair share, in a few years, we will BE China.
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Originally Posted by cb at sea
The reason is CAPITALISM....it's what America is...and why anyone can become more prosperous...IF they acquire a skill, or work harder than others, or have the "want" to do it.
Minimum wage jobs are not meant to be lifelong positions....they are "stepping stones" to something better.
Start giving the burger flipper $20 per hour, and what do you think that burger is going to cost you?
If you want to make more money, become skilled at something....you don't need to go into debt getting some degree....learn a trade or a skill....this country NEEDS folks to DO things....like trimming trees, or fixing a leaking water line, or roofing, tiling, paving, cooking, sewing....you name it....it's a skill that PAYS!
People used to be able to support their family on minimum wage. They weren't rich, but they didn't need food stamps to get by either. If the minimum wage is raised to $15 an hour, the dollar menu will become the $1.15 menu. Prices won't fluctuate much because people won't pay $5 for a crappy burger. People will also have more money to spend and this creates more jobs, unlike tax breaks which do nothing but give the wealthy more money.
The idea that everyone "should learn a trade/skill/get an education" is completely impractical for many reasons. One, not everyone can afford or is cut out for advanced education, two there are not enough jobs in advanced positions and three, who will work these "bottom rung" jobs if everyone "gets a better job?"
The average low wage worker is in their late 20s/early 30s. A lot of them are underemployed because they can't find a job in their field of choice. If a person shows up to work everyday, does their job well and works full time, they should be able to pay their bills, have food and shelter without government assistance. These billion dollar corporations can easily afford to do this, but they have convinced a lot of people this is bad, so we don't require them to do so.
America is one of the wealthiest countries in the world! We should not have any impoverished citizens, yet we have the HIGHEST rate of poverty in the industrialised world. We can still have capitalism while requiring fair wages. It is not an either/or situation.
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Originally Posted by KellyXY
Maybe I was a bit harsh in my last post (especially with the public figures). Still, my point is that it's one thing if you are actually reaping the benefits from YOUR work, but it's another in the case of executives that are making many times more (inflation-adjusted) than they did a few decades ago (and my relative-minimum-wage idea would help close that gap).
CEO salaries have been any rocketing because they don't invest into their companies anymore. Instead of buying health insurance, paying fair wages, providing safe working environments, paid vacation, etc, they are just pocketing that money.
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Originally Posted by marcopolo
OF COURSE all of us together bear the societal burden of providing for those who are not competent to earn their own way in the world. How condescending and cruel for you to judge that those jobholders would be better off without any job anyway. Let people whose labor is worth $6 or $8 or sell that labor--get a job--climb on the bottom rung. Nearly everybody in the country who now earns great steaming piles of money started out on the lowest rung. Why deny this opportunity to others?
Elimination of the minimum wage would have no effect on anyone now earning $10 or $20 or $80 per hour. And it would create jobs for those whose labor is worth $4 or $6. Where is the downside in that?
This is not true. Most money is inherited and many high level jobs are given to friends or family members. I'm not saying it's impossible for the average Joe to become a big wig, but for the most part it's who you know these days.
I know someone who people are making a big fuss about around here because at his young age (early 30s) he launched a $350 million condo project. What all these boasting magazine articles and news segments are failing to note, is that he comes from an extremely wealthy family and his father loaned him the money to start this business. What do you think the odds are of this exact same person launching a huge condo complex at age 30 if his parents were just a middle class family? Probably almost 0.
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Originally Posted by LoriBee62
Um, this is neither raw, basic, fundamental, inescapable nor is it a fact.
If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be $21.75. That's what the minimum wage equivalent was back in the 1970's. I was around back in the 1970's. My mom was a single mother back then. We were able to eat plenty of hamburgers from McDonalds. We were neither impoverished or poor because of it.
As another poster said, the minimum wage has risen countless times sin 1938, and a hike has never resulted in the situation you are claiming as an "inescapable fact". So no matter how forcefully you want to insist, it still won't make it true.
You were able to make it back then because your mother was an amazing woman carefully budgeting her expenses vs her income. She never told you about the times that she cried because she didn't know what she was going to do about this bill or that, or where she was going to get food for dinner with $1.00. It's not because her wage was the equivalent of $20 an hour today. I know, I was there with a few million of my closest friends..
Um no, she didn't. And no, you weren't there. Please just claim to be an expert on your own situation and stop presuming you know everything there is to know about strangers.
Um no, she didn't. And no, you weren't there. Please just claim to be an expert on your own situation and stop presuming you know everything there is to know about strangers.
I was in the U.S. economy making minimum wage from the mid to late 1970's, as most of my friends and acquaintances were. So yes, I WAS THERE.
You could use a little bit of respect for what she did, instead of putting all of her 'success' (always had McDonalds hamburgers on the table) on the government mandated minimum wage.
You were a kid, how the heck do YOU know what she made or the hard decisions she faced?
I was in the U.S. economy making minimum wage from the mid to late 1970's, as most of my friends and acquaintances were. So yes, I WAS THERE.
You could use a little bit of respect for what she did, instead of putting all of her 'success' (always had McDonalds hamburgers on the table) on the government mandated minimum wage.
You were a kid, how the heck do YOU know what she made or the hard decisions she faced?
Everyone that says that minimum wage was NEVER meant to be lived on needs a serious reality check and needs to learn a little bit if history.
1950s:
"...minimum wage workers could pay rent for a month for less than a week and a half of full-time work―or catch Disney’s Cinderella for just over a half-hour of labor."
1970s:
"Minimum wage: $1.60/hour
Gas: $0.36 or 14m
Movie ticket: $1.55 or 58m
Rent: $108 or 67.5hrs"
In the 70s it only took 67.5 hours of MINIMUM WAGE work to cover rent. My husband makes almost triple today's minimum wage and it takes him around 70 hours to cover our mortgage, which is EXTREMELY LOW for where we live because of when we purchased our house. If wages had risen properly, we would easily be middle to upper middle class, instead we are on the cusp of upper lower class/lower middle class
2010
"Though the housing crash actually made rent more affordable, minimum-wage workers still had to put in 109 hours of work (or more than 60% of monthly income) in 2010. Of course, in cities like New York, the numbers are much higher. In 2010, the NY-Northern NJ-Long Island area had a median gross rent of $1,125, which equals 155 hours of work. Basically, if you worked full-time, didn’t eat, commute, or pay utilities, and gave nearly every penny to your landlord, you could just make it in the Big Apple."
So minimum wage workers went from needing 60 hours of work to cover rent in 1950 to DOUBLE, 109-155 hours of work, in 2010! Wages are NOT keeping up with cost if living! It's that freaking simple.
I work at a big multinational. The entry level jobs in the department paid $10 an hour 10 years ago, and still pay $10 an hour today with the quality of applicants going up aswell. Leverage for middle and lower class workers has collapsed since the crash, with outsourcing at one end and automation at the other. Its only going to get worse as professional well paid jobs either evaporate or are deskilled through it/automation.
I don't think people realise how badly the current generation entering employment have got it.
Maybe I was a bit harsh in my last post (especially with the public figures). Still, my point is that it's one thing if you are actually reaping the benefits from YOUR work, but it's another in the case of executives that are making many times more (inflation-adjusted) than they did a few decades ago (and my relative-minimum-wage idea would help close that gap).
Fine. Then there also has to be a way to decide that the guy at the bottom can do half of what the CEO can do. Fair? I think so.
There's a reason minimum wage is what it is. LOTS of people can do that job, there is nothing special about it. And for all the whining and jealousy about CEO wages, I bet there isn't one minimum wage worker that can do 10% of that CEO's job. Or, more importantly, is willing to. The other pesky thing about minimum wage jobs is the lack of accountability. You screw up, you just lose your job, and are free to get another one at any number of places (because remember, your skill is nothing special). But that CEO has the well being of his employees AND his shareholders at stake. That's a level of accountability that very few people are willing to take on. And they don't just get to leave at 5:00 when the clock hits that hour.
Fine. Then there also has to be a way to decide that the guy at the bottom can do half of what the CEO can do. Fair? I think so.
There's a reason minimum wage is what it is. LOTS of people can do that job, there is nothing special about it. And for all the whining and jealousy about CEO wages, I bet there isn't one minimum wage worker that can do 10% of that CEO's job. Or, more importantly, is willing to. The other pesky thing about minimum wage jobs is the lack of accountability. You screw up, you just lose your job, and are free to get another one at any number of places (because remember, your skill is nothing special). But that CEO has the well being of his employees AND his shareholders at stake. That's a level of accountability that very few people are willing to take on. And they don't just get to leave at 5:00 when the clock hits that hour.
You're missing the whole point. Of COURSE the CEO should make more money. No one is denying that or even implying otherwise. But that CEO does not deserve ALL the money and that is where the problem lies: GREED.
Though the CEO is an important part of the company, the bottom rung, low wage workers are equally important. The CEO's business CAN NOT FUNCTION without them. The CEO can not run the registers, make the food, clean the floors and the equipment, stock product, and execute all the other ins and outs of the day to day work involved in running each and every location and be the CEO. If every single employee walked out of Papa John's, how is he going to make money? If every single employee walked out if Walmart, how would they make money?? They can't. Low income workers are a vital part of society and we are allowing these big wig jerks to treat them like garbage.
A year or so ago, Wells Fargo was in the news when a teller wrote an open letter asking that he and his fellow employees get a raise. WF makes over $5 billion dollars a QUARTER! The CEO "earns" $12 million PER YEAR and gave himself a $19 million bonus, yet they pay their tellers $10 an hour and many of them need government assistance to get by. HOW IS THAT EVEN REMOTELY FAIR??? With the amount of money this ONE company has they should not have ONE SINGLE EMPLOYEE on food stamps. You guys are all mad at poor people for being on assistance, when you should be angry at corporations for not providing fair and sufficient salaries. WE the TAX payer are making up the difference. We are basically paying their salaries for them while the big wig *******s sit back and rake in all the money. It's disgusting!
It is unfortunate that so many of us have not figured out how to be sufficiently valuable to the rest of society to earn a living wage. A decent society will provide for those who need it. Only an ignorant society would throw that social burden onto the backs of the employers who provide the paychecks for over 100,000,000 people in the US.
It has nothing to do with being "valuable" and everything to do with a lack of business ethics. Middle-class jobs that used to pay the bills are no longer enough for a lot of people, because wages and benefits are eroding while corporate profits explode. It's not just a matter of inequity -- it's unsustainable. Henry Ford understood that you want to pay your workers enough so they can buy your products. Now companies like Wal-Mart are just as happy to let their workers go on food stamps to pick up the shortfall. If they have to choose between clothes for the kids and medicine for an illness, too bad.
People complain about the $15 minimum wage, and I don't contend that's a panacea, but $15 full time is only a little under $32K a year. That's not a whole lot these days. I think we're losing sight of just how far out of whack wages are with the escalating cost of living.
That's why I'll go out of my way to support companies like Costco or The Container Store that still offer decent wages and benefits. They treat their employees like an important part of the business, as they should. Heck, it even makes good business sense. If you take good care of your workers, they'll be happier workers, and happier workers are more productive workers. That translates into a more positive customer experience, which in turn leads to higher sales.
You'd think this would be common sense, but the allure of greed is apparently too powerful for too many corporations these days.
Um, this is neither raw, basic, fundamental, inescapable nor is it a fact.
If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be $21.75. That's what the minimum wage equivalent was back in the 1970's. I was around back in the 1970's. My mom was a single mother back then. We were able to eat plenty of hamburgers from McDonalds. We were neither impoverished or poor because of it.
As another poster said, the minimum wage has risen countless times sin 1938, and a hike has never resulted in the situation you are claiming as an "inescapable fact". So no matter how forcefully you want to insist, it still won't make it true.
That's roughly $42K yearly. Do you think some person pushing a broom at McDonald's should be making that at a minimum?
What is the next tier...$50K?
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