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I think a lot of people are missing something about minimum wages. You do realize that the government sets minimum wage, and makes minimum wage policy - right? What that means is that there is already government regulation. It is the GOVERNMENT who is to blame for the minimum wage issues - not businesses. And since the government is regulating wages, they should be more responsible about it and provide a complete program - which means since they are regulating one type of employee's wages (the lowest rung), they should be fair and regulate the rest - from the employee, to middle management, to administration, to CEO. THAT is the reason minimum wage is not working - because there is escape. Companies can just fill the pockets of administrators and cry that they are too poor to pay the janitor any more money.
"The "market-rate" excuse is nothing but a comfort pillow so that the greedy parasites can collect billions of dollars while employing people who need government assistance to get by. It stops them from feeling guilty about making unholy amounts of money while people under their employ suffer in impoverished conditions - no matter how well the company is doing. They do not have to think about how they are shafting these people because they can always say they are paying them "market rate" - no matter how successful their company is. Funny that they don't pay Administrators the least they can get by with, though - and it has little to do with what they do, but more about how personally close they are to them. People who are not on the board getting mega pay? Ridiculous and shameful. Companies by and large DO have the money to distribute pay better - they just CHOOSE not to.
And you have to be completely oblivious to sit back and say certain positions have no value and should get paid less. Every position has value - many Administrators do nothing but collect a paycheck; just sit there twiddling their thumbs all day. A company should pay people for their actual worth - and they don't "owe" you because you decided to blow your parent's life savings on college! It isn't their fault and they shouldn't be expected to compensate you because of your college debt (that is the government who put you into debt, not your employer). Also, even if you feel like you should get paid because you voluntarily chose to go to college - that doesn't mean you get to undervalue another worker and take that money out of their pockets. Why can't everyone get paid decently? Lets see how wonderful a work environment would be with no custodians? Would you like to be allocated time to clean the filthy toilets, take out the trash??? How much is it worth when YOU have to do it?
Anyways, the sad truth is that the system is made to take your money away from you. So even if people were getting paid fairly, prices would just adjust to put the lowest paid in the same position they have always been in. Consider California - you can make 20+ per hour and still struggle to make it. This thing is hopelessly broken and would take far more than a decent minimum wage to fix... There are too many tools to counteract giving people better wages for it to have any effect.
Making it worse is that there are a number of jobs that need to be done but there is little or no profit to be had. Those just fall to the government. So we all chip in to pay those wages. Well, except right now it is in vogue to give tax breaks to corporations and the rich.
And you have to be completely oblivious to sit back and say certain positions have no value and should get paid less. Every position has value....
Sheesh. Yes, every position has value. It is the amount a willing employer will pay a willing employee. That is the value. Brain surgeon, big bucks. Floor sweeper who is not too good about showing up for work, not so much. There are tens of millions of employers in the country. The best wage you can get is the fair value of your labor. Don't like it? Improve your value. We will all be better off if you do.
Fortunately, at birth we are not labeled as "floor sweeper" or "burger flipper." We are each free to unlock whatever fraction of our own potential we care too. Much of a person's potential value to an employer is free: attitude, productive effort, worth ethic, punctuality, dependability, working as part of a team, learning on the job, etc.
The economic denialists who want to sever the link between value added to society and paychecks are missing the point that when value to society is the measure of wages, we are all richer as a result.
Funny how people who are living in one of the most abundant, freest societies in the history of the world act like they are SO oppressed because it makes sense to pay the actual value of labor, no more, the same as each of the whiners shops for a can of beans or a car. Do you pay steak prices for hamburger? Then don't expect employers to, either.
Sheesh. Yes, every position has value. It is the amount a willing employer will pay a willing employee. That is the value. Brain surgeon, big bucks. Floor sweeper who is not too good about showing up for work, not so much. There are tens of millions of employers in the country. The best wage you can get is the fair value of your labor. Don't like it? Improve your value. We will all be better off if you do.
Fortunately, at birth we are not labeled as "floor sweeper" or "burger flipper." We are each free to unlock whatever fraction of our own potential we care too. Much of a person's potential value to an employer is free: attitude, productive effort, worth ethic, punctuality, dependability, working as part of a team, learning on the job, etc.
The economic denialists who want to sever the link between value added to society and paychecks are missing the point that when value to society is the measure of wages, we are all richer as a result.
Funny how people who are living in one of the most abundant, freest societies in the history of the world act like they are SO oppressed because it makes sense to pay the actual value of labor, no more, the same as each of the whiners shops for a can of beans or a car. Do you pay steak prices for hamburger? Then don't expect employers to, either.
But how big should the range be?
Should anyone be paid less than it takes to support themselves and one dependent?
Should anyone be paid 50 times more than that?
IMO, workers should be rewarded for their contribution and if they possess a skill or work ethic that makes them more valuable than some of their coworkers they should get more. But I think the scale of how much more is reasonable has gotten way out of whack. Free enterprise can't be like Monopoly where the winner ends up with all the money and no one else has any. We need structure to keep that from happening. In actuality, the system would collapse well before it gets that concentrated. Right now, we seem to be hell bent on finding out at what point that is, and this concerns me greatly.
But how big should the range be?
Should anyone be paid less than it takes to support themselves and one dependent?
Should anyone be paid 50 times more than that?
IMO, workers should be rewarded for their contribution and if they possess a skill or work ethic that makes them more valuable than some of their coworkers they should get more. But I think the scale of how much more is reasonable has gotten way out of whack. Free enterprise can't be like Monopoly where the winner ends up with all the money and no one else has any. We need structure to keep that from happening. In actuality, the system would collapse well before it gets that concentrated. Right now, we seem to be hell bent on finding out at what point that is, and this concerns me greatly.
The range should reflect the actual range of the value provided, period. In cases where the value of labor is not sufficient to support that person, we have a societal obligation to make sure they do not starve or freeze and have basic medical care. Welfare is for those who cannot support themselves. There is no rational reason why an employer ought to be burdened with the societal cost of welfare. And each person is free to improve their value to the rest of society; in fact, for most of the top 10%, each person started out at minimum wage and then grew their value. Having no skills is a choice. It should not be rewarded with above-market wages.
You say "Free enterprise can't be like Monopoly where the winner ends up with all the money and no one else has any." Duh. Free enterprise assures that there will be a technician to fix my car, a gallon of gas available when and where I need it, food at the grocer's for my family, clothes available for me to purchase, a plumber and electrician and roofer to help with my shelter, etc. Each person involved in bringing these things to me gets paid the value of their labor. Each company involved gets a return on the capital invested. I pay a little money each month to a cell phone provider and have the use of a multi-trillion dollar communications network. The person who sells me the phone, the people on the help desk, the people who maintain the network are all making above minimum wage--and each one is getting paid for the value of their labor.
Monopoly does not have anything to do with it. Preserving the incentives that made this country great is far more important than having some do-gooder decree that some jobs need to be abolished so others will pay a little more.
With all the debate going on with raising the minimum wage, I have an idea that would solve most of the anti-hiker's concerns. Instead of an absolute dollar amount, make the minimum wage for example half the mean (full-time equivalent) pay of all workers in the company. (The average is mean and not median for a very good reason - it means that if you pay the executives an exorbitant salary you'd have to give your rank-and-file workers a raise too to make the math work.)
This proposal has the advantages in that it does not force a business to spend any more money on pay than it does now (though it may force them to be more equitable with it), concerns that there may be more inflation are moot, and for the inflation that does occur there is no need to change the law to account for that (since there is no fixed amount in the statute). The main drawback is that it'd be harder for the individual workers to enforce it, although if the government requires employers to keep records of their workers' pay then they can make that general statistical information (not necessarily individual worker's pay if privacy is a concern) public.
Bad idea for two main reasons:
1) Different companies would be forced to pay vastly different wages for the same work; and
2) It would be ridiculously easy to bypass.
In (1), say you have a small 20-person corporation that hires a full-time receptionist. The owner is also a worker and pays himself a small salary. Half the median is, say, $10/hour. Say you have a different multi-national corporation where the CEO earns a few hundred thousand a year (also assume he works 100-hr weeks and is extremely skilled at making deals to earn more work to grow the company... so he earns his CEO pay), and they also need a receptionist for a new satellite office they just opened. Same job description, same workload, same skill level. Half the median here is $25/hour. Is this fair in your world?
In (2), all you'd have to do is farm out all menial jobs to staffing firms who only employ low-wage workers. So now half the median salary would be, say, $5/hour.
With all the debate going on with raising the minimum wage, I have an idea that would solve most of the anti-hiker's concerns. Instead of an absolute dollar amount, make the minimum wage for example half the mean (full-time equivalent) pay of all workers in the company. (The average is mean and not median for a very good reason - it means that if you pay the executives an exorbitant salary you'd have to give your rank-and-file workers a raise too to make the math work.)
This proposal has the advantages in that it does not force a business to spend any more money on pay than it does now (though it may force them to be more equitable with it), concerns that there may be more inflation are moot, and for the inflation that does occur there is no need to change the law to account for that (since there is no fixed amount in the statute). The main drawback is that it'd be harder for the individual workers to enforce it, although if the government requires employers to keep records of their workers' pay then they can make that general statistical information (not necessarily individual worker's pay if privacy is a concern) public.
Your alternate view is interesting, but overly complicated and difficult to enforce. I would propose tying the minimum wage to the COL (cost of living) The Govt already compiles COL indices and we can use that data.
There would have to be adjustments for different areas since NYC is more expensive than Lexington KY. for example.
Something like this would never happen though as it would be characterized as socialism and only commies like socialism.
The fact is its relative to what society values and raising it means that others more valued will want relative pay increase which leads to higher prices. There is also the fact that many f these jobs are easy to automate and its only a cost actor that keeps it from getting worse I that regard than it has gotten. Looking at pure labor a large part of it has already been a replaced by machines and computers. Everything is relative to something I this world. Its why Buffet thinks in future many will be on unearned income and not actually work or be subsidized. The problem there is value wise its still the bottom. Liberals tend to want government to supervise such things thru programs like food stamps because they basically do not trust many with money and biggest factor is they want large( read as more power over lifes) government to control.
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!
If you think bigwigs just sit back and rake in the money, you obviously know no CEO's of large corporations.
And yes, those lower rung jobs are important, but you are missing the point - ANYONE can fill those positions. No, the CEO can't do all the jobs, but lots of grunts can. BUT I bet not one of those grunts could fill the CEO position.
It's NOT a corporation's responsibility to provide "sufficient" salaries. They provide a job to someone that AGREED to work for a particular wage. Period. End of story.
The pathological envy of the successful in this country is astounding.
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