Raise the minimum wage to $12 an hour and poof no more working poor! (independent, biased)

[bobtn]

artemis, In the real world, age and pay are not related. Now one can make more with years of experience, having passed various certs that the newbie could not pass. That merits a difference in pay, per whatever the Free Market defines the difference should be. But the gap is for the certs and experience, not the age.

[SandboxQ]

Originally Posted by bobtn

artemis, In the real world, age and pay are not related. Now one can make more with years of experience, having passed various certs that the newbie could not pass. That merits a difference in pay, per whatever the Free Market defines the difference should be. But the gap is for the certs and experience, not the age.

That depends on what kind of job you are talking about. Some you can get hired at 18 but they won't let you do anything until 21!

[artemis agrotera]

Originally Posted by bobtn

artemis, In the real world, age and pay are not related. Now one can make more with years of experience, having passed various certs that the newbie could not pass. That merits a difference in pay, per whatever the Free Market defines the difference should be. But the gap is for the certs and experience, not the age.

Okay! I dont live in the real world


Australia's minimum wage is $15.51 per hour or $589.30 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).

This is for a person of 21 years and above.

[bobtn]

There are some like that, but they are dwindling. Most of them are uncompetitive, for that very reason. Why would any sane person pay someone $18 per hour to do NOTHING of value? Pretend for a moment you are writing the check with your money. That is what us "Guys in suits" do every day. We treat corporate money as carefully as we would treat our own.

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by GreenGene

Raising the minimum wage to almost $10 an hour means that a person earning minimum wage in Washington State and San Francisco will have the same purchasing power as a person on minimum wage in 1968.

Are you serious? What was your labor participation rate then? It was only 59.4% -- whoooooo. Not much competition in the work place. Just a little "minor" detail there.

And who cares about purchasing power?

Prices are set by Supply & Demand. How many Brasilians, Chinese and Indians were screaming for marble counter-tops and iPods in 1968?

None. Just another little "minor" detail you ignored.

The Free Market Economic System is also about distributing goods, services and resources, and the [Free] Market System lets Supply & Demand do that.

Let's take Toilet Bowl tickets. The stadium/team/league artificially sets the price of tickets at $70 per seat, but the Demand for those tickets is far greater than the Supply of those tickets, and so scalpers can sell them for $1,000 each.

Can most people afford that? No.

And if the price of chicken jumps to $12.99/pound then what? That's Supply & Demand too, and not everyone can afford that.

I'm really sorry about their luck, but that's their problem, not my problem, and their continued attempts to make it my problem is why your country is in the crapper, and why you're spiraling slowly into 2nd World Status.

There are alternatives to paying $12.99/pound for chicken. There's chicken hearts, chicken gizzards and chicken livers. And if you don't like that, then you can buy pork brains, hog maws, chitlins, pork livers, ox tails, beef tripe, beef tongue or beef liver.

It's all meat. It won't kill you. You don't need to eat meat 3x per day, 7 days per week anyway. I didn't do that until I was in the army. I lived.

So if prices rise, and you don't have the same purchasing power, then you'll have to work around that buy cutting back, finding alternatives or doing without.

It isn't my job to subsidize your life-style.

Not subsidizing....

Mircea

Originally Posted by gizmo980

Do you guys have any idea how much it costs to live in San Francisco?

No, and I don't care. If you cannot afford to live there, then move. It is not my responsibility to fund your life-style.

What are you doing, washing dishes? Hell, you can do that in Senegal and make enough money to have your own apartment. Get your passport today. Do it. Do it now.

Not caring...

Mircea

Originally Posted by Konraden

I'll use you as my example, but a solid half of the responses here so far have been, "we'll lose jobs."

Modern research disagrees.

Oh my god, are you serious? The Economic Policy Institute? Well, let's just skew all of our data to get the desired result we want then scream loudly.

This model is based on the assumption that low-wage workers can withhold their labor if they are not paid a sufficient amount.

That is a failed assumption. No wonder their results are so peachy.

Not skewing....

Mircea

Originally Posted by SandboxQ

I think it may FORCE greedy employers to start paying what they should have been all along.

Which is what, exactly?

You speak as one who has never run a business and wouldn't know the first thing about it.

I think if I were dictator, this is what I would do: require all workers to obtain a work permit, and the prerequisite for obtaining a work permit is setting up and running your own business.

Or maybe if they present a proper business plan, you know, where they have gone through and worked out the Wage Cost, Labor Cost, Production Cost, Expenses, Price Elasticity, Maximum Price, Optimum Price etc etc etc. I'll let them have a temporary work permit.

Not every business makes a huge profit, contrary to what you might believe. I know a lot of people are quick to criticize oil companies for their profits, but then those people have never run an oil company. How do you get permission to into Nigeria, Tajikistan or somewhere and search for oil? You pony up $20 Billion for that privilege.

That's just the ground work; a few geological teams looking at rock formations.

I'll grant you that there are a few companies that make obscene profits, but that's a small (and highly publicized) minority of businesses.

Originally Posted by SandboxQ

The same jobs paid $20 twenty years ago. Those are all gone. The deadbeats come in for the roasting! A licensed electrician, plumber etc is worth $12-$15 per hour? They charge the customer $100+ per hour. Someone is getting fat and it's not the guy with the brains!

Have you worked it out?

What is the cost to own/lease the vehicle? How is much the insurance? How much does the fuel cost? How much do parts and supplies cost? What are the Labor Costs? Taxes? Marketing? Advertising? Business insurance? Licensing/Bonding? Permits? Accounting? Compliance? Legal? Etc etc etc?

Whenever they are tired of working for $12-$15/hour, they are free to man-up, grow a pair, grow a spine, get a brain transplant and start their own business.

The Market rules....

Mircea

[BigGuy77]

Originally Posted by Workaholic?

Washington State and the City of San Francisco have raised the minimum wage up to nearly $10 an hour. What impact has this had on the amount of working poor? Would raising the minimum wage up to $12 eliminate many of the working poor? Would it save the government money because less people would be eligible for food stamps and earned income tax credits?

It will make it harder for employers to afford their employees, which will lead to layoffs. Real help for the poor is personal; it takes conscious, deliberate giving on the part of the giver -- like talking to poor people and using good judgment to decide whether you should give them something, or letting them know your door is open (so to speak) in case they want to come to you. Government programs OTOH are formal, legal-ish systems with their own mysterious political inner workings. Somehow these programs have come to be called "help", as if there were a magic trick that can turn abstract legal-political mazes into help. But they're actually more like a cardboard-cutout "help". And the worst of it is, there are lots of bogus "helpers" out there who like to hide behind fake help and will use it as a pretext for talking nasty to anybody who objects.

[bobtn]

If one truly wants to help the poor, volunteer at programs like RIF, Habitat for Humanity, or a ton of others your local United Way can tell you about. Offer a path for a hand UP, not an artificial hand out. Every increase in the minimum wage, even if the macro total jobs is constant, means the least skilled of the presently employed get shown the door.

Volunteer so that those you care about so much are no longer the LEAST skilled.

[freightshaker]

The minimum wage is just a tool for politicians to gander votes from the poor while throwing them under the bus at the same time. Each time the minimum wage is raised, the working poor lose ground and don't even realize it.

[Speleothem]

Originally Posted by AnUnidentifiedMale

Walmart can afford it.

I understand that small businesses can't afford to pay that much, but any huge corporation as successful as Walmart can afford to pay all of their employees at least $10/hour.

You correctly point out that small businesses can't afford to
pay that much, but you haven't considered that those small
businesses would then have to compete with that higher wage.

[Konraden]

So glad nobody is capable of reading on these forums, or else people would have to support their arguments.