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By treating employees as contractors, employers are able to dodge not only the minimum wage law, but all of the provisions of the Fair Labor Standard Act, including protections against retaliation and overtime rules.
These ^^^ are just some of the ways the businesses get "around" the minimum age. Have any of you ever read the Fair Labor Standard Act? THESE are not examples of social responsibility by the big businesses who are cheating this country. Is "cheating" an appropriate business model?
One of the biggest "loopholes" are illegal aliens but it seems no one wants to close that one, just increase the headcount. There is no min wage in an underground economy. No taxes either. But hey, so long as their kids get tax payer funded benefits the family will eventually vote for those pushing to provide the freebies. The original illegals from 86 have kids that can vote.
By treating employees as contractors, employers are able to dodge not only the minimum wage law, but all of the provisions of the Fair Labor Standard Act, including protections against retaliation and overtime rules.any
These ^^^ are just some of the ways the businesses get "around" the minimum age. Have any of you ever read the Fair Labor Standard Act? THESE are not examples of social responsibility by the big businesses who are cheating this country
The IRS already defines employees and contractors. The SCOTUS ruled that substance, not form, governs tax related issues. In other words, just because I call you a contractor doesn't make you a contractor. MS got in trouble for that years ago.
Even until 1981, the Business Roundtable trade group understood the need to balance these different stakeholders.
“Corporations have a responsibility, first of all, to make available to the public quality goods and services at fair prices, thereby earning a profit that attracts *investment to continue and enhance the enterprise, provide jobs, and build the economy,” the group said at the time, in a document cited this year in an article in the publication Daedalus.
It continued: “The long-term viability of the corporation depends upon its responsibility to the society of which it is a part. And the well-being of society depends upon profitable and responsible business enterprises.
Watson published a seminal text in 1963 called “A Business and Its Beliefs: The Ideas that Helped Build IBM.” In it, he wrote that IBM’s philosophy could be contained in three beliefs: One, the most important, was respect for the individual employee; the second, a commitment to customer service; and third, achieving excellence.
He wrote that balancing profits between the well-being of employees and the nation’s interest is a necessary duty for companies. Watson took pride in the fact that his father avoided layoffs, even through the Great Depression.
“We acknowledge our obligation as a business institution to help improve the quality of the society we are part of,” read the text of IBM’s corporate values.
Under Watson’s watch, IBM introduced groundbreaking computers that shot his father’s company to the top of the technology world. Even into the 1980s, there was a saying that IBM’s products were so reliable, “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.”
I think that Walmart is a symbol of a much larger debate, which is the change in American corporate culture that has taken place. Maximizing profits until fairly recently was not seen as the only concern of business leaders. The idea that maximizing shareholder profits is the only responsibility of business is a fairly recent right wing economic ideology that is somewhat of a perversion.
If Walmart and other corporations were willing to agree to an objective investigation of the financials and what is the value of the production of certain categories of Walmart workers to the bottom line of Walmart, I'd be willing to live with the results of such an investigation.
If that investigation said, walmart workers don't produce much more value than they are paid by Walmart and this came from an objective source that would strengthen Walmart's argument, but if that objective investigation showed that workers add much, much, much more to the profitability of Walmart than they are being compensated, then that severely weakens walmart's position.
That is fair compensation getting close to the value that your work produces for a company.
The problem is there simply exists a huge inequality of power, and inequality of information between employees and employers in most cases.
For all the talk of free markets, entering into an agreement with an employer on a wage, that's not what corporations and their apologists want.
In order for workers to truly negotiate in a free market there needs to equal access to honest factual financial information about that company and the worker's value to that company.
If a worker goes into a negotiation for salary having no idea what his or her individual efforts contributed to the bottom line and how much his or her efforts made the company, then that negotiation is extremely unequal and the worker is an extreme disadvantage.
That's not a free market where employees are left in the dark and the employer has all the relevant information.
If a worker goes into a negotiation for salary having no idea what his or her individual efforts contributed to the bottom line and how much his or her efforts made the company, then that negotiation is extremely unequal and the worker is an extreme disadvantage.
That's not a free market where employees are left in the dark and the employer has all the relevant information.
I can tell you what a average Walmart worker is worth with out a full blown investigation the company can replace them in a matter of day/days. You are right the employees have no bargaining power and they never will and that is reality. Our mothers told us " its a dog eat dog world out there " were they lying?
That is quite a generalization. The argument is that there are valid reasons for entry level jobs with low wages.
I've said this before and will again. You are arguing for treating the symptom and not the disease. We have ran off good paying jobs and rather than complain about that many want to complain that historically low paying entry level jobs don't pay as well as these jobs we ran off.
Maybe those good paying jobs have been run off because Johnny can't read or write. When you have so many unable to speak coherently, spell or add, how are you supposed to run a business?
First, my statement as NOT about emotion but rather moral standards/values.
Yes, indeed, "supply and demand" does change in an economy where huge segments lose the ability to purchase the products, and in this new service-based economy, more and more people are having to take jobs which don't even pay enough to meet their essential needs, much less gives them money to purchase "products" other than bare necessities.
That has nothing to do with this being a "service based" economy and everything to do with the fact that wages are not as high as they once were. You're obfuscating.
The levels at which supply and demand exist for certain skills has changed. That's not rocket science. The concept of supply and demand has not changed, and you have failed to demonstrate any legitimate economic reasoning behind this subsidization argument you keep pulling out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FancyFeast5000
If basically calling me stupid makes you happy, knock yourself out. Your problem is that you cannot really counter what I am saying by using your outdated business model, so you attack my intelligence instead.
More nonsense. The concept of supply and demand has not changed, nothing here is outdated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FancyFeast5000
Social responsibility RESTS with everyone, including corporations (who are individuals like people) who reap big profits from the community in which they conduct business, as well as individual human beings and our government (which represents the citizens of this country).
So it rests with everyone. Not just one corporation, or any one group of corporations.
We agree. Good.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FancyFeast5000
Our government should not have to subsidize private businesses by paying for part of their labor costs through welfare programs.
And once again, the repeated assertion. This is bunk. You have no clue what you're talking about, and your inability to comprehend even the most basic logical concepts speaks volumes about your entire argument.
The taxpayers are not subsidizing Walmart, and you can't counter a single point in my OP from an economic standpoint. Your theory is bunk, I destroyed it, and you don't have a rebuttal, excluding this irrelevant fluff about our "service based" economy, which means nothing.
Seventeen pages and not a single one of you is able to even begin to counter my point by explaining the economic relationship between "need" and wage rates, and as such is a prerequisite to make the "the taxpayers are subsidizing walmart" argument, the argument has been shown to be nonsense.
No they don't. The vast majority of shoppers don't regularly shop online. They buy their goods in stores. These are the people that make up the bulk of small businesses or Walmart customers.
Firstly, I'd like to see the stats that about the "vast majority". Secondly, you said that Amazon does not directly compete with box stores, and that is simply not true. Even if one person shops at Amazon instead of a box store, that is competition. Don't go changing the goal post - now it's "vast majority" and "regularly shop". Even one sale is competition.
When someone buys something on Amazon that they could buy at a box store, they are directly competing. Period. I do it all the time. I weigh whether it's worth my time and gas to drive for an item, or just buy it online.
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