Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Is this suggesting that the requirement that emergency rooms treat all comers, regardless of ability to pay, is a violation of hospital operators' rights?
Wow.
What right have you to compel someone to work for your benefit?
Of course. What a silly question. Living wage isn't about who you are, its about what is right.
All liberals campaigning for living wage are doing so for new business owner, old business owners, new employees, old employees, people with red hair, people who dress in pink, people who wear loafers, etc.
What a pointlessly silly thread.
Really? Can you point me to those efforts? Because as a business owner, I spent years NOT making a living wage, even thought I paid someone (more an I earned) to work for me.
Nobody is even slightly concerned that a business owner makes money, except those he owes money to. You liberals treat them as if they are inexhaustible bank accounts to rob to make yourself feel better.
Business owners usually have money to begin with, or they get it somehow by convincing investors, banks etc. Now, whether or not the business is a success, that depends on the ideas and products. If those suck and nobody wants them, then who is going to pay that income to the owner? It is kind of his or her own fault if that business fails. And if it does not fail, the owner usually does get a living wage out of it.
An employee on the other hand depends on the people above him in the company hierarchy to have the ideas. If the employee works well and is not to blame for the company failure, but instead contributes to its success, why should he or she not be paid a living wage?
Employees can be paid according to the value they produce for the employer. Need or want is irrelevant.
Sure ... as soon as employees gain access to the same tax incentives, low-interest loans, write-offs, and outright subsidies that so many companies now enjoy.
If corporations are people, then it follows that people are corporations and should be entitled to be treated accordingly -- right?
Is this suggesting that the requirement that emergency rooms treat all comers, regardless of ability to pay, is a violation of hospital operators' rights?
Wow.
Yes.
Why do you feel that a medical doctor owes you his labor for no payment?
The post was in response to a ridiculous hypothetical statement that there should be no minimum wage.
In answer to your question I remind you that the current minimum wage is not enough to live off of, so why would anyone work for minimum wage today? Because they have to and that's why businesses can get away with it today and why they would get away with it in this hypothetical.
Minimum wage was never meant to support most individuals, let alone a family. It's meant to be paid to those entering the job market, or those seeking a little extra. It's meant to be paid to teenagers who are performing unskilled labor as they learn what a job is.
I agree that some working minimum wage jobs do so because they have to. They have not prepared themselves for life in the real world and thus their choices are limited. They have little if anything to offer an employer or with which to negotiate a higher wage. I also agree with the poster who said there should be no minimum as I think unless you have something to offer, be happy that you get anything.
My first part time job was washing pots in a commercial kitchen. For $2.76 an hour. It was hard work, it was messy work. It sucked. But it taught me what it took to earn money and made me judicious in spending. I knew there had to be a better way, so I went to school, studied hard, looked at the world to determine what was valued. I developed expertise in what was in demand, and became one of the best at my craft. I have choices.
My company doesn't have to pay me over 50 times what I made washing pots. I don't have to work for them. It's by mutual agreement. If they don't want to pay me that, there are others who will, because few do what I do as well as I do, and I charge the going rate for it. I have something to offer. I bring value to the negotiating table. I produce far beyond 'unskilled labor' each and every day, and my company turns a profit in pimping my skills and service to its' clients.
Were it up to me, I'd do away with the concept of minimum wage. Let the market determine what value lies in a pair of hands seemingly unattached to a working brain. And let that be motivation to develop marketable skills rather than depend on government intervention or the charity of others. If you don't like it, there are three choices: 1) Starve, 2) Learn how to do something that others value, or 3) Shut up and clean that Slurpee machine.
Well, you kind of had me on your side until you went with the partisan political thing at the end, but I guess that's the way of it here at C-D; some political jab of some kind.
Anyway, no one has the right to anything except their civil rights. If a person works, he has a right to minimum wage. He also has the right to forgo the purchase of an I-phone, an HD TV, ect. We all are equal, but we all aren't identical. There are going to be the haves and the have nots (or at least the "have less"). In a sense, that is the logical scenario in a free market country.
The title of the thread... Is a conditional statement. The commentary is based on the idea that IF YOU BELIEVE that employees deserve a comfortable life for having merely given some time out of their day to you, then don't business owners?
I owned my last business for 9 years. For the first few I did NOT earn "a living wage".
I didn't start with money, didn't have investors or banks lending me money. I took every cent I had, which was less than a half year's earnings at minimum wage.
Since I lacked money, I used time and skills and creativity. And the fact that I put in the occaisional 20 hour day, lived as frugally and painfully poverty stricken as anyone has, including living in what most of you would call a "shack", to make do, to build it up, never got me a single handout.
I had to give up all claims to unemployment, welfare, food stamps, every form of assistance.
And I still got taxed.
Yet, as a business owner, liberals were hostile, one going so far as to refer to any private business as "your empire".
I haven't had "health insurance" for 30 of my 50 years, and do not now, and haven't for several years. And I have serious health problems.
All I want is the chance to work out out my own decisions... rather than have some mindlessly stupid agency dictate I do something dumb.
Since we chose to move, I am starting another. I'm going to be self employed. And work 10 and 12 hour days 5 and 6 days a week for no extra compensation, not get health insurance, and have no paid vacations, no sick pay, not one single benefit, other than to be abused and taxed by government.
And all these people cry about how EMPLOYEES are entitled to pick the pockets of people like me because, well, they DESERVE it.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
