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Illegals aren't keeping the wages low. The employers are, and they're mostly getting away with it. If we made everyone who is living here legal, that excuse would be gone, but as long as employers determine wages, nothing will change.
The minimum wage only applies when the states enforce them. It's not to any political advantage for many states to enforce them, especially when the elected officials are helped along financially to keep the wages low.
How much is a person worth? Good question, patch. How much do you think you are worth? I know the limits as to what my services will bear on the open market, and even though I think my services and skills are worth more than what that market will pay for them, that's my problem, not theirs.
If I want more money, I need to find a higher paying part of the marketplace. I already know where that is, but to get a piece of it would require a move and sacrificing a life I enjoy very much as it is. I freely choose to make less to stay right where I am.
For sure, relatively few others have my skills, so they may not have the choices I have. For folks who don't have choices, a livable wage not only betters their lives, it also creates the demand for more purchases. More purchasing floats more boats, so employers can expand their businesses.
For sure, business owners would feel the pinch, but if the minimum wage laws were enforced across the board, everything would slide up a notch on the scale. The prices of goods and services would increase, but if the wages allowed a bit more increase, everyone would be making more money, and more money would be moving around.
All it needs is a couple of bucks more than the poverty level to do it. One state's poverty level could be much different than another state's, so how much the increase is should be a state's affair. The federal government is the only place that can determine the levels of all the states in comparison to each other, so their job is to determine the lowest level of poverty.
That's what the Feds have always done. When they say a wage is below the amount needed to be nothing but subsistence, that's the poverty level. Anything below that means people will go hungry and without adequate shelter to some degree.
Please provide some kind of evidence that the minimum wage law is regularly not being enforced. I don't mean an isolated case.
What you are worth and what the market will bear. Wait until Obama brings more illegals in, the market will bear less but ya, keep supporting Obama because he's Obama.
What should the maximum housing density be? What the market will bear?
I think the minimum wage law should be repealed.....
.....and replaced by negotiations on a national or state level between industry leaders on what a fair rate of pay would be for any given industry, be it mining, carpentry, IT, landscaping, retail, construction and so on. Whatever contracts come out of these negotiations should then be upheld by law.
I think the minimum wage law should be repealed.....
.....and replaced by negotiations on a national or state level between industry leaders on what a fair rate of pay would be. Whatever comes of these negotiations should then by upheld by law.
Great! Because the attacks on the working American havent been bad enough the past few decades, lets just turn them into indentured servants! It's not demand for skill that's at work right now, it's demand for jobs, and right now people would take half of minimum wage most likely if it meant having a job. Throwing the last remaining pieces in business's court is certainly the worse of two evils.
So, unemployment, as long as it's government making it happen, is better than employment - to you.
And, in theory, people would refuse to work for $2 so they wouldn't be able to get away with paying that little. Employers do have to compete for employees. That is a fair market.
That being said, I'm not completely comfortable with eliminating or reducing it and it's not causing that many problems as whogo pointed out, so let's just not raise it and accept minimum wage won't be a "living wage."
Please provide some kind of evidence that the minimum wage law is regularly not being enforced. I don't mean an isolated case.
All one has to do is look at the agriculture industry. Not just the farms, but the entire industry from farm to table. While ag is the easiest example, there are lots of others, large and small.
Does your home state have active enforcement afoigrokerkok? Can you provide examples of employers brought to court over non-enforcement?
I can't in my state, and as far as I know, there are no means of enforcement here.
There's plenty of evidence, but I'm not prepared to lock horns with millionaires over it, so I'm not going to start quoting references on a forum. All you have to do is a couple of minutes of googling to find it.
I like your idea. I believe a minimum wage should be a state's responsibility foremost, and I agree that wages should be carefully calibrated to differing businesses and different manufacturers. Accomplishing such a sophisticated task, though, seems doubtful to me at present, but I don't think it would be impossible.
I promise you that no one on a national or state labor board will agree to $2 an hour. When I said "industry leaders", I wasn't referring only to management. I should have clarified that there should be industry-wide labor boards to be involved in negotiations, so I'm clarifying that now.
And no, I don't think everyone should be making $100 an hour either, that's stupid and unrealistic. I think the state of the economy should always be taken into consideration in negotiations.
I think the minimum wage law should be repealed.....
.....and replaced by negotiations on a national or state level between industry leaders on what a fair rate of pay would be for any given industry, be it mining, carpentry, IT, landscaping, retail, construction and so on. Whatever contracts come out of these negotiations should then be upheld by law.
??? Who will be negotiating across the table???
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