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I am "people." I don't think business owners are making outrageous profits. Some are, some aren't. It depends. I do think that you should not be able to employ people at substandard wages, and wages below $15 are substandard. It seems like a huge increase, but it's just a necessary corrective to restore wages to what they were before labor started being eviscerated in the 1970s.
Again, where or how do businesses find the money to pay for the wage increase?
I can never get a straight answer for this question.
That's how every wage is set in case you don't know.
LOL. That's OK. The market will find a way. Please don't tell me before illegals, nobody was doing those jobs.
I didn't live with my parents. I had roommates. I grew up poor and knew how being poor is like. Nobody in America is poor.
Yes, employers do like to set depressed wages for their employees and then fill them with excuses on why they are paid so little.
Well sure, before illegals there might have been Americans doing those jobs, but don't expect them to want to do them for the same pay. So basically you did this when you were very young and had a small budget you had to worry about, that isn't the same thing as someone trying to provide for a family. I could show you plenty of people in America that can tell you that we do in fact have poor in America. To think otherwise is just nonsense.
Yes, employers do like to set depressed wages for their employees and then fill them with excuses on why they are paid so little.
Again, that's how every wage is set. Shouldn't we have a minimum wage for every job then?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cliftonpdx
Well sure, before illegals there might have been Americans doing those jobs, but don't expect them to want to do them for the same pay. So basically you did this when you were very young and had a small budget you had to worry about, that isn't the same thing as someone trying to provide for a family. I could show you plenty of people in America that can tell you that we do in fact have poor in America. To think otherwise is just nonsense.
That's called being poor managed not being poor. Why do they have a large family to provide for? If we don't break circle, it would just keep going down.
From the great big vault where all "da rich Republicans" who "stoled all da People's monies" are hiding with it, of course.
Only in the land of rainbows and unicorns .......
What nonsense. I can't wait until the world's seventh largest economy insists employers pay a living wage and does just fine economically. Folks like you will tell everyone to not believe their lying eyes though and insist wages everywhere else in the US should remain substandard. There will be a million excuses for why it won't work in Everywhere Else, USA even though it works in California.
What nonsense. I can't wait until the world's seventh largest economy insists employers pay a living wage and does just fine economically. Folks like you will tell everyone to not believe their lying eyes though and insist wages everywhere else in the US should remain substandard. There will be a million excuses for why it won't work in Everywhere Else, USA even though it works in California.
Care to answer my question?
Quote:
Originally Posted by lifeexplorer
Again, where or how do businesses find the money to pay for the wage increase?
I can never get a straight answer for this question.
I am "people." I don't think business owners are making outrageous profits. Some are, some aren't. It depends. I do think that you should not be able to employ people at substandard wages, and wages below $15 are substandard. It seems like a huge increase, but it's just a necessary corrective to restore wages to what they were before labor started being eviscerated in the 1970s.
You keep looking at this at a state level only. You are not looking at this in regards to competition nationally...let's put aside international or global competition...let's just focus on our own nation.
In 2013, that number was about 20% of the population.
(Sorry, had to use cache link since regular link would not open for me.)
I have worked from home for a few years now. I have worked for very large companies, the ones that people think sit on boat loads of cash...they kind of do..I've worked for them. They were not based in my state. They were in another state. To help cut costs, and frankly to make it a bit easier for workers, they hired people to work from home. No need for office, furniture, electronics, electricity, codes, zones, whatever else is needed to open up an office...that all saves the company money. The workers save money by not having to spend money on gas, work attire, even car insurance goes down significantly...and it also works for companies because you have all these little "satellite" offices (to use the term loosely). So if you have a storm, or an earthquake, or a fire, or whatever, you, the company, still have people all over the country able to provide service.
The problem is, if your state has crazy labor laws, or your state has a high minimum wage, your state is excluded from MANY of those job opportunities. By pushing the min wage even higher, the jobs that were open to the states with high min wages and crazy labor laws will face being taken off of those lists, as well.
You all keep thinking about "this state" without thinking about national competition. You all keep forgetting about COL across the country - it is not the same in Maine as it is in CA, for example.
So let's say that there's an entry level customer service job available nationwide. It's from a huge company, and they want to employ people across the nation. They write up contracts with several smaller companies who do the dirty work of hiring and firing employees, or even IC (Independent Contractors). These smaller companies hire specifically for work at home employees, (or ICs). They do the background checks, they do the training, they pay the workers (or ICs), they are in charge of it all, saving the big company even more money. Of course the smaller companies get some money from the big company for doing all of this, and then the workers get a rate based on what is left over.
So the huge company finds a smaller company to make a contract with. The smaller company negotiates money, then they go out and find workers from all across the country. A LOT of those smaller companies will NOT hire people from certain states because of a) labor laws that essentially restrict them from being able to hire (CA is a big one), and b) high min wage that prices the workers out of the market. The people in certain states cannot get hired because their state law says that they have to be paid X amount per hour. It doesn't matter if you work for Giant Company X in the state of Texas, you are working in the state of WA or the state of CA or some other state with a higher min wage. If the smaller company cannot pay you that min wage, you're not getting the job. Which means you also don't get the bonuses and the extra hours to take on since you are no longer commuting, and you miss out on the perks of the job from Giant Company X even though you are not directly employed with Giant Company X (yes, they still give perks to ICs).
Here's why people in higher min wage states will not get the job: In some jobs, you are paid on "talk time". You are doing Customer Service, but you are paid extra for the time you are actually talking. Most of these types of jobs will have a "base pay", (some won't), but that base pay will fall below the high min wage that some states have. So, while it is very possible to make $16-20 an hour doing this customer service job if you work hard, the base pay is not going to meet the "required min wage" level that some states have in place. That means that all of those people living in those states with high min wage are now out of the running for the entry level customer service job that could actually be paying them up to $20 an hour. I know this from personal experience because that was my very first work at home job ever. I no longer work that job, I now freelance-am my own boss, but a LOT of people need this kind of work. I just took it because my car was dead and I don't like working in offices with a bunch of idiots. The percent of people working from home is going to go up, not down. You are not just competing with other people from CA, you are competing with people from Maine, for example, who have a ridiculously low cost of living. You have people competing from TX, who also have a low cost of living. You have people competing from all kinds of places across the country who do not insist on a $15/hr min wage. Because of that, the people in those states will be closed off to yet another market that could employ them.
I really wish all of you who keep insisting on a higher wage would stop thinking about yourselves and think about how many people you just screwed.
Last edited by Three Wolves In Snow; 03-28-2016 at 12:31 PM..
The awesome thing is we're about to find out what happens in the US if you raise wages to first world standards. Do you we flourish like Australia? (I see no reason why we don't.) Or does it kill the economy? Once California proves you can pay US workers a decent wage and still make a profit other states will have a much harder time keeping their wages low.
Its not really a fair comparison, since Australia is only about 11% rural, while the United States is somewhere between 25%-30% rural.
While a business in an city might be able to sustain paying $15/hr wages, it would kill many businesses and consumers in sparsely populated areas of the US. For example, how can a small-town grocery store, the only nearby source of food for some isolated communities, supposed to absorb wage hikes like this? They already have to charge a premium because they don't have the turnover of grocery stores in bigger cities. This will force them to increase prices even further, putting a financial strain on everyone in the community, or fire their employees and work more hours themselves.
Or worse, they'll be forced out of business entirely. My family lives in a rural area. If the local grocery store closes and they need a gallon of milk, their 6 mile trip just became a 60 mile trip.
These minimum wage laws certainly have good intentions, but an avalanche of negative side-effects might come with them. This is why minimum wage laws need to be passed locally, not state-or-nationwide. What might work in Los Angeles might not work in rural Wyoming, and forcing a square peg into a round hole just doesn't work.
I already did, Life. I don't want to bother answering it again, because if you didn't listen the first time there is no reason to assume you would subsequent times.
What nonsense. I can't wait until the world's seventh largest economy insists employers pay a living wage and does just fine economically. Folks like you will tell everyone to not believe their lying eyes though and insist wages everywhere else in the US should remain substandard. There will be a million excuses for why it won't work in Everywhere Else, USA even though it works in California.
That economy had little or no competition for the high-paying, capital-intensive heavy-industrial work that generated the big bucks when I was coming of age; This is no longer true.
The unfortunate fact is that our competitors now produce products just as good as ours, and at lower cost because thy don't have to deal with all manner of government interference and regulatory folderol.
A de-industrialized economy doesn't need more meddlesome, lawyers, biased "teachers", and bureaucrats. It needs people to do the non-challenging, unfulfilling work, and people to supervise them, at a price determined by the law of supply and demand.
Looks like you're elected, and you brought this upon yourself; have fun!
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