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But why do you have more sympathy for the ruling class than the working class? Are you a member of the ruling donor class yourself? Dont talk about food carts on the sidewalk. Its the Chamber of Commerce and other big shots who whine incessantly about minimum wages, just like they did in the 1950s and 1960s during Eisenhower and JFK. Then they use the "food carts on the sidewalk" to hide behind to attract supporters to their cause which is to squeeze the working man of America as much as possible.
Oh you can go back farther then the 50s and 60s. You can go back more than 150 years ago, the same people complaining about raising the minimum wage today would have been defending slavery and justifying it by saying the slave owners could not afford to pay the workers a living wage!
After that, they would have been complaining that we cannot survive without child labor. Its good for the children!
They always have an excuse. But in the end it is pure greed.
Nope, that's not at all the way it would work. Around my area, the economy is crazy good right now. There are "help wanted" signs all over the place in fast food and dept store businesses. Many of those jobs go unfilled because the job-seeker pool chooses the businesses that will pay them the most (obviously). So the place offering the lowest wage doesn't get any applicants. Guess what they do to remedy that problem? (hint: they don't buy slaves)
Half the problem with you guys is that you think everyone is a helpless victim. They are not. Have some faith in people. Unless there is something wrong with them physically or mentally, or unless the economy is in a huge depression, which it is not, they will generally figure out what they need to do to get a better wage. Around here right now, it is just a matter of walking to the business next door if you don't like your wage.
Look, you have to choose which side you are on. The workers or the capital owners. The workers are not organized while capital is. When workers are disorganized, they are like lone rangers up against a well equipped platoon. We know who is going to win. And we see what has happened. Male wages have stagnated for 40 years while the people at the very top has a higher share of national income today than any time in the last 100 years. This idea that workers are better off in a dog-eat-dog society where a few ultra wealthy elites buy the politicians and control the economy is really way off base. The power lies where the big money is. And Joe Sixpack is losing.
I don't have sympathy for anyone. It's a matter of numbers. Some people understand them and some do not. Some understand them but think that the numbers will magically transform themselves if we pass a law that directs them to transform.
What you people are doing is attempting to legislate that PI is not 3.1415 blah blah blah, but that it is really 9.4547 blah blah blah. Doesn't work that way. Something has to make up for that legislated change of basic economics. And it always tends to be the taxpayers in the end that foots that bill. Johnny is going to get twenty-five dollars an hour for cleaning toilets and playing with his smartphone. Frank, the owner of the restaurant, is going to go in the red because he isn't making enough to pay Johnny's wage. He will then complain that this government mandated wage is unfair to small business owners. The government then will scheme up some more legislation to fix what they broke in the first place with some sort of subsidy. And on and on it will go. In the end, it is ALWAYS John Q. Public that pays for the stupidity and takes it up the hind end at tax time, while Johnny the toilet scrubber gets engineer's wages and Frank goes to the poorhouse.
Perhaps good ol' Frank should listen to Franklin D Roosevelt, the most popular president in the last 100 years:
Quote:
In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
Correction: The dems want slavery back so they can use illegals for cheap/free labor while claiming "[I]illegals do jobs no one else wants[/I]".
Seriously, does any american want to clean houses or work farms. Did you see the picture of the staff that work at Mara la go. If they weren't illegals then they were H2B workers. No americans there. And you know why because H2B workers work for less.
01-21-2018, 08:33 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by natalie469
Seriously, does any american want to clean houses or work farms. Did you see the picture of the staff that work at Mara la go. If they weren't illegals then they were H2B workers. No americans there. And you know why because H2B workers work for less.
Well, at Mar-a-lago, it's because they refuse to hire Americans, and go out of their way to avoid finding any qualified American workers.
The guests there expect eastern European slaves to wait on them, not Shantelle from across town.
Broadly speaking though, you're right. Citizens long ago discovered that disability fraud paid okay and was far preferable to manual labor like cleaning toilets or picking crops.
Nope, that's not at all the way it would work. Around my area, the economy is crazy good right now. There are "help wanted" signs all over the place in fast food and dept store businesses. Many of those jobs go unfilled because the job-seeker pool chooses the businesses that will pay them the most (obviously). So the place offering the lowest wage doesn't get any applicants. Guess what they do to remedy that problem? (hint: they don't buy slaves)
Half the problem with you guys is that you think everyone is a helpless victim. They are not. Have some faith in people. Unless there is something wrong with them physically or mentally, or unless the economy is in a huge depression, which it is not, they will generally figure out what they need to do to get a better wage. Around here right now, it is just a matter of walking to the business next door if you don't like your wage.
Nonsense, I don't think anyone is a helpless victim but your excuse for not needing a minimum wage is that we currently have low employment. Well guess what, it isn't always like that and we can't just roll out a minimum wage law during periods of high unemployment and many employers have repeatedly proven themselves unwilling to paying one penny more than they are required to by law.
My parents lived through the depression before there was a minimum wage. My dad was a factory worker whose wages were cut 50% overnight and he was told that he was lucky that he still had a job. How would you fare if your wages were cut 50% tomorrow?
During the last recession I'm pretty sure that there were employers who would have loved to cut wages 50% if they hadn't been restrained by minimum wage laws. I think it's a mistake to assume that corporations care about anything other than profit, that's why we have wage and labor laws, environmental, food safety and other regulations. It's not some kind of socialist conspiracy, it's about guaranteeing us some degree of protection against unconstrained corporate greed.
Meanwhile in Dallas (Texas minimum wage $7.25 per hour) restaurants come and go ALL THE TIME. It is an ultra-competitive market, and it is very hard for independent places, once the novelty wears off.
So nice try.
Precisely. This is nothing new. The restaurant industry is notorious for high turnover & the majority of restaurants don't make it. High overhead. I work with restaurant operators & I hear every day how difficult it is to open & maintain a restaurant. It is not surprising in the least if a restaurant closes. Many operators want to over extend themselves & keep adding things & I tell them all the time, don't do it. Keep it simple, keep it simple, keep it simple. A hood system alone is ridiculously expensive, not to mention plumbing, licensing, inventory, etc. I used to want to open a small restaurant until I started the job I do now & you couldn't pay me enough to try it. No thanks. I would stick with opening a bar instead of a restaurant.
But raising the min wage does have negative economic effects. But min wage has to be sometimes raised to match inflation. And without min wage laws American workers would be making $0.25 per hour like they did in 1938 (and $0.25 per hour wages would be worse for America than any $15.00 per hour min wage law.)
You were making some reasonable points until you veered off into hyperbole in bold.
But here's an idea, reduce the Sf minimum wage to the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour and see how many restaurants go out of business because they can't find help who will work for that.
That's a silly statement. If they can't get people for $7.25 per hour, they'll do what all business do....raise wages on their own.
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