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The original point is is that when minimum wage is too low, people need gov't assistance to survive. Raising minimum wage would reduce gov't dependence, I'd think you'd be all for that
And essentially, WalMart and McDonalds are the "factory jobs" of this era, for people who are cut out for no more than that, if you don't pay a subsistence wage, some will just turn to crime, which hurts everybody
Yeah, I get ya, but its a balance. There will definitely be businesses whose margin is so thin, they will have to cut back on hours and employees if it were to go to $12 an hour. There would also be businesses who just wouldn't survive. You give some, but take it other areas. I would be all for it if small businesses were to get some type of temporary subsidizing if they could prove that it would effect them too greatly.
State wide minimum wage is a bad idea. When CA set their rate rise schedule, that's fine for San Fran, LA, San Diego but for the rural areas? It is a job killer and business closer. When you raise the cost of something you get less of it. Anyone denying a negative impact on jobs in say, Yuma where the impact will be greater than Phoenix is blind. Raising the minimum wage spurs automation which kills jobs. Vote for a candidate who has a pro economic growth agenda because a growing economy throws off all kinds of positives such as wage increase without government mandate. Just my opinion of course.
Why was it not a problem to pay the factory workers of 40-50 years ago a livable wage but it's a problem to pay the same type of employment offered today one? Walmart, fast food - they are basically the jobs today what factories were years ago and no one complained that people then shouldn't make enough to live on. Why have we decided that the people who work those jobs now are not worthy enough to make enough to live on? I honestly would love to hear an answer to this. It was not a problem years ago if someone wanted to work at a factory and labor in the same job for years and years until they retired - why have we switched our mentality now?
Location: Live:Downtown Phoenix, AZ/Work:Greater Los Angeles, CA
27,606 posts, read 14,596,838 times
Reputation: 9169
Quote:
Originally Posted by sandy6879
Why was it not a problem to pay the factory workers of 40-50 years ago a livable wage but it's a problem to pay the same type of employment offered today one? Walmart, fast food - they are basically the jobs today what factories were years ago and no one complained that people then shouldn't make enough to live on. Why have we decided that the people who work those jobs now are not worthy enough to make enough to live on? I honestly would love to hear an answer to this. It was not a problem years ago if someone wanted to work at a factory and labor in the same job for years and years until they retired - why have we switched our mentality now?
Minimum wage increase helps those at the bottom keep up with cost of living. Housing costs at all levels (including craphole apartments) have increased at a higher % than minimum wage has, in 2001 AZ min wage was the federal $5.15/hr and you could get a studio apt for $300/month. Now, AZ min is $8.05/hr, a 56% increase where a studio around here is now $600/month, a 100% increase; this has caused an increase in the need for welfare for people who are working, to top off their ever meager wages. Raising it would prob see a decrease in welfare spending, which I know you are all for
Those are some good points, and I would like to believe that the number of welfare recipients would decrease ... however, that has not been the case with any of the past minimum wage increases. In fact, during the 1980s when the minimum wage was $3.35 and wasn't increased for nearly 10 years, the U.S. had one of the most prosperous economic periods in history. Of course, the booming '80s economy was attributed to many factors, and the minimum wage probably played a minimal part (no pun intended), but there isn't any proven facts stating that the economy improves or there are few people on public assistance when the minimum wage is raised.
I believe you proved the point about how minimum wage increases are synonymous with price increases when you compared the housing costs then vs. now. Raising the wage in almost all cases will lead to further inflation of goods & services, then we're back to square one: the lower income people will still be poor and will struggle to make ends meet even with higher wages, and will likely depend on public assistance. The real solution is to obtain the education & skills necessary to move out of the menial jobs & into better ones ... however, that has to come from individual motivation, not from gov't subsidies or more laws/regulations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JGMotorsport64
The wrong question is why do poor people get a raise when middle class people don't, that's arguing for peanuts.
It's a legitimate question. Why should the ones on the bottom of the totem pole with few skills and little education be given raises every few years when many office & managerial jobs that are considered middle income & require more skill & education have barely seen a raise in many years? Raising the minimum wage to $12 will likely be followed by a raise in the cost of living, but the middle income earners will likely see no benefit for them, which will result in the middle class struggling even further.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jgustav
It is a poor practice to increase the minimum wage to make it at a level someone can use as their sole source of income or even attempt to raise a family using it. The minimum wage jobs should normally go to unskilled workers in high school and the low 20's completing their education. AZ is already over the federal minimum wage of 7.25 found in states like Utah and Texas.
Absolutely! The majority of minimum wage workers are high school & college students who are single & still live with their parents. It's ridiculous to believe that we need to raise the minimum wage so that people can afford to support their families. If somebody is only earning minimum wage, they have no business having a spouse & kids to support. Give me a friggin' break!
Quote:
Originally Posted by sandy6879
Why was it not a problem to pay the factory workers of 40-50 years ago a livable wage but it's a problem to pay the same type of employment offered today one? Walmart, fast food - they are basically the jobs today what factories were years ago and no one complained that people then shouldn't make enough to live on. Why have we decided that the people who work those jobs now are not worthy enough to make enough to live on? I honestly would love to hear an answer to this. It was not a problem years ago if someone wanted to work at a factory and labor in the same job for years and years until they retired - why have we switched our mentality now?
Well, several factors are involved, including the fact that the education & skill levels were not as high 40 or 50 years ago like they are now. Back then, factory & other blue collar jobs were the middle class positions, and the people with higher skill/education levels usually held the higher paid positions.
Another thing to consider is the standard of living is much higher now ... and that is largely due to technology being a major player in society. 40 years ago, touch tone phones and answering machines were considered high tech, but now people feel like they need to have all the latest gadgets (smart phones, ipods, etc., etc., etc.), which all cost a pretty penny. The bottom line is: people are spending a hell of a lot more money now than 40 or 50 years ago, and much of the spending is on frivolous items. A person who makes $100K a year could be broke just by splurging on technology, but a person earning $30K per year could still have money in the bank by living frugally.
Could you make ends meet on less than $17,000 per year? With the current minimum wage (2080 hours x 8 = 16,744), you would need to find some kind of housing for less than $400 per month. This is where HUD and Welfare become necessary.
Even at $12 an hour in 2020 and even if a person worked 2,080 hours for the entire year, it's still less than $25,000 per year.
I remember my Sociology professor lecturing on how the American economy is a pyramid shape with the very rich at the top of the pyramid. The professor also stated that the bottom strata (the poor) would continue to increase in size as more of the lower middle class would also lose earning potential and would be reclassified as poor.
And that's setting aside the fact that it's rare to get more than 20-30 hours on a regular basis in most minimum wage jobs. Even if you do go higher, it's utterly inconsistent and subject to the whims of some idiot at corporate with a calculator trying to make numbers fit on a spreadsheet.
I worked a retail job for 5 years before getting a software engineering job. Out of 225 employees in the building, hourly people who got 38+ hours numbered less than a dozen (basically full time when accounting for a 15 minute buffer in shift length to prevent incidental minutes here and there of overtime). I was lucky enough to be one of them. The rest were 15-25 hours per week. And it was definitely not for lack of work to do - there were always far too few workers with way too much work to do. It seems to be a corporate game to try to find that perfect balance of enough workers to spread the hours budget out between so as to not need to give anyone full-time hours, but few enough workers that they are never idle for even 5 seconds; in fact, their work is literally never done and just rolls over from one day to the next even for those who are total balls-to-the-wall badasses at their job.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FirebirdCamaro1220
You forget that there are fewer good paying jobs than there are people to fill them, so it's not always about "not trying to improve yourself", as there are no openings for something better, one of the main causes is people who already have good jobs are working overtime, and waiting until after 70 to retire, so the extra workers in those positions aren't needed. So it becomes a choice of working a minimum wage job because it's all there is, or starving to death waiting for something better. Get real people, it's not all losers with no ambition. There are only so many seats at the "good paying jobs" table, so when those jobs are filled, what are the people who got left out supposed to do?
Agreed, and I said exactly this in the third post of the thread. I'm starting to think 99% of my posts are invisible. "Get some education so you can get a better job." First, that doesn't work anymore. And even if it does, the heinous debt cancels the result out. Second, there are only so many high paying jobs anyway. Way too much demand for those jobs, but by far not enough supply.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Valley Native
... but a person earning $30K per year could still have money in the bank by living frugally.
That was exactly me a few years back. I was renting a room in a nice house in a nice area of Santa Clara (Silicon Valley), had 3 or 4 bills that were fixed in size, and gave myself a fixed budget for each two week pay period. I was happy and not left wanting (except to live in my own place of course). I was getting about $34k/year and yet still saved $700-$800 per month. Entirely possible without being unhappy.
However, then a girlfriend was added....
Last edited by PhoenixSomeday; 09-15-2016 at 12:40 PM..
Location: Live:Downtown Phoenix, AZ/Work:Greater Los Angeles, CA
27,606 posts, read 14,596,838 times
Reputation: 9169
Quote:
Originally Posted by Valley Native
Those are some good points, and I would like to believe that the number of welfare recipients would decrease ... however, that has not been the case with any of the past minimum wage increases. In fact, during the 1980s when the minimum wage was $3.35 and wasn't increased for nearly 10 years, the U.S. had one of the most prosperous economic periods in history. Of course, the booming '80s economy was attributed to many factors, and the minimum wage probably played a minimal part (no pun intended), but there isn't any proven facts stating that the economy improves or there are few people on public assistance when the minimum wage is raised.
I believe you proved the point about how minimum wage increases are synonymous with price increases when you compared the housing costs then vs. now. Raising the wage in almost all cases will lead to further inflation of goods & services, then we're back to square one: the lower income people will still be poor and will struggle to make ends meet even with higher wages, and will likely depend on public assistance. The real solution is to obtain the education & skills necessary to move out of the menial jobs & into better ones ... however, that has to come from individual motivation, not from gov't subsidies or more laws/regulations.
It's a legitimate question. Why should the ones on the bottom of the totem pole with few skills and little education be given raises every few years when many office & managerial jobs that are considered middle income & require more skill & education have barely seen a raise in many years? Raising the minimum wage to $12 will likely be followed by a raise in the cost of living, but the middle income earners will likely see no benefit for them, which will result in the middle class struggling even further.
Absolutely! The majority of minimum wage workers are high school & college students who are single & still live with their parents. It's ridiculous to believe that we need to raise the minimum wage so that people can afford to support their families. If somebody is only earning minimum wage, they have no business having a spouse & kids to support. Give me a friggin' break!
Well, several factors are involved, including the fact that the education & skill levels were not as high 40 or 50 years ago like they are now. Back then, factory & other blue collar jobs were the middle class positions, and the people with higher skill/education levels usually held the higher paid positions.
Another thing to consider is the standard of living is much higher now ... and that is largely due to technology being a major player in society. 40 years ago, touch tone phones and answering machines were considered high tech, but now people feel like they need to have all the latest gadgets (smart phones, ipods, etc., etc., etc.), which all cost a pretty penny. The bottom line is: people are spending a hell of a lot more money now than 40 or 50 years ago, and much of the spending is on frivolous items. A person who makes $100K a year could be broke just by splurging on technology, but a person earning $30K per year could still have money in the bank by living frugally.
It'd be nice if you acknowledged one of my later posts where I mentioned that there are fewer good paying jobs available than there are people who want them. Why do you think we have so many college graduates with legitimate degrees (not humanities/liberal arts but marketable degrees) struggling to find work in their chosen field? It's because the people who already have those jobs are working 15-25 hrs/wk of unpaid overtime AND waiting until after 70 to retire, so vacancies aren't opening up to be filled
Why was it not a problem to pay the factory workers of 40-50 years ago a livable wage but it's a problem to pay the same type of employment offered today one? Walmart, fast food - they are basically the jobs today what factories were years ago and no one complained that people then shouldn't make enough to live on. Why have we decided that the people who work those jobs now are not worthy enough to make enough to live on? I honestly would love to hear an answer to this. It was not a problem years ago if someone wanted to work at a factory and labor in the same job for years and years until they retired - why have we switched our mentality now?
Why do you assume that? Why would they not be compared to the same higher paying, non-degree requiring jobs of today, that some have a union for.
It'd be nice if you acknowledged one of my later posts where I mentioned that there are fewer good paying jobs available than there are people who want them. Why do you think we have so many college graduates with legitimate degrees (not humanities/liberal arts but marketable degrees) struggling to find work in their chosen field? It's because the people who already have those jobs are working 15-25 hrs/wk of unpaid overtime AND waiting until after 70 to retire, so vacancies aren't opening up to be filled
Well, I can't disagree with the fact that good paying jobs are hard to find ... however, why do college graduates feel like they need to start at the top? I had to start at the bottom & work my up like practically everybody else. I've been at my company for 25 years, and when I was fairly new, I took advantage of the tuition reimbursement program that my firm offered. I worked by day and went to college at night to earn my business degree. During that time, I went from answering the phones to eventually a management position. It didn't happen overnight, and I'm not a high paid corporate executive by any means, but I have a decent paying job, and it was accomplished through hard work, ambition, and determination. A college degree isn't (and shouldn't be) a guarantee to land a good paying job, especially right away.
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