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.
They haven't even fully instituted the wage increase yet. Gonna have to wait a couple more years before we start seeing the real impact.
This isn't rocket science or voodoo science.
Raising the minimum wage from $10 to $15 an hour is no different from the perspective of the business than the Gov stepping in and taxing them $11,000 a year for every employee they have. It does the exact same thing to them. They don't care if they are paying the employee or the government. They are paying more for the same productivity. They will find ways offset this the same way. They will reduce labor costs (cut hours/fire people), They will try to retain the "best" employees and extract the same amount of productivity in fewer hours with less people (this doesn't work so great in the fast food world). They will raise prices. Automation becomes more affordable.
They simply cannot absorb the extra cost the already razor thin margins. If a small restaurant has 10 min wage employees and they wind up paying an extra 100K a year in labor costs, many will go under.
To make it worse, restaurants not in the middle of Seattle will be constrained on how much they can raise prices because they will be competing with restaurants in cities that did not raise the min wage.
And the end result? Closed restaurants. Fewer jobs. To top it all off, once the skilled labor unions use this to negotiate a big raise, putting a lot more money chasing the same goods, lifting prices on everything higher, the lowly min wage worker will be right back where they started in terms of purchasing power. At least the ones that still have jobs will.
I think the worst part is that its going to hurt the very people its supposed to help. The least educated low skill workers will be priced out of a job simply because they cannot produce enough to pay their own wages. Of course those are the are mostly "colored" people so we don't really care about that do we?
Also a little known fact is that the first minimum wage laws were initiated in the South to make hiring black people unattractive. Blacks were willing to work for less money than whites. The business owners in the South hired blacks because in the end green was their favorite color. White unemployment rose until lawmakers stepped in set a minimum wage that priced blacks out of the jobs. It was done in Canada to stop Japanese immigrants. It was done in South Africa during the Apartheid. It was done in Australia to stop Chinese immigrants. Those people understood well what the min wage does. It prices the most needy portion of our society out of work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57
You act like $15 is a ton of money and that people don't deserve it. $15 will get you one, maybe two tickets into a movie. It'll buy you a burger, fries and a beer. It'll buy you a few weeks worthof tokens for angry birds or farmville. It's not what it used to be. We're getting eaten alive by inflation & stagnant wages. Minimum wage is one of the few weapons workers as a whole have left against it. We've willfully & consciously destroyed all our other means of combating it.
Where I work, wage rates are set by a formula derived from what our peers & competitors pay their similar workers. If sector raises salaries we have to also raise salaries or else no one qualified will apply. This is also how the retail sector worked when I worked there going on 8 years ago. Walmart paid in the range Target paid. If one them initiated raises the other would follow suit within a reasonable time.
Much like real estate, it has little to do with rationality or hard data of what the particular elements or factors involved are worth.
Some of you have some weird notions about economics. You're almost making a labor theory of value argument. The amount of value an employee adds is not fixed & the value if goods and services have almost nothing to do with how much work goes into it. If that were the case, the same jobs would pay the same everywhere.
Your entire comment is blathering about feelings and very little to do with economics. You should review again who has the weird notions. There is not a single point in your entire post.
By the way, the FED would love to see some inflation right now. They have done everything they could short of dropping cash in the streets to stave off the looming deflation.
You act like people deserve things they do not earn. If they earned $15 by adding enough value, they already would be receiving $15.
Why should minimum wage earners go to a movie? That is a bad decision. They should save their money.
Why should minimum wage earners eat out? And buy alcohol? That is a bad decision. They should save their money.
Why should minimum wage earners waste money on angry birds or farmville? That is a bad decision. They should save their money.
Currently running somewhere between 0% and maybe 2%, depending on the calculation method and source. That is nowhere near "getting eaten alive by inflation."
Sounds like equilibrium has been achieved. Economics works.
...Except for the fact that employers are rational and pay the wage needed to keep the workforce desired, and employees are rational and switch jobs if there is a good opportunity.
Well yeah and why should they eat, or wear clothes or even breathe the same air as the rest of us... damned wastrels, right miss sporty?
They haven't even fully instituted the wage increase yet. Gonna have to wait a couple more years before we start seeing the real impact.
This isn't rocket science or voodoo science.
Raising the minimum wage from $10 to $15 an hour is no different from the perspective of the business than the Gov stepping in and taxing them $11,000 a year for every employee they have. It does the exact same thing to them. They don't care if they are paying the employee or the government. They are paying more for the same productivity. They will find ways offset this the same way. They will reduce labor costs (cut hours/fire people), They will try to retain the "best" employees and extract the same amount of productivity in fewer hours with less people (this doesn't work so great in the fast food world). They will raise prices. Automation becomes more affordable.
They simply cannot absorb the extra cost the already razor thin margins. If a small restaurant has 10 min wage employees and they wind up paying an extra 100K a year in labor costs, many will go under.
To make it worse, restaurants not in the middle of Seattle will be constrained on how much they can raise prices because they will be competing with restaurants in cities that did not raise the min wage.
And the end result? Closed restaurants. Fewer jobs. To top it all off, once the skilled labor unions use this to negotiate a big raise, putting a lot more money chasing the same goods, lifting prices on everything higher, the lowly min wage worker will be right back where they started in terms of purchasing power. At least the ones that still have jobs will.
I think the worst part is that its going to hurt the very people its supposed to help. The least educated low skill workers will be priced out of a job simply because they cannot produce enough to pay their own wages. Of course those are the are mostly "colored" people so we don't really care about that do we?
Also a little known fact is that the first minimum wage laws were initiated in the South to make hiring black people unattractive. Blacks were willing to work for less money than whites. The business owners in the South hired blacks because in the end green was their favorite color. White unemployment rose until lawmakers stepped in set a minimum wage that priced blacks out of the jobs. It was done in Canada to stop Japanese immigrants. It was done in South Africa during the Apartheid. It was done in Australia to stop Chinese immigrants. Those people understood well what the min wage does. It prices the most needy portion of our society out of work.
There are almost 500 posts in this thread, at least 1/3 of them contain factual data disproving most if not all of the claims you are making, you should go back and read a few of them
They haven't even fully instituted the wage increase yet. Gonna have to wait a couple more years before we start seeing the real impact.
Your entire comment is blathering about feelings and very little to do with economics. You should review again who has the weird notions. There is not a single point in your entire post.
By the way, the FED would love to see some inflation right now. They have done everything they could short of dropping cash in the streets to stave off the looming deflation.
It has nothing to do with feelings. People should be able to make decent wages for a honest day's work. Again, most of you see A JOB as some sort of entitlement. What the heck is wrong with you?
We have deflation in ipads and other Asian-manufactured electronic crap. The things that matter cost much more - housing, health care, education.
"They should learn some skills" you say. Okay, fine. Then support tuition-free college instead, at least community college. But no, you'll complain about minimum wage then complain when people are in distress due to student loans. So which is it? What should they do? Because it sounds like you're creating a situation where they can't win.
"They should learn some skills" you say. Okay, fine. Then support tuition-free college instead, at least community college. But no, you'll complain about minimum wage then complain when people are in distress due to student loans. So which is it? What should they do? Because it sounds like you're creating a situation where they can't win.
So it doesn't matter if minimum wage were $15/hr, those "non-college" people would still be unable to meet their "needs" because they would have no jobs. That's why I'm against just raising minimum wage instead of raising skill levels, whether the wage is $100/hr or $10/hr, if they aren't hired, it might as well be $0/hr.
I have no issues with community colleges, for the most part, they were free to me (state provides free community college for high schoolers who partake a state program). You can argue that other states should have programs like that, and I would agree. I also find community colleges to be pretty affordable... If they want to argue price point, then argue that. But they waste effort arguing over minimum wage, which even if they got passed, they will eventually be squeezed out of the job market anyways.
The entire $15/hr movement, I find it ridiculous because the entire time they talk about it, they sound like they have no clue how to move out of their situation, it's like climbing onto the table on a sinking ship, the table is still getting lower along with everything else. All they see is the water in the room, and not the ship sinking. They don't see "why" they are in poverty, only that they don't have enough "income". They think they can fix the income problem without addressing the reason they they are paid so little in the first place.
Really, what good is a $15 minimum to a minimum wage worker? Everything will just adjust to the new minimum wage, and they are still stuck being minimum wage workers.
There are almost 500 posts in this thread, at least 1/3 of them contain factual data disproving most if not all of the claims you are making, you should go back and read a few of them
Well I read the first few hundred and none of them contained such information. I doubt any of them do because most of what I stated is what has happened in the past.
Well I read the first few hundred and none of them contained such information. I doubt any of them do because most of what I stated is what has happened in the past.
You offered a few unsubstantiated 'opinions' about the horrors of a $15 an hour minimum wage. Others have offered sourced data about what really happens when wages are increased, and what has happened so far in Seattle because of their wage increase does not reflect what you are claiming.
For God's sake the minimum wage is slated to be $15 an hour in SEVEN YEARS. If a business can't adjust to that, then maybe they need to look at their business plan. The price of meat doubled in 5 years, the cost of food comprises a greater part of COGS than do wages but I didn't see all this hand wringing doom and gloom nonsense over that, want to know why? It's because all businesses in the sector experienced the same price increases so they could raise prices without losing competitive advantage, and that is what will happen with wage increases too.
It has nothing to do with feelings. People should be able to make decent wages for a honest day's work. Again, most of you see A JOB as some sort of entitlement. What the heck is wrong with you?
We have deflation in ipads and other Asian-manufactured electronic crap. The things that matter cost much more - housing, health care, education.
"They should learn some skills" you say. Okay, fine. Then support tuition-free college instead, at least community college. But no, you'll complain about minimum wage then complain when people are in distress due to student loans. So which is it? What should they do? Because it sounds like you're creating a situation where they can't win.
You are very confusing. People supporting a $15 hour job are the ones thinking that a job is an entitlement where the government should guarantee some minimum wage. Thats an entitlement attitude.
The cost of housing climbing so high is a direct result of easy money loans directed by the government. They created a housing bubble and despite the recent downturn we are still overpriced and back to handing out subprime mortgages.
The costs of health care climbing so much is a direct result of Obamacare. Another government program that is having the exact opposite effect from its intention. People like you were arguing that we had to have that because people deserve to have healthcare.
The costs of education are shooting through the moon because of the availability of student loans. Any time you get more and more money chasing the same amount of a product the price will climb to soak up that extra cash. All these easy money loans for school are driving the price of schools higher and higher exactly like what happened with housing when we gave anybody a mortgage. You don't have to go to college to get a good job. In fact a lot of people have been priced out of college but bigger loans are so easy to get and they have been brainwashed into thinking that a college degree is necessary to get a good job so they windup graduating college with a monstrous debt burden. When they move into higher paying jobs, instead of buying a home or increasing retirement savings they are paying off student loan debt.
Free college tuition is a pie in the sky idea that simply cannot happen. There is no such thing as free because people don't work for free. They can win. They just have to go learn a skill with on the job training. They can join the military or reserves. They can work as an apprentice and learn a trade or go to one of the many very affordable trade schools. They can start a business. They can self learn skills from reading or the internet. There are more.
Free college tuition is a pie in the sky idea that simply cannot happen.
It was either free in the case of city colleges or practically free in the case of state colleges & universities until the late 1970s, early 80s. What's happened since then are state subsidies have gone to near-zero. This is not a case of something that is impossible - it is something most other 1st world countries already do & that the U.S. actually USED TO DO!
Quote:
They just have to go learn a skill with on the job training.
Most employers expect you to be fully or at least mostly trained on day 1. In my wife's current job, they gave her a single full day of training, then expected her to do the job on her own. If she didn't, she was gone. She's very highly educated and could do it, but a lot of people don't have that capability.
Quote:
They can join the military or reserves.
The military does not need that many people these days. Our big wars have wound down & they just have to keep up with replacing outgoing service-members. If you have health problem or a something on your record, they will reject you.
Quote:
They can work as an apprentice and learn a trade or go to one of the many very affordable trade schools.
This is not as easy as you think. It can take years just to get your foot in the door for something like plumbing or electrician apprenticeships. You need a connection.
Quote:
They can start a business.
With what startup capital? Even a food truck will take at least $50K worth of capital to get started.
Quote:
They can self learn skills from reading or the internet.
It was either free in the case of city colleges or practically free in the case of state colleges & universities until the late 1970s, early 80s. What's happened since then are state subsidies have gone to near-zero. This is not a case of something that is impossible - it is something most other 1st world countries already do & that the U.S. actually USED TO DO!
The state also offers a scholarship that "funds to eligible graduates of A+ designated high schools who attend a participating public community college or vocational/technical school, or certain private two-year vocational/technical schools." So they don't even have any out of pocket expenses for associates degree or vocational school for trades, or part of a 4 year degree.
Quote:
Most employers expect you to be fully or at least mostly trained on day 1. In my wife's current job, they gave her a single full day of training, then expected her to do the job on her own. If she didn't, she was gone. She's very highly educated and could do it, but a lot of people don't have that capability.
schools are slowly changing that, here they are building a center where local high school students can go to learn those "future jobs"
Quote:
CAPS was designed to better prepare students for college and the 21st century workforce through partnerships with local businesses. CAPS provides students with educational experiences in four career tracks: advanced manufacturing and engineering, technology solutions and computer code writing, health and medical services, and global business and entrepreneurship.
So from manufacturing to IT to healthcare or small business... local students have a chance to get into those jobs before even "college" comes into play.
Really, there are a lot of things high school kids can do, the fact that many of them ignore these opportunities doesn't mean they aren't there. There really isn't a good reason why high school grads can't make at least $15/hr as it is today if they had any kind of motivation in life. They don't need someone to rig the minimum wage so they can have a "living" wage. They have a living wage because they took what was provided to them and improved themselves to be worth $15
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.
