Minimum wage is an issue of character. (student loan, expenses, employment)

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by redguard57

I don't really know what you mean by people "worth" hiring. Wages, and wealth in general, do not have anything to do with the human value of any particular person. Wages and salary don't even say much about whether someone is competent in their job, since the job market is only partially meritocratic.

At everywhere I've worked, wages are set by a kind of consensus. We ask "what are our regional competitors paying for this job title/class?" and set something in the same range. A little more or a little less.

Therefore, raising the minimum wage puts upward pressure on wages in the lower bands since that consensus will rise. That does cost a few of the lowest end jobs, but it pays off macro-economically through economic activity by those whose got raises, since in the lower bands they put everything they earn back into the economy.

We live in inflationary world. Fixed wage rates make no sense in this world. In my opinion we should have pegged minimum wage to CPI a long time ago, and stop having this argument once and for all. If the $7.25 minimum was pegged to CPI it would currently be $9.23. Had we done it in 1971 when the minimum wage was $1.60, it would currently be $10.34.

Had we done so in 1938 it'd be around $4.55 today.

[ddm2k]

Originally Posted by mathjak107

While we need these essential low paying jobs we don’t need that worker ....the low paying jobs tend to have a big labor pool to replace them with as usually these are jobs anyone can do.

The more difficult and specialized the job the smaller the labor pool is that can do them.

That which we can’t or won’t do for ourselves tends to pay better

And we tend to treat them as such. Both customers and managers are guilty of this. And we curse them for the high turnover in those positions. That's why onboarding training has been shortened to nearly nothing, to the detriment of both the product and the consumer.

We don't respect labor, we don't respect their output, we don't respect those positions. That's not healthy. Corporations solidify this dangerous attitude by saying how "happy" their associates are to "serve" you. This model leads to customers berating employees, abusing the "customer is always right" philosophy.

I don't work in this area anymore but I haven't forgotten it. I consider myself lucky that I worked when there was a shred of respect left for the people that helped you find an item, apply a discount, or provide technical support. Today, with the "Karen" culture, recording employees as you're harassing them, and posting everything to social media in order to get a knee-jerk reaction from the company and fire the employee, it's everyone against the FMW (or near FMW) worker. Even if the employee was following the handbook and upholding company policy in the interest of (Target, or Walmart, or whomever that signs their paycheck) they can still be fired without investigation on a single-sided viral embellishment of a customer's dissatisfaction with a policy that the company itself wrote.

[Hemlock140]

Many public agencies require that any contractor they hire is paying their workers "prevailing wages" which is basically union scale, whether union or not. Look at a few examples from ours (King County, WA), and it's pretty clear that a certified welder electrician at $90/hr is worth more than a drywall taper at $62, which is worth more than flaggers at $43. Minimum wage is obviously not an issue, for jobs requiring skills.




https://secure.lni.wa.gov/wagelookup/

[pbjyum]

I guess I am in the minority of people that believe there shouldn't be a minimum wage at all (gets behind flame shield)...

[ddm2k]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

Many public agencies require that any contractor they hire is paying their workers "prevailing wages" which is basically union scale, whether union or not. Look at a few examples from ours (King County, WA), and it's pretty clear that a certified welder electrician at $90/hr is worth more than a drywall taper at $62, which is worth more than flaggers at $43. Minimum wage is obviously not an issue, for jobs requiring skills.
https://secure.lni.wa.gov/wagelookup/

I consider minimum wage and prevailing wage to be similar wage floors that were established in different ways. FMW is not necessarily skilled, prevailing wage assumes a higher union wage to match. Skill is assumed, however, it is debatable whether even full scale warehouse selectors fall under skilled labor.

That doesn't mean they can't make bank.

Would you rather work at a $17/hour RTW warehouse, a baseline of 400 cases/hr, capped at 30 hours/week, and impossible PFP incentives

or

$22/hour union warehouse, flat production quota of 200 cases/hr, and double time after 49 hrs?

[redguard57]

Originally Posted by EDS_

Had we done so in 1938 it'd be around $4.55 today.

And if we'd done so before that it'd be zero.

[redguard57]

Originally Posted by pbjyum

I guess I am in the minority of people that believe there shouldn't be a minimum wage at all (gets behind flame shield)...

We had a world like that not that long ago. If you want to know what life was like without it, crack open a history book.

There are some countries that don't have a MW... get this - Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland. LOLOLOLOOL! https://www.investopedia.com/article...imum-wages.asp Iirc Germany only recently instituted one.

The thing is, which can be seen on this thread, is that America is not culturally capable of NOT having a minimum wage. We don't treat workers well, and would treat them worse if we took away basic protections. Americans have this weird pathology where they think they're the greatest country on Earth but they hate a lot of their own countrymen with a passion (see the posts here basically claiming American workers are crap).

It would be a race to the bottom.

When I've had conversations with Europeans (Germans) about our labor practices, they just looked at me baffled and said "we wouldn't low-ball workers that way. We pay them what they're worth." So they don't need a minimum wage as badly. They're not so acculturated to lowest-common-denominator type thinking.

My hypothesis is that the U.S., as a former slave nation and always an immigrant destination, is used to having a surplus of workers and so looks at them as expendable, throw-away resources. Honestly, the rhetoric I see about low-wage workers online is pretty similar to American rhetoric about slaves and immigrants from the 19th century. E.g.: "They wouldn't do a day's work unless we make them!" That is literally what affluent whites used to say about slaves and immigrants.

[Regajohn]

Originally Posted by Supposn

EDS, I responded to you when you previously asked the same question. Respectfully, Supposn
/////////////
Excerpted from the thread, "Private industry is not always the superior solution":
EDS, … I do not know why or how an extremely excessive minimum wage rate would be net economically detrimental to the economy, but I do not doubt that it would be detrimental. No nation has or is ever likely to do that. …”.

Evidently EDS keeps asking the same question in response to the same tired "stuff" you keep posting over and over and over again.

Activities or lack thereof have consequences, in the old days if you didn't kill the deer or your crop was ruined you might die.
Now if you dropout of high school, are a big partier and don't actively plan your future, you might end up at a dead-end job ... too bad for you, maybe you'll do better in your next life. But at least now you will have free medical care and welfare/food stamps, versus dying.

of course if you risk it all, are smart, have a great idea you sell the millions of people, you might end up vastly wealthy ... but there are a lot of people who go down in flames every year ... But they tried.

[Supposn]

Redguard57, these sentences within your post caught my eye.

Originally Posted by redguard57

... There are some countries that don't have a MW... get this - Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland. LOLOLOLOOL! https://www.investopedia.com/article...imum-wages.asp Iirc Germany only recently instituted one. ...

Every nation in today’s world, to the extent that their national and their province’s governments have effective controls and are able to enforce their laws throughout their own jurisdictions, have laws and regulations that perform the functions and tasks similar to those of USA’s federal minimum wage rate laws. Which is why I suppose almost every nation that you specifically named in your post have such laws.

Unlike the USA, those nations' labor organizations have much greater effective legal and economic powers within their nation. Their labor organizations have substantial legally protected power within their governments and additionally within the board of directors of every substantial corporation functioning within those nations. I know for a fact that this is the norm In Germany and almost all, if not all of Europe’s Scandinavian nations. Within those nations, their labor organizations, and/or industrial organizations within which their labor organizations exercise substantial powers, have what we often describe as “quasi-governmental” status and powers.

Respectfully, Supposn

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by redguard57

And if we'd done so before that it'd be zero.

Right. The point is FDR's minimum wages were meant as a little more than survival minimums.