It's Time for America to Get Back to Work (union, expenses, free market)
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The original intent of minimum wage was that it be a living wage, per FDR. There is nothing official that ever said minimum wage jobs were meant to be temporary and not careers - that is just what they become because people can't survive on them, so the only people who can afford to take them are those who have others helping to pay for the things they can't afford on the minimum wage. What we're seeing now as cost of living rises is that people in the job market in situations where they can afford to take a minimum wage position are fewer than the number of jobs. So the employers either need to find ways to do without the employees or they need to raise wages so that people can afford to take that job. Unemployment is generally quite low right now, there aren't lots of people just sitting around not working. There is simply a supply and demand problem - there is a greater demand for minimum wage workers than there is a supply of people who can afford to take that kind of work because they don't need to try to live on it.
I don’t know. I see a great untapped resource of talent. Healthy retirees. I am retired, work two days a week at a job that would traditionally have been done by someone younger. It keeps me socially active and puts some extra cash in my pocket. So as far as there being a shortage, maybe of motivation, not actual workers.
Wait a minute, Comrade Arya. Wasn't all the talk in the past two years about getting the minimum wage up to $15/hour so that it was a liveable wage?
Now you're telling us that $15/hour isn't a liveable wage. So what is? $20/hour? $30/hour? $50? $100?
And, by the way, minimum wage was not meant to be adult wage. Minimum wage jobs were for high school students and college students (maybe) earning spending money. What we have now, instead, is low-skill adults, and some senior citizens, who are depending upon those jobs since they cannot fill in higher-skill positions due to age or skill. Chalk this disconnect up to each individual circumstance.
In 2017, minimum wage jobs only made up 2.3% of all jobs nationally, so MW is not the real issue. MW was never meant to be a liveable wage, i.e., sole income for adults.
Inflation is rearing its ugly head under the Slow Joe DEMentia administration. Only a fews months into it, and this administration is a train wreck picking up speed.
What it used to mean doesn't matter. What it's going to mean does. You're already hinting at why that's so.
These jobs that are mocked today are going to be the everyman blue-collar jobs of tomorrow. Those decent-paying career tracks for physical labor/blue collar work in manufacturing and construction that the middle-class depended on 50 years ago can't go the way of the Dodo fast enough, and tech continues to automate more of it every day. If you don't have a college degree or specialized tradeskills training, your future job prospects will only be these 'non-adult' jobs that currently pay minimum wage. I even see jobs like truck drivers being automated out of a job and looking for a drive-thru window to work at in a decade.
Of course, the flip side is if you pay them too much then tech will see another opportunity to automate those remaining jobs to sell more of their solutions. No employer is going to pay someone more to do something than they can buy a kiosk to do instead, especially when that kiosk is happy to work 24/7 with no benefits.
A college degree is to your generation what a high school diploma was to my generation. You couldn't get a decent job (not even military) without a high school diploma. Now it's turning into college degree.
Quoth the OP: "It's time for America to get back to work. This isn't an issue the Fed can fix alone via rate policy. Everywhere I go and everyone I talk to needs employees. Fast food places are offering starting wages at $13 to $15 per hour even in states where the minimum wage is far less."
You must not live in Texas then. Our minimum wage is still $7.25/hour. Mickey D's is attempting to attract workers by offering $9/hour. Woo hoo! If we want America to get back to work, pay up. For real.
It's not the wages and probably only partially unemployment bump. In my area the businesses are desperately advertising that they pay anywhere from $13 (minimum is $12) to over $20 an hour, with most in the $14-18 range. That is what all the liberals were asking for when they asked for a $15 minimum wage.
There are several problems -
1) 15 months of being shut down is a long time. From what I'm seeing at my work trying to hire back hourly employees, many of them adjusted their lives to the new reality. School was also closed, so in many cases one parent needed to stay home to do child care. A lot of them re-thought their lives, and put work as a lower priority.
1a) Most of these service jobs are part time and don't come with health insurance. When I have my pick of any $16 an hour job I want, I'm going to take the best one.
2) Every business is hiring AT THE SAME TIME - this is pretty much unprecedented. Of course they can not all find workers because they're all competing among the same pool.
3) Housing is so absurdly expensive that even $18-20 an hour doesn't cut it. In my area, in ONE year, what it took to afford a 1br apartment went from about $20-22 an hour to $30. One. Freaking. Year. Housing went up absurdly; the median housing price increase in my area from May 2020 to May 2021 was 42%. That's on top of about 15-30% per year increases ever since about 2016. So why work for $18? That is about a 50% increase for service job wages since about 2015... but housing has gone up 200%, with 40% of that being the past single year alone. So the $18 will never pay the bills anyway and you'll just fall further behind, since housing is expected to rise another 10-15% by the end of the year.
People keep ignoring, in the YEARS since we've been having this minimum wage conversation, is the housing part of the equation. FIX THE HOUSING PROBLEM. You can either pay more money or reduce peoples' #1 cost which is housing.
Last edited by redguard57; 06-20-2021 at 02:19 PM..
I suspect another round of covid lockdown next year or major riots again next year when all the PPP, stimulus programs all stopped and people cannot get used to working for less income than getting free money before.
The biggest problem the government haven't addressed is all the outstanding rental debt that will not be paid back to landlords will cause huge number of lawsuits and evictions which will incite more violent protests.
People will find excuses to force the government to print more money and install permanent UBI.
I actually really like this. Employers are desperate but apparently not desperate enough to pay reasonable wages. In this society $15 dollars per hour isn't enough to live on. Employers have had it good for too long. If they are really desperate they should take maybe a million from their salary and pay some employees.
It is my sincere hope that this goes on for a long time and forces wages way higher.
None of the small business owners I know are making millions. They are barely getting by. The small women's clothing shop in town is run by a single mother just trying to pay the rent.
Do you think the people running many of the local restaurants who were closed for months are making millions? The guy who opened the framing shop? The local bodega owner?
Don't spew your vile and insult people about whom you know nothing. You assume you know. But you don't know.
I simply don't care. If you don't have the money to pay the wages you are supposed to be paying.. you do not deserve to be in business.
I have always said that restaurants have a nerve paying people no wages and asking me to supplement in "Tips".. tips should be for good service NOT THE WAGE.
I truly hope that this pandemic destroys this business model. Frankly restaurants are making us all sick anyway with excessive bad food and too much of it. We all should be eating at home more often and making our own food. I hope at least 50% of restaurants go out of business.
The small unorganized businessman somehow argues that his business is so valuable to society that we should just give him everything.
No if you can't run a business that does contribute without handouts and cheats, you need to go out of business. Frankly I Loved the pandemic for putting a lot of this crud businesses out of business...
If you don't have a product that support the ability to pay a wage that doesn't have your staff living in poverty, you shouldn't have a business.
People would go to work if they weren't being paid by the government to stay home. The small business owners have received very little from the government as opposed to the large corporation and individuals who continue to receive checks for not working.
Whilst reading your posts, visions of Cruella de Vil come to mind as you wish evil and failure of others. Just remember, karma's a witch.
Aren't you a merry soul, spreading your brand of abomination around.
I simply don't care. If you don't have the money to pay the wages you are supposed to be paying.. you do not deserve to be in business.
I have always said that restaurants have a nerve paying people no wages and asking me to supplement in "Tips".. tips should be for good service NOT THE WAGE.
I truly hope that this pandemic destroys this business model. Frankly restaurants are making us all sick anyway with excessive bad food and too much of it. We all should be eating at home more often and making our own food. I hope at least 50% of restaurants go out of business.
The small unorganized businessman somehow argues that his business is so valuable to society that we should just give him everything.
No if you can't run a business that does contribute without handouts and cheats, you need to go out of business. Frankly I Loved the pandemic for putting a lot of this crud businesses out of business...
If you don't have a product that support the ability to pay a wage that doesn't have your staff living in poverty, you shouldn't have a business.
There is no wage you are “supposed to be paid“. Wages are determined by supply and demand and your value as a contributor to the labor force. If you are common and anyone can do what you can do then you do not have much value and you do not deserve to be paid any more than a minimum amount. No one is entitled to a living wage, or even a job. No one is entitled to housing, or food, or health care, or love, or pretty much anything. Your job as a human being is to be valuable and earn your way to success, not demand it from your fellow human beings. Nobody owes you a dime, and nobody owes you enough money to live according to the manner in which you desire to become accustomed.
I am so sick of losers making demands in this society. Enough already. Be valuable. Make yourself into someone worthy of being paid a decent amount of nice green dollars. You do not have any value for simply existing.
I suspect another round of covid lockdown next year or major riots again next year when all the PPP, stimulus programs all stopped and people cannot get used to working for less income than getting free money before.
The biggest problem the government haven't addressed is all the outstanding rental debt that will not be paid back to landlords will cause huge number of lawsuits and evictions which will incite more violent protests.
People will find excuses to force the government to print more money and install permanent UBI.
These are all very random predictions and claims for which there is no rational evidence. The vaccines are doing wonderfully, the economy is returning to normal, there are more jobs than people, and the psychological mood is very upbeat and positive at the moment. However, the free money does have to stop. People are sitting on their asses instead of working because it is easier to mooch off your fellow citizens. That has to stop now.
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