How about a "relative" minimum wage? (Corporate Profits, employment, ethics)
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.
Maybe I was a bit harsh in my last post (especially with the public figures). Still, my point is that it's one thing if you are actually reaping the benefits from YOUR work, but it's another in the case of executives that are making many times more (inflation-adjusted) than they did a few decades ago (and my relative-minimum-wage idea would help close that gap).
Your thoughtful proposal solves zero of my concerns. The raw, basic, fundamental, inescapable fact is that when the price of something goes up, less of it gets used. If you raise the price of low-skill labor, less of it will get used. Jobs will be destroyed. This is a cruel trick to pull on those least able to afford it.
Well, these jobs already suck, and can't really sustain many folks anyways. What good does it do to hold on to something that doesn't work?
And I believe we're still subsidizing these employees through various programs, so the rest of us are paying for it anyways.
I do understand there should be enough wiggle room so that a position requiring a doctorate or esoteric skills should be paid several times more than an unskilled labor position. However, there is no excuse for executives (or sports figures, celebrities, or anyone else who is in their position due to show rather than substance) making 100+ times more than the median worker.
1. Define unskilled when using esoteric and doctorate in the same sentence. Can a doctorate run an entire company or branch of one? If not, that person is unskilled. Esoteric skills is basically on the job training. Does the doctorate have the knowledge of the esoteric? Is esoteric a college course of study?
The proles can make the whole thing run and those at the top can have no idea of what they do. Esoteric skills go a long way.
2. No excuse? Why do houses sell for $1M+? Because people are willing to part with that sum of money for it. Same with expensive cars, clothes and other things. People earn large sums of money because another is willing to part with it to keep those people around. If not, those people wouldn't be around earning large sums of money.
When you become dictator with total control you can implement your fantasy laws. Before that happens, everyone will suffer horribly because you will have stolen everything they loved, and caused them pain.
The main point of total control is to cause pain for one's own advancement.
Total control = evil, no?
Those of unrealistic ideals will never let me down. They think it to be for the good of all; peace, harmony and equality for all.
How does that come about? Taking from those who work - everyone - rather than have the rest labor to get theirs. It's socialism/communism you desire to make us all equal. How about those at the top? Like it or not, there will always be 1%.
Well, these jobs already suck, and can't really sustain many folks anyways. What good does it do to hold on to something that doesn't work?
And I believe we're still subsidizing these employees through various programs, so the rest of us are paying for it anyways.
OF COURSE all of us together bear the societal burden of providing for those who are not competent to earn their own way in the world. How condescending and cruel for you to judge that those jobholders would be better off without any job anyway. Let people whose labor is worth $6 or $8 or sell that labor--get a job--climb on the bottom rung. Nearly everybody in the country who now earns great steaming piles of money started out on the lowest rung. Why deny this opportunity to others?
Elimination of the minimum wage would have no effect on anyone now earning $10 or $20 or $80 per hour. And it would create jobs for those whose labor is worth $4 or $6. Where is the downside in that?
Your thoughtful proposal solves zero of my concerns. The raw, basic, fundamental, inescapable fact is that when the price of something goes up, less of it gets used. If you raise the price of low-skill labor, less of it will get used. Jobs will be destroyed. This is a cruel trick to pull on those least able to afford it.
I have the same concerns that many have about CEO pay--maybe a couple hundred instances in our land of 300 million people--but the vast majority of workers are paid the market value of their labor. Some union workers enjoy above-market-wages but we have seen this is not sustainable. No one is paid below-market wages, since workers can simply go to the employer with the better offer. But if people are working under the best conditions any employer is willing to offer, they ARE receiving an equitable wage.
Your version of "equitable" is to pay less to those who deserve it, and pay more to those who have not earned it. This is in no sense equitable.
It is unfortunate that so many of us have not figured out how to be sufficiently valuable to the rest of society to earn a living wage. A decent society will provide for those who need it. Only an ignorant society would throw that social burden onto the backs of the employers who provide the paychecks for over 100,000,000 people in the US.
Sounds good in theory but the issue I have with this is what if "the best conditions any employer is willing to offer" is slavery or close to it and because of "scarcity" desperate people take it and it produces a "vicious cycle"? Wages are a cost of business just like rent and utilities are and if a company can't pay at least an amount for a certain person to afford a basic living, then they can't afford to be in business any more than they can afford to be if they can't pay their rent, taxes, or office utility bill (NOTE I did NOT say, "an amount to raise a family, etc.", I agree that is earned, I'm talking about basic survival here, that to me is what a "minimum wage" is).
The collapse of Communism shows well what happens when we don't let the "free market" be efficient, but we still need limited regulation to prevent "accidental inefficiencies" like the above or monopolies.
With all the debate going on with raising the minimum wage, I have an idea that would solve most of the anti-hiker's concerns. Instead of an absolute dollar amount, make the minimum wage for example half the mean (full-time equivalent) pay of all workers in the company. (The average is mean and not median for a very good reason - it means that if you pay the executives an exorbitant salary you'd have to give your rank-and-file workers a raise too to make the math work.)
There is a very simple way to evade that. Pay your executives in stock and dividends.
The raw, basic, fundamental, inescapable fact is that when the price of something goes up, less of it gets used. If you raise the price of low-skill labor, less of it will get used. Jobs will be destroyed. This is a cruel trick to pull on those least able to afford it.
Um, this is neither raw, basic, fundamental, inescapable nor is it a fact.
If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be $21.75. That's what the minimum wage equivalent was back in the 1970's. I was around back in the 1970's. My mom was a single mother back then. We were able to eat plenty of hamburgers from McDonalds. We were neither impoverished or poor because of it.
As another poster said, the minimum wage has risen countless times sin 1938, and a hike has never resulted in the situation you are claiming as an "inescapable fact". So no matter how forcefully you want to insist, it still won't make it true.
Um, this is neither raw, basic, fundamental, inescapable nor is it a fact.
If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be $21.75. That's what the minimum wage equivalent was back in the 1970's. I was around back in the 1970's. My mom was a single mother back then. We were able to eat plenty of hamburgers from McDonalds. We were neither impoverished or poor because of it.
As another poster said, the minimum wage has risen countless times sin 1938, and a hike has never resulted in the situation you are claiming as an "inescapable fact". So no matter how forcefully you want to insist, it still won't make it true.
That's actually a partial myth, I say partial because it would be higher than the current one, it would be about $12/hour in today's $$$ and that "peak" actually occurred in 1968.
Um, this is neither raw, basic, fundamental, inescapable nor is it a fact.
If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be $21.75. That's what the minimum wage equivalent was back in the 1970's. I was around back in the 1970's. My mom was a single mother back then. We were able to eat plenty of hamburgers from McDonalds. We were neither impoverished or poor because of it.
As another poster said, the minimum wage has risen countless times sin 1938, and a hike has never resulted in the situation you are claiming as an "inescapable fact". So no matter how forcefully you want to insist, it still won't make it true.
You were able to make it back then because your mother was an amazing woman carefully budgeting her expenses vs her income. She never told you about the times that she cried because she didn't know what she was going to do about this bill or that, or where she was going to get food for dinner with $1.00. It's not because her wage was the equivalent of $20 an hour today. I know, I was there with a few million of my closest friends.
In the seventies there was no internet, no cell phone, no required car or health insurance, no computer, and no cable or satellite TV bill to pay. If you needed a car you could pick up a usable junker for a couple of hundred dollars. Thrift stores were FULL of low-cost necessities of life because people were constantly buying new and better and donating the originals, and stores ran regular clearance sales at excellent discounts, not today's 'regular price $12.99, clearance price $12.00'.
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.
