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.
As a NYC resident, ultimately the customer would have to burden the cost of a pay/wage increase. Therefore, from where I sit, I would ONLY agree to a wage increase in exchange for a "welfare" decrease. Most of the people in fast food from what I can see in NYC are on some sort of food stamp, public assistance benefit. That being said, if their wages increase, it's only fair to assume that a decrease in social benefits should come.
People who make $15 an hour typically don't qualify for entitlements. They make too much money. I've made around that range before and that is well above the cutoff for a single person with no kids and even a single person with two dependents.
You're so obviously oblivious to what owning or running a business entails, it's laughable.
Tell you what - go buy a McDonald's franchise, run it for three years, and then come back and tell us about all the millions you make, and how you pay your employees $15/hour.
No, you won't do that. Not only because you can't, but because you know that your idealistic bubble would be burst. Deep down, you know how insane the crap you spout is, but you can't bring yourself to admit it because it doesn't fit your utopian dream world ideal. Must be nice to have the luxury of not having to face reality.
Somehow In-N-Out pays their employees better. Not $15 an hour, but much better than McDonald's does. And these days McDonald's food costs nearly as much as In-N-Out.
I think they have a good case. Try surviving in NYC on $8.90 an hour, the median wage for food service or food preparation worker in New York City.
Or this lady: "Pamela Waldron, who after eight years at KFC makes $7.75 an hour, which typically amounts to around $10,000 a year. "
The article makes a good point that these jobs are no longer just for teenagers or students, but now include all kinds of people who have lost their jobs.
Thank you. I worked in Manhattan for two years and it's incredibly expensive to live. It's a credit to New Yorkers that they have the guts and smarts to stick up for themselves. I really feel sorry for new graduates today. They don't have near the opportunities I had. I had a sharp kid who graduated from Alabama make my subway sandwich last week, and a kid from an exclusive Dallas private school, and graduate of SMU help me with a new dishwasher at Best Buy. Dude, I was making $9.50 an hour during the 1980's running phone lines in the Summer out of high school and I thought the job was horrible. It was a job for burned out hippies and transients. That job in today's dollars is $21 per hour
Last edited by padcrasher; 11-30-2012 at 09:10 PM..
And they still manage to find a way to send money "back home" every week..plenty of money.
They live 20 to a dwelling and are the source of complaints in CA, AZ, NM, UT and NV bar minimum. Yes, people should really live like that. So their neighbors can whine about how Anaheim (one example) has turned into a cesspit because the Mexicans are living 20 to a house meant for 8 tops.
But hell, lets bring that back. Lets have Americans living 20 to an apartment or house, with cars everywhere and dogs and cats everywhere, with every last inch of the dwelling converted to beds and storage for the few meager possessions. Is this how Americans should live?
I personally find it deplorable that the illegals are living like that, and my annoyance is that they cannot find a way to NOT live with their 19 relatives in a cramped house or apartment.
Since you appear to lack reasoning skills, let me lay out the scenario for you. AeroGuy says they should all pack up and move areas with lower cost of living.
Ok, so person A leaves McDonald's and moves to someplace that is cheaper. McDonald's will have to fill that slot, so Person B gets hired.
What does Person B do?
In all honesty, if everyone in NYC who works for minimum wage heeded AeroGuy's advice there would be no restaurants, fast food or otherwise, and no coffee shops in that entire city. There would also be no more big box stores and many of the retailers would be gone. Macy's starts its employees around minimum wage. So does Target.
Macy's and Target by the way, are idiots, IMHO. They won't hire teenagers and they don't like to hire students. But they want to pay minimum wage. There goes the "these sorts of jobs are for teenagers" arguments. Some McDonalds franchises won't hire people under 18 either.
They live 20 to a dwelling and are the source of complaints in CA, AZ, NM, UT and NV bar minimum. Yes, people should really live like that. So their neighbors can whine about how Anaheim (one example) has turned into a cesspit because the Mexicans are living 20 to a house meant for 8 tops.
But hell, lets bring that back. Lets have Americans living 20 to an apartment or house, with cars everywhere and dogs and cats everywhere, with every last inch of the dwelling converted to beds and storage for the few meager possessions. Is this how Americans should live?
I personally find it deplorable that the illegals are living like that, and my annoyance is that they cannot find a way to NOT live with their 19 relatives in a cramped house or apartment.
Geez, your name reminds me of living in Germany and going to Basel for Fasching. I'd send all my kids to Switzerland to work as street sweepers if it meant they could live and raise their families there. This country is going to hell in a hand basket so quickly it's startling.
For those who are saying "how could we ever pay fast-food workers $15/ an hour?", here's a hint.
If corporate profits were dispersed more fairly, maybe the red line, the top 1 % , would level off a bit, allowing those flat lines at the bottom to actually go up a little.
The top 1 % makes its money from capital gains and investment income, which in turn is based on the performance of companies. When companies do well, the top 1 % get even richer. But when companies do well, the workers usually see little or no wage increase. This last year most publicly traded corporations made record profits. So why can't some of that profit be shared with the people who earned it --- the employees?
If just a little more of the pie went to the workers in the bottom 20 % by paying them a FAIR wage, it would more accurately reflect the contribution they are making to corporate earnings. Right now the wealth the employees generate with their productivity trickles up to the select few at the top, primarily CEOs and investors --- what these workers deserve is that some of that wealth go to those who earned it.
Geez, your name reminds me of living in Germany and going to Basel for Fasching. I'd send all my kids to Switzerland to work as street sweepers if it meant they could live and raise their family's there. This country is going to hell in a hand basket so quickly it's startling.
Everyone always remarks about how the illegals make it in the US. I was just stating how they do it. They have money to send back to Mexico because they live 20 to a 2 bedroom apartment in Santa Ana while working three part-time jobs apiece. Plus since they're illegal they don't do income taxes.
Yes, this country is going to hell in a handbasket. Its undoing will be at the hands of the entitled poor and the greedy rich. Being that I'm solidly middle class, this fact annoys me greatly.
Good luck sending your kids to Switzerland. With no verifiable ancestry there of any kind its 10+ years and you must at least pretend to be Christian (by Christian I mean Lutheran only!), not mind learning how to carry a gun, learn the dominant language of the canton in which you reside and make a bunch of other honest efforts to assimilate into Swiss society before they will grant citizenship.
But my original point...comparing Americans making minimum wage to illegals from south of the border doing the same is apples and oranges in terms of comparison. If the conservatives are willing to talk about letting the minimum wage class be truly exempt from income tax (nothing withhold at all, not even Medicare or Social Security) like the illegals are, not mind when they live 20 to an apartment like the illegals do I'm willing to talk about how lazy Americans allegedly are.
This graph indicates the same thing. Productivity has gone up, but incomes for the middle and lower classes have not kept pace. Who is getting the benefits from the increases in productivity? The wealthy.
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.
There goes the "these sorts of jobs are for teenagers" arguments. Some McDonalds franchises won't hire people under 18 either.
