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There is no hard and fast RULE that wage increases MUST BE PASSED ON TO THE CUSTOMER. You've just bought that line because it justifies greed and lack of social conscience. That kind of "thinking" allows people to be as greedy as they ever wanted to be with no shame at all. lol
Yes there is. It's called common sense. If the costs of running your business go up, the prices you charge for your services or products go up as well. This isn't rocket surgery, it's simple economics.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FancyFeast5000
Our economy is now a SERVICE-BASED economy for the most part. If employees working in the service industry are paid so little that they have to depend upon, and indeed do qualify for, public assistance programs, then YOU PERSONALLY are "paying" the needed wages for the big businesses. Are you such a devotee and committed disciple to/of big companies and corporations that you are happy to "tithe" a portion of your tax money to subsidize their employees because they won't pay a wage which allows their employees to support themselves and their families?
Doubling the wages of fast food workers, or even increasing those wages by 50%, is not going to remove them from the welfare roles for very long. It might temporarily give them enough of an income to be kicked out of the welfare programs - which wouldn't necessarily be a good thing for many of them - but as soon as the wages for jobs that actually require training and education adjust to the new normal these workers will be right back to where they are now. There is a reason that fast food is considered to be a dead-end job, after all.
If you truly want to help these people obtain a living wage, step back and look at the larger picture instead of focusing in on what you incorrectly perceive to be income inequality. The areas that you should be paying attention to are the insanely high cost of living (which your solution would actually cause to go up even farther), the ridiculous prices that are being charged for higher education, and the mentality that leads people to believe they should have equal outcome rather than equal opportunity.
And nobody believes that the minimum wage law will increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, although I think that would be fair and a good thing. Have you ever heard of negotiations? You ask for MORE THAN what you hope to get. Raising the minimum wage to $10 or $12 per hour would be a good start.
I have heard of negotiations and I have also heard of reality. The reality is that no burger flipper working a fast food joint deserves big bucks for flipping a preformed, prepared disc of ground beef.
Fair and good thing for who? Good for the flipper but hardly fair for the owner or the consumer.
Raising the min wage to $8 would be a good start then allow it to increase to match inflation.
If wage increase arent passed onto the consumer, where will it come from.
It will come from the absurdly excessive PROFITS made by those companies/corporations. The "owners" and multimillionaires and billionaires can let go of a little tiny bit of their obscenely large profits in order to support their employees and communities by paying their employees enough money that they don't have to rely on your tax money for public assistance. You seem to have been so deeply conditioned by the right wing think tanks and their absolute religious beliefs in support of the "business model" which creates a situation where a "business/corporation" (who, are after all individuals according to the U.S. Supreme Court) can shamelessly accumulate wealth beyond imagination and return NOTHING to the communities from which they made that enormous wealth, that you actually cannot see anything beyond that extremely narrow and incorrect perspective.
I don't believe they should be payed $15.00, I wish I made $15.00 an hour, however I do believe the minimum wage should be at least $9.00 at this point. The wage was not inceased for YEARS, while the cost of everything else has gone up dramatically. And it's true that the large corporations let the working taxpayers subsidize what they are not paying but should be. I don't think things have "trickled" down very much. Perhaps a littel "trickle up" would help. The wages people who are willing to work are paid in this country is the only thing that will keep us from being like a third world country, in my opinion.
Also, I heard a conservative talk show host, who was substituting yesterday for the host I usually listen to, say that fast food jobs are meant just for teenagers and "women who have husbands making good salaries who just want to earn a little extra income". That USED to be pretty accurate. I wondered whether he'd been living under a rock for the last twenty years of so.
I think you're missing the point here. Minimum wage laws apply to all employers.....not just McDonalds and fast food restaurants. It would include businesses like, for example, WalMart. There are many people working at WalMart stores who are not teenagers and those jobs are not "first-time jobs." There are many ADULTS working for those businesses at minimum wage trying to support themselves and their families. Additionally, when was the last time you went to a fast food place? Did you see anyone working there who was not a teenager? I think you may be unaware of the changes in the world today. This is not the 1950s anymore.
No, there are not many working at Wal-Mart for minimum wage.
I have heard of negotiations and I have also heard of reality. The reality is that no burger flipper working a fast food joint deserves big bucks for flipping a preformed, prepared disc of ground beef.
Fair and good thing for who? Good for the flipper but hardly fair for the owner or the consumer.
Raising the min wage to $8 would be a good start then allow it to increase to match inflation.
Minimum wage law applies to business beyond fast food businesses. I'm sure that back when we used child labor in sweat shops to work excessively long hours for almost zero pay, some people must have thought, geezzz, those jobs are not worth more pay and certainly not jobs that adults supporting a family would work. I've provided five sources in re minimum wage vs. inflation for your reading pleasure.
$10.74
How much the federal minimum wage would be if it had kept up with inflation over the past 40 years. Instead, it’s $7.25. Learn More
"When protestors gathered in the nation’s capital 50 years ago from Wednesday, they had ten concrete demands, one of which was “A national minimum wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard of living.” They also pointed out that research showed that “anything less than $2.00 an hour fails to do this.” A $2 minimum wage would be $15.27 an hour in today’s dollars.
Yet today’s minimum wage stands at $7.25, where it hasn’t budged for four years. And it has in fact fallen in value since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his “I Have A Dream” speech. If it had kept up with inflation since the 1960s, it would be over $10 an hour.
"A new poll reports that 80% of Americans - including 92% of Democrats, 62% of Republicans and 80% of Independents - are in favor of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour and indexing it to the cost of living.
The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 has been introduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. If passed, it would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour by 2015, and adjust it each year after that to keep up with the rising cost of living. The legislation would also increase the minimum wage for employees who receive tips.
I'm sure that people who marched and fought for civil rights at one time thought "reality" meant there would be no changes....but some people disagreed with that "reality" made a stand and therefore reality changed.
If there is a large social movement to increase minimum wages and ultimately people start boycotting those companies who insist on raising product prices in order to MAINTAIN their ENORMOUS AND OBSCENELY LARGE PROFITS, then they will be required to change their financial practices. People will pay those outrageously high prices for just so long. Ultimately that strategy of passing the cost of labor on to their customers will fail.
It will come from the absurdly excessive PROFITS made by those companies/corporations. The "owners" and multimillionaires and billionaires can let go of a little tiny bit of their obscenely large profits in order to support their employees and communities by paying their employees enough money that they don't have to rely on your tax money for public assistance. You seem to have been so deeply conditioned by the right wing think tanks and their absolute religious beliefs in support of the "business model" which creates a situation where a "business/corporation" (who, are after all individuals according to the U.S. Supreme Court) can shamelessly accumulate wealth beyond imagination and return NOTHING to the communities from which they made that enormous wealth, that you actually cannot see anything beyond that extremely narrow and incorrect perspective.
You know jack **** about business, its painfully obvious..
Most businesses that start out dont see a dam dime in profits FOR YEARS...
So what you're suggesting is that we make it more difficult for smaller businesses to be created, which will decrease competition for both labor, and products, thus raising the prices of everything, increasing those "record profits" even more, while lowering the demand to pay good wages..
Yeah, thats beyond one of the dumbest things I've ever heard in my entire life..
It will come from the absurdly excessive PROFITS made by those companies/corporations. The "owners" and multimillionaires and billionaires can let go of a little tiny bit of their obscenely large profits in order to support their employees and communities by paying their employees enough money that they don't have to rely on your tax money for public assistance. You seem to have been so deeply conditioned by the right wing think tanks and their absolute religious beliefs in support of the "business model" which creates a situation where a "business/corporation" (who, are after all individuals according to the U.S. Supreme Court) can shamelessly accumulate wealth beyond imagination and return NOTHING to the communities from which they made that enormous wealth, that you actually cannot see anything beyond that extremely narrow and incorrect perspective.
Thank you for posting the economic ignorance that is driving the Left's lynch-mob mentality for the rest of us to examine.
About half of those "obscene profits aren't even distributed, and much of what is goes to institutions -- many of which hold to a social philosophy far to the left of the people who produced that wealth. The centers of "higher learning" turning out the latest generation of slackers and intellectual finger-painters are a prominent example.
Prices won't be raised and passed to customers if it means business will be lost. Most places are in a race to the bottom these days with quality, service, whatever. It WILL mean restructuring businesses and changing the game. Yup, some places will be lost (the ones that aren't operating well now) and others will rise to replace them. It's kind of exciting thinking about changes that unless you are the type who resists change, and only want what you currently know and have...forever and ever. Zzzzz.
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