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If we had Single Payer the Employer would no longer have to foot the bill for employee's health care, Workmans Comp would also be halved because it would only cover wages. Then we could raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour and put some cash into the hands of those who would spend it. That would create demand
Your partisan-slip - I mean partisanship - is showing. European nations with single payer have far higher payroll taxes than we do. Look it up. Learn.
I owned a business with 27 employees and I can tell you that many are not worth the recent minimum wage hikes.
Many are very valuable and worth the money I could pay them but believe it or not, many were not worth 3.00 per hour at best.
The 3.00 type of people could not think on their own, you had to take the time to lay out every single aspect of the job and had to check on them constantly.
The higher wage employees showed up 15-30 before start time and of course the min wage workers showed up 1 at one minute till start time and prepared to leave 15 minutes before time to go home.
The min wage type employee was not worth the min wage period. People do not realize that a small business owner cannot pay these people to just show up and them not being productive. Each employee has to make you money or they are not needed.
So the facts are this recent hike has a lot to do with the unemployment rate.
Look around, less bank tellers, less people in fast food, less people at grocery stores, less people at the checkouts in the stores etc.
One of our fav places to eat at a local mall cafe court used to have 4-5 employees working on weekends and now you will be lucky to see 2 making your food for you.
We need to drop the min wage down to 3.50 for those people with no skills and for teens who need a part time job. You will see twice as many people employed as you do now as the small businesses then can support the cost because you now have 2 for the price of one. Therefore more production so the business can make more money.
One issue, cost of living. If the cost of living comes down, then I'll think about it. 3.50 an hour might work in Mexico or India, but not in the USA.
Maybe the minimum wage does do all the negative things some of you complain that it does but, human nature being what it is, I am glad it is there. Mind you, I have never worked for minimum wage but I know that many employers would pay no wage at all if that too were legal and it was, once upon a time. If there had not been abuses there would not have been the neccessity of passing minimum wage laws. And, I don't know if it has been mentioned yet, but all ammendmets like the minimum wage rises have all kinds of tiers and extensions. In many places AFAIK the last of the extensions has not run out and employers can still pay the old minimum wage. To say that minimum wage is responsible for the current recession is a stretch since the minimum wage has been $5.25/hr for decades. During this time many businesses have grown wildly and some have failed. Could it be that the failed companies were victims of something else other than that they had to pay a minimum wage? This is the very argument that led to the Civil War, only then the argument was whether to pay wages at all. We haven't made any progress at all.
If they can't afford it, then perhaps they should cut salaries for the CEO and other top executives. Think they'll do that? NO! They will wind up with some sort of bonus at the end of the year, even though they are failing. Home Depot changed leadership a year or so back. Think they just canned him and told him to get his **** and "git"? Nope. Severance package, golden parachute. You think people being laid off get any kind of severance package?
"We'll pay you through the end of the day. Here's security to escort you back to your desk so you can clean it out."
Is McDonalds going to layoff half their staff and only have half the people doing the same amount of work? I doubt it.
Actually McDonald's did a great deal of crying over the (then) proposed $7.15/hr minimum wage and said it would force them to layoff about 30,000 workers... not half their staff by any means but there you are.
What kind of employer can't afford to pay minimum wage?
Is McDonalds going to layoff half their staff and only have half the people doing the same amount of work? I doubt it.
The problem though isn't if McDonalds can afford it, it's what happens to specialized work. Think back to the 1950s and 60s films. If there was a scene where a car was going to a gas station, you'd have one guy filling up the tank and another guy checking the oil and even washing the windshield. But what happened to those people? Simple, the minimum wage priced them out of existence. Now if you want your gas pumped, you have to pay extra.
There's also the issue with unemployment. Not that companies will lay people off if the minimum wage goes up, but companies will hire less if it does. Here's a section from a mises.org article.
Quote:
Real statistics indicate that the critics of minimum wage laws were right all along. While it is true that minimum wages do not drive the national unemployment rate up to astronomical levels, it does adversely affect teenagers and ethnic minorities. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the unemployment rate for everyone over the age of 16 was 5.6% in 2005. Yet unemployment was 17.3% for those aged 16-19 years. For those aged 16-17 unemployment was 19.7%. In the 18-19 age group unemployment was 15.8%. Minimum wage laws do affect ethnic minorities more so than others.[3] The unemployment rate for white teens in the 16-17 age group was 17.3% in 2005. The same figures for Hispanic and black teens were 25% and 40.9% respectively. Of course, these figures decrease for older minorities. Blacks aged 18-19 and 20-24 had 25.7% and 19.9% unemployment in 2005. For Hispanics unemployment was slightly lower — 17.8% at age 18-19 and 9.6% at age 20-24.
Mainstream economic theory lacks any basis for judging the effects of income redistribution. According to textbook economics we attain the highest level of economic efficiency when markets clear, when we realize the maximum gains from mutually advantageous trade. Income transfers benefit some at the expense of others. Economists have no scientific methods for comparing gains and losses through income transfers.[5] Once economists depart from discussing efficiency conditions and begin to speak about income redistribution, they become advocates of a political agenda, rather than objective scientists. The jobs lost to minimum wage laws might not seem worthwhile to DeLong or Landsburg, but they obviously are worthwhile to the workers and employers whom these laws affect. Why should the value judgments of a few armchair economists matter more than the interests of would be employees and employers? These jobs may be "lousy jobs," but one could also argue that these jobs are quite important because they are a first step in gaining job experience and learning adult responsibility.
A second problem with the case against minimum wages is that they affect older workers too. As already noted, workers in the 20-24 age group appear to be affected by minimum wage laws. Unemployment rates in the 25-34 age group are higher than for the 35-44 age group. The unemployment rate for blacks and Hispanics aged 25-34 were 11.1% and 5.8% in 2005. Unemployment for whites and Asians in this age group were 4.4% and 3.5%. In the 35-44 age group the unemployment rates for these four ethnicities were 7.2%., 5.1%, 4.4%, and 2.7%. A comparison of black to Asian unemployment is revealing. In the United States, Asians tend to attain higher levels of education than blacks. Thus minimum wage laws are relatively unimportant to Asian Americans. Consequently, Asians are able to attain unemployment as low as the 2-3% range. For Asians aged 16+ the unemployment rate was only 3.3% in 2005. For Asians in the 20-24 age group unemployment was 5.1%. These figures are only a fraction of the unemployment rates experienced by blacks in 2005. There is no reason why white, Hispanic, and black Americans cannot also reach the 2-3% range of unemployment.
Supporters of minimum wage laws do not realize that prior to minimum wage laws the national unemployment rate did fall well below 5%. According to the US Census, national unemployment rates were 3.3% in 1927, 1.8% in 1926, 3.2% in 1925, 2.4% in 1923, 1.4% in 1919 and 1918, 2.8% in 1907, 1.7% in 1906, and 3.7% in 1902.[6] Even today, some states have unemployment rates as low as 3%. Virginia now has an unemployment rate of 3.1%. Wyoming has an unemployment rate of 2.9%. Hawaii has an unemployment rate of 2.6%. National unemployment rates seldom drop below 5% because some categories of workers are stuck with double digit unemployment. Given these figures, it is quite arguable that minimum wage laws keep the national unemployment rate 3 percentage points higher than would otherwise be the case.
The purpose of minimum wage jobs are to provide a stepping stone to the next job level up. It's not meant to be something you can live off of.
I have no problem with a minimum wage. I do have a problem with a FEDERAL minimum wage. The cost of living in New york city is not the same as the cost of living in Arkansas or Louisiana. There are many states that have raised their minimum wage much higher than the federal minimum wage.
The idea that the federal government should tell EVERY STATE where to set their minimum wage is stupid.
Do we not think Arkansas knows whats best for its own business and citizens? If Arkansas companies are underpaying so badly, then why can't people just move to another state? We have a single federal entity controlling the entire country from hundreds or thousands of miles away, and we are given no other options.
The idea that Oklahoma or Arkansas consistently gets "told what to do" by California, New York, and New Jersey is ridiculous.
The role of the federal government is to the protect the rights of the people. Not to control the economy and set wages. That is the job of communists and fascists.
Some folks won't be happy until people are willing to work for food. They long for the days of serfdom, never realizing that they too may well end up being serfs.
Some folks won't be happy until people are willing to work for food. They long for the days of serfdom, never realizing that they too may well end up being serfs.
Most economists believe a minimum wage in all respects is detrimental to the economy. It makes it very difficult for unskilled workers, the young, the old, and minorities to find jobs.
Look at say, a door greeter at many grocery stores vs even a McDonalds worker.
McDonalds was my first job, I started working there when I was 16. McDonalds is actually a pretty demanding job, I worked harder at McDonalds than most jobs since, and I made minimum wage($4.25 at the time). On the other hand, door-greeters at grocery stores have a very easy job. This job is usually given to young high-school age girls or the elderly.
The question is, how valuable is a job like a door greeter or even a grocery sacker? Is it worth $3 an hour? $5 an hour? $7 an hour? $9 an hour?
People see minimum wage as being "The necessary minimum amount a full-time worker needs to make for a set standard of living." This works as long as we are talking about an adult with no other income source. It is a system that protects employers from exploiting low-skilled adult labor.
Where the problem comes is when we start dealing with jobs that are more of a "frills" job, that aren't necessary, and requires absolutely no skill. If you cause minimum wage to go up. Companies won't be able to afford to pay people like door-greeters, grocery baggers, the guys holding up signs in front of stores, and many of the other customer service style jobs. And it could devastate fast food restaurants, because if the cost of fast food was to spike up too much, Americans wouldn't see eating out as being "worth it".
A good example of the effects of high minimum wage can be seen in the Swedish company IKEA. The Swedes have had socialism since before WWII, and they have traditionally had to pay very high wages. The way IKEA deals with high wages is, it basically has almost almost no employees. It is nothing but a warehouse and a showroom, and you basically have to do all the shopping yourself. If you want to talk to a customer service rep, you will have to call for one. Compare that to Wal-mart or Home depot, that has someone working almost every single isle.
And lastly, I think its pretty silly that a high-school kid that lives with his mommy and daddy are entitled to the same standard of living(minimum wage) allowances as an adult living on their own, trying to support their family.
The idea that the FEDERAL/CENTRAL/WASHINGTON/almost 3,000 miles from the west coast, government. Should be in charge of everything that happens in this country is stupid.
Just let the states and/or communities set the rules for their communities. Why can't the federal government trust Oklahoma to do whats best for Oklahoma?
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