what I am saying now is. . . if a company 'gets in trouble' from bad management they easily will ask/make the employees take a cut but when the company is BOOMING . . . they are very silent Rocket River
You actually believe that booming companies are silent? Since you mentioned unions, do you believe that union employees are generally underpaid with too few benefits? Really? And a paycut is not what I was talking about. I bet many companies would be interested in program that would tie their profits to wages directly if that meant there was no minimum on wages. GE reports a loss, none of its employees get paid.
hmmm. The black and white office shows the whole department while the other one shoes just one workstation. Don't you think there is some bias there?
Then there can be a multi tiered wage based on the size and success of the company. Just because a small business can't afford to pay a living wage, doesn't mean that Walmart shouldn't have to.
Don't you love this solution. Be smarter! Be better! Improve your model! Make it so! Why didn't somebody think of that before? Sounds like some awful middle managers I've had. The mindset of the beauracrat/regulator. Mandating outcomes, never responsible for achieving them. Never responsible for the consequences of their meddling (indeed, negative effects are only used to justify more meddling). One terrible thing about the minimum wage is that employers can treat their employees relatively poorly, knowing there is an excess supply of workers wiling to fill that job at an artificially high wage. In fact it's almost incumbent on employers to insist the employee work longer and harder to financially justify the higher wage.
I saw the thread title snippet from the forums main page and honestly assumed the thread title was "The Minimum Wage Is Too Damn High".
$7.25 is a livable wage (full-time). You can't raise a family by any means, but I know plenty of people that support themselves on that kind of income (I'm 26, and a lot of my friends still haven't exactly found themselves, but aren't supported by their parents anymore). I'm all for indexing it for inflation though. No reason it should be static and wait for an adjustment.
Very true. And Wal-Mart (at least prior to the $7.25 minimum wage) paid their employees more than the minimum wage. Not a ton more, but I was getting $6.55 in the days of $5.15, and then got a raise after 90 days.
Actually, it's the mindset of a good businessperson. If you don't think you can compete and take on challenges, you really probably shouldn't own a business in a competitive marketplace. I own one of those companies that has people traditionally around the minimum wage level (a coffee shop), so I'm directly affected by this and very responsible for achieving those outcomes. Nice try, though. How many people do you employ? Nonsense. Especially the "longer" part, given that these people are being paid hourly. Employers do get higher quality employees, though, for their extra wages since there are more people willing to work at the higher price.
So simplistic. Study actual historical facts much. Limiting yourself to conservative doctrine and econ 101 devoid of a the big picture brings us the magic of supply side economics and the myth that raisig the minimum wage causes many jobs to be lost. You can't understand the entire economy by thinking about a household budget. You can't think about the whole economy by thinking about only a mom and pop business with one eor two mployees. The household analogy and the mom and pop biz analogy are useful as talking points designed to fool little folk conservatives and benefit the Kochs and the 1%. If you raise the minimum wage millions of folks working at gigantic corporations like W. Mart and McDonalds and KFC will have a raise. It is doubtful that these giant corporations will lay off folks due to this. Yes, folks at W. Mart do make minimum wage for long periods at certain areas. I have a nephew a 30 year old adult who made that in S. Texas. After 5 yrs he makes a bit more now. In addition to the millions who make minimum wage there are probably tens of millions who make just a bit above that and whose wages are essentially linked to the minimum. Studies have repeatedly shown that raising the minimum wage if not done to very high levesl has virtually no effect on national unemployment levels. As per usual when arguing when oft repeated conservative talking points, don't need no stinking sudies or facts. Many of these minimum wage workers have their wages subsidized by food stamps and even welfare. Essentially this is a form of corporate welfare. So raising their wages might even help a lot of the litlle folks like comodore who buy the simplistic misleading econ theories fed them by folks high above the food chain as they might have their taxes lowered.
Interesting point to go with the other point about unions. I wonder what that graph might look like with healthcare and retirement benefits lumped in as well. My initial feeling from glancing at that chart is that there is something missing. Like it isn't providing the full picture...but maybe I am just dead wrong in my initial feeling. Here's another graph that I think gives better color (for my dense skull) to that productivity and wages graph. Clearly, wages have lagged inflation. ....Spoiler for size.... Spoiler
The unemployment rate is 8% and there are plenty of jobs available. Cut unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc and people will eventually take these jobs - the minimum wage jobs.
