That article was viewed very seriously by people at the time it was published, but I have noted on this forum that after reviewing things, I don't buy the idea that Obama was really responsible for what transpired at Benghazi, and ridiculed those on the right who did. Not that that matters to those who view things through black and white lenses, I guess.
I'm not offended by anything you post. I'll spot your six figures (which to me is just four figures, since I don't count the numbers after the decimal point, Cletus). What are we betting on? that' you're not a slack-jawed clown-okel? For the prosecution: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?p=7385819&highlight=magnetik#post7385819 Certified check, please.
Mary Kay Henry in the Colbert clip above says the average fast food worker is 28. When I drive around the vast strip center that is Houston, I try to imagine who works in all those Subways, fingernail salons and tattoo parlors and what their lives must be, living in cheap apartments, driving an iffy old car and having $0 savings for their retirement.
Using the mean age is a TERRIBLE way of ascertaining the situation, because there are two groups of people who work minimum wage: the really young, and the really old. If anything, that shows that my theory is correct, because since the vast majority of workers are young, the mean age is tilted more towards them as opposed to the smaller but still significant groups of old people who work minimum wage jobs. In fact, the median age of minimum wage workers? 23-24.
I know some pretty miserable rich folks. Quality of life is pretty subjective. Though I concede that rich and miserable is better than poor and miserable. It may be some consolation to know that this sad state of affairs (job-wise) isn't true for all people. I make plenty for my wife to be a stay at home mom and have us set up pretty comfortable for retirement. She works retail for fun, her own spending money, and because she gets bored at home. When I retire, I plan to find a laid back part time job to stay active as well. EDIT: all that said, the minimum wage is too damn low
For Dubious who also is concerned about the folks working for minimum wage. Australia has twice the minimum wage as the US and Big Macs cost roughly the same. TRANSCRIPT: JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jaisal Noor in Baltimore. Over the past year, increasing amounts of fast food and retail workers have been on strike demanding $15 an hour and better benefits and working conditions. Their struggle has spread nationwide, and their demands have been hotly debated in the media. To talk about this issue, we'll go to Australia, where the minimum wage is over $16 an hour for fast food workers..... When you look overseas, you see that minimum wages are much higher among our trading competitors, and these countries are doing very well. Countries like France, Germany, Australia, you know, while they may have occasional recessions like the U.S. has right now, over the long haul, over a, you know, 30- or 40-year period, they do just as well as the United States, but they have much higher wages for their workers. And so while overall economic growth is about equal between the U.S. and other countries, conditions for ordinary working people are far better in places like Australia and Europe. BABONES: The cost of living in Australia is in fact slightly higher than in the United States. And if you want to make an adjustment for that, the Australian fast food wage of $17.98 an hour probably comes down to around $12 an hour if you adjust for cost of living. On the other hand, if you adjust for the fact that that Australian $17.98, on top of that, Australian workers get four weeks' annual vacation, retirement benefits, and full health insurance, then of course you would have to revise the figures upward. .. As far as the Big Mac index goes, that's a really interesting index compiled by The Economist magazine. And, in fact, Big Macs are slightly more expensive in Australia than in the U.S., something like $0.70 ... For my money, I'd rather buy a hamburger for $0.70 more, knowing that people behind the current counter have a living wage, than to pay $0.70 less for a hamburger and have slave labor conditions in fast food restaurants http://www.truth-out.org/video/item...ly-rich-country-to-dodge-the-global-recession
agreed illegal aliens into the USA have also soared from about 130,000 per year in the 1970s, to 300,000+ per year in the 1980s, to over 500,000 per year in the 1990s, to over 700,000 per year in the 2000s.
No **** the fast food workers are better off, glynch. What's next? Ethanol subsidies are a wonderful idea because of how much the corn farmers have benefited? Because that's what minimum wage is. Only instead of having the rich subsidize the poor through taxes, you're having the middle class do it instead because it's the middle class who goes to McDonald's and will have to pay higher prices. And the middle class is worse off in Australia, or rather their purchasing power ( which is, after all, what we're discussing in an economics argument as opposed to civic obligation or something from some report) is inferior. About 20% inferior. Also, if we're going to be citing studies, let's look at what raising the min wage does in Puerto Rico. It raises unemployment.
Ethanol? I think your hysteria is caused by the fact that Australia having a higher minimum wage does not fit the spin you have gotten from Fox, the Koch's and the right think tanks funded by the billionaires tasked with justifying the increasing inequality in the US. You cite as an established fact that the middle class in Australia is less well off. Prove it. The whole point is that fast food workers in Australia are not in poverty and their wages would be in the lower rung of the "middle class" in US terms. Interesting that you cite concern for the middle class as an argument for a low minimum wage while trying to decrease its size by having millions of fast food and other workers make too little to be in it.
What a disingenuous post. Are you really making a case for minimum wage workers to have their wages forced high enough to be in the middle class? Minimum wage was never intended to lift those jobs into the middle class. Minimum wage is the lowest end of the pay scale. By definition, the lowest end of the pay scale would encompass the poor, not the middle class. This of course ignores the fact that making unskilled work pay middle class wages eliminates the incentive to do middle class work. Why would a person learn a trade, like welding, when they could run the cash register at the grocery store for similar (now middle class) wages? Being a cashier is much less physically taxing and has a substantially lower risk of on the job injury. There is a reason that jobs like welding have a middle class wage and being a cashier does not. That reason has zero to do with being unfair. Quite the opposite. Generally, people in middle class occupations have a skill and their job is more demanding or hazardous.
Australia vs. United States Uh, sure, if you're just going to factor in wages. Under your thinking, a guy earning $40,000 in Manhattan is better off than someone making 35K in Houston. If you really want me to concede, this is what I will concede. A small subset of the Australian population, most of whom actually aren't poor to begin with but are teenagers looking for a job, do benefit from minimum wage. Everyone else in the country, poor who aren't earning minimum wage, the middle class, businesses? All of them are worse off. Like I said, it's like ethanol. A feel good policy that benefits a small minority and hurts everyone else when there are much, much better alternatives to fighting poverty like the methods I've been arguing. And think very carefully about what you claim, glynch. You're arguing that there is this button the government can push. That if they just demand that everyone earns $15 an hour, everyone will be middle class ( never mind that class is a relative factor, unless you want to say that the 19th century British didn't have a middle class because their middle class is so much poorer than ours). And this will have absolutely no side effects. As anyone who has the slightest grasp on policy would know: if a policy is too good to be true...it probably is.
No, I didn't. He chastised another poster who expressed concern for the middle class. He said that it was interesting that he showed concern for the middle class while decreasing its size by have millions of fast food and other workers make too little to be in it. That comment suggests that fast food workers should earn middle class wages at a minimum.
Wages make up about 1/3 of the cost for a typical fast food restaurant. So if the typical Mcdonalds makes $40k a week, then it pays out about $12k in labor costs. Figure that the average per hour cost is $10, because you have to pay managers and such, so that's 1,200 hours of labor. It probably takes about 10 people to run a McDonalds all in (factoring heavy times and light times) so that's 120 hours of operations a week - or 17 hours a day. That's about right considering it's back of the envelope - maybe the average pay is $11/hr. So I don't think you can expect a McDonald's to increase wages without increasing prices. If you want to pay your employees $1/hr, and you need 1,000 hours of labor a week - that's an extra $1,000 in labor costs. Or 2.5% of your total revenue. So to offset that cost, you'd need to raise prices 2.5%. So to pay someone $11.5/hr instead of $7.5, you'd have to increase prices 10% (or a bit more to offset lower consumption). So a $5 meal would go to $5.50. But on the flip side, you could argue that a 10% increase in prices is not much compared to a 50% increase in salary. The real question is what is the impact of 50 cents increase on the cost of your cheap fast food? Are people going to notice that increase much? If you depend on McDonalds to live off of yes. But if you eat it once a week? No. It's still dirt cheap food. Anyway, I don't think having a minimum wage that keep in line with inflation at $11/hr would hurt business much or the economy. It was at that level and these businesses were flourishing then. $11/hr is still dirt cheap labor. Put it in other terms - would you care if you paid $7.50 for an hour of personal training or $11? Probably not - you'd still be pretty stoked. Point is, it's cheap labor no matter how you slice it.
Actually, people will notice that increase. Fast food is incredibly sensitive to the price elasticity of demand, especially compared to staple foods. A 10% increase in prices for fast food would result in around a 10% decrease in business.
You really can't fault a lot of people for being below average, there are so many factors that determine an individual's fate: IQ, socialization process, family influences, physical health, mental health, opportunities, interested or disinterested mentors and role models, successful or outcast peer groups. But you have to accept them under the definition of "we the people", the general welfare and the the greater good. Everyone does recognize that raw capitalism is by definition exploitive and is mollified a thousand ways in in US law? I mean we already have minimum wage laws, we're just talking about where we draw the line. (we already have gun control laws, it's just where we draw the line)
