Incorrect. Even if you only read the first page, you'll see that it's not what you think it's about. Not to be mean, but whether or not you think future technology will develop to the degree that most jobs will become obsolete is besides the point since it's pure speculation. I'm talking about the here and now. Unskilled labor has already been replaced by kiosks in many stores. And somehow, you think that by raising the cost of unskilled labor further, society will benefit? Not really. Businesses provide goods/services. Once they see that the rest of us can no longer afford those goods/services (by virtue of no longer having jobs), then they will change their business model. Nope. The rules say that you should have a skill that society finds beneficial. Actually, I think it is. Everyone has the capacity to improve themselves regardless of whatever decision they've made in their past. Back when I used to have rental property, I had a house in the ghetto. My tenant was a single mother (late 20's) with 3 kids who received food stamps, and section 8 housing assistance paid a portion of her rent. She only had a high school diploma, but in her free time, she took classes for medical billing (something of that nature; I'm not quite sure). She eventually found a job, and despite the fact that her benefits were cut, she was happy with her choice. When she made the inevitable decision to move to a neighborhood with a better school district, I didn't charge her rent for her final 3 months. Is it your contention that America should pay annual homage to England? After all, had the British not decided to colonize America, we wouldn't be here today. And what about Germany? If not for WW2, we wouldn't have been the global powerhouse that we are today. I find the "infrastructure" argument to be ridiculous.
http://www.fool.com/investing/gener...le-foods-and-the-container-store-3-compa.aspx How are Costco, Whole Foods and the Container Store able to pay well above minimum wage?
Their corporate culture is more generous. But you should also consider the number of locations those stores have compared to their minimum wage peers.
This. Also, you have to consider for Costco, that they vary the product offering depending on what they can buy in bulk at a lower cost.
CEOs catch flack for their compensation but really one of the problems is pressure to maximize profits. You are evaluated as a CEO in comparison to your perts. They try to save everywhere.
Costco has far far lower employee turnover levels compared to Walmart/Sam's Club. There's a huge value in productivity and savings by virtue of not having to train new employees over and over again along with the fact that their employees are just more familiar with the store layout. If anyone has ever had the unfortunate pleasure of retail management, turnover is such a nightmare and being short-staffed really can screw up your day and make life hell. An interesting example is QuikTrip (several other gas stations do this as well). They do end of year profit sharing that is uniform across the country. On a good year, you'll see minimum wage employees get several thousand dollar bonuses. I like the idea of every employee sharing an incentive in business performance rather than just handing out bonuses to managers. If you compare QuikTrip to other gas stations, they tend to be cleaner, have lower employee turnover, and higher employee satisfaction.
Costco and Whole Foods have an extremely different clientele from say, Walmart - it's not that different from asking why waiters at a 5-star French restaurant, or hell even an Applebee's can earn good money.
Minimal employment effects=inability to differentiate between a zero employment effect and significant negative results due to minimum wage=insignificant significance on employment through wage changes=minimal employment effects. It's happening now: this isn't speculation, this is the continuance of a trend, which in technology IS just about extrapolating the curve. Raising the price of "unskilled" labor is the only way to combat the rampant inequality that threatens to destroy the global economy. Even the IMF knows what's up: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2012/int061412a.htm Rise of Inequality at Center of Global Economic Crisis Level of inequality as high now as before Great Depression Inequality has frozen U.S. economic, political institutions Investments in education, health, infrastructure can help cut inequality If capital think robots are a better way to do customer service, they'll quickly realize that robots don't buy products. Nope. They'll squeeze so long as the model is good for them, customer be damned. It's no coincidence that the most profitable sectors involve things that have been built for people---either pharmaceuticals with government research and protection, or oil and gas, which benefits from the work of millions of years. People won't change their business model until you force them to acknowledge that their business model requires either suing children (Napster and P2P services for music) or keeping people on public welfare rolls while employed (minimum wage) or benefiting from a glut of cheap energy that can't last. Otherwise, why fix what ain't broke? I still see the music industry as a wreck, and they've only just begun to figure it out, or at least Spotify is figuring it out for them. Nope. Replace society with capital. Capital may find your skills and abilities in committing fraud with robo-foreclosures, money laundering for terrorists, and shifting resources to tax havens useful (Goldman has more subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands then in the UK, Japan, and Australia combined), but I doubt society does. Conversely, the skill of raising a child, and teaching, and building socially-oriented open-source software is something capital has never really found a benefit for, that society must. Anecdotal individual evidence is great, but the American dream is decaying on an aggregate level for the average person. Equality of opportunity used to be the foundation of America. Now I suppose it is the foundation of the Nordic countries. Arguably America does and did pay homage for WW2 through the military protection accorded through NATO for Germany, and the Marshall Plan for Europe, as well as the station of troops in Japan which allows for the Japanese to maintain a very lean military budget, and their constitutional self-defense mandate. So if we're using that as an example, considering the recency of events, I would say a Marshall Plan for American citizens who helped fund the agencies that developed the backbone of the Internet and who are the basis of the success of consumer facing startups such as Facebook should get something back, and not get shafted at IPOs.
Well yes, because inflation lags, and if we're using your fast food example, Americans spend some of the lowest proportion of their household budget in the world (something like 4%) on food so the effect on overall costs would be marginal as compared to the increase overall in purchasing power. I don't want to destroy fast food, I myself enjoy a quick meal here and there, but something that makes people think twice economically about toxic junk, and gets people more inclined to learn how to cook themselves, and to gather together as a community (ideally with locally sourced food, and great fresh ingredients) can be a beautiful thing for the health of individuals and the community. I'm perfectly alright with it being an ancillary benefit to this proposal, but hell, I would directly tax fast food if I had the power, so you don't want to go down the two-face route, you want to be calling me a communist
If ypu have the time, please read the following: http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/pu...travail/documents/publication/wcms_202352.pdf You are missing the following factors, this paper gives a basic overview: Globalization Financialisation Welfare state retrenchment Declining bargaining power of labor Increased market power of capital
Btw, with all of this talk about skills beneficial to "society" (but really capital): http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends Top Job Trends HTML5 MongoDB iOS Android Mobile app Puppet Hadoop jQuery PaaS Social Media Thought it might be useful for a somewhat scientific approach. If you're learning how to read and analyze documents like half of America is, you're **** out of luck <3 <3 <3 Hadoop and MongoDB
Did you miss this entire thread? Seattle mayoral candidates pushing for $15+/hr min wage And just FYI, the city of SeaTac has approved to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour. Granted the City of SeaTac mostly covers the airport only, there is in fact more than one person arguing that minimum wage to go up to $15.00. In response to Seattle raising min. wage to $15.00... http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=8375470&postcount=23
Is it your contention that we should have a revolution/social upheaval every 50 years? Seems like that also create the most opportunity for class mobility.
Clarifying my stances a little more on this topic: Raising minimum wage is not a long term solution, and should not be a long term solution. What needs to happen: Increased education and more access to have desire-able skills for the next century. I'm talking about using even the basic ability to use Excel, Powerpoint, and etc. I also think there should be A LOT more birth control education. Over population is a real danger, perhaps there are more people than opportunities.
So because increases in the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.50 resulted in minimal employment effects, you believe than an increase from $7.25 to $9 (at least) will also have minimal employment effects? Businesses will tolerate rising minimum wages as long as unskilled labor remains cheaper than automated alternatives. The trend may be heading in that direction, but it most certainly is not happening right now. You say that raising the minimum wage is the ONLY way to combat inequality. You then cite the IMF as agreeing with you. You then quote that the IMF says investments in education, health, and infrastructure can help cut inequality. Here's what I said: So basically, you agree with me. No, I said "society", and I meant "society". If you want to work in a day-care, go ahead. You'll make more than minimum wage. If you want to teach, go ahead. There's nothing wrong with that, and those jobs won't become obsolete. You can't help people who don't want to help themselves. If people want to complain about the low minimum wage but don't have the ambition to seek something greater, they could be afforded all the opportunities in the world. They'd still fail. And you may not believe it, but there is still plenty of opportunity in America. Why do you suppose students from other countries want to study here? Didn't the Marshall Plan end in the 1950's? If your point had any merit at all, we would still be helping Europe out. And what about paying homage to England since they colonized America? In any case, it's unreasonable to expect companies like Facebook/Twitter to owe anything to the government simply b/c the government created the internet. Remember, government is funded by the people. You could argue that the creator of FB/Twitter were simply reaping the fruits of their own investment and ingenuity.
