Lord knows any well-adjusted individual responds to an argument in a debate with a wish for a restraining order. Those unfamiliar ideas can be bloodthirsty!
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Lord knows any well-adjusted individual responds to an argument in a debate with a wish for a restraining order. Those unfamiliar ideas can be bloodthirsty!
SPARTAN VI
[H]F Junkie
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Overall it is. I also have a BA in Business Administration and my family runs a small non-profit where we set an annual budget, but not in the sense where we explicitly decide we're going to spend $X on wages this year. In our case, reducing staff isn't an option if minimum wage were to drastically rise, so the offset would have come out of pretty much every other part of the budget (e.g. supplies, technology, non-essential operations). In Wells Fargo's case, would it simply increase the budget and tell the stockholder's to pound sand? Nope.
Explain to me how businesses ever survived 40 years ago when adjusted for inflation, minimum wage was several dollars higher per hour than it is now?
Every year that goes by without a wage increase, you are making LESS money. CEO pay is at an all time high, corporate profits are higher, and worker productivity is up. Yet people are making less money than they did decades ago.
Minimum wage should be tied directly to inflation and not require congress to increase it whenever they feel like it. If a company feels an employee is worth $8 per hour in today's dollars, then in 5 years they should also be worth $8 an hour and paid $8 an hour, in 2019 dollars, not 2014 dollars.
If a company can't figure out how to make a profit while paying fair wages, then whoever runs that company doesn't know what they are doing and they should be the first ones fired. When businesses lose money and layoffs are required to stay afloat, they should start at the top and go down, not the other way around.
LeninGHOLA
Vladimir Hayt
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Minimum wage works as well as rent control in Manhattan, it's a great concept with shitty execution.
Value of the dollar was far stronger, cost of living was far lower, quality of life was far lower. You had to be fancy if you wanted a credit card. Food was home-cooked most of the time. You had one car, if you had one at all. A lot of one-bedroom and two-bedroom homes.
It was also a far humbler society, referring to both the workers and the owners. I'm certainly not denying that many companies are run by sociopaths with all the empathy of a honey badger. I'm simply saying that raising the minimum wage is the equivalent of having a savings account that also charges you each month for keeping your money in it. Sure, you have more money for a little bit...before you end up handing it over to the same people as before, since prices tend to rise.
Personally, I think the minimum wage should be reduced, so that unskilled low-level labor can be offered to teenagers, college students, and other people looking to pick up pocket money and not support a lifestyle. That would allow more money to be diverted to employees who depend on their paycheck to live. Meanwhile, the low-paid workers are picking up knowledge and experience that will allow them to either rise within the company, or go elsewhere for a better opportunity.
I know the default reaction is that, for some reason, employers would suddenly pay all their employees less. You're kidding, right? There'd be protests nationwide and it would backfire like crazy. On the contrary, it would give employers more options in hiring. If there's one complaint I've heard from people about their jobs these days, it's how understaffed their workplaces are. I'm sure some simple work could be offered if the proper price could be set. Unfortunately, this option doesn't exist, and it seems some people are too scared to try it. They should remember this isn't the 1910s, it's the 2010s. Comcast can barely sneeze these days without the internet telling it to cover its goddamned mouth. Consumerist is quite a popular blog. This isn't a nation of uneducated immigrants anymore. It's a nation of overeducated hipsters. God help us all.
Pop quiz: which country now has the largest labor unions in the world?
Hint: It's the same country who now has trillion dollar a year trade surpluses with ours.
Ironically, China's labor unions and <i>their</i> increasing minimum wages are the only hopes we and other labor forces in Western countries ever have of competing with Communism.
Hint: It's the same country who now has trillion dollar a year trade surpluses with ours.
Ironically, China's labor unions and <i>their</i> increasing minimum wages are the only hopes we and other labor forces in Western countries ever have of competing with Communism.
arthur_tuxedo
Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2003
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- 558
Every law, statute, and ordnance should be automatically indexed to inflation by default. Otherwise you get idiocy like minimum wage being allowed to fall below the poverty line and attempts to bring it partway back up being called a "hammock". Opponents of wage increases act like it's some crazy experiment, but there is no mystery to the consequences of increasing the minimum wage. It's been done many, many times, and the statistical evidence is rock solid. Minimum wage increases don't negatively affect jobs much, if at all, and can actually have a positive affect.
In today's depressed labor market with persistently high unemployment, worker productivity is many times higher than wages. Sure, there are a few businesses who struggle to make a profit, but the vast majority of minimum wage laborers work for companies who could easily afford to double their wages without significantly affecting the overall cost of their product. But this is still an extra cost, right? And won't that drag down the number of jobs available, even if most employers can take the hit?
Historically, the answer is almost always no. This argument forgets that the workers who have received a raise can now afford to buy more of the things these companies produce, and low earners ($15 / hr is still low) typically spend most if not all of their monthly income, increasing demand for homes, cars, restaurant meals, etc. Higher growth increases long-term profitability, and eventually shareholders even recoup valuation initially lost to wage increases. In the long run, maintaining an underclass of working poor hurts the nation and everyone in it, including the very rich. Once-great nations that began to glorify the already-rich and kick everyone else's ladders away are strewn about the graveyard of history, and there are always vacant plots available.
In today's depressed labor market with persistently high unemployment, worker productivity is many times higher than wages. Sure, there are a few businesses who struggle to make a profit, but the vast majority of minimum wage laborers work for companies who could easily afford to double their wages without significantly affecting the overall cost of their product. But this is still an extra cost, right? And won't that drag down the number of jobs available, even if most employers can take the hit?
Historically, the answer is almost always no. This argument forgets that the workers who have received a raise can now afford to buy more of the things these companies produce, and low earners ($15 / hr is still low) typically spend most if not all of their monthly income, increasing demand for homes, cars, restaurant meals, etc. Higher growth increases long-term profitability, and eventually shareholders even recoup valuation initially lost to wage increases. In the long run, maintaining an underclass of working poor hurts the nation and everyone in it, including the very rich. Once-great nations that began to glorify the already-rich and kick everyone else's ladders away are strewn about the graveyard of history, and there are always vacant plots available.
According to the US government there is no inflation. If you see inflation, economic contraction or unemployment, those are all things you're completely imagining according to the official stats from the hallmark of integrity that is the fine statesmen we've asked to represent us.
The two aren't even related so I'm not sure where you're going with that point.
Wages not keeping up over the past few decades is 100% a result of the expanding labor supply. That's just how the world works. There were major social and political revolutions that encouraged and allowed that to happen, and here we are. I know we all want to think it's as easy as some cartoonish Montgomery Burns-like character being a greedy SOB, but wages respond to supply and demand just like everything else in the market.
You know unemployment just hit 5.9%, right? I mean, it's a bullshit number, but it's still a six-year low.
collegeboy69us
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
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- 5,255
sorry - if you willingly stay at a job for 7 years and only make 15 dollars an hour, you need to do some work on yourself, or look for another job. Nobody is just going to knock on your door one day and say "i wanna give you 20 dollars an hour"
After the 2009 crash, i went from almost 6 figured a year to a $15/hour job. It sucked, but I did what I had to do to keep working. After 4 years I was making $20. Guess what? I quit and went on to much better pastures. It's risky, it's not fun, and quite honestly it sucks too Because I'm typing this from some middle of nowhere oil well site in Utah that I've been stuck at for almost 50 days straight without a break.
It's money though - and I had to kick my own ass to make the leap. I could have stayed at my previous employer for another 20 years (walgreens - IT guy) and never made any more money, I had maxed the pay scale already).
I hope the guy gets some resolution to his issue - but in 7 years, if you don't at least TRY to find something better... it's kind of on you. The days of pensions, and the company actually looking out for you are long gone. Again: it sucks, but the only one that can really take care of you, is you.
After the 2009 crash, i went from almost 6 figured a year to a $15/hour job. It sucked, but I did what I had to do to keep working. After 4 years I was making $20. Guess what? I quit and went on to much better pastures. It's risky, it's not fun, and quite honestly it sucks too Because I'm typing this from some middle of nowhere oil well site in Utah that I've been stuck at for almost 50 days straight without a break.
It's money though - and I had to kick my own ass to make the leap. I could have stayed at my previous employer for another 20 years (walgreens - IT guy) and never made any more money, I had maxed the pay scale already).
I hope the guy gets some resolution to his issue - but in 7 years, if you don't at least TRY to find something better... it's kind of on you. The days of pensions, and the company actually looking out for you are long gone. Again: it sucks, but the only one that can really take care of you, is you.
SamuraiInBlack
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
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- 5,771
At a retailer I worked for, a 50 cent raise after 6 years was the best they could do for me.
Nevermind the fact my receiving team was the best in the entire company for almost a year straight, and that I was one of three people who were personally picked to be next in line for a manager spot.
At one of the quarterly meetings where all store managers went to the corporate office for financials, the president of the company responded to the topic of raises with "The pay that's in place now is the pay that will be in place. If an associate wants a raise, they can go work somewhere else."
Over the next 3 months, by around March/April or so, half our store had quit in response to the president's statement about pay raises and moved onto better jobs. Ten people had quit that week. Half my team left a couple months later. I joined them a year later.
Today that store is a joke. The parking lot on the weekends looks like a bad Monday at Best Buy. I feel bad for the people I know who are stuck working there for whatever reason. I sincerely hope they get out before the stress of that place kills them. I'm not kidding about that statement.
Leaving that place honestly saved my life.
You increase your budget.
Tell me this, how do you continue to make profit if you cut your production force in half?
While I dont think minimum wage should really be reduced at this point, it honestly wouldnt care if it was. I remember making minimum wage; I was a child doing child like work. It was gas money so I could drive my mom's car around. As someone else earlier said, minimum wage shouldnt be a "living wage". There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to be "stuck" working at wal-mart, McDonalds, as a Janitor, etc. Even if you are unemployed these jobs are a waste of time, since the time spent working them could be better spent finding a higher paying job.
If you are a grown adult and only making minimum wage, then I'm sorry but you dont get to have the american dream just yet. You dont get to have an iphone, a honda civic, and a home to call your own. You dont even get to live in your own apartment. You get to ride public transportation or perhaps a very old vehicle, and you live with roomates to cut your expenses. This is all part of "growing up" until you land a real job.
Riccochet
Fully [H]
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- Apr 11, 2007
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- 28,999
How come every time someone opens their big mouth about the minimum wage some idiot spats off that it should be $15 an hour because large corporations. What that fail to realize is that large corporations don't make up every 1/3 of the workforce in this country. Small business does. So for the small business that only has 2-3 employees they'll have to scale back to 1-2 in order to keep the doors open. It would kill jobs. A LOT OF JOBS.
Think outside of the "large corporate greed" bubble you are so inherently stuck in. The jobs market doesn't revolve around large corporations.
Think outside of the "large corporate greed" bubble you are so inherently stuck in. The jobs market doesn't revolve around large corporations.
Most businesses are small businesses that don't have the option of increasing budgets without severely affected their debt position...and it's also why most businesses fail.
The "increase the budget" mentality, in my opinion, has been galvanized by a culture of bailouts and "too big to fail". Corporations never go under because the government catches them with a net full of taxpayer dollars...which they then demand more of from taxpayers because they don't have enough.
As a culture, thankfully, it seems like individuals are really learning to embrace individualism and self-reliance. Perhaps that will have a trickle-up effect.
Good grief. Ever been to China, horse's ass?
I employ three workers at $10/hr, a wage that is competitive for the work being done. I could buy a machine to do the work of five people, but after doing a little math I find that it'll cost $60/hr to run over its lifespan. (For the less math inclined, that works out to $12/hr each if the work were being done by five humans.) This is less cost efficient than the people working now, so I don't buy the machine, but instead debate hiring a few more people to help out.
Minimum wage is increased to $15. Now the machine is cheaper than the people, and I fire them, simultaneously growing my business while becoming more efficient.
Minimum wage is increased to $15. Now the machine is cheaper than the people, and I fire them, simultaneously growing my business while becoming more efficient.
Riccochet
Fully [H]
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- 28,999
Look sorry for the personal swipe but I have zero tolerance for treason pawning itself off as ignorance.
In China there is no free market. No competition. No private business sector beyond that which is controlled by the Communist government. They've even installed party-loyal "bishops" in the Roman Catholic Church. Drop a RGB into the big basket on Sunday and it's in the Communists' hands on Monday.
I could spent the next six months continuously writing about the catastrophic ramifications of Richard Nixon's "opening the gates to China" on my country.
In China there is no free market. No competition. No private business sector beyond that which is controlled by the Communist government. They've even installed party-loyal "bishops" in the Roman Catholic Church. Drop a RGB into the big basket on Sunday and it's in the Communists' hands on Monday.
I could spent the next six months continuously writing about the catastrophic ramifications of Richard Nixon's "opening the gates to China" on my country.
Well obviously you just need to dig into the massive profits you're hoarding, you terrible, horrible business owner that hates workers. I bet you use your employees as furniture, don't you?? STOP EATING OFF OF HAROLD'S BACK!!!
You know what I meant. Too much CRT talk.
I don't know why you think I was acting in the form of a Chinese apologist. Perhaps it wasn't clear but my last paragraph was referring to the US. It was technically a break from the previous two responses and meant to be generic to the thread.
Here's the problem with your proposition. The average minimum wage job in the 60's paid well enough for you to have close to all of the things you have listed. A house would take some work, but the rest of it? Completely doable. A years salary at minimum wage would get you a hard top Ford Mustang. For half a person's salary (somewhere around 60%) at minimum wage the person could drive a brand new VW bug, what's left over would allow you to rent an apartment and possibly live on your own if you were frugal.
Today? That's just not possible. What it looks like you are really saying is that you don't mind having a lower standard of living, which I just don't agree with.
Remember when you were a child, and you whined and cried because some kid had a candy bar and you didn't? Remember saying between weepy sobs, "*huck* *huck* IT'S *huck* NOT *huck* *huck* FAAAIIIRRR!!!"?
Remember when the adults said "You're right, child. It's not fair. You deserve anything you want whenever you want it. I'll go take some of theirs and give it to you."?
Me neither. Wonder why they didn't say that.
Remember when the adults said "You're right, child. It's not fair. You deserve anything you want whenever you want it. I'll go take some of theirs and give it to you."?
Me neither. Wonder why they didn't say that.
Bank profits are highly regulated. That is what many people do not understand. Banks can't just go rolling that profit into what ever they see fit. Banks are forced to take most of their profits and put them into loans and other various market related activities.
Christ, I miss that show.
cdr_74_premium
[H]ard|Gawd
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What the FUCK happened to the good old United States of America?
Some bullshit communist logic in this thread that I'm totally used to hear about... in Latin fucking America. No wonder the mighty is slowly falling.
Some bullshit communist logic in this thread that I'm totally used to hear about... in Latin fucking America. No wonder the mighty is slowly falling.
cdr_74_premium
[H]ard|Gawd
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- Oct 20, 2010
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And please shut the fuck up about China. There's a REASON why droves of Chinese (and people from third world shitholes in general) would go so far as to risk their lives to live in the United States of America.
mediumraresteak
n00b
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2011
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World War II happened and the fleeing socialist professors in Europe infected the schools in America and thus you have the paradigm shift in economic thought, among other social issues.
mediumraresteak
n00b
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2011
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- 40
People need to realize that even though China's GDP is at an all-time high in recent years, their 'per capita' GDP is much less than the U.S.
leezard
Supreme [H]ardness
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- Aug 24, 2004
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- 4,949
My pay has increased a little over $10 an hour in the 3.5 years I have been at my job. I could make more elsewhere, but I like my coworkers, I enjoy my job, I have good insurance and like someone else said, If i go somewhere else its last hired first fired when the economy shits itself again.
Seventyfive
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2004
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Stop confusing this argument with facts and math. Go with what your heart and feelings tell you to do.
What I took/take issue with is the traitorous (imo) assumption that Communist China's labor force represents any kind of legitimate competition to ours, or that of any capitalist country. As wild as that might sound, it was in fact the way most Communist countries including China were dealt with by capitalist governments for over a half century, by every U.S. president before Richard Nixon regardless of political party.
Another pop quiz: Where did both Henry Kissinger and Hank Paulson decide to retire? Kissinger was one of the major proponents of this "opening the gates to" a country that had just finished providing most of the munitions to put 55,000 of our kids to death in Vietnam. And one online source claims the latter of the two personally netted $7B in our last president's extortion on his way out of office. Excuse me I mean TARP.
Given world history it was only a matter of time before the American people started electing genuine traitors to office, and we finally got them in the forms of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Look at virtually any long-term financial chart and all hell breaks loose starting with these two presidents.
I was referring to the large increase in labor supply here in the US, through a social change of encouraging women to enter the workforce where they had previously been homemakers, and the vast increase in immigration (both legal and illegal).
Obviously wages are going to plummet.
You don't need to find a bogeyman when reality is a good enough explanation.
A certain and increasing percentage of American women start businesses and become producers of labor demand, many of them major. E.g. 11 corporations currently on Forbes' Top 100 list were founded by women. The point is, you can't approach this as if only a given number of jobs exist in our country and women are sucking up an increasing number of them. Women have been in our workforce en masse since WWII and it's never caused a problem. What is causing relentless downward pressure on U.S. wages is trying to play checkers with someone who is playing chess. I have nothing against either game but the chess player must be forced to play with other chess players.