The unaffordable higher minimum wage fallacy

originally posted by: pexx421
a reply to: engineercutout

I don't know why yall don't seem to get it. You are not listening I think. The cost, as always, is PASSED ALONG TO THE CONSUMER. Got that? At any rate, it's not like small mom and pop stores or farms can compete now. They are quickly growing extinct due to corporate price wars and lobbying, so you won't have to worry about them soon and it has nothing to do with how much they have to pay their labor. At any rate, what most of you fail to pick up is that we don't have a static minimum wage. We have a declining standard of those on minimum wage. If it had increased at the same rate as inflation it would now be around $19 an hour. Meaning that those on min now have half the purchasing power that their grandfather's did.

I understand what everyone has been saying, and I have read the entire thread. Cost passed along to consumer, got it. Mom and pops fail along the way because they can't absorb the cost but that's okay because they're doomed anyway, got it. The wages that unskilled entry level workers are paid are inadequate and haven't increased with the inflation of our fiat currency, got it. Our standard of living is continuing to decline, got it.

What you don't seem to understand is that a minimum wage hike like this will not solve the problem. Prices will increase at pace with the wage increases. Corporations will gain more control from the damage done to small business. I want them to have less control over the products I buy and who I give my time(labor) to, not more!

The standard of living has been steadily declining for everyone who is not wealthy for decades now, and it really has nothing to do with a minimum wage. Inflationary monetary policy, the elimination of protective tarrifs, flooding of the job market with cheap foreign labor (legal and illegal), lack of easily accessible job skill training, corporate bailouts, and a regulatory climate that favors the corporation all have a lot more to do with that declining standard of living than the lack of a higher minimum wage in my opinion.

A large minimum wage hike doesn't really address the underlying causes of this problem, so it ultimately won't solve this problem it will actually make it worse. Should low paying mega-corporations pay their labor more? Yes, absolutely, I agree. Should small, privately owned businesses be required to pay their employees more? No way, you'll never convince me of that. I want those small businesses hiring as many people as they can afford to, creating as many jobs as possible. Should we have a legal minimum wage? Yes. Fifteen dollars an hour? No. Labor shouldn't be priced out of the market.

To keep our argument in context, I thought I would revisit my first post here in this thread. The examples I cited of carpenter or mechanic whose shops would be hurt by a dramatic wage hike are both professions that would start an unskilled new employee out at a pay rate above the minimum wage right now. They can afford that. They probably couldn't afford to start their labor off at fifteen dollars an hour in most parts of the United States, though. These types of businesses provide a lot of trade learning jobs. You squeeze them out and you will squeeze a lot of on the job training out.

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: EternalSolace

originally posted by: 8fl0z
It's not that it can't be afforded, its that raising minimum wages across the board would in turn raise the prices of everything else in the world. You are not meant to make a living from fast food jobs, grocery store jobs, and other menial jobs. If you want better for yourself, go to school and/or learn a trade so you don't have to settle for peanuts. It is really that simple. All these scrubs and socialists calling for higher wages for crappy jobs are people who have settled for mediocrity. The only ones who say no one needs millions/ billions of dollars are the people that are incapable of making that kind of money. I realize that money isn't everything, but in this society, the more you have, the easier life is for you and yours. I would rather have more than is needed, than not have enough and be struggling.

I believe there is around 318 million people in the Unted States. This is a rough guestimate, but I'm guessing that there are around 250 million adults. Probably less than that are working adults. Please show me where, or name the employer, where there are mid to high paying jobs for 250+- million people?

I'm sorry, but we all can't be computer programmers or doctors. And for you to ridicule, by calling scrubs, people who work what you see as a crap job, doesn't speak very well for you as a human.

But who cares... right? It's not you or your own.

The poor in America live better than 99% of the rest of the world.

It really speaks well of America when you have to compare it to the most dirt poor third world countries in order to make it look good. While if you compare it to peers in western Europe, northern Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand it has slums that simply don't compare. Shining city on a hill my ass!

Didn't read the whole thread but the Seattle based company "Gravity Payments" moved all it's employee's to a minimum annual wage of 70K this year. Honestly this is the only time I have seen capitalism work for all workers from low-end to high-end. If companies want to stop people from leaving who they have invested training in, this is the model to follow.

Having worked front-line retail for over 25 years and for 7 different companies, I can tell you loss of good people costs companies huge. Part time people are treated so bad in todays environment, really good ones are very hard to find too.
If you paid a part-time mom or dad 35K a year to work part-time(20hrs. a week) they could spend more time with their kids during those really important formative years, without taking too huge of a financial hit for a few years.

Both parents could work part time and make 70k and help the family, but greed is stopping this, the stock market is bad for modern society it encourages corporations to be greedy for shareholders.

originally posted by: Blue_Jay33
Didn't read the whole thread but the Seattle based company "Gravity Payments" moved all it's employee's to a minimum annual wage of 70K this year.

This is not completely accurate, but what he doing is still pretty awesome.

abcnews.go.com...

From the article:
"The CEO of a credit-card payments company in Seattle said executive pay is "out of whack," so he's cutting his own pay and creating a minimum salary for his workers. Now, he will be earning $70,000 like many of them, and he's OK with it.

Dan Price, 30, announced this week that any employee at his company, Gravity Payments, making less than $70,000 annually will receive a $5,000-per-year raise or be paid a minimum of $50,000, whichever is greater. The aim: By December 2017, everyone will earn $70,000 or more.

To facilitate this change, Price said his salary will decrease to $70,000 from about $1 million until or unless the company's profits are greater than last year's approximately $2.2 million."

a reply to: onequestion

Wages will HAVE to come up eventually. We cannot sustain our economy on 8 dollar an hour service jobs. The Average worker has very little buying power and even less ability to save money. The only reason we have kept things going up until recently is that people offset their low wages by consuming with credit debt, and the fact that products were relatively cheap due to cheap foreign labor. Well, people are not buying frivolously with credit cards anymore, and offshore wages are rising albeit slowly. So at some point wages will either have to rise or the economy will crash and we will be in a decades long depression.

a reply to: openminded2011

Yeah but your wrong.

Most of those service jobs arent even worth $2 an hour and those losers should get an education.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom

While I agree with you, many here would not. They would see the CEO and board of directors perfectly deserving of high salaries and running a corporation with insane profit margins at the expense of their employees.

Please explain what you consider an insane profit margin, and who has one?

originally posted by: onequestion
Most of those service jobs arent even worth $2 an hour and those losers should get an education.

I think most agree with the total screw up of the last 6 years to fix the economy that 10 bucks an hour is about what minimum wage should go to, and many states are already there.

I thought I should go back and clarify my thoughts here.

originally posted by: engineercutout

The standard of living has been steadily declining for everyone who is not wealthy for decades now, and it really has nothing to do with a minimum wage.

I don't think minimum wage laws are evil, they have benefitted our society in the past.

Should small, privately owned businesses be required to pay their employees more? No way, you'll never convince me of that.

I'm not against raising the minimum wage altogether, I just think fifteen dollars an hour nationwide is excessive, and ultimately would create more problems than it would solve. I also think raising it drasticallly and abruptly is what would hurt small business. If it were implemented incrementally, small businesses would have a better chance of absorbing the cost increase.

I agree, engineer, that the stock market/ corporate system is the problem. However, I think it more likely that minimum wage can increase than that the stock/corp system will change any time soon. And this would at least level the playing field for a while. As to many others....your views of the poor and homeless are powerfully flawed. I worked in mental health for a long time. Most of my patients were homeless and abject poverty. No, they did not have cell phones....or bank accounts, or cars, or even often clothes that were not ragged and filthy. They suffered from severe emotional issues, had many diseases which they could not get treatment for, were suffering from many basic nutritional deficiencies (even though their caloric intake was fine) due to the garbage they were forced to subsist on. It is almost impossible for them to get work without a phone/car/address/bank account. Your views of the homeless and poor are coloured by the dominant propaganda of the national paradigm, and reflect nothing of the reality. Keep in mind that the majority of the homeless are ex vets, and that NONE of the homeless and few of the poor get any real, actionable, useful help. Even in our medical system, we provide little actual care....we mostly act as a funnel of taxpayers dollars to the pharma industry and offer little to no counseling or aid, and put them out as soon as medicare/aide runs out. Take your blinders off, and find wherever you misplaced your heart, humanity, and compassion.

a reply to: engineercutout

The standard of living has been steadily declining for everyone who is not wealthy for decades now, and it really has nothing to do with a minimum wage. Inflationary monetary policy, the elimination of protective tarrifs, flooding of the job market with cheap foreign labor (legal and illegal), lack of easily accessible job skill training, corporate bailouts, and a regulatory climate that favors the corporation all have a lot more to do with that declining standard of living than the lack of a higher minimum wage in my opinion.

Nice synopsis.

a reply to: pexx421

.we mostly act as a funnel of taxpayers dollars to the pharma industry and offer little to no counseling or aid, and put them out as soon as medicare/aide runs out. Take your blinders off, and find wherever you misplaced your heart, humanity, and compassion.

The help for the homeless is a total joke.

The healthcare system is fundamentally flawed. The homeless shelters close at 4-5 pm and let everyone out at 6. How the hell is someone suppose to manage their entire life in that time frame such as get a job find a place to live get food pay their bills see their doctors. Its a joke.

The mental healthcare system is a joke as well. I see my psychiatrist once every two months and I havent seen a therapist once and im type 1 bi polar. Luckily ive gotten really good at managing over the years because i didnt know until 3 months ago.

People really just want to make themselves feel better rather then be compassionate they put themselves on a pedestal.

originally posted by: onequestion
a reply to: openminded2011

Yeah but your wrong.

Most of those service jobs arent even worth $2 an hour and those losers should get an education.

Statements like this make me lose faith in humanity. You have no clue the struggle for the "educated" let alone the ones who couldn't get approved for education funding but wanted more education.

There is a name for people with your mindset, it's against TOS though.

a reply to: Vector99

Its sarcasm.

Im a strong advocate against this type of ridiculous ideology. It makes no sense.

a reply to: onequestion

My apologies, didn't read what you were quoting. Will someone please invent sarcasm font lol.

a reply to: Vector99

Good idea haha.

I just enjoy displaying how asinine it is for people to laugh at.

a reply to: onequestion

Seriously, anyone who thinks waiters are throwaway workers should try waiting tables some time. I've done medical, construction, military, etc and can tell you that waiting tables is brutal work.

originally posted by: Edumakated
The poor in America live better than 99% of the rest of the world.

No, they do not. I am in the bottom 4% in income in the US. I am quite aware of my living conditions and those of people in other countries. I don't get health care, I eat on under $100 per month, everything takes longer because I cannot afford to drive much (and if you've never walked let me tell you something, pedestrians are completely invisible to traffic, I have been hit by cars and had them speed off), my so called luxury items are eating a piece of meat or drinking something other than tap water/tea.

This is still a step up. For my first college degree I was homeless (the choice was money for a roof or tuition). My town had no shelters, and if I was caught they would drive me far enough out of town that I wouldn't be able to make it to class. Fortunately, my town had a 24 hour Tim Hortons and in those days the lobby was open 24 hours/day. So after class I could walk there, use their bathroom, and have shelter all night while doing homework. In the morning I would go back to school and sleep on campus (usually by hiding in a study room in the library), shower in their gym, then attend class in the afternoon. By homeless standards in the US I actually had it pretty good. In a whole lot of places it gets a whole lot worse... I would have been in that worse place if a cop were ever called on me.

You mentioned seeing poverty in other countries and that the US just doesn't have it. Let me ask you this, have you ever known a disabled person who had to keep 2 other roommates in a 1 bedroom apartment to make rent? How about that same person who couldn't afford food because the roommates were behind? I supported his eating habits for months at a time. At that time I got $140/month for food stamps, so that gave us each $70 to eat on.

That's what poverty is like in the US. The threat of losing the roof over your head at any moment, and people who have to make the choice between food, shelter, or medicine (and that's just for the ones lucky enough to be able to see a doctor in the first place).

Have you ever watched people in America agonize over medications? When they have a weeks left but don't get paid for 2 weeks? And skipping that week will severely harm them? Watching them struggle to decide if they can go a week without eating or if they should skipping medicines that could very well kill them by skipping? I watched my mom make that decision before I stepped in and gave her whatever food I could.

That is poverty in America, we have running water and electricity but there's also medical issues... the last time I saw a dentist was 6 years ago (no low income options here sadly), that involved quite a bit of work, much drilling and a root canal with no anaesthetic because I couldn't pay for that part of the treatment.

We might be better off than somewhere like Haiti but we are certainly not better off than virtually anywhere else in North America or Europe.

originally posted by: Edumakated
Who else's fault would it be? The beauty of America is you don't have to stay poor. If you work hard, get an education, don't have kids out of wedlock, and avoid the criminal justice system the odds of you being poor or needing to work a minimum wage job are virtual ZERO.

4 college degrees... 3 associates and a bachelors
No kids
Clean record

I have never been paid more than minimum wage in my life.