Missouri Returning to Reason - Rolling back minimum wage

originally posted by: Uberdoubter

With the cost of education, I think a whole lot end up with nothing more than minimum pay for years and years. If you're born into a poor "barely roof over their head" family, it takes some doing getting out of that. These days even former middle class people have to resort to #ty jobs with no pay.

I'm older, but I had roommates until my 30s...don't see why that would be any different today.

You don't have to be stupid and lazy to be poor, no more than being rich means you're smart and hard-working.

If you are consistent in improving your worth to companies year by year, decades by decade, and you do not have a string of poor decisions and life failures you can do very well.

Fair enough - If the pay of the CEO was split among the 130,000 employees, they would hardly notice any difference.
I just wish they'd play by the same rules - no raise for you? No raise for me neither.

If you took 40 million off the top of all the leadership in Boeing that would come out to a 15 cent raise for each employee. That is what people just do not understand that when one person is rich that is big to them but it does not spread very far.

For many people there is just no path towards "$100K and beyond", unless they manage to invent stuff, become the next Hollywood superstar, or do a miraculous amount of kissing the right asses.

Become a plummer...

originally posted by: Xtrozero
If you took 40 million off the top of all the leadership in Boeing that would come out to a 15 cent raise for each employee. That is what people just do not understand that when one person is rich that is big to them but it does not spread very far.

Yet they can't apply the same logic to taxes and government spending.

a reply to: Mikehawk

Yes, good behavior is rewarded and bad is punished.

a reply to: daskakik

Our grandparents didn't have a fully fiat currency. When the gold standard finally ended, 40 hours at minimum wage was more than 1 oz (closer to 2 oz). $1214/oz right now so we will call it $2000 for the easy math. That would be $50/hr.

Also note, the example that I gave was getting a job while unemployed and sustaining from zero. But the formula of saving 1/4 and 3/4 for expenses is sound policy.

As for working longer hours, yes. But I don't think that my job of driving welfare recipients to doctors appointments for 10-12 hours is harder work than 8 hours in a steel mill next to the furnace.

But knowing what I get paid and what the owner gets paid per trip is the part that will make you sick. Especially when you realize that your tax dollars paid for it and the brokerage company gets more than what my boss does per trip....but that is a whole other can of worms.

Me, I live off of those that say "I can't" and while I don't make Trump's money doing it, I get by.

originally posted by: poncho1982
I'm going to go out on a limb here.

I make $15 an hour.

I own a home, that I am paying the bank for every month.
I have healthcare that I pay for via my employer (3x the cost of what it was before 2014, but that's another story)
I pay my bills, have cable tv, internet, a cell phone, a motorcycle, a car, and a van.
I buy groceries, I travel a bit and have fun.

I also have over 20 years experience in my chosen field (which is a VERY crowded job market right now)

I do all this on just my income. No wife (not anymore, anyway!) no children, no roommates, nothing but my paycheck.

I've made more at other jobs, but I have also made less too. But I make it.

On $15 an hour, a single person no children anyone can do this with good money management skills.

Now add a family, a divorce or two, a few life curve balls ( Health Issues), and $15 a month is practically poverty wages for a family.

Life doesn't come without financial bumps, the road is not smooth and most people are not a paycheck away from debt, most people are in debt and going deeper by the day.

I personally think that money management should be a mandatory class throughout school, and also maybe basic hands-on economics and business classes.

originally posted by: Xtrozero
...

If you are consistent in improving your worth to companies year by year, decades by decade, and you do not have a string of poor decisions and life failures you can do very well.
...

In my experience, that "worth" is based on chemistry with the management - in effect your ability to kiss the right asses - and not so much on how good you are at what you do.

People shouldn't bend over backwards to massage the ego of the management to get somewhere in life, but unfortunately, that is what's expected.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what the term minimum wage means. The impression, in "The Greatest Nation on the Earth" seems to be that minimum wage means, the smallest hourly wage (based on a 40hr. work week) that a person can make and be above the "poverty" line. According to government reports (I'm sure you got your figures from reliable sources also), the least expensive place live in the USA is Washington DC (ranked #4 over all world wide) based on a median income of 65,910 It cost 17,584.788 (26.68% of income) to live. So if everyone, and all families, that made your suggested 7.70 (15,400 annually) would fall short by only 2,184. But we know everyone has side jobs to make a little extra.
Maybe just maybe, if the government truly kept their grubby mitts out of business and reinstated the original corporation laws, we might just have a free market (free of fed. gov. influence), and then 7.70 would be a poverty level wage at the very least. Then the market would truly drive the prices in all things and you could sell for as low, or high as you wanted without fear of loss to the fed. gov. . a reply to: Wayfarer

originally posted by: Realtruth

originally posted by: poncho1982
I'm going to go out on a limb here.

I make $15 an hour.

I own a home, that I am paying the bank for every month.
I have healthcare that I pay for via my employer (3x the cost of what it was before 2014, but that's another story)
I pay my bills, have cable tv, internet, a cell phone, a motorcycle, a car, and a van.
I buy groceries, I travel a bit and have fun.

I also have over 20 years experience in my chosen field (which is a VERY crowded job market right now)

I do all this on just my income. No wife (not anymore, anyway!) no children, no roommates, nothing but my paycheck.

I've made more at other jobs, but I have also made less too. But I make it.

On $15 an hour, a single person no children anyone can do this with good money management skills.

Now add a family, a divorce or two, a few life curve balls ( Health Issues), and $15 a month is practically poverty wages for a family.

Life doesn't come without financial bumps, the road is not smooth and most people are not a paycheck away from debt, most people are in debt and going deeper by the day.

I personally think that money management should be a mandatory class throughout school, and also maybe basic hands-on economics and business classes.

I agree.

My Mom taught me how to manage money. School did not. I got lucky. As I've said on here before, I grew up poor, and I am thankful for it. Life has shown me that nothing is free, and everything is earned.

In a family, the other half usually works too. Stay at home parents are a rare bird these days, unless Government handouts are involved. But that's another thread entirely.

If I had child support payments to make, then it would be rough. I'd love to say that was a choice, but nature decided differently in my case.

I do have two divorces, but neither involved any alimony payments.

a reply to: Ahabstar

FDR pretty much abandoned the gold standard during the 1930s. I think it only became official in 1971.

Either way, fiat money produced per capita vs fiat money taken home is apples to apples.

Nobody is comparing hours in a hard job to one in a cushy job.

What you get paid and what the owner gets doesn't make me sick, it is what I am pointing out. I'm not emotional about it but it is the situation. You actually proved my point.

originally posted by: Uberdoubter

In my experience, that "worth" is based on chemistry with the management - in effect your ability to kiss the right asses - and not so much on how good you are at what you do.

I have always worked in a technical field, so I do not see this, but maybe in a administration type field people might constantly compete for positions that most anyone there could do, so more ass kissing/networking is the key, but in the technical world you are basically judged on your performance and skills.

a reply to: daskakik

The price point between owner and employee is not the part that will make you sick as that is just the difference between $55 and $5 for a 18 mile/30 minute trip. The part that will get you is the realization that is $110 per day round trip for an addict to go to a methadone clinic. $770/wk of tax dollars for one recovering addict's transportation. We do a hundred more just like that every single day.

It's only money until you understand that there is no plan in place to actually ween them completely off the methadone. Same story for Suboxone clinics, about 350 of those clients but they tend to only go once or twice a week.

Any questions as to why Gov. Kasich wants the Medicaid expansion and federal funding to continue? Heroin is an epidemic in Ohio, as it is in other states, but there are only so many dollars to throw at it from the state level.

Would you like to know the numbers on school children we take to school because a) They can't behave well enough to ride a school bus b) They go to a special school c) They are in foster care in another city yet still attend their old school? Hint c) is a very large and rapidly increasing number. Total number is around 2000 school kids and I might be low on that number. But the projection is 3000 per day by the end of next school year. Each kid costs the schools $40-$50 a day depending on the distance regardless of district.

But to get this post back on topic. Regardless of the minimum wage, the US is in dire need to get people working for the payroll taxes to be collected to fund this sort of stuff.

originally posted by: Ahabstar
The price point between owner and employee is not the part that will make you sick as that is just the difference between $55 and $5 for a 18 mile/30 minute trip. The part that will get you is the realization that is $110 per day round trip for an addict to go to a methadone clinic. $770/wk of tax dollars for one recovering addict's transportation. We do a hundred more just like that every single day.

That doesn't get me either.

The $50 difference between a cushy job and a cushier job was my point.

Would you like to know the numbers on school children we take to school because a) They can't behave well enough to ride a school bus b) They go to a special school c) They are in foster care in another city yet still attend their old school? Hint c) is a very large and rapidly increasing number. Total number is around 2000 school kids and I might be low on that number. But the projection is 3000 per day by the end of next school year. Each kid costs the schools $40-$50 a day depending on the distance regardless of district.

I don't really care and it is not what I was discussing.

If anything it is just society finding things for people to do because they are expected to do "something".

But to get this post back on topic. Regardless of the minimum wage, the US is in dire need to get people working for the payroll taxes to be collected to fund this sort of stuff.

Something tells me that it is more complicated than that but that things are going as planned. You ever wonder if gov just acts dumb?

originally posted by: Xtrozero
I have always worked in a technical field, so I do not see this, but maybe in a administration type field people might constantly compete for positions that most anyone there could do, so more ass kissing/networking is the key, but in the technical world you are basically judged on your performance and skills.

That's not my experience. I'm in CS which is one of the more merit based fields out there, and while there is a good amount of merit based advancement, there's also the typical corporate BS where they like a worker but not necessarily their work, so the person is promoted into a management track. That's something that is very common, but then you also have the people who genuinely want to go into a management track and use their skills at a higher level. As I'm sure you're aware, a good technical manager can be very useful, but alongside those people are the incompetent ones who were promoted into it just to get them out of the way of the day to day stuff.

originally posted by: daskakik
a reply to: Fools

You cherry picked one of the cheapest things around. Why not a home or a car. I'm seeing 1950 $8,500 for a new house and $1,500 for a new car.

2017 $350,000 for a new house and $25,000 for a new car.

Min wage hours needed to buy:
1950
Home = 11,333.3 hours
Car = 2,000 hours

2017
Home = 45,161.3 hours
Car = 3,225.8 hours

$26 doesn't sound far off looking at these slightly more important purchases.

Well, when I was starting out I rented and bought used cars that I could afford. It was more work on the car end, but I figured it out.

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: Xtrozero
I have always worked in a technical field, so I do not see this, but maybe in a administration type field people might constantly compete for positions that most anyone there could do, so more ass kissing/networking is the key, but in the technical world you are basically judged on your performance and skills.

That's not my experience. I'm in CS which is one of the more merit based fields out there, and while there is a good amount of merit based advancement, there's also the typical corporate BS where they like a worker but not necessarily their work, so the person is promoted into a management track. That's something that is very common, but then you also have the people who genuinely want to go into a management track and use their skills at a higher level. As I'm sure you're aware, a good technical manager can be very useful, but alongside those people are the incompetent ones who were promoted into it just to get them out of the way of the day to day stuff.

No apologies, you seem to not want to actually work for you have. You seem to think that all people regardless of merit need to make the same pay. That is communism. Do you, or have you ever had a talk with anyone that lived in the Soviet Union? I have, and its all a joke. What happens with universal equality is that people have no purpose, no reason to work harder or be smarter than the next guy. Soon, the only people actually making money are people involved in black market exchanges. When that happens, a rule of law is kind of silly as those people pay off the authorities. And the black market people get a pass on illegal activity. Every single time pal, every single time.

It is as if we as human beings think or yet believe we can live outside of nature and be more than God, whatever that may be. You suffer the same, I think you are young, or hard headed, who knows? I don't, but one thing I do know is that your banging on the wall of whats fair isn't going to work. Because nature, it doesn't care. It just moves along and keeps finding the best way to do things. I think our purpose as humans is to run aside of nature and tame what we can and allow what we can't tame. Because it seems to me, the older I get, the more our intelligence bangs its head on natures wall, the dumber we become. And conversely the more "we" suffer.

originally posted by: Fools
Well, when I was starting out I rented and bought used cars that I could afford. It was more work on the car end, but I figured it out.

The point wasn't about what people could have done to make things work for them. I'm sure many people did the same as you.

It was about Aazadan's claim that 75 cents had the purchasing power of 26 dollars. You pointed out the price of a burger to rebute and I pointed out that for other things it does seem to work out to approximately that amount.

a reply to: Fools

I don't mind working for things, but some things shouldn't require work. Also, I never said Communism, I said reducing wealth inequality. The times in our countries history when the economy was at it's best such as the 50's and 60's also coincided with wealth inequality being at it's lowest. At times where we've had a lot of internal disagreement, economic disasters, and even civil war, it was at it's highest.