POLITICS: Senate Defeats Minimum Wage Increase

So, you think we should reinstate slavery? Make people go to work for no money because this will save the economy???? Paying people for their work is not socialism, it is called making the world go round. If you want someone working for you, you have to pay them money, unless you have slavery, which apperently you want cause from your response paying people for working is socialism.....

I AM NOT ANTI MONEY OR PRO SLAVERY! SOCIALISM IN MY EYES IS LIKE SLAVERY BECAUSE THE STRONG HAVE TO SUPPORT THE WEAK! I hope that gets through to you this time.

Let's say I'm a business owner, with 20 minimum wage employees.

20 X $5.15 hr = $103.00

Minimum wage increases to $6.35...

17 X $6.35 hr = $107.95

or better yet....

16 X $6.35 hr = 101.60

Boom! I just laid off 3-4 people, and my profit margin stays about the same or a litte lower.

How does this help the 18-21 year old minimum wage earner? Not to mention the unemployment rate.

[edit on 11-3-2005 by Carseller4]

Thank you carseller!!!!!!!!!!!!
This will put people out of work. I feel for those who must get by on minimum wages, really.
But, it seems to me this is just another step towards getting rid of the middle class. Soon, it will be you're either rich or you're poor.
Now my little unionized public library job isn't so well-paying. My contract decides my wages, the government doesn't help me make a decent wage. And, the library I worked for just ratified a contract: no pay raises until 2007----at least.

oh the days of unions...secured work, increased pay...oh poor you. Why not get a job where you actually earn your pay increases and not forced increases. Unions had a place and time, not now. They do more damage to companies these days than help them. In fact that is why migrant workers and job outsourcing are becoming more prominent. How can it be fair that even though the company has a bad year, because you have a contract you cannot have a cut in pay or lose your job even if you do not deserve it. I am not saying that you are a bad worker or anything, but that within the union system there is a lot of corruption and at times too much power to the people.

And also, now you are faced with what you are in now. The union system is a double edged sword. It either cuts into the company or the worker and in your case the contract negotiations did not work in your favor. I feel bad for you because though I live in an area where there are no unions, a lack of industry can cripple the workers of this area, and I have worked many jobs where the pay was minimum: NC's 5.25. I was a student in high school at the time so it wasn't that big of a deal to me. But I do have a problem when autoworkers or other manufacturing jobs are getting paid more than a job that someone had to goto college and fork out huge sums of money to get. Not all jobs are equal and not all workers deserve what they get. That's the beauty of our capitalist system. Pure Laize Faire, where have you gone?

[edit on 11-3-2005 by CAConrad0825]

Ok, let me use your world as an example. People are whipped awake by the slave master. They go to work, they work 10 hours for no money making tvs. They go home, eat, sleep, wake up next day being whipped by slave master. Repeat. Now, all these tvs are built, and the company goes to sell them. WAIT! No one has money to buy the product for they are slaves, they aren't paid. So, you have a product, but no one is buying it because you used slaves, and so no one has money. How does this make an economy work? If no one has money to buy things, then the economy dies. So, it is not socialism to pay people for working, it is called business. Unless you want to start working for your company but not a get a paycheck, which I bet they would love you to do. Until you don't have money, don't buy their product, they make no money for no one buys their product, for no one has money.

MONEY MAKES AN ECONOMY WORK! MAKING IT SO PEOPLE DON"T HAVE MONEY KILLS THE ECONOMY! How do you expect people to buy your tv? Your car? Your gas? Hm? You don't pay anyone, they all slaves, so they can't buy anything.

I find it quite interesting that although the two most obvious portions of the puzzle have already been discussed. Wage and Profit. No one seems to consider how important Infrastructure is. Example: Many companies will reward a hard working employee with one of the products made, such as a fast food worker getting a 50% discount or even a free small meal. Doesn't feed his/her family nor put him/her through school (trade or college) but it does offset maintenance costs... there by increasing potiential production or generating more infrastructure which can then be converted into both profit(sells) and wages (payroll).
The other half of infrastructure is critical to capitalism also. The ratio of production divided by Time. The solution to maximizing the ratio to it's most effectiveness is through enlightenment of tasks and time management. i.e. training and scheduling.

If balenced right the forth factor that gives and/or takes from the other 3 is Morale. An increase in minimum wage is a Morale increase for the folks at the bottom of the chain of command, but can be a Morale decrease for those at the top for entirely different reasons. Those in the middle tend to vary.

A mimimum wage increase is great for a company who already has quite a surplus of infrastructure or profit, as well as for those employed, but those companies who don't have it, it can be troublesome.

We will now return you to your regularly scheduled program already in progress....

Thank you Crysstaafur for that enlightening break. It gave me just enough time to gain my breath to yell once again

I am not antimoney or proslavery! Get it through you thick head!!!

Hey, you scared me.

Thought my monitor was going wacky on me.

sorry to all other posters who were frightened by my previous post. I in now way meant to frighten, disturb or disrupt any other poster. However repeated posts of mine were ignored by one James the Lesser. I would think a writer/scholar would be able to read however my posts concerning money and slavery were repeatedly ignored and an increase in font was drastically required.

What? You have repeatedly said paying people money for working kills the economy. That giving people money will kill the economy. That paying someone for their labor is going to kill the economy so they shouldn't be paid for their work. Paying people for working is socialism which is evil. That sounds like you are supporting slavery.

So, either you support paying people money for working or you support slavery.

Originally posted by Carseller4
Where are my Libertarian friends on this?

Right here.


I posted this a while back, thought it would be fitting here.


Minimum wage: a hurdle for the poor.

The minimum wage creates a permanent poverty class. It hurts the poor. If the minum wage works, lets just raise it to $25 per hour. Whats that you say? The UNEMPLOYMENT rate would skyrocket? Oh, well thats O.K., because the 50% of the nation that was employed could simply be taxed 75% to pay welfare to those who lost their jobs. Gee, minimum wage is swell! See what a good socialist I am? I care about the poor so much that I refuse to listen to reason and instead act on emotion, even if that means hurting the people I pretend to protect. After all, only a MEANIE would want to tell a poor person they may be getting less money or that they have to actually prove they are worth a raise instead of the gov. saying how much they are worth and creating a means for employers to justify not giving them more. Ask yourself why a fast food joint would pay an unskilled worker more than what the government says is the right wage for the lowest jobs in our country. Minimum wage = UNEMPLOYMENT = less spending = less profit = MORE UNEMPLOYMENT. Raising taxes = less income = less spending = less profit = MORE UNEMPLOYMENT. Doesn't make any sense to me. But hey, lets keep the UNEMPLOYMENT rate up, or we cant justify that huge welfare budget that keeps gov. employees sitting at their desk instead of heading to the UNEMPOYMENT office.



Minimum wage: a hurdle for the poor.


[edit on 12-3-2005 by cavscout]

If minimum wage was done away with entirely, the poor with these jobs would'nt even get paid as well they do now.

They'd get probably 2 or 3 dollars an hour.

It's not about employee's wellbeing or rewarding them. It's about how more profit is obtained for the one's "on top". The more money that big businessess and corporations make, the more they want.

It's about paying employees the least amount they can get away with. And those minimum wage jobs are some of the crummiest jobs in this country.

Pay people what they deserve not what the minimum wage is. Some minimum wage jobs deserve more while others don't deserve even that. Hell, some people who are in high paying jobs get way over paid. A good example of this is union workers who because of contracts and no enforcement of unproductivity, they get paid huge sums for doing nothing.

The same goes for other workplace "must haves" such as smoke breaks. Smoking is a vice not a necessity. Cut it out during work or quit. You have just as much of a right to smoke as people have not to smoke, but why do you get paid for it? You get more breaks than other people who continue to work through that time.

I was once a janitor at my highschool. I had to empty tampon disposal sites, clean up toilets, empty trash bins filled with snot rags and bloody band-aids. Did I get hazard pay? NO. I also worked at a small boat business where insulation fell from the ceiling and there was little or no ventalation. OSHA had been previous called but no progress was made. How to solve a job problem like this? Simple, quit. If you are that valuable of a worker you will be able to find another job somewhere. If not then tough, that's the real world. Life isn't always fair and believe me, I am speaking from experience but hard work and determination do pay off.

And in response to James the Lesser:
I am not against paying workers! I am against minimum wage. You took what I said and ran with it. Please try to develope a better interpetation of what people say. All because I am right wing on Minimum wage doesn't mean I wish to go Ante Bellum. I am anti-Slavery. However i do feel that people should focus more on harsher forms of slavery besides what supposedly caused the American Civil War. What about the Chinese workers who built our nations railroads? Do you think that they got minimum wage? Did they eventually get their citizenship? There are other minority groups in this country besides Blacks and Latino's. When are they going to get the respect they deserve?

Poverty does not know color race or creed. However, government programs like minimum wage recognize poverty, invites it to the party and goes to bed with it. Thank god for Big Government. Minimum wage is like social security: They were meant for 1930's America that was recovering from an economic depression. Not for permenant status. I love how people forget what FDR had in mind. At least he had some common sense. Temporary government intervention. Good for America. Long Term Government Intervention: Adult Day Care.

Originally posted by CAConrad0825
oh the days of unions...secured work, increased pay...oh poor you.

Believe me, I am no fan of unions. Esp. when people in fast food joints oftn work harder than the guys in the Big 3 auto plants.
And yes, I think highly paid union jobs are a big reason companies went to outsourcing.

I guess I used a poor example to make my point: raising the minimum wage will cause employers to hire fewere workers and it will negatively impact other workers who make slightly more than the current minimum wage.

I don't know why the fact that raising the minimum wage can and does cost jobs making the act an invalid one is lost on people. Some people will be making more money, but some people will have no job at all that initially could have or even did. And also like has been stated earlier, the costs of goods and services would increase which would hurt the poor and those on a fixed budget, but just be an annoyance for those that make a good wage. Very simple economics really.

The thing that "feels" right isn't always the thing that is right.

The cost of goods and services has been increasing. Toilet paper, cereal, fruit, electricity, water, diapers this # has gone up in price in the last 5 years even when the minimum wage has stayed the same. Of course music and movies have gone down because they were overpriced from the beginning just like any new product will be. But I think if food and certain utilities are going to go up in price, then the money we get paid should as well. Those who argue that the employers would lay people off, well hey itmay be true but all you are doing is making an excuse for a business owner or corporation to be more greedy with its money.

I wouldnt mind the minimum wage going up, but me personally I can live either way. I can make money on my own legally but it would take more money than I have at my disposal to be able to achieve. Therefore I could always take the illegal route because: #1 I can start making money right away, and #2 it is somewhat easier, besides dodging the police. Now the only reason certain ways of income are illegal is because the government doesnt get their cut of your money. The real reason our planet and societies are in a pickle is because the people who wanted to be super rich saw that the more people you have under your control/employ, the more money you can make. The more money you have the more power. Therefore it was encouraged and supported to make the population increase in levels historically unheard of. This is why it would be too difficult now to just abolish money.

See it would be chaos at this point due to populations to just abandon our economies and try to survive on our own because the system has been setup for us to be able to get all of our food from a location where it was imported somewhere else. For one family to live on their own they would need alot of acres for raising animals, and crops. I would estimate at leats 5 acres. There are two ways of getting rid of this problem though. Have a devastating world war to reduce population and preserve the ways of life, or you abandon the hunger for power by aboloshing a monetary system, and begin using all resources and manpower to educate the people so that they will be able to control their own population, and develop the technological means to support the current population until it levels off. To actually unite the world in order to reach a higher stage in our human evolution. Unfortunately it will be easier to have a war that will kill many and cause unimaginable sufferring. Why is it easier? Well I think Jesus said it best in Matthew 19:23

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

A rich man is only rich because he values himself above others by convincing his subordinates that some piece of paper, or shiny metal, or precious stone, or spice is worth a bit of his own freedom. This leads people to believe that whoever possess the most of whichever said valuable item will have the power over so many other souls. In other words our current state of humanity will stay at war until we the people who willingly stay under the control of those with this worthless paper, metal, stones or spices decide that it would be a better world without them. Bascially for as long as we decide that peace and harmony is beyond human resources and capacity, it will stay that way. Maybe a quote from 1984 would help us understand a bit.

If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty five per cent of the population, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.... if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. they needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning.

(Taken from Paragraph 1 of Chapter six in George Orwells 1984)

Hey if we want to keep fighting about minimum wage and paper/metal/rocks/spices that only has value because someone who we see as higher than us says it is worth our labor, then it will be. Just realize that we can actually make this world work without money and still be able to satisfy most all of human needs. We just have to destroy those who feel that they need to have power over others. Guess how many of you on this board would fall. Great flood anyone? I do not want to have power over anyone, I just honestly want to get enough money to move off to a coastal area where I can buy enough land to raise some animals and crops and go fishing and diving for fun. OR if enough people were willing, I would help to drive the change in this world that would bring about a whole new way of life .

But if we want to continue to keep power over others, yes definetly we have to raise the minimum wage so that the precious sheep can feel that they are living comfortably enough to keep the system going. Because if we continue ripping off the proles, then it won't be long until they become concious after all.