"Food Stamps" and "Minimum Wage" do not belong in the same sentence.

Originally posted by schuyler
What's the difference? The minimum wage is an artificial construct of government which interferes with supply and demand. If you think unskilled, teen, and young adult unemployment is bad now, go ahead and raise the minimum wage. OF COURSE you cannot support a family on the minimum wage. The question is, why are you dumb enough to try? If you are so unskilled that all you qualify for is minimum wage jobs, then just perhaps you ought to be concentrating on learning a skill that is valuable enough to earn more. THEN start a family you can afford.

I worked minimum wage myself for many years, and I had a Master's degree at the time. Whose fault was that? MINE, completely. The glut in graduates in my field did not just suddenly happen between enrollment and graduation. Had I bothered to research the situation I would have known. If you have a BA in English and are slinging fries, the same rule applies. Your education has intrinsic value, but not extrinsic. Too many people did the same thing.

The thing is, you are quite capable of getting yourself out of it if you have the energy, and if you don't expect the government to bail you. Did you know that HALF the McDonald's franchise owners started out slinging fries? Now they are part of the 1% you hate so much. If you start out part time minimum wage at Wal-mart there is no reason on earth why you could not be a manager within ten years, a district manager in 15, and an executive in 20--no reason whatsoever. The difference is individual drive and determination.

Depending upon the government to raise the minimum wage is the same thing as depending on government for food stamps. It's still dependence on government. If you need a helping hand with food stamps for awhile, I have no problem with that, but your goal ought to be to get off them as soon as possible. If you do not, your going to stay down in the cellar forever, and it's no one's fault but your own.

Not only do i feel that the minimum wage is a rip off and needs to be increased, i also feel that this type of thinking that defends an unjust system and encourages you to jump through hoops while the years of trying to get a leg up erode your soul away is stupidly wrong.
Everyone is starting to think like they own a business. How simple can it be stated? There is wealth to SHARED to EVERYONE, but first we've gotta cut out this "Your unskilled and therefore worthless" crap.
Im "Unskilled" i have no opportunity to educate myself and my job prospects are looking grim. This doesnt mean that my life should be TERMINATED or that i should be deemed a bottom feeder.
Life should not be around wondering if your gonna have enough money to feed your family. With the century we live in, the technology we have, we could feed the world ever so easily, trouble is its not "profitable"

So sad to see people judging others on "skill" and determining there wage worth. It only props up a system where the poor receive a basic education - Just enough to see them work jobs like mcdonals and then be # on by society for the remainder of there miserable lives while someone else, born with a silver spoon up there ass receives the best education there is, inherts a fortune and continues to pay people the bare minimum claiming that they should jump through hoops to earn more.

reply to post by TheRedneck


Regarding your points about employees, as much as i agree that some people are just stupid and arrogant, employers dont shape up much better.

- They want me to work OT - but they're not going to pay me Time and a half, and in even worse situations, they're not going to pay me, they will give me back my time in "break" periods - That never come. I have no union to end this blatant piss-taking. I am entitled to refuse OT, which i do if im not being paid but it cause's unnecessary tension between the employee and employer. "What do you mean your not willing to bust your ass for nothing?" Well, you dont employ me fun and i dont work for kicks and giggles.

- Perfectly legal here in the uk to have someone work 5 and half hours before they are legally entitled to a break - This is another piss take as it is starting to happen and again i have no union to back me. Making someone work 5 and half hours without a single break (and for the minimum wage) is disgusting.

- My employer tells me that while i work for them, there company comes first - im not allowed to work a second job without there permission as it could interfere with what THEY want. Now, i understand where there coming from, but i feel my employer unfairly limits my ability to bring home a good wage.

All in all, many employers expect to be able to call you at any time of day, have you drop whatever your doing, give you OT paid either at normal rate instead of time and half or pay you back by giving you breaks.

Really is a two way street and the employee's have had the raw end of the deal for century's now.

Making the federal minimum wage 10$ an hour its like putting gum on a leaky pipe and hoping it will be fixed. It just won't work.

What happens when the dollar inflates again? 15$ an hour? The problem with our way of economics is we have to have an infinite amount of spending for it to work. This just is not possible given we have limited resources and various other things like labor laws and such.

Yes having a degree can help but I still see many people that have masters and Ba's that still struggle to make ends meet and need to have 2 incomes to make it work. I saw a job posting the other day that only paid 11.25 an hour, but you had to have a masters in order to even qualify or be looked at for the position.

Simply put the American system just does not work in these days. Even getting a degree doesn't work like it should. Paying 10-30k a year for college only to HOPE to get a decent paying job to pay off loans is really screwed up. I know a guy who went to school to become and engineer (8 years) making almost 150k a year. He got laid off from his job and now works at walmart changing tires for 12.25 an hour. He was really lucky to even get that job because he was as they say "Over qualified"

We as Americans should stop relying so much on falsely backed money and start becoming self-sufficient.
we need to start living more frugally and not beyond the means we have.

reply to post by SearchLightsInc

Here's how it's supposed to work:

Your boss wants you to work OT for nothing (except breaks that don't come)? You say no. If he fires you, he gets to train someone else.

Your boss wants to tell you what you can do on your own time? You say no. If he fires you, he gets to train someone else.

Your boss wants to abuse you in any way? You say no. If he fires you, he gets to train someone else.

The only problem with all this is, in this poor economy, there is always someone else who is happy to do the same job for less. So the employers (at least the ones with no morals) start taking too many liberties because there's no penalty. Incidentally, if anyone here was considering hiring a redneck, understand my time is my time, and you don't get to tell me what I can and cannot do during it. I will tell you (and have tell others) to your face just what place in my life you hold and just how much you have overestimated that place. (Maybe that's why I have so much trouble getting a job.)

A union is supposed to be a group of employees that increase this penalty on employers because a group will stop working rather than a single worker. But of course, many (not all) unions have evolved into an anti-employer that ignores free market principles themselves.

That's why I rail in the threads that say the free market doesn't work or capitalism doesn't work. We haven't seen a failure of either; we haven't seen either in many years. The reason is we have too many laws concerning employment that place good employers at a disadvantage and put them out of business.

TheRedneck

I love these conversations....

The problem is not how much the minimum wage is or isn't. The problem is that, once upon a time, a guy named Reagan came along with a theory (and a buncha folks who believed in it too) that markets should be totally unregulated and absolutely "free".

This was a great idea, for awhile. Then every single business in America got super greedy. They shipped the jobs away and began doing consumer research to determine was the absolute maximum was that they could charge for their goods/services.

So, basically, now just buying a loaf of bread is like calling a plumber, at midnight, on Christmas Eve, in a snowstorm... You're going to pay out the proverbial buttocks because the consumer no longer dictates terms, the seller does.

That's a gross oversimplification as it excludes the train wreck we call a "stock market", and corrupt banking practices, and a government that doesn't even try to hide the fact that it's for sale to the highest bidder, etc.

What we are seeing is the same thing that killed off every advanced or enlightened society before us. What the Catholic Church did to the middle ages? Corporate interests are doing today.

My .02 cents

~Heff

Originally posted by TheRedneck
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

 

When I was born, the minimum wage was $1.00 an hour. When I was growing up, it rose to $2.00 an hour. And during that time, a man could work at a full time job and make enough to support his family... maybe even save a little.

On May 1, 1974, it went to that $2.00 level after 6 years at $1.60. 8 months later, on January 1, 1975, it went to $2.10. On the same date in 1976, it was $2.30. Two years later it went to $2.65, then rose each year through 1982... $2.90, $3.10, $3.35. The same time period that wages were being forced upwards by legislation was when the last major recession hit. Suddenly a household needed two incomes to make ends meet. Gasoline went from $0.25 a gallon to $1.50 a gallon.

Now you want us to do the same thing. Heck, we have been. On September 1, 1997 it was $5.15 and stayed there until 2007. Then on June 24, 2007 it went to $5.85; June 24, 2008 it was $6.55; June 24, 2009 it was $7.25. We are now in the largest recession/depression since 1929. gasoline hit $4.00 a gallon. Households can't make ends meet even with two jobs.


STOP!





FOR


THE


LOVE


OF


GOD





STOP!

Isn't there enough misery already? Are things not bad enough? Are you really that anxious to become destitute? Do you really hate people so much you want them to go hungry and cold?


STOP IT ALREADY!


We have enough troubles already...

TheRedneck

I am not sure what makes you think that Minimum Wage Workers

created this recession. Did you not notice the that the banks created a

global casino and sold a GDP worth of fake debt.

It is not minimum wage that causes the problems, it is the lack of Competition.

Example:

A mid size town in the prior to the mid to late 80's had several locally owned business' compete with each other, over not only prices, but also employees. It was not uncommon for an someone who was a good hard worker, comes in and becomes a staple of that business, and often was the reason people went there vs the other store across the street.

The Owner across the street can't find someone like that, so they contact that person and offer them even more money and benefits to work for them instead. The offer becomes to much to pass up, so they inform their boss about the offer.

Now that boss has two options, Let them go, and loss some business, or at least match the offer and give them a reason to stay.


This type of competition not only made it so that people who were good at what they did, not only succeeded, getting paid what they deserve and were happy with their jobs, but also created happier customers who respected the workers and knew them by name.


In the late 80's through today, these slowly died with the "invasion" of Walmart and like companies, in about every town in America and then some. The corporation's have so much money that they usually lose money the first few years of business by offering things at a rate no one can compete with. They send out people to compare Items in other stores to theirs and so on and so forth.

They hire the workers at these local stores as managers and offer them what would be impossible for the local stores to pay. After a year or two, most of the local and even regional stores have to close their doors giving Walmart an open door to a monopoly in the area.

After a while, Profits of that store sore as they have no competition, and can hire people at the lowest rates with no benefits or limited benefits, just because the competition is dead. Prices go up higher than ever, quality goes down, but the people are forced to purchase there, because they killed the competition.


Who said we have a free market?

reply to post by jacklondonmiller

Where did I say minimum wage workers created the recession? I didn't. I said over-regulation of business by government created the recession.

Under-regulation is just as bad, as pointed out above, but the sad fact is that we in America can't seem to find a middle ground. We tend to go from over-regulation straight to under-regulation and back to over-regulation. What we need to do is allow business to flourish, but within regulations on pollution (not carbon dioxide, but real pollutants), abusive labor practices (which do not include setting wages, but include setting maximum hours without OT, safety, and non-interference with private life), fairness (as much as can be practically specified) and equality (within common-sense limits), Anything more is over-regulation and will have a deterrent effect on job creation, while anything less will allow abuse by employers.

TheRedneck