The Minimum Wage: What's the Big Deal?

#26
#26
alexmanu said:
Inflation is going to happen whether you have a minimum wage or not. We live in a globalized world. The minimum wage law is a protection against absurd rates of pay because of the excess supply of workers. You see the results of no wage protection in these third world countries that pay people like 50 cents a week for hard labor.
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Has nothing to do with the conversation.

I'll support a raise in the Federal Minimum wage if it is attached to a provision baring union wages being tied to it in anyway.
 
#27
#27
By raising the minimum wage, any employer forced to raise wages to any of their employees will suffer in their profit margins (which are small enough as is in most businesses). For businesses with more than a minimal amount of workers in that range, the cost of their products and/or services will correspondingly increase. In some cases, this change will be minimal. In others (fast food, for example), the change passed on to its consumers will be significant.

To address the overarching point of OP's question, this cause/effect in wage vs. price of goods/service is only a part of the disdain for the idea of a high/increasing minimum wage. The other (and larger, in my opinion) reason is that minimum wage jobs are not meant to be a career or provide a "living wage".

The idea is that minimum wage jobs are for those with minimal skills and experience (usually people under 25) or those seeking short term (students) employment or extra shifts on top of another job. As one adds new or increases existing skills, they should correspondingly make more money through different jobs. In the fast food example, one can only rise so high (worker bee to shift manager to store manager). If one wants to break free of minimum wage jobs, they should seek to increase their skills through schooling or training opportunities.
 
#30
#30
hog88 said:
Not now, you are correct. However raising it will not be a benefit either.

There should have never been a FMW established, if a state wanted to enact one, fine.
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going back to one of your early points i think a minimum wage should invalidate unions, of course not all union workers are making minimum wage.

you have to have a FMW, otherwise the market responds like it did and you get unions. which would you rather have? unions or FMW? unfortunately we have both.
 
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#32
#32
VolsNSkinsFan said:
Inflation is negative this year, so should we lower minimum wage?
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Ideally you'd freeze it because deflation never lasts long enough in most countries to justify lowering the minimum wage. Not to mention that it's not politically expedient to do so.
 
#33
#33
LouderVol said:
going back to one of your early points i think a minimum wage should invalidate unions, of course not all union workers are making minimum wage.

you have to have a FMW, otherwise the market responds like it did and you get unions. which would you rather have? unions or FMW? unfortunately we have both.
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Great points - I agree completely
 
#34
#34
LouderVol said:
going back to one of your early points i think a minimum wage should invalidate unions, of course not all union workers are making minimum wage.

you have to have a FMW, otherwise the market responds like it did and you get unions. which would you rather have? unions or FMW? unfortunately we have both.
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You make the unions less powerful by reducing the size of government and increasing the private sector's competitiveness.
 
#35
#35
LouderVol said:
going back to one of your early points i think a minimum wage should invalidate unions, of course not all union workers are making minimum wage.

you have to have a FMW, otherwise the market responds like it did and you get unions. which would you rather have? unions or FMW? unfortunately we have both.
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You still are not picking up what I'm putting down. Raise the minimum wage and a UAW worker at Ford goes from $30 per hour to $33 or whatever their contract dictates.
 
#36
#36
hog88 said:
You still are not picking up what I'm putting down. Raise the minimum wage and a UAW worker at Ford goes from $30 per hour to $33 or whatever their contract dictates.
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Most people's pay rises every year as a result of inflation anyway, it's not exclusively tied to FMW rises.
 
#37
#37
hog88 said:
Raising the minimum wage isn't going to help those who earn it. Most all union contracts have automatic escalators tied to the minimum wage, so almost everything we buy goes up right along with it.
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See, this is what bothers me. I've heard this used repeatedly as an argument against the minimum wage/raising the minimum wage, but facts simply don't bear it out. Seems more like scaremongering that some rich guy would come up with so as to not have to miss out on his next cool summer house venture.

Fact of the matter is, raising the minimum wage hardly raises expenditures, unless we're talking paying McDonald's workers somewhere between $15-20/hour (I agree $15 is too much, at least at the moment.) You would hardly notice the difference as you glut yourself once again on your Big Mac or 2 for 1 sausage and egg biscuits. Furthermore, paying such people better wages would most likely mean a decrease in welfare/entitlement spending (or at least it should).

So I just don't get the "you can't pay those uneducated neanderthals that provide me with my Double Whopper for cheap" argument.
 
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#39
#39
hog88 said:
You still are not picking up what I'm putting down. Raise the minimum wage and a UAW worker at Ford goes from $30 per hour to $33 or whatever their contract dictates.
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i am for getting rid of unions. or at the least if there is a union minimum wage shouldn't be a factor for them. so in your scenario the UAW guys don't get a bump because of minimum wage but maybe because of inflation. the two shouldn't be a factor for each other, i recognize that they are; but imo they shouldn't be. so change the way unions work, again something that wont happen.
 
#40
#40
volprof said:
See, this is what bothers me. I've heard this used repeatedly as an argument against the minimum wage/raising the minimum wage, but facts simply don't bear it out. Seems more like scaremongering that some rich guy would come up with so as to not have to miss out on his next cool summer house venture.

Fact of the matter is, raising the minimum wage hardly raises expenditures, unless we're talking paying McDonald's workers somewhere between $15-20/hour (I agree $15 is too much, at least at the moment.) You would hardly notice the difference as you glut yourself once again on your Big Mac or 2 for 1 sausage and egg biscuits. Furthermore, paying such people better wages would most likely mean a decrease in welfare/entitlement spending (or at least it should).

So I just don't get the "you can't pay those uneducated neanderthals that provide me with my Double Whopper for cheap" argument.
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Short-term, maybe. But long-term, large fast food places will just replace the $12-20/hr employees with robots. Then a large portion of the existing, available jobs for the unskilled/uneducated will disappear. What would that do to welfare/entitlement spending?
 
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#42
#42
LouderVol said:
i am for getting rid of unions. or at the least if there is a union minimum wage shouldn't be a factor for them. so in your scenario the UAW guys don't get a bump because of minimum wage but maybe because of inflation. the two shouldn't be a factor for each other, i recognize that they are; but imo they shouldn't be. so change the way unions work, again something that wont happen.
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Correct. If union member wages were not tied to the FMW the AFLCIO wouldn't give two ****s about the minimum wage.
 
#43
#43
E-Tizzle said:
Short-term, maybe. But long-term, large fast food places will just replace the $12-20/hr employees with robots. Then a large portion of the existing, available jobs for the unskilled/uneducated will disappear. What would that do to welfare/entitlement spending?
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Bingo. Replace people with machines is the dream, not because the people themselves are always a PITA but the regulations that come with employees are.
 
#44
#44
LouderVol said:
just trying to understand your point, what do you think those numbers show? that 6 dollars didn't help the ratio between the three? because it seems like each of those are independent numbers.
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In between the $1.25 and the $7.00 minimum increases 30 million jobs were shipped overseas. You can't win with changes in wages companies will maximize profits always. Otherwise you have double digit inflation and $200 tee shirts.
 
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#45
#45
LouderVol said:
i am for getting rid of unions. or at the least if there is a union minimum wage shouldn't be a factor for them. so in your scenario the UAW guys don't get a bump because of minimum wage but maybe because of inflation. the two shouldn't be a factor for each other, i recognize that they are; but imo they shouldn't be. so change the way unions work, again something that wont happen.
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To add explication to my inquiry, I too see the problems that some unions present. While I recognize the net-positive effect unions have had upon our country and our workers (although many on here refuse to), I admit that nowadays they can be problematic. If it takes tampering with union power to increase wage power among the general labor force, then that's fine with me.

I just don't get what the big deal is with some in our society (and I think it's a loudmouthed, over-opinionated minority, which always tends to be dicks about everything as a general rule) and some on here being so against a minimum wage or even raising it slightly. None of their arguments ever make sense. They just sound like rich boy lackeys everytime.

Look, I get why we probably shouldn't pay fast food workers $15/hour yet, but I'm not sure why we shouldn't pay them $10-12/hour as federal minimum wage.

I think if someone could finally convince these anti-poor folks that paying them a little more would decrease the amount of taxes said anti-poor folks have to spend on entitlement, then they'd probably drop the whole "but we will have to pay 2 cents more for that Big Mac" argument they've been shoving down our throats like we're a bunch of mindless gooberheads.
 
#46
#46
hog88 said:
Correct. If union member wages were not tied to the FMW the AFLCIO wouldn't give two ****s about the minimum wage.
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in my argument you are getting rid of one or the other. or removing one from the equation of the other at the least. there are more people where FMW is the bottom wage than there are where the union wage is the bottom. (unions pay better than FMW so FMW shouldn't be part of union talk). so for me FMW does serve a purpose and needs to be kept. we can argue the dollar amount till the cows come home.
 
#47
#47
volprof said:
To add explication to my inquiry, I too see the problems that some unions present. While I recognize the net-positive effect unions have had upon our country and our workers (although many on here refuse to), I admit that nowadays they can be problematic. If it takes tampering with union power to increase wage power among the general labor force, then that's fine with me.

I just don't get what the big deal is with some in our society (and I think it's a loudmouthed, over-opinionated minority, which always tends to be dicks about everything as a general rule) and some on here being so against a minimum wage or even raising it slightly. None of their arguments ever make sense. They just sound like rich boy lackeys everytime.

Look, I get why we probably shouldn't pay fast food workers $15/hour yet, but I'm not sure why we shouldn't pay them $10-12/hour as federal minimum wage.

I think if someone could finally convince these anti-poor folks that paying them a little more would decrease the amount of taxes said anti-poor folks have to spend on entitlement, then they'd probably drop the whole "but we will have to pay 2 cents more for that Big Mac" argument they've been shoving down our throats like we're a bunch of mindless gooberheads.
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Start a fast food chain and pay them whatever you want. I kid, we know you will never sign the front of a paycheck.

But let's just say we do raise it to $10, I wonder how many high school and college kids will be put out of that first job? The job that teaches a kid what work is.
 
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#48
#48
LouderVol said:
in my argument you are getting rid of one or the other. or removing one from the equation of the other at the least. there are more people where FMW is the bottom wage than there are where the union wage is the bottom. (unions pay better than FMW so FMW shouldn't be part of union talk). so for me FMW does serve a purpose and needs to be kept. we can argue the dollar amount till the cows come home.
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Unions don't pay very many people.
 
#49
#49
IPleadInsanity said:
In between the $1.25 and the $7.00 minimum increases 30 million jobs were shipped overseas. You can't win with changes in wages companies will maximize profits always. Otherwise you have double digit inflation and $200 tee shirts.
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was it minimum wage or union that shipped jobs overseas? imo it was unions.

and to flip the script in your scenario if you don't have FMW is the US a third world country? does paying people 1.25 fix any of our jobs/money woes? its a difficult argument because how much of that increase in minimum wage is due to inflation? i dont know the answer to that, but what started this was people working here weren't getting paid enough to live and feed their family in industry jobs. fast food shouldn't be a living wage imo but industry and manufacturing should be. do you allow companies to directly hurt people or do you want the government to indirectly hurt people by not letting companies directly hurt people. the alternate here isn't a shining example of fairness.
 
#50
#50
hog88 said:
Start a fast food chain and pay them whatever you want. I kid, we know you will never sign the front of a paycheck.

But let's just say we do raise it to $10, I wonder how many high school and college kids will be put out of that first job? The job that teaches a kid what work is.
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See, your problem, dingus, is that you think the fast food jobs that allow you to get your friday evening smug glut on are just "high school kid" jobs.

My stupid public-funded dumbass has actually worked with the public, has taught them too, as has my mother who works with a DSS department.

Some (many people, in fact) aren't has privileged as your smug little rear, and they are neither capable of the intellectual needs of a college education or capable of getting one, even if they are.

But tell us again how you grew up on a farm with parents who always encouraged you to succeed, so anyone can do it. Just like me.

Dingus.
 
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