a few questions for all the folks in here who support a gov't-mandated minimum wage..

[Defiant1]

Good thing I showed up.

I never said that people have to work for a specific employer, you made that up. Nor did I say that they're forced not to improve their lives. You should maybe start with something simpler to understand, like a Cat in the Hat book, and see if you can get all the way though it.

People are forced to take low paying jobs because that's all that's available to a lot of people. And some of these jobs pay so low that employees have to resort to food stamps and the like. So our taxes are helping Walmart, for example, make more money by keeping people at poverty wages and getting the government to foot some of the bill through social programs.

First, Wal-Mart has very few if any workers at minimum wage.

Second, a person doesn't have to resort to food stamps, they can get a second job.

One person can get a second job. Where are the jobs for 40 million people on food stamps to get second jobs?

First you have to assume all 40 million want jobs to begin with.

Second, the opportunity to earn income isn't limited to the amount of jobs available from businesses at any point in time.
The opportunities are endless. One just has to be willing to trade their skills and time for something of value to them.

Mow lawns, clean houses, watch children or elderly, etc.

I've even seen people with fake signs on street corners asking for money.
Some perform tricks or sing songs.

 

[natstew]

Minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation. That means that employers have been steadily increasing what they charge for goods and services but the cost of what they pay their workers has stagnated

Minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation??
Labor wages has not kept pace with inflation, and I mean LABOR wages, as in Carpenters, plumbers, electrician, painters, roofers, glaziers, masons, all the skilled trades. PERIOD!

A skilled Tradesman used to support his wife and children on his wages alone, now his wife must go to work.

Look dammit! the POLITICIANS are responsible for 99.9% of the situation.

Raising the minimum wage is only a "cover my ass" act!

 

[edthecynic]

First, Wal-Mart has very few if any workers at minimum wage.

Second, a person doesn't have to resort to food stamps, they can get a second job.

One person can get a second job. Where are the jobs for 40 million people on food stamps to get second jobs?

First you have to assume all 40 million want jobs to begin with.

Second, the opportunity to earn income isn't limited to the amount of jobs available from businesses at any point in time.
The opportunities are endless. One just has to be willing to trade their skills and time for something of value to them.

Mow lawns, clean houses, watch children or elderly, etc.

I've even seen people with fake signs on street corners asking for money.
Some perform tricks or sing songs.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQv_qLdZ-8Q]Manhattan Transfer - Gentleman With A Family - YouTube[/ame]

 

[LoneLaugher]

Get a second job! Great idea!

 

[LordBrownTrout]

.

In a perfect world, I guess I'd like to see no minimum wage. But we're not within light years of a perfect world.

The fact is, we have essentially created a zombie class in the country - millions of people who have been victimized by the long term, non-stop lowering of standards across the board. We've worried far more about their "feelings" and their "self esteem" than we have in maintaining solid, cultural expectations. So now, here they are, the chickens have come home to roost:

Confident Idiots: American Students Growing More Confident, Less Capable

The question is, what do we do with this large swath of zombies, these "confident idiots"? We either put them on the public dole or we ALL have to support them to some degree. Unfortunately for American business, the quickest and easiest way to do that is to at LEAST expect these people to freakin' WORK, and the businesses simply have to bear the brunt. This is why the Left so passionately rallied around Obama's astonishing "you didn't build that" speech. Business owners "didn't build that", so they don't own that, so we can pile on more and more expectations whether they like it or not. Tough shit, you're greedy and evil, pay the zombies.

This is just another obvious symptom of our decay. The expectations on businesses will continue to increase while the expectations of children and parents will continue to decrease. Hence the rise of the zombie class.

It is what it is, gang.

.

Get off of my lawn ya rotten kids!

Kids today are equal to or greater than kids who grew up in the 50's, 60's and 70's. They work just as hard and have just as much potential. You might want to volunteer some time with them. You will most certainly have a change of heart.

The president never said business owners did not build their businesses. Only a proud liar would continue to blather on about that out-of-context GOP campaign attack.

Yes, O did say that. Dont be trying to lipstick that pig.

 

[Defiant1]

Get a second job! Great idea!

What's wrong with a second job? My father did it, my FIL did it, I've done it.

Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh do it.

 

[rightwinger]

Minimum wage should go up to $12 spread over the next three years. This would put it on par with what it was 30 years ago before Republicans started holding it down

Employers will come up with it he same way they come up with it for any other increase in the cost of doing business.Minor Price adjustments, increased efficiencies

The persons receiving it will be able to pay for college, buy a car, help support their families and get started in life

From then on minimum wage should be tied to a cost of living factor without having to beg Congress for every nickel increase

So.. when you change the floor, other salaries, costs of goods, etc do not raise?? It is simply changing the numeric value of the floor... it does nothing to help poverty

It is the progressive scam of the ages

As usual, other low end salaries will adjust upwards also and fewer people will have to come to the taxpayer for help to pay their bills
I'd rather a business support his workers than the taxpayer

 

[rightwinger]

First, Wal-Mart has very few if any workers at minimum wage.

Second, a person doesn't have to resort to food stamps, they can get a second job.

One person can get a second job. Where are the jobs for 40 million people on food stamps to get second jobs?

First you have to assume all 40 million want jobs to begin with.

Second, the opportunity to earn income isn't limited to the amount of jobs available from businesses at any point in time.
The opportunities are endless. One just has to be willing to trade their skills and time for something of value to them.

Mow lawns, clean houses, watch children or elderly, etc.

I've even seen people with fake signs on street corners asking for money.
Some perform tricks or sing songs.

It is your proposal not mine

People don't need food stamps they need second jobs. I simply asked where 40 million second jobs will come from. Are there 40 million lawns out there that need mowing? 40 million babysitting jobs?
You and I both know there are not

 

[LoneLaugher]

.

In a perfect world, I guess I'd like to see no minimum wage. But we're not within light years of a perfect world.

The fact is, we have essentially created a zombie class in the country - millions of people who have been victimized by the long term, non-stop lowering of standards across the board. We've worried far more about their "feelings" and their "self esteem" than we have in maintaining solid, cultural expectations. So now, here they are, the chickens have come home to roost:

Confident Idiots: American Students Growing More Confident, Less Capable

The question is, what do we do with this large swath of zombies, these "confident idiots"? We either put them on the public dole or we ALL have to support them to some degree. Unfortunately for American business, the quickest and easiest way to do that is to at LEAST expect these people to freakin' WORK, and the businesses simply have to bear the brunt. This is why the Left so passionately rallied around Obama's astonishing "you didn't build that" speech. Business owners "didn't build that", so they don't own that, so we can pile on more and more expectations whether they like it or not. Tough shit, you're greedy and evil, pay the zombies.

This is just another obvious symptom of our decay. The expectations on businesses will continue to increase while the expectations of children and parents will continue to decrease. Hence the rise of the zombie class.

It is what it is, gang.

.

Get off of my lawn ya rotten kids!

Kids today are equal to or greater than kids who grew up in the 50's, 60's and 70's. They work just as hard and have just as much potential. You might want to volunteer some time with them. You will most certainly have a change of heart.

The president never said business owners did not build their businesses. Only a proud liar would continue to blather on about that out-of-context GOP campaign attack.

Yes, O did say that. Dont be trying to lipstick that pig.

Nope. Not even close. If you believe that he did, you are a retard. Period.

 

[LoneLaugher]

Get a second job! Great idea!

What's wrong with a second job? My father did it, my FIL did it, I've done it.

Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh do it.

One full time job should provide for a person and his or her offspring. Labor drives the economy. Respect it as such.

 

[RandomVariable]

There should not be one.

In the small town where I lived most of my youth there was one place to work, the shirt factory. I don't know whose factory it was, it was just referred to as, "the shirt factory." People for miles and miles around were thankful just to have a job in that place even though working there full time would not get one out of abject poverty. Does anyone think that that employer would raise pay by one dime if they did not think they had to? If they thought it would cut into their pay and bonuses by one dollar? One day, after I have moved to another town, the factory shut down. I imagine they got a tax break for moving their factory to a similar town in another part of the world. Where the employer made an even bigger cut. When the workers went to the factory and found the doors closed without notice they probably got unemployment insurances benefits for a while but when the government did not have to pay those any longer they didn't. So then some of the people of that town went to taking government handouts. Did they wanted to? Were they lazy and unwilling to work? Even if there were jobs in the area the jobs would go unfilled, no matter what the pay? Should the people move to a different town where there are jobs? This is not Grapes of Wrath where fliers are being passed around about high paying jobs in California picking fruit. This is a story of a small town in the Arkansas Ozarks but it is true in small towns and even big cities all over this country.

Should there be a minimum wage? No. Does there need to be? Yes.

In case one is curious about what ever happened to that quaint little American town in the Ozarks, currently they are part of this nation's meth epidemic.

 

[Plasmaball]

1. Equal pay for equal work. The pay is dictated by the quality of the work, not by the worker's demands. Minimum wage should be abolished.

2. There will be no set number.

3. In this system, employers would be more apt to hire quality workers over cheap laborers from across the border. There would be no need for extra money, allowing the employer to set the wage based on quality of workmanship would mean more money for them to spend on healthcare plans.

4. It would benefit workers, and also compel workers to do their best. Better work means better pay.

1) you dont work
2) your opinion is niave
3) anyways you abolish MW and things will really collapse. Its bad enough i work in a right to work state where you can work 12 hours with no breaks at all. Furthermore the owner is a cheap asshole. If he could get away with paying less in wages he would. I have to literally be up these peoples asses to get my raises. It took them a month to get mine out. Furthermore i've not missed a day and it means nothing to these people.
So your equal pay for equal work is utter bullshit from a delusional opinion about life.
4) get a job

 

[Defiant1]

Get a second job! Great idea!

What's wrong with a second job? My father did it, my FIL did it, I've done it.

Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh do it.

One full time job should provide for a person and his or her offspring. Labor drives the economy. Respect it as such.

If a person orders their life correctly one full time job will provide those things.
Just not entry level jobs.

Entry level jobs are for young people to start out their lives.

 

[Chaussette]

What's wrong with a second job? My father did it, my FIL did it, I've done it.

Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh do it.

One full time job should provide for a person and his or her offspring. Labor drives the economy. Respect it as such.

If a person orders their life correctly one full time job will provide those things.
Just not entry level jobs.

Entry level jobs are for young people to start out their lives.

Buddy, what color is the sky in your world? The closest Walmart to us is about 80% older people (60+), so is the hardware store...

 

[Defiant1]

One full time job should provide for a person and his or her offspring. Labor drives the economy. Respect it as such.

If a person orders their life correctly one full time job will provide those things.
Just not entry level jobs.

Entry level jobs are for young people to start out their lives.

Buddy, what color is the sky in your world? The closest Walmart to us is about 80% older people (60+), so is the hardware store...

I'm sorry, you are right. And they are for retired people to supplement their incomes.

And again Wal-mart pays higher than minimum wage. They just manage their staff by using mostly part time positions to control their expenses.

You do realize that Wal-Mart store managers earn between 140K-180K a year. I doubt they are using food stamps.

 

[Chaussette]

If a person orders their life correctly one full time job will provide those things.
Just not entry level jobs.

Entry level jobs are for young people to start out their lives.

Buddy, what color is the sky in your world? The closest Walmart to us is about 80% older people (60+), so is the hardware store...

I'm sorry, you are right. And they are for retired people to supplement their incomes.

And again Wal-mart pays higher than minimum wage. They just manage their staff by using mostly part time positions to control their expenses.

You do realize that Wal-Mart store managers earn between 140K-180K a year. I doubt they are using food stamps.

Maybe not, but some of their employees are using food stamps.

What do you call something where a few people at the top make a lot of money and everyone under them doesn't have enough money for food. Here, I'll spot you the first 3 letters: P-Y-R-... C'mon, you can do it.

 

[Defiant1]

Buddy, what color is the sky in your world? The closest Walmart to us is about 80% older people (60+), so is the hardware store...

I'm sorry, you are right. And they are for retired people to supplement their incomes.

And again Wal-mart pays higher than minimum wage. They just manage their staff by using mostly part time positions to control their expenses.

You do realize that Wal-Mart store managers earn between 140K-180K a year. I doubt they are using food stamps.

Maybe not, but some of their employees are using food stamps.

What do you call something where a few people at the top make a lot of money and everyone under them doesn't have enough money for food. Here, I'll spot you the first 3 letters: P-Y-R-... C'mon, you can do it.

You don't believe the store managers at Wal-Mart earn what they are paid?

 

[Clementine]

National Average, United States Cost of Living

Living Wage Calculator - Living Wage Calculation for Brevard County, Florida

If we look to see how much it costs for the average person/family to to live without consideration for retirement savings we can come up with a some numbers that we can use to begin the conversation.

Based on the information above, a single person with no kids in Floruda needs $19,000 per year to have a basic standard of living. Given a 50 week work year....that equates to $9.5 per hour. This person can exist but cannot save for his or her future at this rate.

Now...since most people engage in relationships that result in families being created....and we all sort of agree that families are good things, we must consider the additional cost of living for those with kids.

If a couple has a child and one parent is to remain home to raise this child, the yearly wages needed by the working parent understandably doubles. Therefore, he or she will need to earn $19 per hour to provide a basic standard of living sans retirement savings or investments.

There are tons of variables and what ifs......what if both parents work? Well, them you need to consider costs for childcare. Etc.....etc....etc. Shouldn't people be able to save for retirement or have some investment funds? That is why we hire representatives at the local, state and federal level. They are supposed to work this shit out while being well intentioned.


Your third question.....how will employers do it? They will do it because more people in this country will have funds needed to buy basic goods and services......fueling the economy....generating business for them.

Last question.......kind of ridiculous. Sorry.


And....let me say, on behalf of everyone, how wonderful it is that TK decided to weigh in here. An unemployed teat-sucker with a desire to abolish the minimum wage so it will compel people to work harder. It does not get any better than that.

First, you assume that people will not escalate on their own. An educated person starting at minimum wage should get raises and promotions after a few years. If they don't, time to switch companies or further their education by taking night classes to make themselves more desirable.

Second, why would someone locked into a minimum wage job think about getting married and having children? Getting married is great if the spouse works and that would give the couple an opportunity to save a lot of money for a few years. Both should see a rise in income.

Even if the minimum is raised to $10.00, people will still qualify for aid to make ends meet. If they keep having lots of children, they will be forever dependent on aid unless they are able to climb the ladder at the company they work for.

When people don't finish high school and have lots of children, they are setting themselves up for a minimum wage job forever. Shouldn't we expect people to meet the tax payers halfway when deciding on their future?

If we just keep raising the minimum a little bit at a time, it won't help. If it was raised to $19.00, a lot more jobs would disappear. I would predict more automated services to replace people.

 

[Londoner]

1. What do you think the minimum wage should be...?

2. How did you derive this number...?

This is a good question, and I have never seen a convincing explanation on either side.

Let's take a took at the Supply Side Movement, which told us that the Free Market needed to set labor costs.

Here is what we were told in the 80s by the Supply Side Movement (popularized by Reagan and Thatcher, influenced by the Chicago and Austrian Schools): Capital investment requires the lowest possible cost of production. The lower the labor and material costs, the higher the returns. The higher the returns, the more likely that capital will flow into investments which lead to economic growth. On the other hand, if government arbitrarily sets labor costs at a higher rate than the market will pay, the result will be a disincentive against investment and, as a consequence, lost jobs. This was a convincing argument in the 80s (after decades of regulatory overreach), which is why the US embarked on a long process of weakening Unions and removing all the postwar wage controls that created the highest paid middle class in world history. (FYI, US corporations thought the middle class had become too expensive to employ and damaged the ability of US Business to compete effectively and lift all boats).

The solution to this problem was a global project of neoliberalism. Here is a bland, dictionary definition of Neoliberalism: "Economic liberalization, free trade, open markets, privatization, deregulation, and replacing government with the private sector in all areas of American life. Key components being Lower taxes on suppliers and austerity for workers - and transferring public resources to for-profit industry." [FYI: most Conservatives don't know that the aforementioned "liberalization" means the classical liberalism of Adam Smith, were liberalism means capital freed from traditional state and religious controls. As opposed to New Deal Liberalism, which implies state controls on markets to extend freedom and opportunity to the non-wealthy]

So the plan, enacted in the 80s by Reagan, was to give American Capital greater access to the cheapest labor and raw material across the globe. This is why Reagan used the Cold War as a context to help solidify American Capital's access to cheaper labor and cheaper raw material. This involved using the admittedly real Soviet Threat as a context to construct the political conditions for cheap labor all over the globe, but mostly concentrated in Southeast Asia and Latin America. The plan worked. Go into any Walmart and read the labels on the toasters and clothing. You will see "Made in China" "Made in Taiwan" "Made in Vietnam" "Made In Grenada" "Made in Mexico", etc.

Problem is: as we shifted production to these freedom hating places (so our capitalists could make higher profits), the American worker started losing ground. He had to compete with Taiwanese sweatshop workers making $5/day in order to get corporations to move production back to the US. The result was a huge decline in American purchasing power. And/but economic growth requires that the American worker have enough purchasing power to go into "Main Street" stores and buy things - otherwise Main Street businesses die. So starting in 1980 we expanded credit (debt) to make up for the lower wages, lost jobs and decreased benefits (-seriously, please study what happened to family debt levels starting in 1980. It will blow your fucking mind). And it was great for a while. We had two decades of massive debt-based growth. Americans flocked to shopping malls with credit cards in record numbers. When they ran out of room on their MasterCards and Visas, they turned their homes into ATMs and borrowed record amounts of cash.

Now the fucking middle class is too indebted to borrow enough to go into "Main Street" stores and buy enough stuff to sustain domestic job growth and we are facing years of de-leveraging as the largest consumer debt bubble in US history works its way through the system. Our corporations are sitting on record levels of cash - but they lack consumers. Too many of our smaller businesses can't sell what they have on the shelves. You can give them all the tax breaks you want, but they need consumers to invest and add jobs. We need to jump-start demand by revisiting some of our postwar fiscal policies, but we lack the political tools to remove the special interests that benefit from the current doctrine of neoliberalism. Oh, and we no longer have cheap energy, which was the building block of American postwar economic supremacy.

Whoops.

(Game over morons)

(You can't cannibalize workers (consumers) to grow profits because eventually you destroy Demand)

Okay, now go back to discussing minimum wage and rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

[DiamondDave]

Minimum wage should go up to $12 spread over the next three years. This would put it on par with what it was 30 years ago before Republicans started holding it down

Employers will come up with it he same way they come up with it for any other increase in the cost of doing business.Minor Price adjustments, increased efficiencies

The persons receiving it will be able to pay for college, buy a car, help support their families and get started in life

From then on minimum wage should be tied to a cost of living factor without having to beg Congress for every nickel increase

So.. when you change the floor, other salaries, costs of goods, etc do not raise?? It is simply changing the numeric value of the floor... it does nothing to help poverty

It is the progressive scam of the ages

As usual, other low end salaries will adjust upwards also and fewer people will have to come to the taxpayer for help to pay their bills
I'd rather a business support his workers than the taxpayer

Completely false.... it simply changes the numeric value of the floor.. no more, no less.. as the lowest rung of labor increase in price, so do the other rungs, so does the cost of good, etc etc etc... it changes NOTHING in terms of who 'needs' (more like wants) help, who is in poverty, etc