Explain to us Libs, what is a living wage?

[thereisnospoon]

I would bet you fifty cents against a donut that this guy has not held any kind of meaningful job and certainly didn't work in H.R.

He really is unable to grasp the concept of labor having value and can't or won't separate that from a sense of entitlement. What ARE they teaching kids in school these days? This is downright scary.

I have never said anything about entitlement. I believe if someone works hard at their job, any job, they should be rewarded. You disagree. You believe certain jobs do not warrant rewards no matter how hard the work. And that others warrant reward no matter the effort level put in simply due to the nature of the position.

People like you are the reason we have such wide spread income inequality.

But whatever, it's not like you care, right? I mean, it's not like you work for a living any more, like some of us.

No.....We agree on that point. If one works hard or smart while showing he or she is a valuable employee, wage increases will follow.
Now, there are certain entry level type jobs that have an appropriate wage limit. That is reality. It is what it is. No one is going to pay for example a data entry clerk thirty or forty thousand per year. The position simply does not warrant that type of salary. Why? Because data entry is a low skilled position that with little training, anyone can do.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Of course if you had actually worked in H.R., you would know that.

A VP makes $100K and her assistant makes $50K annually. The VP makes 100% more than the assistant, but everyone agrees that's fair based on job duties and skill sets.

Both employees work their asses off all year and the VP fully agrees she could not have done her job as well without her assistant. Raises come around. The VP gets 10% and the assistant gets a cost of living 3%.

Next year, same thing. Year after that, same thing. Now, the VP is making $133K and the assistant is making $54.6K. The VP is now making 144% of what the assistant is making.

Is that what the assistant agreed to? Is the company being fair to that employee? Is this a good way to retain a hard working employee? To build company morale?

But anyway, I'm sure you're right. I'm sure I never worked in HR.

See here's the rub. You people look upon wage increases as an entitlement. Your idea of "fair" is based on your wish to institute a system where there is equality of outcome.
That type of system is incompatible with freedom and liberty.
Let's be realistic here. My Wife is an AVP at a larger bank. She does not receive 10% raises. IN fact, NO ONE in her company gets raises that large. So that pretty much squashes your scenario right there.
Next, it is NONE OF THE ASSISTANT'S BUSINESS how large her boss' increase is.
IN fact that information is confidential. So that again, kicks your analogy out.
Finally, just because the VP says to his assistant "I could not have done my job without your help" does not mean she is entitled to anything but what she earned.
I think the employer is assigning compensation the way it sees fit which is the right of the firm to do so. Fair has nothing to do with it.
Did it ever occur to you that at $50k the assistant has reached the highest end of the salary range for that position? If the assistant is not satisfied with her wage and believes her value to her boss and the company in general is higher than her current salary warrants, she then has the opportunity to negotiate a higher wage. If she rejects the wage, she is free to seek other employment or she can become an entrepreneur and run her own business. There are choices.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Think about what you just wrote. You are saying that a VP should be paid higher than his assistant, and that NO MATTER WHAT, he should get a higher percentage raise every year, because of his skill set and not because of his work. And you think this is fair.

Also, think about it again, if you raise the VP wages every year by a higher percentage than his assistant, the inequality in their incomes will grow every year. You know, kind of like I said it would, showed it did and say it will continue to do.

And you think this is all fine?

Absolutely! I went to high school with a girl who became a dental assistant. She had a taste for the finer things in life. She envied the lifestyle of the dentist she worked for. She went back to school and became a dentist. I can assure you, her take away from her experience wasn't to give equal pay to her own dental assistants. Do you even work or are you carrying a 99% sign around and posting on your capitalist iPad?

Here we go again.

There's nothing wrong with being a dental assistant. Plenty of people do that work and enjoy it and we need people to do that work! The idea, though, that because they chose that job their wage should NEVER increase, no matter how hard they work or how good they are, is just ludicrous. Plus, I would hazard to say it's un-American. We pride ourselves on hard work and being rewarded for it, but now you're the 3rd person to say that shouldn't be the case!

There is a salary range for just about every non board of director position.
That includes a dental assistant. In looking at various websites that track salaries for various jobs, a dental assistant even in higher cost of living areas can hope to top out in the mid to upper $30k range. That is what that job pays. Period.
HomeFair.com: "Error"

 

[kwc57]

1) Sarcasm is wasted on you.
2) I was right. You only value jobs that directly affect the bottom line. You don't care about any others.

Translation: I can't rebut it so I'll accuse you of being uncaring. If you did work in H.R., it must have been that same company that gave the unproductive VP a big raise.

How can I rebut the fact that you just don't care? I can't.

Look, I already said that we disagree on this. I value all jobs and all hard work. You don't. Why do you insist on continuing to fight over this?

I bet shysters love to see you walking towards them, because they know it's going to be a good day for them. Gold is selling for around $1620 per ounce today. Are you the moron who is going to pay $1620 per ounce for steel? After all, they are both metals and they both have value. Idiot.

 

[Bern80]

No they [VPs] shouldn't make have a pay raise that is greater than there assistant no matter what.

Excellent. Thank you. We agree.

Extreme income inequality wouldn't be good, but it's hard to worry about it continuing to occur since it's an outcome that isn't beneficial to anyone, rich or poor.

Again. We agree. However, it's been ongoing for decades, so I have a hard time thinking it will stop any time soon.

If you want to stop it you need to start barking up the right tree. Government is the entity that is propping up businesses that would otherwise fail without their help. They fail because they are managed poorly or because they have overly greedy CEO's looking for a quick score. But because the have the money and it's legal they can buy politicians. That is called crony capitalism and not how a real free market is supposed to work. Companies like Goldman Sachs and GM should have been allowed to fail and I bet that that relationship between government and corporations is a contributing factor to why that graph looks the way it does.

Again, we agree. I would only add, that if government has been part of the problem the past decades, then they could certainly be part of the solution for the upcoming decades. Provided they had the will to do it.

Yes they could. The government solution would be less government. We identified the cause so let's address that. Let's eliminate the problem instead of using an increased living wage as some means of counter balancing the problem.

How can I rebut the fact that you just don't care? I can't.

Look, I already said that we disagree on this. I value all jobs and all hard work. You don't. Why do you insist on continuing to fight over this?

The point in bringing it up would be to point out that it's an objectively false position. It's one of those things that a person can have an opinion about but can still be shown to be empiracally true or false. The fact is that no, not all hard work is valuable work. Digging a hole in the ground for eight hours would be hard work. Is it of value to anyone if it's being done for no other purpose than to occupy time? Of course not. It's worth harping on because it illustrates why blue collar work like working on an assembly line, which I personally know to be physically hard because I've done it, may not merit the same pay increase as the person who sits at a desk crunching numbers and managing the company.

You'll just have to trust me when I say I have first hand knowledge of this. My job is as a technical service rep. Essentially helping people with our product. I sit at a desk and talk on the phone most of the day with customers. But I have also spent weeks at a time on our assembly lines actually building our product. Assembly line work is physically more demanding than sitting at my desk no doubt. There's heavy lifting and moving and you have to be able to do things quickly, efficiently and correctly to meet daily quotas. My desk job isn't physically hard at all. The difference is and what makes it more valuable is that rather than simply knowing how to do one step of assembling one model of motor, at my desk I have to basically know everything about everything. I have to be able to explain things to people in a way they can understand and I have to be able to do it politely when their frustrated. It would take about two days to train someone to work on one of our assembly lines to the point where they can be relied on to do an efficient correct job. It honesly took me a year to learn everything I need to know from computer programs to products to do what I do sitting at my desk. And we have to continue to learn as we come out with new products. A production line worker is less valuable to the company than I am. That's not a knock on assembly workers. It just is what it is. But I'm not the CEO either so my potential increase in income in this job isn't as great as the CEO. By the same token the assembly line workers potential for increase in income is less than mine. It's the same principle we've been talking about, just shifted down the pay scale. From the assembly line person's starting wage, they may have a maxximum potentioal increase of say %15. 15% more is all the more they can expect to make if they stay at that job. In my job it may be more like 20%. The point is, and as someone else pointed out, there are certain skill sets that are going to top out at what they yield in income at some point. It isnt' reasonable for me to expect that when I started making 25k a year here 4 years ago doing this job, that in 10 years or something I'm going to be making 50k if I stay at the same position. At some point it's gonna max out and at that point I either have to decide whether I'm content with that or do something else to earn more if I want more. How hard I work whether it be at the desk or the assembly line is only going to accomplish so much in terms of increase in pay. It isn't about how hard a person works that determines how much their income will increase. It's about how smart you work.

 

[Foxfyre]

It all comes down to understanding the economics of wages in a free market system. Many many countries have attempted the government establishing the prevailing wage to achieve equity, and that has without exception produced far more negative consequences than positive results.

We can deplore that some CEO's make obscene salaries and believe that is counter productive, but the alternative--that is, taking freedom away from business to pay whatever it wants--is far worse.

But the starting point always has to be the value of the work done. Nobody knows the value of a good secretary or administrative assistant more than I do and I have always treated and paid mine very very well and, when I have been in that role, I have been paid very well. But I have no illusions that such non-producing jobs are worth what producing jobs are worth and generally do not merit the same percentage raise that the producer merits. There is a price to be paid for people taking on jobs with tremendous responsibility, risk, stress, and requirements for results.

Which is why I have educated and prepared myself to do work different from secretarial or purely administrative, put myself into the production end, and choose to work on commission so that I cannot be overpaid or underpaid.

 

[JRK]

It all comes down to understanding the economics of wages in a free market system. Many many countries have attempted the government establishing the prevailing wage to achieve equity, and that has without exception produced far more negative consequences than positive results.

We can deplore that some CEO's make obscene salaries and believe that is counter productive, but the alternative--that is, taking freedom away from business to pay whatever it wants--is far worse.

But the starting point always has to be the value of the work done. Nobody knows the value of a good secretary or administrative assistant more than I do and I have always treated and paid mine very very well and, when I have been in that role, I have been paid very well. But I have no illusions that such non-producing jobs are worth what producing jobs are worth and generally do not merit the same percentage raise that the producer merits. There is a price to be paid for people taking on jobs with tremendous responsibility, risk, stress, and requirements for results.

Which is why I have educated and prepared myself to do work different from secretarial or purely administrative, put myself into the production end, and choose to work on commission so that I cannot be overpaid or underpaid.

Good for you. opportunity as well as adapting to changing conditions in the free market is the key to making a living wage. back in the day couples worked thru these times, thats sadly not the case much any-more

 

[editec]

While CEOs and shareholders have been cashing in, wages as a percent of the economy have dropped to an all-time low.

While I am confident this is true, do you have anything concrete to back this up? I think it would be valuable in this thread.

Here

Source

Sources: Economic Report of the President, 2008, Table B-1 (GDP), Table B–29—Sources of personal income, 1959–2007.

This was part of a massive redistribution of income and wealth to the top.

Over the years 1950 to 1970, for each additional dollar made by those in the bottom 90 percent of income earners, those in the top 0.01 percent received an additional $162.

In contrast, from 1990 to 2002, for each added dollar made by those in the bottom 90 percent, those in the uppermost 0.01 percent (today around 14,000 households) made an additional $18,000.

In the United States the top 1 percent of wealth holders in 2001 together owned more than twice as much as the bottom 80 percent of the population. If this were measured simply in terms of financial wealth, i.e., excluding equity in owner-occupied housing, the top 1 percent owned more than four times the bottom 80 percent.


Between 1983 and 2001, the top 1 percent grabbed 28 percent of the rise in national income, 33 percent of the total gain in net worth, and 52 percent of the overall growth in financial worth. 35

The truly remarkable fact under these circumstances was that household consumption continued to rise from a little over 60 percent of GDP in the early 1960s to around 70 percent in 2007.

This was only possible because of more two-earner households (as women entered the labor force in greater numbers), people working longer hours and filling multiple jobs, and a constant ratcheting up of consumer debt.

Household debt was spurred, particularly in the later stages of the housing bubble, by a dramatic rise in housing prices, allowing consumers to borrow more against their increased equity (the so-called housing “wealth effect”)—a process that came to a sudden end when the bubble popped, and housing prices started to fall. As chart 1 shows, household debt increased from about 40 percent of GDP in 1960 to 100 percent of GDP in 2007, with an especially sharp increase starting in the late 1990s. 36

 

[Inthemiddle]

Why are you lefties

BLOCKED! If you think I'm a "lefty" then you're a radical extremist who's probably on the verge of terrorism.

 

[editec]

Of course if you had actually worked in H.R., you would know that.

A VP makes $100K and her assistant makes $50K annually. The VP makes 100% more than the assistant, but everyone agrees that's fair based on job duties and skill sets.

Both employees work their asses off all year and the VP fully agrees she could not have done her job as well without her assistant. Raises come around. The VP gets 10% and the assistant gets a cost of living 3%.

Next year, same thing. Year after that, same thing. Now, the VP is making $133K and the assistant is making $54.6K. The VP is now making 144% of what the assistant is making.

Is that what the assistant agreed to? Is the company being fair to that employee? Is this a good way to retain a hard working employee? To build company morale?

But anyway, I'm sure you're right. I'm sure I never worked in HR.

See here's the rub. You people look upon wage increases as an entitlement.

Bullshit

Your idea of "fair" is based on your wish to institute a system where there is equality of outcome.

More billshit

That type of system is incompatible with freedom and liberty.

Still more bullshit

Let's be realistic here.

Yes, let's.

My Wife is an AVP at a larger bank. She does not receive 10% raises. IN fact, NO ONE in her company gets raises that large. So that pretty much squashes your scenario right there.

Yeah if you're stupid enough to think that WILLY MAYS describes the reality of all Black people, maybe.

We're talking about the MACRO ECNOMY and you give us what in response?

Some happy horseshit story about some gal you know who did well?


Do TRY to imagine that we are discussing the NATIONAL STATISTICAL REALITY here, and not you're wife's experience.

 

[Foxfyre]

Baniks have traditionally made 'officers' of as many employees as possible. This initially started to make employees exempt from workers compensation or subject to a cheaper flat rate for officers for liabiity insurance. So, the states/insurance companies countered with a requirement that officers must hold a certain percentage of the corporate stock (generally 10% or more) in order to be eligible to be exempt by virtue of holding an office in the corporation.

Banks have generally kept the practice of making many employees 'officers' anyway as a P.R. ploy because customers like dealing with somebody 'important' instead of a 'peon'.

Such token offices in a business geneally do not include increased responsibility or expectation of increasing productivity, however, and therefore usually don't come with the big executive pay packages.

Again it is basic economics 101.

 

[Cecilie1200]

It's clear that judging by their posts and total economic illiteracy, most Progressive should never be allowed anywhere near "the Real World"

On the contrary. Their delusional asses should all be DRAGGED, kicking and screaming, into the real world, so that they grow the fuck up and stop trying to impose their bizarre fantasies on the rest of us.

 

[Cecilie1200]

If it takes 15.00 an hour to have a "living" wage, well I really dont have an issue with that except that really all your doing is raising the cost to build a widget, or grow a widget to a point in which the 8.00 an hour becomes 15.00 an hour it seems to me
What is a living wage?

Here is the whole issue with wages. A very large portion of our economy comes from consumer spending. The lowest income earners spend the greatest percentage of their incomes on products and services. The ability for consumers to spend, meaning they have money to spend, is what drives our economy. As spending power decreases among the middle class and underclass, so goes the economy. Rich people do buy goods and services, but they don't buy nearly as much as the rest of us do. If the top ten percent are earning approximately 45% of income, and the other 90% is earning the other 55%, do you really think that the top 10% is putting that money all back into the economy?

Increasing the wages of the lowest income earners will just put all that money right back into the economy. Everyone benefits. Of course it isn't quite so simple as just giving everyone a raise. However, when we look at the amount that the top income earners have increased their incomes by, we must ask ourselves what are they using that money for? Are they putting it back into the economy? With American businesses sitting on over $2 trillion in cash, the obvious answer is no. If that money was in the pockets of American workers, it would all be put right back into the economy creating substantial growth.

I am not saying that this is the solution, but just explaining that is how things actually work. Making it so is another story. The other problem that we have is that the baby boomers have reduced their spending considerably just due to the fact that they have everything they need. So we now have reduced spending on two fronts, the wealthy baby boomers and the rest of the populace that is just struggling to get by. But on the other end, we have the wealthy who continue to gain wealth while the rest of the country takes it up the ass.

Then with all of this happening, we have people like Herman Cain telling us we need to drastically reduce taxes on the wealthy, those who are already increasing their wealth, while increasing taxes on everyone else, those who are already losing any wealthy they may have. It really makes sane people scratch their heads.

Yes, the economy is all about people shopping, and rich people just hide their money under the mattress and in mayonnaise jars buried in the back yard. There is no other side to the economy, where the money to go shopping actually comes from. Apparently, THAT is just raining from Heaven like manna.

 

[Foxfyre]

If it takes 15.00 an hour to have a "living" wage, well I really dont have an issue with that except that really all your doing is raising the cost to build a widget, or grow a widget to a point in which the 8.00 an hour becomes 15.00 an hour it seems to me
What is a living wage?

Here is the whole issue with wages. A very large portion of our economy comes from consumer spending. The lowest income earners spend the greatest percentage of their incomes on products and services. The ability for consumers to spend, meaning they have money to spend, is what drives our economy. As spending power decreases among the middle class and underclass, so goes the economy. Rich people do buy goods and services, but they don't buy nearly as much as the rest of us do. If the top ten percent are earning approximately 45% of income, and the other 90% is earning the other 55%, do you really think that the top 10% is putting that money all back into the economy?

Increasing the wages of the lowest income earners will just put all that money right back into the economy. Everyone benefits. Of course it isn't quite so simple as just giving everyone a raise. However, when we look at the amount that the top income earners have increased their incomes by, we must ask ourselves what are they using that money for? Are they putting it back into the economy? With American businesses sitting on over $2 trillion in cash, the obvious answer is no. If that money was in the pockets of American workers, it would all be put right back into the economy creating substantial growth.

I am not saying that this is the solution, but just explaining that is how things actually work. Making it so is another story. The other problem that we have is that the baby boomers have reduced their spending considerably just due to the fact that they have everything they need. So we now have reduced spending on two fronts, the wealthy baby boomers and the rest of the populace that is just struggling to get by. But on the other end, we have the wealthy who continue to gain wealth while the rest of the country takes it up the ass.

Then with all of this happening, we have people like Herman Cain telling us we need to drastically reduce taxes on the wealthy, those who are already increasing their wealth, while increasing taxes on everyone else, those who are already losing any wealthy they may have. It really makes sane people scratch their heads.

Yes, the economy is all about people shopping, and rich people just hide their money under the mattress and in mayonnaise jars buried in the back yard. There is no other side to the economy, where the money to go shopping actually comes from. Apparently, THAT is just raining from Heaven like manna.

It really comes down to two choices.

1. We can punish the wealthy for their wealth, impose much higher taxes, diminish the ability of such people to buy things and provide jobs to people but feel righteous that we have achieved greater 'equity'.

. . .or . . .

2. We can appreciate a country that makes it possible for the poorest of the poor to become the richest of the rich, and recognize that without the rich, there would be far fewer jobs, far less venture capital, less money available to borrow and use, less philanthropy that the rest of us can't afford, and much less prosperity and quality of life for the rest of us.

 

[JRK]

It's clear that judging by their posts and total economic illiteracy, most Progressive should never be allowed anywhere near "the Real World"

On the contrary. Their delusional asses should all be DRAGGED, kicking and screaming, into the real world, so that they grow the fuck up and stop trying to impose their bizarre fantasies on the rest of us.

There is some truth to that, It would hep if the progressives had a better understanding as to how all of this works.
People who amass wealth typically earn it. I made bad choices in life as to who i would grow old with, that ended until recently mu chance to amass a large chunk of wealth
A living wage begins with living with-in your means. It ends with being trained to earn that wage
The progressive should know better than any-one as to the opportunistic opportunities the poor or one of the 7 protected races have from the federal govt to get that training

 

[Bern80]

Why are you lefties

BLOCKED! If you think I'm a "lefty" then you're a radical extremist who's probably on the verge of terrorism.

Well you certainly have the integrity of a lefty.

 

[Mr Natural]

The problem is not with those amassing great wealth.

The problem comes when those with great wealth use that wealth to influence elected officials to get things to go their way effectively rendering your and my vote virtually meaningless.

 

[DiamondDave]

The problem is not with those amassing great wealth.

The problem comes when those with great wealth use that wealth to influence elected officials to get things to go their way effectively rendering your and my vote virtually meaningless.

But there is no problem with those in mass who get something for nothing from the government influencing the government to get things to go their way and keep freebies flowing, effectively rendering the votes of actual contributors virtually meaningless???

 

[Foxfyre]

The problem is not with those amassing great wealth.

The problem comes when those with great wealth use that wealth to influence elected officials to get things to go their way effectively rendering your and my vote virtually meaningless.

But there is no problem with those in mass who get something for nothing from the government influencing the government to get things to go their way and keep freebies flowing, effectively rendering the votes of actual contributors virtually meaningless???

The problem is solved in both cases by passing an iron clad law, preferably a constitutional amendment, making it illegal for Congress to use the people's money for ANY form of charity or benevolence to anybody except perhaps very short term immediate disaster aid.

I wonder how many of our friends here would agree to that.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Libs believe that they are entitled to a certain amount of money. They will never consider living within their means, the means should rise up to the level of entitlement. Minimum wage was never supposed to be a living wage. It would be detrimental to have minimum wage one that someone could live on. If that were so, there would be little to no incentive to move beyond minimum wage. Entry level would be quarantined into itself. Workers are expected to move out of minimum wage quickly. Unless they are kids with summer jobs, or elderly looking for pin money, minimum wage jobs are not supposed to last very long, a year perhaps.

I have known and worked for companies that have a minimum wage time limit. As short as 90 days, as long as a year. Either you become qualified to move up, or you are out of a job.

If minimum wage is something that you shouldn't be able to live on, then what are you supposed to do when the only job you have pays minimum wage? Getting a second job isn't exactly something you can quickly acquire in this economy.

Become a more valuable employee, that's what.

The last time I had a minimum-wage job was right after I graduated high school. It was for a veterinary hospital, and primarily consisted of cleaning the kennels that the in-patients were kept in. It didn't take me long to figure out that the job sucked, the paycheck sucked, and any other jobs I was currently qualified for were going to suck just as much. Unfortunately, my father had just had a major stroke, and my mother desperately needed my help in taking care of him and supporting us all. So going off to college was not an option (this is actually why I had taken the kennel job right out of school in the first place).

I looked around to see what was in demand that I could learn fairly quickly and paid more than minimum wage, and set out going to trade school while I cleaned kennels. Tada!!! Now I was a secretary/receptionist. Didn't pay a lot, but paid better than hosing out poop (and took place in a nicer environment). It also offered the opportunity to get raises, get promotions, and get new jobs at places that paid even better as I got more experienced. Sixteen years later, I left the clerical field as an administrative assistant to the head of a department at the University of Arizona. Trust me when I tell you that position DOESN'T pay minimum wage, and that's not even counting the benefits.

This is how the system works. Is it going to be harder to manage in this economy? Sure. Is artificially increasing the minimum wage so you don't have to muster any ambition and hard work going to HELP this sorry economy? Hell, no.