Poll: Solid majority (71%) of Americans support Obama’s increase of the minimum wage

[Dubya]

Its not even debatable, Kidrocks is right! When average Americans have more money in their pockets it is spent on food, bills and comfort items. Even you cannot deny that when people have and spend money more jobs are created than lost! Hell, give em 15 dollars an hour and watch the economy take off! ANother thing! Just watch the welfare rolls shrink drastically as more poor people race to work for a decent wage. Granted, inflation might raise its ugly head, but at least the economy will be booming!

Inflation might raise it's ugly head? Might? LOL, now THERE'S the understatement of the year! Heck...JQ...why not pay everyone a thousand dollars an hour and the economy would REALLY start booming. You folks live in such a fantasy world that it's amazing that you can function on a daily basis.

Is that all you've got? Lets stay reasonable. You are going off the deep end: typical right wing obstructionism!

The old fart is a typical right-winger who thinks in micro-economic terms about macro-economic solutions. Ask the fool what would happen if wages were all cut by a thousandth! His business wouldn't be working then.

 

[Dubya]

I will never understand how folks get this far in life without knowing basic math. you raise the cost of labor the cost of everything else goes up. what is so hard to understand?

What happens to small business with labor losing it's purchasing power and essentially wages are going down?

Isn't it a fact that people will not have there other costs of living reduced and will focus their money on survival and not spend it in small businesses?

 

[BreezeWood]

has anyone mentioned a Maximum Income Law should coincide with the Minimum Wage for the purpose to reach a Median Income for everyone in a full employment economy.

Yeah, that was Karl Marx.

Karl Heinrich Marx: 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883 ... In 1867 the first volume of Capital was published

A federal minimum wage was first set in 1938: Oct 24, 1938 - $0.25.


1867 was still the decade of emancipation, which was a step forwards for some, excluding of course Tea Party Republicans but not quite yet time for the minimum wage ...

Actually the minimum wage laws were introduced starting 55 years after the death of Marx and his input in regards to the effect of both a minimum and maximum income within a Capitalist economy at full employment is significantly limited - mainly because his effort was to eliminate Capitalism rather than it being a viable alternative to his own proposals.

as stated previously the American Capitalist economy should minimize both extremes of poverty and wealth through Congressional legislation i.e. Minimum Wage - Maximum Income that would evolve a broad Median Income that would also produce for the first a truly full employment economy as is the goal set by classical economic theory.

 

[Wyatt earp]

how about this a carpenter has 3 helpers, 3x $7= $21 bucks an hour. you rasie the minimum wage to $11 bucks it would then be 3 x $11 = $33 bucks an hour. whats he going to do? lay off one worker so his cost would be $22 an hour labor and those two workers would have to work twice as hard.

the only people real hurt by this is the people now at $12 ~ $14? an hour because everything goes up except their salary. dont you get it?

 

[Dragonlady]

You remember me talking about that line cook that left for "greener pastures"? He's the reason why wages don't keep going down. It's simply because there is competition in the market place for skilled labor. We weren't willing to pay him as much as someone else and therefore we lost him. That's a free market in action..

I know of no line cooks making minimum wage. A line cook is a skilled worker and good ones are very hard to find. If you were paying your line cook minimum wage, you deserved to lose him.

I suppose I could pay everyone half what I am now, if there were no regulations on what I'm required to pay but I'd be foolish to do so because I would lose ALL my employees.

So what you are saying is that you can't pay your employees any less than what they're making now, but that you would like to. This is exactly why, the minimum wage needs to be raised. Because your workers are paid so little they have to depend on government handouts to live. They don't pay income taxes, and they're a drain on the public purse.

YOU need to pay your employees a living wage, or go out of business because the American taxpayers are tired of giving government subsidies like this to business owners. Either pay your employees enough to keep them off the public purse, or close. Someone with better business sense than you will come along, scoop up the space, and put in a better restaurant that pays well.

My poker game includes a gentleman who owns 6 restaurants - all of them high end establishments. NONE of his employees are paid minimum wage. NONE. All of his restaurants are packed every night because he puts out excellent food, with great service, and he knows how to promote them.

 

[Dubya]

You remember me talking about that line cook that left for "greener pastures"? He's the reason why wages don't keep going down. It's simply because there is competition in the market place for skilled labor. We weren't willing to pay him as much as someone else and therefore we lost him. That's a free market in action..

I know of no line cooks making minimum wage. A line cook is a skilled worker and good ones are very hard to find. If you were paying your line cook minimum wage, you deserved to lose him.

I suppose I could pay everyone half what I am now, if there were no regulations on what I'm required to pay but I'd be foolish to do so because I would lose ALL my employees.

So what you are saying is that you can't pay your employees any less than what they're making now, but that you would like to. This is exactly why, the minimum wage needs to be raised. Because your workers are paid so little they have to depend on government handouts to live. They don't pay income taxes, and they're a drain on the public purse.

YOU need to pay your employees a living wage, or go out of business because the American taxpayers are tired of giving government subsidies like this to business owners. Either pay your employees enough to keep them off the public purse, or close. Someone with better business sense than you will come along, scoop up the space, and put in a better restaurant that pays well.

My poker game includes a gentleman who owns 6 restaurants - all of them high end establishments. NONE of his employees are paid minimum wage. NONE. All of his restaurants are packed every night because he puts out excellent food, with great service, and he knows how to promote them.

The old fart claims to own and work at a fine dining restaurant, just one of his restaurants, and pays his line cooks $11 per hour.

 

[Dubya]

how about this a carpenter has 3 helpers, 3x $7= $21 bucks an hour. you rasie the minimum wage to $11 bucks it would then be 3 x $11 = $33 bucks an hour. whats he going to do? lay off one worker so his cost would be $22 an hour labor and those two workers would have to work twice as hard.

the only people real hurt by this is the people now at $12 ~ $14? an hour because everything goes up except their salary. dont you get it?

You aren't good at math are you, because the helpers would only have to work 50% more and not twice as hard? You aren't good at the constuction business, because a carpenter doesn't have three helpers.

 

[JQPublic1]

how about this a carpenter has 3 helpers, 3x $7= $21 bucks an hour. you rasie the minimum wage to $11 bucks it would then be 3 x $11 = $33 bucks an hour. whats he going to do? lay off one worker so his cost would be $22 an hour labor and those two workers would have to work twice as hard.

the only people real hurt by this is the people now at $12 ~ $14? an hour because everything goes up except their salary. dont you get it?

How about this: The Carpenter has to hire 3 more workers, 3+3 = 6 x$11 =$66 per hour. He takes that action because of the increased demand for his services due to an increase in the minimum wage. I year later his profit margin allows him to start a lumber company where even more workers are hired with commensurate compensation! Ain't life grand?

 

[Dragonlady]

The old fart claims to own and work at a fine dining restaurant, just one of his restaurants, and pays his line cooks $11 per hour.

My daughter's boyfriend did a stint as a dishwasher/kitchen prep worker at a fine dining restaurant down the street. He was paid $12.00 an hour, which is $1.75 an hour above the minimum wage in Ontario. In addition he received a percentage of sales each week, which was small - $50 to $60 a week, but still.

I know what my friend up the street pays for line cooks and it's in the neighbourhood of $25 an hour. Good cooks are very hard to find.

 

[Wyatt earp]

how about this a carpenter has 3 helpers, 3x $7= $21 bucks an hour. you rasie the minimum wage to $11 bucks it would then be 3 x $11 = $33 bucks an hour. whats he going to do? lay off one worker so his cost would be $22 an hour labor and those two workers would have to work twice as hard.

the only people real hurt by this is the people now at $12 ~ $14? an hour because everything goes up except their salary. dont you get it?

How about this: The Carpenter has to hire 3 more workers, 3+3 = 6 x$11 =$66 per hour. He takes that action because of the increased demand for his services due to an increase in the minimum wage. I year later his profit margin allows him to start a lumber company where even more workers are hired with commensurate compensation! Ain't life grand?

and how he hell would that be possible with everything else going up? and less people working? you act like cash falls down fron the sky daddy up in the clowds..

 

[Wyatt earp]

Do you really want the u.s. to be like detroit? where for every union guy with a job at around $30 bucks an hour there is like 50 people with No job.

 

[Dubya]

The old fart claims to own and work at a fine dining restaurant, just one of his restaurants, and pays his line cooks $11 per hour.

My daughter's boyfriend did a stint as a dishwasher/kitchen prep worker at a fine dining restaurant down the street. He was paid $12.00 an hour, which is $1.75 an hour above the minimum wage in Ontario. In addition he received a percentage of sales each week, which was small - $50 to $60 a week, but still.

I know what my friend up the street pays for line cooks and it's in the neighbourhood of $25 an hour. Good cooks are very hard to find.

Oldstyle could have meant $11 per hour was a start for his line cooks, but he said he paid dishwashers $7 and prep cooks $9 also.

Most fine dining, I'm aware of, are only for dinner and some may have bars that stay open until late at night, but they don't serve food that late. The typical fine dining restaurants in the US don't pay high wages, except for things like exceptional cooks. Normally they don't pay busboys minimum wage, but may pay a good bartender more than minimum wage and that's usually the person who manages the bar.

 

[Dubya]

Do you really want the u.s. to be like detroit? where for every union guy with a job at around $30 bucks an hour there is like 50 people with No job.

You people won't be satisfied until the whole country is another third world country.

 

[Dragonlady]

Do you really want the u.s. to be like detroit? where for every union guy with a job at around $30 bucks an hour there is like 50 people with No job.

You're comparing apples to elephants. Different things entirely.

Union jobs in Detroit paid nowhere near minimum wage. Auto manufacturing is a sector where manufacturing has been shifted to Third World countries, or has been shifted to robotics, so the comparison isn't even close to valid. Minimum wage jobs aren't going anywhere. They are hands on service jobs which only humans can do, in the cities and towns where they work. Wait staff, retail workers, ditch diggers - none of these people are ever going to see their jobs outsources or eliminated by technology. Even electric dishwashers require someone to bus the plates, scrape and rinse the plates, load and unload the dishwasher.

 

[Wyatt earp]

Detroit is a 3rd world country, it wasnt caused by the cons and is a fine example of how stupid liberal'sl are. No one replaced the stores and shops that left due to stupid liberal policy. And the auto plants went to RTW states........

 

[Dubya]

Detroit is a 3rd world country, it wasnt caused by the cons and is a fine example of how stupid liberal'sl are. No one replaced the stores and shops that left due to stupid liberal policy. And the auto plants went to RTW states........

Cities look for the Dems to help them because they know the Pugs won't. Those people follow how politician vote for legislation, so why would they vote for a Republican?

 

[Redfish]

Detroit is a 3rd world country, it wasnt caused by the cons and is a fine example of how stupid liberal'sl are. No one replaced the stores and shops that left due to stupid liberal policy. And the auto plants went to RTW states........

Cities look for the Dems to help them because they know the Pugs won't. Those people follow how politician vote for legislation, so why would they vote for a Republican?

Detroit is the inescapable result of liberalism and unions. That once great city of 1.8 million is now a garbage heap of 700K people most of whom do not have jobs.

Great job UAW and liberal governments-------------

 

[Dragonlady]

Detroit is a 3rd world country, it wasnt caused by the cons and is a fine example of how stupid liberal'sl are. No one replaced the stores and shops that left due to stupid liberal policy. And the auto plants went to RTW states........

It wasn't "stupid liberal policy" that made it cheaper to manufacture in Mexico and China. It was conservative free trade policies put into place by Ronald Reagan and Canadian Conservative Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney. They promised us that free trade was the key to prosperity. It didn't work our that way.

GM transferred major manufactuing to Mexico under the pact, and jobs in Detroit started disappearing.

Added to that Reagan and successive Republican and Democratic administrations consistly allowed Detroit to avoid reducing carbon emissions in US made cars, while most of the rest of the world adopted strict environmental standards for fossil fuel vehicles. This left Detroit woefully behind European and Japanese car makers in terms of alternative fuel sources and emissions, to that point that many American cars could not be exported to markets with strict emissions controls, further reducing sales.

Yes, union wages are a factor in the hollowing out of the US auto industry, but only one factor. The killing blow was dealt by the NAFTA Treaty which lifted US import restrictions which protected the jobs of US auto workers. Free trade is a hallmark of Friedman economics, and in all countries where import protections are lifted, manufacturing jobs go to Third World countries. Reagan didn't give a rat's ass about unionized auto workers because Reagan was in the business of busting unions.

Mexico's economy is booming and GM makes money regardless of where their cars are made. Only the US and Canadian workers lose, and the cities like Detroit, Windsor and Oshawa which grew up around the auto industry. And our governments lose too because all of these workers who used to work and pay taxes, are now on the dole.

 

[Wyatt earp]

no it was crappy ass quality control in the 70's. and with enough cash I could build anything to replace a worker. I know of plastic plants that run lig ts out at night and weekends.

 

[Wyatt earp]

and according to the liberal logic, a new store would take the place of a store that shut down due to high operating costs. well that didnt happen in detroit, everyone just left. lol.