Small Businesses in NYC Struggling with $15 Minimum Wage

[pknopp]

Sounds about right

Workers in the 1950s earned $30-$40 a week. They supported families on that wage with one salary.

$1.25 bought you a lot

not as much as $25 today. NOPE no one could support a FAMILY back then on $40 per week except in real poverty----like no car----probably no phone, ---
maybe a three room apartment ---low end. $25 per hour-----at 40 hours is
$1000 per week for a teenager slinging burgers. why bother to stay in school? anyone got a job for me?

The problem is that very few teenage boys are slinging burgers. It's mostly young single moms with children to support. The average age of minimum wage workers is 27. $1000 per week translates to $750 per week take home, less $200 per week for child care, taking it down to $550 per week, net, after expenses, and our worker still doesn't have healthcare insurance for him/herself or any children they may be supporting. I don't know what rents are like where you live, but where I live, you can't find any apartment much under $800 per month, plus utilities, Much one big enough for a parent and child. Anything family size is over $1000 plus utilities, unless you can get into goverment owned, geared to income housing. The waiting list is currently two years here.

So really, by the time a single mother pays for withholding and taxes, child care, and rent, exactly how much of that glorious $1000 per week, is he or she going to have left, to cover food, clothing, school supplies, transportation, health care, and we're not talking luxury living here Rosie.

Every dollar this worker gets from government income supports costs taxpayers at least $1.25 to collect, process and pay out. Each dollar this employer gives their workers costs the employer $0.78, and the taxpayers $0.22, So, it's a whole lot cheaper for taxpayers to pay a slightly higher price for their goods and services, and lower taxes overall, with the added benefit that it cuts the size of government overall. Since, as you pointed out, the rich pay most of the taxes, they'll get most of the tax savings, thereby further reducing their net cost on the raises. Increasing the money going into the pockets of working Americans will enable them to spend and save, as they were able to do before Reagan changed the tax code, while providing stimulus to the economy by putting more money in the pockets of hard working Americans.

It's time for the rising tide of American prosperity to lift the dinghys as well as the yachts, because these people cannot bail fast enough right now.

you have no idea what is REALLY going on. I do-----I was once a single mom supporting a kid on virtually nothing. When I was a child----my mom faced that situation for a few years-----but not with one kid-----FIVE. The single working mother is an issue of SOCIAL dissolution-------I have known people from southeast asia who cannot UNDERSTAND how it happens in American families that a woman is so abandoned by her own family. It is a social issue based on our culture of
INDIVIDUALISM. One of the ladies who was so horrified by this American
phenomenon was a psychiatrist educated as a physician in India and in the US training as a psychiatrist. Her question "how does her mother and sibs IMAGINE she is going to recover if she has to go out----get a job ----and find a place to live and care for her child with NO HELP? No society can care for the
DETRITUS of the social system with BIG SALARIES for -----for viturally no economically viable contribution

My father died when I was eleven years old. My mother raised two children on a widow's pension, and working as a caregiver for the five children of the registered nurse who lived around the corner. I got a paper route so I could have spending money to go to a movie. I was also a single mother of two toddler age children with a deadbeat dad after my first marriage ended. I know all to well how it works.

But your solution is to wring your hands and moan about how grandma and grandpa aren't pulling their weight in poor families, and helping out their kids. That's because grandma and grandpa aren't doing so well either and are probably still working to support themselves. Or worse. Life expectancy in poor neighbourhoods, where access to health care is free clinics and emergency rooms, is on a par with Third World shithole countries. Statistically, minorities receive inferior health care to white Americans and have higher death rates.

And then you have a criminal justice system which criminalizes young non-white males at much higher rates than young white males facing similar charges, sending larger numbers of them to prisons, so both ecoomically and socially, there are good and valid reasons why your Asian model is at best, an unrealistic idea.

Our justice system doesn't sweep people off the street and throw them in prison. If you want to stay out of prison, don't break any laws. Believe it or not, most people (including many minorities) live their life that way.

Don't break laws or become an investment banker.

 

[pknopp]

And, of course, liberals never bother to ask, "What if a given job is *not* worth $15 per hour?" Hey? What if the job is so basic and easy that it's not worth paying someone $15 per hour to do? Do liberals just think that all businesses have money trees?

Do you think the CEO of Boeing was worth what he got?

 

[Mr Natural]

Fifteen bucks for an hour of a persons life seems reasonable.

 

[Dragonlady]

$1.25 in the 1950s was equivalent to $ 25 today ??? in what universe.

Sounds about right. Workers in the 1950s earned $30-$40 a week. They supported families on that wage with one salary. $1.25 bought you a lot

Typical BS pulled directly from your always ignorant ass. Many worked overtime or 2 jobs and most Americans lived far simpler lives.

Average family income in 1950 was $3,300 a year
Income of Families and Persons in the United States: 1950

That is $65/wk which conflicts BIGLY with your previous post claiming $30 - $40/wk.

The prob with mindless leftards like you is that you can never understand how 2+2=4.

What he says is true. Even in L.A. County, California you could make it on a buck, a buck and a quarter an hour and have an apartment and own a car in the early '60's. Guys living with their parents after turning 19 or 20 were ridiculed unless they were going to college. It's the inequality of wealth index we have now, and it's getting worse as far as I can see.

Wealth inequity has nothing to do with it. If we took every single dollar from every rich person in this country, it won't benefit you one bit. It will just make government richer.

If the wealthy paid living wages to their workers, government income supports wouldn’t be necessary. The working poor wouldn’t get all of the free stuff you hate so much.

 

[danielpalos]

It isn't just small businesses and it has nothing to do with the Minimum Wage.

Eventually common sense needs to break through your partisan wall.

If a company has X amount of money to spend on labor and the cost of that labor suddenly goes up without a corresponding rise in revenue then something has to give.

Higher pay labor creates more in demand and pays more in taxes.

Not when fewer people are getting paid overall

only in the short run. in any long run equilibrium, higher paid labor must create more in demand and pay more in taxes.

 

[Papageorgio]

$1.25 in the 1950s was equivalent to $ 25 today ??? in what universe.

Sounds about right. Workers in the 1950s earned $30-$40 a week. They supported families on that wage with one salary. $1.25 bought you a lot

Typical BS pulled directly from your always ignorant ass. Many worked overtime or 2 jobs and most Americans lived far simpler lives.

Average family income in 1950 was $3,300 a year
Income of Families and Persons in the United States: 1950

That is $65/wk which conflicts BIGLY with your previous post claiming $30 - $40/wk.

The prob with mindless leftards like you is that you can never understand how 2+2=4.

What he says is true. Even in L.A. County, California you could make it on a buck, a buck and a quarter an hour and have an apartment and own a car in the early '60's. Guys living with their parents after turning 19 or 20 were ridiculed unless they were going to college. It's the inequality of wealth index we have now, and it's getting worse as far as I can see.

Wealth inequity has nothing to do with it. If we took every single dollar from every rich person in this country, it won't benefit you one bit. It will just make government richer.

If the wealthy paid living wages to their workers, government income supports wouldn’t be necessary. The working poor wouldn’t get all of the free stuff you hate so much.

Then what is a living wage? $15? $17? $22? $35? I keep hear "living wage" but no one will define it, and what should a living cover?

 

[danielpalos]

And, of course, liberals never bother to ask, "What if a given job is *not* worth $15 per hour?" Hey? What if the job is so basic and easy that it's not worth paying someone $15 per hour to do? Do liberals just think that all businesses have money trees?

You only say that because you can complain about taxes for welfare. Income from a job is more beneficial for our economy than welfare.

 

[Lesh]

Small Businesses Struggle With $15 Minimum Wage Hike in NY: 'They're Shutting Down'

EXCERPT: According to a report published Monday by the Wall Street Journal, many business leaders and owners in the Big Apple have said that they are having to cut hours, raise prices, and reduce staff in their businesses due to the rising labor costs that they say come from the recent city law bumping up the minimum wage. . . .

The president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Grech, told the Wall Street Journal that he has seen an increased number of small businesses closing in the last six to nine months. He believes the rising closures are due to the minimum wage legislation.

“They’re cutting their staff. They’re cutting their hours. They’re shutting down,” Grech said. “It’s not just the rent.”

Jesus dude...your own article refutes your bullshit.'

The only two businesses cited admit they have not even had to cut anyone and that all their employees are doing 40 hour weeks

Jesus what a lame thread

Ever noticed the self checkouts everywhere and the lack of cashiers?

I wonder what caused that?

Computers, dumbass

What does computers have to do with it dumb ass?


View attachment 273407

Please tell me that you don't realize that self checkouts are computers...ya fucking moron

 

[BluesLegend]

Well that's shocking.

Lets raise the minimum wage to $1,500 an hour maybe that will work.

 

[Dragonlady]

It isn't just small businesses and it has nothing to do with the Minimum Wage.

Uh, if you read the article, you'll find out that new minimum wage does have something to do with it. Have you read any of the zillion studies that document the harmful effects of an excessive minimum wage?

The article has nobody in it saying they have shut down due to the MW and small businesses in NYC have a lower MW than larger employers. There are businesses like Dunkin Doughnuts and cell phone companies that are expanding in NYC. It is a matter of what you provide. Restaurants have a short shelf-life in the Age of the Foodie so their numbers have been going down in NYC for years. Major retailers have been pulling out or downsizing to showroom only stores because sales have moved online.

All that to say you never took business or economics 101 let alone run a lemonade stand as a kid.

Seriously dude it's not rocket science .

.

Macro economics is the very essence of rocket science. You just spout some stupid right wing talking points which have been endlessly debunked, not just by economic models but by the economic history of the United States.

Minimum Wage - Wage and Hour Division (WHD) - U.S. Department of Labor

This is a list of the increases to the minimum wage from 1938, until today. Then came the ascendancy of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics which promoted the idea of absolute free market economies. Nixon was an accolate but after the poverty and violence that followed the restructuring of several South American countries under free market economies, even Nixon raised the minimum wage in nearly every year of his second term, as did Ford, and Carter.

Until Ronald Reagan was elected, Presidents on both sides of the aisle consistently raised the minimum wage. Not Reagan. While exhorting American workers to get rid of the unions as holding back their wages and benefits and stealing their union dues, Reagan didn't raise the minimum wage once during his Administration. Bush 41 raised the MM, but all MM wage increases ceased the moment the Republicans took over the House and it was not until 12 years later when Dems took back the House and Senate, that MM wage workers received another raise. Since 2010, when Republicans retook the House, there has been no increase in the minimum wage. That's 29 of the last 40 years, that everyone in America got wages except the poorest workers, the ones who are increasingly dependent on government assistance, funded by middle class taxpayers. The last 40 years has been the wealthiest period in the history of the world, and most of that wealth has gone to the top.

The workers need a raise - a big one, because in the last 40 years, the poor workers in the USA have had 9 raises.

Then add up the increases in inflation and you will see that any increase in wages has been more than wiped out by increases in the cost of living.

Of course the workers need a big raise, you sure as hell not going to get it raising the minimum wage, instead of 2% of workers making minimum 30% plus will be making MINIMUM WAGE if it goes to $15 bucks an hour.


Once again tell me the difference between this $8.00 dollar burger basket in Wyoming ( Minimum wage $7.25)


View attachment 273415


And this $12 dollar burger basket in Colorado (minimum wage $11.25)


View attachment 273417

You're not paying an additional $6.00 in federal taxes to provide income supports to the worker in Colorado.

 

[Lesh]

Well that's shocking.

Lets raise the minimum wage to $1,500 an hour maybe that will work.

And we get the dishonest absurdist argument from the people who would prefer slave wages for "them"

 

[Dick Foster]

Small Businesses Struggle With $15 Minimum Wage Hike in NY: 'They're Shutting Down'

EXCERPT: According to a report published Monday by the Wall Street Journal, many business leaders and owners in the Big Apple have said that they are having to cut hours, raise prices, and reduce staff in their businesses due to the rising labor costs that they say come from the recent city law bumping up the minimum wage. . . .

The president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Grech, told the Wall Street Journal that he has seen an increased number of small businesses closing in the last six to nine months. He believes the rising closures are due to the minimum wage legislation.

“They’re cutting their staff. They’re cutting their hours. They’re shutting down,” Grech said. “It’s not just the rent.”

Soon the tents, shacks and shitting on 5th avenue begins. Coming to a neighborhood near you.

 

[rightwinger]

Sounds about right

Workers in the 1950s earned $30-$40 a week. They supported families on that wage with one salary.

$1.25 bought you a lot

not as much as $25 today. NOPE no one could support a FAMILY back then on $40 per week except in real poverty----like no car----probably no phone, ---
maybe a three room apartment ---low end. $25 per hour-----at 40 hours is
$1000 per week for a teenager slinging burgers. why bother to stay in school? anyone got a job for me?

The problem is that very few teenage boys are slinging burgers. It's mostly young single moms with children to support. The average age of minimum wage workers is 27. $1000 per week translates to $750 per week take home, less $200 per week for child care, taking it down to $550 per week, net, after expenses, and our worker still doesn't have healthcare insurance for him/herself or any children they may be supporting. I don't know what rents are like where you live, but where I live, you can't find any apartment much under $800 per month, plus utilities, Much one big enough for a parent and child. Anything family size is over $1000 plus utilities, unless you can get into goverment owned, geared to income housing. The waiting list is currently two years here.

So really, by the time a single mother pays for withholding and taxes, child care, and rent, exactly how much of that glorious $1000 per week, is he or she going to have left, to cover food, clothing, school supplies, transportation, health care, and we're not talking luxury living here Rosie.

Every dollar this worker gets from government income supports costs taxpayers at least $1.25 to collect, process and pay out. Each dollar this employer gives their workers costs the employer $0.78, and the taxpayers $0.22, So, it's a whole lot cheaper for taxpayers to pay a slightly higher price for their goods and services, and lower taxes overall, with the added benefit that it cuts the size of government overall. Since, as you pointed out, the rich pay most of the taxes, they'll get most of the tax savings, thereby further reducing their net cost on the raises. Increasing the money going into the pockets of working Americans will enable them to spend and save, as they were able to do before Reagan changed the tax code, while providing stimulus to the economy by putting more money in the pockets of hard working Americans.

It's time for the rising tide of American prosperity to lift the dinghys as well as the yachts, because these people cannot bail fast enough right now.

you have no idea what is REALLY going on. I do-----I was once a single mom supporting a kid on virtually nothing. When I was a child----my mom faced that situation for a few years-----but not with one kid-----FIVE. The single working mother is an issue of SOCIAL dissolution-------I have known people from southeast asia who cannot UNDERSTAND how it happens in American families that a woman is so abandoned by her own family. It is a social issue based on our culture of
INDIVIDUALISM. One of the ladies who was so horrified by this American
phenomenon was a psychiatrist educated as a physician in India and in the US training as a psychiatrist. Her question "how does her mother and sibs IMAGINE she is going to recover if she has to go out----get a job ----and find a place to live and care for her child with NO HELP? No society can care for the
DETRITUS of the social system with BIG SALARIES for -----for viturally no economically viable contribution

My father died when I was eleven years old. My mother raised two children on a widow's pension, and working as a caregiver for the five children of the registered nurse who lived around the corner. I got a paper route so I could have spending money to go to a movie. I was also a single mother of two toddler age children with a deadbeat dad after my first marriage ended. I know all to well how it works.

But your solution is to wring your hands and moan about how grandma and grandpa aren't pulling their weight in poor families, and helping out their kids. That's because grandma and grandpa aren't doing so well either and are probably still working to support themselves. Or worse. Life expectancy in poor neighbourhoods, where access to health care is free clinics and emergency rooms, is on a par with Third World shithole countries. Statistically, minorities receive inferior health care to white Americans and have higher death rates.

And then you have a criminal justice system which criminalizes young non-white males at much higher rates than young white males facing similar charges, sending larger numbers of them to prisons, so both ecoomically and socially, there are good and valid reasons why your Asian model is at best, an unrealistic idea.

Our justice system doesn't sweep people off the street and throw them in prison. If you want to stay out of prison, don't break any laws. Believe it or not, most people (including many minorities) live their life that way.

Our criminal laws are archaic. We have 2.5 million in jail, most non violent offenders. The highest percentage in the world.

Most countries find other ways to deal with drug and non violent offenders than incarceration

We now have for profit prisons with an incentive to keep them locked up

 

[rightwinger]

Well that's shocking.

Lets raise the minimum wage to $1,500 an hour maybe that will work.

Yes, because any wage above $7.25 might as well be $1500 an hour

 

[BluesLegend]

Well that's shocking.

Lets raise the minimum wage to $1,500 an hour maybe that will work.

And we get the dishonest absurdist argument from the people who would prefer slave wages for "them"

Nobody can afford to work in a high tax Dem state on $15 an hour.

 

[BluesLegend]

Well that's shocking.

Lets raise the minimum wage to $1,500 an hour maybe that will work.

Yes, because any wage above $7.25 might as well be $1500 an hour

Why not $20 an hour or $30? Have you tried to live in a Dem run tax and spend state on $15 an hour did you morons think you accomplished something?

 

[Dekster]

$1.25 in the 1950s was equivalent to $ 25 today ??? in what universe.

Sounds about right. Workers in the 1950s earned $30-$40 a week. They supported families on that wage with one salary. $1.25 bought you a lot

Typical BS pulled directly from your always ignorant ass. Many worked overtime or 2 jobs and most Americans lived far simpler lives.

Average family income in 1950 was $3,300 a year
Income of Families and Persons in the United States: 1950

That is $65/wk which conflicts BIGLY with your previous post claiming $30 - $40/wk.

The prob with mindless leftards like you is that you can never understand how 2+2=4.

What he says is true. Even in L.A. County, California you could make it on a buck, a buck and a quarter an hour and have an apartment and own a car in the early '60's. Guys living with their parents after turning 19 or 20 were ridiculed unless they were going to college. It's the inequality of wealth index we have now, and it's getting worse as far as I can see.

Wealth inequity has nothing to do with it. If we took every single dollar from every rich person in this country, it won't benefit you one bit. It will just make government richer.

If the wealthy paid living wages to their workers, government income supports wouldn’t be necessary. The working poor wouldn’t get all of the free stuff you hate so much.

Workers are never happy. They used to get to live in a company house and shop at the company store and they complained about that too.

 

[Lesh]

Workers are never happy. They used to get to live in a company house and shop at the company store and they complained about that too.[/QUO

Workers are never happy? Yea...screw em...why pay em anything then right?

And that who "company store" thing was pretty fucked up

 

[Wry Catcher]

Sounds about right. Workers in the 1950s earned $30-$40 a week. They supported families on that wage with one salary. $1.25 bought you a lot

Typical BS pulled directly from your always ignorant ass. Many worked overtime or 2 jobs and most Americans lived far simpler lives.

Average family income in 1950 was $3,300 a year
Income of Families and Persons in the United States: 1950

That is $65/wk which conflicts BIGLY with your previous post claiming $30 - $40/wk.

The prob with mindless leftards like you is that you can never understand how 2+2=4.

What he says is true. Even in L.A. County, California you could make it on a buck, a buck and a quarter an hour and have an apartment and own a car in the early '60's. Guys living with their parents after turning 19 or 20 were ridiculed unless they were going to college. It's the inequality of wealth index we have now, and it's getting worse as far as I can see.

Wealth inequity has nothing to do with it. If we took every single dollar from every rich person in this country, it won't benefit you one bit. It will just make government richer.

If the wealthy paid living wages to their workers, government income supports wouldn’t be necessary. The working poor wouldn’t get all of the free stuff you hate so much.

Then what is a living wage? $15? $17? $22? $35? I keep hear "living wage" but no one will define it, and what should a living cover?

A living wage, enough to:

• Provide for shelter
• Provide for food
• Provide for clothing
• Provide for Health Insurance
• Provide for Transportation
• Provide for the future
  • Able to afford training to secure a better job
  • Able to provide for a family
  • Able to afford savings & be able to retire
  • Sufficient income to avoid governmental assistance

Gee, it must be fun to work and not be able to afford all or in some case any of these bullet points without the aid of government assistance.

 

[Timmy]

It isn't just small businesses and it has nothing to do with the Minimum Wage.

Uh, if you read the article, you'll find out that new minimum wage does have something to do with it. Have you read any of the zillion studies that document the harmful effects of an excessive minimum wage?

If you can’t afford to pay workers min wage then what good are you?