So What Do You Think Is A Fair And Decent Wage?...

[RKMBrown]

My daughter and her husband were raising two children on half that, in Texas.

Yeah but we are trying to discuss this without taking into account welfare checks, right? Plus the discussion leaned to American Dream, not just "surviving."

No, my daughter and her family receive no welfare, he is a soldier. They live by a budget and not beyond their means. Only one, yep, ONE small, modest car that was priced within their budget. They manage to find decent places, in decent neighborhoods, to rent. (She researches using the internet before they move to a new area.) The daughter stays at home and doesn't waste her time and energy trying to earn a paycheck that would only be used to pay someone else to raise their children. They are most definitely not simply surviving, but they are practical about what they can (or cannot) spend money on. People with lower incomes DO NOT need government supplements. What they do need is to learn to live within their means, budget and save if they want more.
Funny thing, my daughter does not feel 'poor' at all. She has a wonderful family, a husband who loves and supports her and their children. And her children are very well behaved, clean and intelligent. Imagine that?

Ah, I thought soldiers got tremendous benefits, money to school, food clothes, ... I could see how a soldier's family could be getting by on less. The point was more to the American Dream money not scraping by. As said earlier in the thread you can survive on much much less. In the private sector we don't get the benefits a soldier does except in very few cases. Before I forget... thank them for me for their service pls. Yes when I was just married, first got started, I also got by on much much less, granted the apartments were smaller, but it was my dream and I was living it large

 

[francoHFW]

Where did he go wrong...

 

[Uncensored2008]

/unsub

If the BAU from "Criminal Minds" comes here, we'll know who to point them at..

 

[High_Gravity]

I don't look down on them. I started out my working life doing low skill menial labor odd jobs like that. So did Mr. Foxfyre. But both of us, job by job, improved our situation until we were enjoying work we loved and were earning a comfortable wage.

Both of my kids worked in fast food in highschool and college. And each of them now hugely outearns Mr. Foxfyre and myself when we were at the very top of our earnings. Those fast food and other low level helped us all develop a work ethic, get some honest to goodness experience, develop some skills, and acquire references that opened much more lucrative doors for us later on until we were ready to enter the professional world in the careers we prepared ourselves to excel in.

But if those first employers had been required to pay us a living wage while we learned and prepared ourselves to do better, we never would have been hired for those jobs in the first place.

You two apparently are quite intelligent. Not all are. I know you get that. I'm not sure others on the board do.

Not everybody is management material. Or office material. Not all graduated high school. People make mistakes, bad life choices, or just never escape the life level they were born to.

I do not believe it follows, "And therefore, you must suffer further, because corporate greed is the price you (and the government) will pay."

I will ALWAYS believe that if somebody is working 40 hours, they deserve to be able to afford the basics.

NOT have to be on welfare, because - and this is completely ridiculous - they qualify.

That brings us back to the question: What are "the basics"?

I Phone, New Jordans and flat screen.

 

[BlackSand]

That brings us back to the question: What are "the basics"?

I Phone, New Jordans and flat screen.

Apple is the a greater wage stiffer than McDonalds and Wal-Mart.
Apple, Walmart, McDonald's: Who's the Biggest Wage Stiffer? | Alternet

Nike, Apple and Microsoft make tons of profit manufacturing overseas and admit to Offshore Tax Shenanigans.
Nike, Microsoft and Apple Admit to Offshore Tax Shenanigans; Other Companies Plead the Fifth | Tax Justice Blog

Vizio Televisions might be a decent choice as Forbes lists the company at 2.8 billion in profits annually with sales staff, tech support, and members of accounting making $8-$11 an hour.
VIZIO Salaries | Glassdoor

.

 

[Indeependent]

That brings us back to the question: What are "the basics"?

I Phone, New Jordans and flat screen.

Apple is the a greater wage stiffer than McDonalds and Wal-Mart.
Apple, Walmart, McDonald's: Who's the Biggest Wage Stiffer? | Alternet

Nike, Apple and Microsoft make tons of profit manufacturing overseas and admit to Offshore Tax Shenanigans.
Nike, Microsoft and Apple Admit to Offshore Tax Shenanigans; Other Companies Plead the Fifth | Tax Justice Blog

Vizio Televisions might be a decent choice as Forbes lists the company at 2.8 billion in profits annually with sales staff, tech support, and members of accounting making $8-$11 an hour.
VIZIO Salaries | Glassdoor

.

Which simply implies that our Foreign Trade Policies were not composed with the best interests of the US citizen in mind.

 

[RKMBrown]

I Phone, New Jordans and flat screen.

Apple is the a greater wage stiffer than McDonalds and Wal-Mart.
Apple, Walmart, McDonald's: Who's the Biggest Wage Stiffer? | Alternet

Nike, Apple and Microsoft make tons of profit manufacturing overseas and admit to Offshore Tax Shenanigans.
Nike, Microsoft and Apple Admit to Offshore Tax Shenanigans; Other Companies Plead the Fifth | Tax Justice Blog

Vizio Televisions might be a decent choice as Forbes lists the company at 2.8 billion in profits annually with sales staff, tech support, and members of accounting making $8-$11 an hour.
VIZIO Salaries | Glassdoor

.

Which simply implies that our Foreign Trade Policies were not composed with the best interests of the US citizen in mind.

Minor correction, US laborers in mind... many US citizens, walmart shoppers, welfare recipients, retired folk all benefit from low priced product from asia.

 

[healthmyths]

$10 an hour should be the bare minimum IMO.

How many people under 24 living at home make minimum wage?
FACT:
Together, these 3.8 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 5.2 percent of all hourly-paid workers.
Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers: 2011



Near 2 million living at home most likely under 24 making minimum wage...
They pay no rent most likely... take the bus.. no car payment... just cell phone maybe...
BUT really what purpose would $10 do for incentivizing the employee to do better, go to school get a trade that
PAYS $20/hour! How stupid.
But to raise to $10 will cause some employers to LET PEOPLE go because idiots like you don't seem to comprehend..
THE EMPLOYER PAYS:
SS 6.2% Medicare 1.45% FUTA/workman's comp... all this adds up to nearly 10% of the hourly wage..
So when your humble opinion of $10 REMEMBER it is really $11.00 the employer will be paying... reaches a point
where this type of service looks attractive.. a Japanese restaurant HAS no waiters!!

 

[deaddogseye]

whatever the free market / laws of economiocs determines it to be

 

[auditor0007]

I believe there has to be an automatic balance, though. The nation's minimum wage goes up, the welfare checks are limited to 3 years with 20% decreases each year until they are stopped the third year. We stop enabling the able bodied workers.

The three year rule would not apply to the physically grossly disabled, elderly or severely mentally handicapped. Agree to the $10.00 an hr.

Everyone pays taxes.

When the minimum wage is raised, it gives those on welfare a much better incentive to actually go out and get a job. If you collect $1200 per month in public assistance, and a minimum wage job pays you $1200 per month, why would anyone take a minimum wage job? Ideally, reduce the welfare a little bit and increase the minimum wage a little bit so we create a situation where the welfare recipient only receives $1000 per month from all benefits but will earn $1600 plus if they work. Under those circumstances, a lot more would consider looking for work rather than staying on the dole.

 

[gallantwarrior]

Yeah but we are trying to discuss this without taking into account welfare checks, right? Plus the discussion leaned to American Dream, not just "surviving."

No, my daughter and her family receive no welfare, he is a soldier. They live by a budget and not beyond their means. Only one, yep, ONE small, modest car that was priced within their budget. They manage to find decent places, in decent neighborhoods, to rent. (She researches using the internet before they move to a new area.) The daughter stays at home and doesn't waste her time and energy trying to earn a paycheck that would only be used to pay someone else to raise their children. They are most definitely not simply surviving, but they are practical about what they can (or cannot) spend money on. People with lower incomes DO NOT need government supplements. What they do need is to learn to live within their means, budget and save if they want more.
Funny thing, my daughter does not feel 'poor' at all. She has a wonderful family, a husband who loves and supports her and their children. And her children are very well behaved, clean and intelligent. Imagine that?

Ah, I thought soldiers got tremendous benefits, money to school, food clothes, ... I could see how a soldier's family could be getting by on less. The point was more to the American Dream money not scraping by. As said earlier in the thread you can survive on much much less. In the private sector we don't get the benefits a soldier does except in very few cases. Before I forget... thank them for me for their service pls. Yes when I was just married, first got started, I also got by on much much less, granted the apartments were smaller, but it was my dream and I was living it large

Once upon a time, there were funds to help pay for both soldiers' and their dependents' schooling. Medical and dental care was provided to the military member and their families. Specifically those two things have been pretty much eliminated during this current administration. Now, they're even discussing closing the commissaries, where military families can usually save some on food and other household amenities. Sadly enough, in a time when the service members are being deployed more often, and for longer periods, the families are having to get by on less. (My SIL was deployed three times during his first seven years in service.) When they had their government "slow down" a few months ago, the military families were threatened with the loss of both housing and subsistence allowances. All the small things that help offset the low pay have been slowly whittled away.

 

[gallantwarrior]

I Phone, New Jordans and flat screen.

Apple is the a greater wage stiffer than McDonalds and Wal-Mart.
Apple, Walmart, McDonald's: Who's the Biggest Wage Stiffer? | Alternet

Nike, Apple and Microsoft make tons of profit manufacturing overseas and admit to Offshore Tax Shenanigans.
Nike, Microsoft and Apple Admit to Offshore Tax Shenanigans; Other Companies Plead the Fifth | Tax Justice Blog

Vizio Televisions might be a decent choice as Forbes lists the company at 2.8 billion in profits annually with sales staff, tech support, and members of accounting making $8-$11 an hour.
VIZIO Salaries | Glassdoor

.

Which simply implies that our Foreign Trade Policies were not composed with the best interests of the US citizen in mind.

And where do our foreign trade policies come from?

 

[Wyatt earp]

I believe there has to be an automatic balance, though. The nation's minimum wage goes up, the welfare checks are limited to 3 years with 20% decreases each year until they are stopped the third year. We stop enabling the able bodied workers.

The three year rule would not apply to the physically grossly disabled, elderly or severely mentally handicapped. Agree to the $10.00 an hr.

Everyone pays taxes.

When the minimum wage is raised, it gives those on welfare a much better incentive to actually go out and get a job. If you collect $1200 per month in public assistance, and a minimum wage job pays you $1200 per month, why would anyone take a minimum wage job? Ideally, reduce the welfare a little bit and increase the minimum wage a little bit so we create a situation where the welfare recipient only receives $1000 per month from all benefits but will earn $1600 plus if they work. Under those circumstances, a lot more would consider looking for work rather than staying on the dole.

I never understand a liberal mind set. I have an old H.S. girlfriend who won the Illinois state Lottery, who now lives in Dayotna beach and she just went back to work because she was bored. Work is not about the money if it is you are just a miserable person

 

[paulitician]

My advice to the 'Undesirables' and 'Low-skilled Workers', is to get organized. There is strength in numbers. Until that happens, most Americans will continue to disrespect them. The Helots eventually figured that out. America's Helots will have to do the same.

 

[RKMBrown]

I believe there has to be an automatic balance, though. The nation's minimum wage goes up, the welfare checks are limited to 3 years with 20% decreases each year until they are stopped the third year. We stop enabling the able bodied workers.

The three year rule would not apply to the physically grossly disabled, elderly or severely mentally handicapped. Agree to the $10.00 an hr.

Everyone pays taxes.

When the minimum wage is raised, it gives those on welfare a much better incentive to actually go out and get a job. If you collect $1200 per month in public assistance, and a minimum wage job pays you $1200 per month, why would anyone take a minimum wage job? Ideally, reduce the welfare a little bit and increase the minimum wage a little bit so we create a situation where the welfare recipient only receives $1000 per month from all benefits but will earn $1600 plus if they work. Under those circumstances, a lot more would consider looking for work rather than staying on the dole.

Not true at all. Poverty level is essentially indexed to minimum income of some percentage of population... raise minimum wage and you move the bar for the poverty level in this country. No matter what you do you can't change the statistical fact that income of some number of folks is gonna be in the bottom 25% of all folks. It's like grading subjective essays on a curve... No matter how good the essays are, 25% will be in the bottom. All you do by moving up minimum wage is move more people onto welfare that can't get someone to pay them the higher wage.

Poverty in America now means having a free smart phone, all the free food you can eat, free subsidized housing, free health care, and a free large flat screen TV. What could go wrong?

 

[Desperado]

So What Do You Think Is A Fair And Decent Wage?... For what job specifically?
NFL Quarterback?
Lawyer?
Welder?
Actor?
Mechanic?
Singer?
Question is way to broad.... You have to be more specific.

 

[zeke]

I don't look down on them. I started out my working life doing low skill menial labor odd jobs like that. So did Mr. Foxfyre. But both of us, job by job, improved our situation until we were enjoying work we loved and were earning a comfortable wage.

Both of my kids worked in fast food in highschool and college. And each of them now hugely outearns Mr. Foxfyre and myself when we were at the very top of our earnings. Those fast food and other low level helped us all develop a work ethic, get some honest to goodness experience, develop some skills, and acquire references that opened much more lucrative doors for us later on until we were ready to enter the professional world in the careers we prepared ourselves to excel in.

But if those first employers had been required to pay us a living wage while we learned and prepared ourselves to do better, we never would have been hired for those jobs in the first place.

You two apparently are quite intelligent. Not all are. I know you get that. I'm not sure others on the board do.

Not everybody is management material. Or office material. Not all graduated high school. People make mistakes, bad life choices, or just never escape the life level they were born to.

I do not believe it follows, "And therefore, you must suffer further, because corporate greed is the price you (and the government) will pay."

I will ALWAYS believe that if somebody is working 40 hours, they deserve to be able to afford the basics.

NOT have to be on welfare, because - and this is completely ridiculous - they qualify.

That brings us back to the question: What are "the basics"?

Really? You don't understand what "basics" must be met to live financially independent of others? Be it government, parent or friends/family.
Things like rent, food, utilities, insurance, clothing, gasoline. Those are basic to independent living in America. For lower wage earners, it usually takes two people working full time to meet the basics. Even then it is pay check to pay check with no room for error or illness or accident.

You are just goofing on that right? You have lived on your own before? Ever been a low wage earner?

 

[Londoner]

A healthy economy requires two things.

1) Attractive production costs, ones that usually come with lower wages so that investors can make higher profits.

2) High enough wages so that workers have the purchasing power to sustain the economy through their consumption.

[1 and 2 are in conflict. When an economy overlooks 1, it destroys the incentive to produce. When an economy overlooks 2 it destroys the ability for workers to buy what is produced]

Or, try this explanation:

Henry Ford thought a decent wage was one that was high enough so that the worker could afford to buy Model Ts.

Ford realized that a healthy "consumption economy" is one where the wage system supplies the needed purchasing power for economic growth.

This is why we spent the entire postwar years focusing on demand, so that the worker had the wages to consume. Problem is, we over cooked demand and made production costs too expensive, thus undermining the incentive to produce.

Reagan fixed this with his war on labor. He brought down wages and focused on suppliers (supply-side economics).

The pendulum swung back until the current low wage/no benefit system hurt consumer demand. Then the Reagan revolution did the one thing you should never do to repair demand, that is, it over-expanded credit so that people could continue to buy things.

Don't take my word for it. Research household debt starting in 1980. You will find that "Morning in America" was over-funded by the expansion of credit (debt).

As a result our middle class spent 30 years going into debt. This type of thing usually results in a credit-bubble followed by a meltdown, and long-term damage to the economy... as a generation of Americans withdraws its consumption in order to get out of debt.

 

[zeke]

A healthy economy requires two things.

1) Attractive production costs, ones that usually come with lower wages so that investors can make higher profits.

2) High enough wages so that workers have the purchasing power to sustain the economy through their consumption.

[1 and 2 are in conflict. When an economy overlooks 1, it destroys the incentive to produce. When an economy overlooks 2 it destroys the ability for workers to buy what is produced]

Or, try this explanation:

Henry Ford thought a decent wage was one that was high enough so that the worker could afford to buy what he produced.

Ford realized that a healthy "consumption economy" is one where the wage system supplies the needed purchasing power for economic growth.

This is why we spent the entire postwar years focusing on demand, so that the worker had the wages to consume. Problem is, we over cooked demand and hurt incentives.

Reagan fixed this with his war on labor. He brought down wages and focused on suppliers (supply-side economics).

When this destroyed demand, The Reagan revolution did the one thing you should never do to repair demand, that is, it is expanded credit so that people could continue to buy things.

As a result our consumption classes spent 30 years going into debt. This type of thing usually results in a credit-based meltdown, and long-term damage to the economy... As a generation of Americans withdraws it's consumption in order to get out of debt.

Problem is, what you wrote applies to ANY economy. And if ever increasing profits is the driving force behind the investor class, they end up chasing those profits all over the world.
There loyalty is only to their profit. Cheap labor in China, go to China.

That allows them to take what they can from the economy and leave behind people (US) who are experiencing a declining standard (for the bottom 60%) of living for the first time in many many years. And there are is no downside to this action for them. Hell, rich people are the most protected class of people alive.

Or course the labor force of an economy like China is enjoying what we used to enjoy. Rising wages and real opportunity to do better this generation than the last generation.

You mention Henry Ford. A populist through and through. He had some ideas I didn't care for. But he understood that to allow the bankers of the world to manipulate and control currencies and economies, would be a disaster.

Henry was right. And we are screwed.

 

[OODA_Loop]

A healthy economy requires two things.

1) Attractive production costs, ones that usually come with lower wages so that investors can make higher profits.

2) High enough wages so that workers have the purchasing power to sustain the economy through their consumption.

We have both.