Should We Drop Minimum Wage?

[malonetd]

[quote]yorik wrote:
It’s idiotic to think that you should be able to live off the minimum wage.
[/quote]

Of all the issues surrounding minimum wage, I think this one gets me the most. If you’re only able to make minimum, you shouldn’t expect to be getting by comfortably, if you can get by at all. Why should someone who only has the skills to earn minimum wage expect to earn as much as others who worked to increase their working value?

Conversations about minimum wage should have nothing to do with getting by. Minimum wage is for students and senior citizens.

[Makavali]

[quote]malonetd wrote:

Minimum wage is for students and senior citizens.[/quote]

Surely you jest.

[Stronghold]

[quote]pushharder wrote:
jasmincar wrote:
that would get us straight back into the 1800’s.

What would?[/quote]

Haha, Push popped a boner.

[Stronghold]

[quote]Makavali wrote:
malonetd wrote:

Minimum wage is for students and senior citizens.

Surely you jest.[/quote]

You’ve never been to a Walmart, have you?

[Makavali]

[quote]Stronghold wrote:
Makavali wrote:
malonetd wrote:

Minimum wage is for students and senior citizens.

Surely you jest.

You’ve never been to a Walmart, have you?[/quote]

I have, but a blanket statement like that makes me double take.

[Cockney_Blue]

[quote]pushharder wrote:
PonceDeLeon wrote:
My point is:

If govt. drops minimum wage, and all businesses within a 50 mile radius of an individual decide that they want to pay their employees no more than $4/hr - when they were making at least double that - do you think the cost of living will proportionately drop, too?

It won’t.

Rent won’t drop, gas won’t drop and groceries/food/entertainment will not drop.

How would the individual afford their previous lifestyle, even if it was meager to begin with?

You guys are suffering what most people suffer and that is a lack of a holistic view of the situation. You are not considering the repercussions of such changes because yelling that the “government shouldn’t get involved” is enough to make your dicks hard.

Push,

Don’t you own your own business? What good will dropping minimum wage do you?

Ponce, wage and price controls never work in a market economy. It’s a “feel good” vote getting gesture by people that “care.” But the “care” is ultimately about the votes and the power those votes produce.

In my case, my company is presently contracted on a job that falls under the thumb of the Davis-Bacon law and its mandated minimum wage (heavy highway construction category). Minimum wage is around $22 an hour for a common laborer.

So where I could/should, in the instance of one particular instance on my crew, be paying three young guys say $8 each, I have to trim back and employ just one. It is an entry level position and requires a bare minimum of skill.

I would love to be apprenticing three guys instead of one. But the government insists IT knows more about the value of the employee in this position than I do.

So as a result there are two 19 year olds out there in western Montana somewhere that are learning the life long skill of hamburger flipping at Wendy’s (open til 2 a.m.!) instead of watching and learning construction equipment operator skills that really could help them support their wives and children someday.

You are doing the right thing by asking these questions of someone who REALLY does own and run a business rather than some fucktard politician who only “cares” because of the current and lifelong benefits that a seat in Congress promises.

[/quote]

Totally agree with you Push.

[Cockney_Blue]

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
PonceDeLeon wrote:
Read an economics book? So I can stuff my brain with nonsense THEORY?

No, so you can at least have a familiarity with the argument everyone here seems to understand yet you do not.

You do understand that many concepts just don’t pan out in real life?

Name one that does not in economics. Since you refuse to read THEORY how can you even have a basis to make such an argument?

There is no way that, all of a sudden, the cost of living will DROP in proportion to the average wage. It doesn’t work that way.

Explain how wage control hurts productivity. Do you mean that employees will not work as hard knowing they will receive a minimum wage? I don’t buy that argument at all.

If you tell an employer what he has to pay his employees and it is more than he currently can you understand what will happen? Productivity must drop therefore less goods are produced and therefore goods must become more expensive. This raises the cost of living – which is precisely what you attempted to combat in the first place.

The “cost of living” is a function of productivity in combination with monetary policy. As long as the money supply remains unchanged and social productivity is increased goods and services become cheaper which lowers the cost of living. Increasing the money supply (inflation) will raise prices if the supply of goods remains unchanged or is lowered – as a result of price controls, for example.

In a free society where people are free to exchange their talents and interests there is always a natural tendency for the cost of living to come down in relation to the money supply.

Price controls create shortages no matter what.

Now, can you offer a logical alternative explanation for this phenomena which I have laid out above? Probably not since you are not familiar with the logical structure of the economic sciences.[/quote]

Or the company ships production, customer service and back office work offshore in order to cut costs and everyone loses their job.

[Cockney_Blue]

[quote]orion wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
orion wrote:
In your scenario production could decline but productivity would not.

If you fire the least productive members of society you become more productive by definition.

By making human labor more and more expensive, production also shifts toward machines, making the remaining workers even more productive. They remaining do more in less time.

Which is why most European countries are more productive than the US but have a lower per capita income and a high base unemployment.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what productivity is. What units do we measure it in?

(revenue - cost)/time?

or

goods produced/time

if goods produced is indirectly proportional to costs then they are both the same.

So it is not necessarily productivity that affects cost of living but total production?

Where am getting lost?

It really depends on how you define it, I just wanted to point out that we have to be sure how we define it. Otherwise we may be agreeing anyway without knowing it.

If it is just “productivity” I immediately think of output per worker.

So it would be totally possible that overall production shrinks while productivity rises.

If wages are determined by productivity, it would follow that if you raise the minimum wage the least productive would lose their jobs first and thereby raise productivity?

[/quote]

I would side with Orion’s definition here. I can produce less more efficiently. Has my productivity gone up or down?

Also, US business is not in a vacuum. If I am producing less then someone else is likely to fill the gap in the market with products from another part of the US or abroad.

[malonetd]

[quote]Makavali wrote:
Stronghold wrote:
Makavali wrote:
malonetd wrote:

Minimum wage is for students and senior citizens.

Surely you jest.

You’ve never been to a Walmart, have you?

I have, but a blanket statement like that makes me double take.[/quote]

My point was that minimum wage is not for getting by, but for people looking for supplemental income – like senior citizens looking to add to their retirement income.

Minimum wage isn’t for raising a family and buying a house.

[Makavali]

[quote]malonetd wrote:
Makavali wrote:
Stronghold wrote:
Makavali wrote:
malonetd wrote:

Minimum wage is for students and senior citizens.

Surely you jest.

You’ve never been to a Walmart, have you?

I have, but a blanket statement like that makes me double take.

My point was that minimum wage is not for getting by, but for people looking for supplemental income – like senior citizens looking to add to their retirement income.

Minimum wage isn’t for raising a family and buying a house.[/quote]

There we go.

[PonceDeLeon]

[quote]malonetd wrote:
Makavali wrote:
Stronghold wrote:
Makavali wrote:
malonetd wrote:

Minimum wage is for students and senior citizens.

Surely you jest.

You’ve never been to a Walmart, have you?

I have, but a blanket statement like that makes me double take.

My point was that minimum wage is not for getting by, but for people looking for supplemental income – like senior citizens looking to add to their retirement income.

Minimum wage isn’t for raising a family and buying a house.[/quote]

There are FAR more jobs that pay the current minimum wage and a disproportionately low number of jobs that pay “real” income. If you tripled or quadrupled the number of real jobs then I wouldn’t mind an abolishment of min. wage. The fact is that a lot of people are currently getting by on minimum wage (many students, for instance) and it does NOT necessarily reflect on their drive to succeed in life.

[PonceDeLeon]

[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:

So where I could/should, in the instance of one particular instance on my crew, be paying three young guys say $8 each, I have to trim back and employ just one. It is an entry level position and requires a bare minimum of skill.
[/quote]

I understand your point BUT I also believe for the scenario you are describing to take place - that three guys could be employed at an employer-discretionary wage of $8/hr - that you A) need the resources AND time to train these guys, B) are able to find three guys that want to learn this skill and NOT for the money; notice that if you pay $8/hr and Wendy’s pays $3/hr, that you may attract some folks who simply want more money but not necessarily folks that see themselves doing highway construction in the future.

Hence, it is not a guarantee that the interest in your type of labor will be genuine (i.e. an investment in someone’s future skill set vs. the pursuit of a greater pay check).

I had more to say but will come back later. Need sleep.

[Stronghold]

[quote]PonceDeLeon wrote:
malonetd wrote:
Makavali wrote:
Stronghold wrote:
Makavali wrote:
malonetd wrote:

Minimum wage is for students and senior citizens.

Surely you jest.

You’ve never been to a Walmart, have you?

I have, but a blanket statement like that makes me double take.

My point was that minimum wage is not for getting by, but for people looking for supplemental income – like senior citizens looking to add to their retirement income.

Minimum wage isn’t for raising a family and buying a house.

There are FAR more jobs that pay the current minimum wage and a disproportionately low number of jobs that pay “real” income. If you tripled or quadrupled the number of real jobs then I wouldn’t mind an abolishment of min. wage. The fact is that a lot of people are currently getting by on minimum wage (many students, for instance) and it does NOT necessarily reflect on their drive to succeed in life.[/quote]

Would you mind providing some sources for this? The last time I checked (when our economy was healthy, mind you) there were plenty of opportunities that paid “real income”…just not for those who don’t have more to offer than an ability to mop floors or take french fries out of the grease.

[malonetd]

[quote]PonceDeLeon wrote:
The fact is that a lot of people are currently getting by on minimum wage (many students, for instance) and it does NOT necessarily reflect on their drive to succeed in life.[/quote]

Since you specifically mentioned studentd, why is it important for them to make more than minimum wage? I would hope they are students with the intention of improving themselves and their market value. If not, they shouldn’t be students. And they can use their extra time to work a second job.

This leads into another regarding “living off” minimum wage. Many, many people making a decent and comfortable living work much more than 40 hours a week, yet people making minimum wage and low hourly wages, generally work a 40-hour work week. Well, if they want to make more, they should work more hours (like a second job) like their higher earning counterparts. If they want more money. they should work more.

[pittbulll]

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
There should be no intervention in the wage by government…period.

This creates disemployment by raising costs on employers who now must lay-off of their most marginally productive employees. Suddenly, street sweepers are out of work because no one thinks they’re worth $7.75/hr.

They should jack the minimum wage up, if for no other reason to piss Lifty off On a more serious note we need a livable wage, after we have everybody that wants to work having job then we can have a minimum wage
.

Yes it will be the lowest paid person in the work force. If a person takes a job at $5/hr, then obviously that job is fine by him. Yes, he may need another job, but obviously that person is in a position that he may need two or three jobs.

Yet, if you cannot hire him at the wage the government is demanding then, he gets no job. The sad thing is that the one time I told someone the reason that I could not hire them, I told them that for the job that I could hire them for, I could not pay them. They pleaded with me to pay them under the table for a lower wage.

So, it is obvious that there is people that will work for under minimum wage and have no problem with it. The government (which does not work anywhere close to minimum wage) thinks these people should be paid more, well that’s fine but when businesses cannot even hire someone to train them to be in a position to get more money how are the businesses supposed to eventually pay them that wage the government wants them to pay.[/quote]

I sure if he took the job at five dollars an hour it was not OK with him , it was all he could get, If some one can not be in business and pay him a wage he can live on maybe they should not be employing people.

It is obvious to me that any body that would work for minimum wage or below would have many problems making so little money, but would be so desperate that they have no choice

[Stronghold]

[quote]pittbulll wrote:
Brother Chris wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
There should be no intervention in the wage by government…period.

This creates disemployment by raising costs on employers who now must lay-off of their most marginally productive employees. Suddenly, street sweepers are out of work because no one thinks they’re worth $7.75/hr.

They should jack the minimum wage up, if for no other reason to piss Lifty off On a more serious note we need a livable wage, after we have everybody that wants to work having job then we can have a minimum wage
.

Yes it will be the lowest paid person in the work force. If a person takes a job at $5/hr, then obviously that job is fine by him. Yes, he may need another job, but obviously that person is in a position that he may need two or three jobs.

Yet, if you cannot hire him at the wage the government is demanding then, he gets no job. The sad thing is that the one time I told someone the reason that I could not hire them, I told them that for the job that I could hire them for, I could not pay them. They pleaded with me to pay them under the table for a lower wage.

So, it is obvious that there is people that will work for under minimum wage and have no problem with it. The government (which does not work anywhere close to minimum wage) thinks these people should be paid more, well that’s fine but when businesses cannot even hire someone to train them to be in a position to get more money how are the businesses supposed to eventually pay them that wage the government wants them to pay.

I sure if he took the job at five dollars an hour it was not OK with him , it was all he could get, If some one can not be in business and pay him a wage he can live on maybe they should not be employing people.

It is obvious to me that any body that would work for minimum wage or below would have many problems making so little money, but would be so desperate that they have no choice
[/quote]

This is stupid. Wages are directly proportional to the importance of the worker. If you can’t live off of what you make in 40 hours at McDonalds, perhaps you should work more hours or find something to do that involves a more unique skill set.

[Brother_Chris]

[quote]pittbulll wrote:
Brother Chris wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
There should be no intervention in the wage by government…period.

This creates disemployment by raising costs on employers who now must lay-off of their most marginally productive employees. Suddenly, street sweepers are out of work because no one thinks they’re worth $7.75/hr.

They should jack the minimum wage up, if for no other reason to piss Lifty off On a more serious note we need a livable wage, after we have everybody that wants to work having job then we can have a minimum wage
.

Yes it will be the lowest paid person in the work force. If a person takes a job at $5/hr, then obviously that job is fine by him. Yes, he may need another job, but obviously that person is in a position that he may need two or three jobs.

Yet, if you cannot hire him at the wage the government is demanding then, he gets no job. The sad thing is that the one time I told someone the reason that I could not hire them, I told them that for the job that I could hire them for, I could not pay them. They pleaded with me to pay them under the table for a lower wage.

So, it is obvious that there is people that will work for under minimum wage and have no problem with it. The government (which does not work anywhere close to minimum wage) thinks these people should be paid more, well that’s fine but when businesses cannot even hire someone to train them to be in a position to get more money how are the businesses supposed to eventually pay them that wage the government wants them to pay.

I sure if he took the job at five dollars an hour it was not OK with him , it was all he could get, If some one can not be in business and pay him a wage he can live on maybe they should not be employing people.

It is obvious to me that any body that would work for minimum wage or below would have many problems making so little money, but would be so desperate that they have no choice
[/quote]

Well if I paid someone $4/hr to put up fliers, run errands, deliver papers, pick up papers, etc I could hire more people instead of just contracting the work out to courier businesses and having to put more stress on my higher paid employees to do these marginal utility tasks.

See with economics it is all about the dollar. I need X amount of workers with a Y skill and I pay them Z to do W amount of work, I could hire A amount of workers with B (no skill) skill and pay them C (below minimum wage) to do D amount of work. Instead I have to hire less than A with the equal B skill, pay higher than C, and do more than D which cuts down on the marginal utility, increases marginal cost, and decreases marginal units produced per worker. On top of that, it also cuts down on the marginal utility of skilled workers since more load has to go onto them and/or they cannot be paid as much.

So what this comes out to is that with minimum wage, I higher less workers, for more money, and get less marginal units per worker. Which as well raises my average total cost, making it more expensive for my clients.

[pittbulll]

[quote]Stronghold wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
Brother Chris wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
There should be no intervention in the wage by government…period.

This creates disemployment by raising costs on employers who now must lay-off of their most marginally productive employees. Suddenly, street sweepers are out of work because no one thinks they’re worth $7.75/hr.

They should jack the minimum wage up, if for no other reason to piss Lifty off On a more serious note we need a livable wage, after we have everybody that wants to work having job then we can have a minimum wage
.

Yes it will be the lowest paid person in the work force. If a person takes a job at $5/hr, then obviously that job is fine by him. Yes, he may need another job, but obviously that person is in a position that he may need two or three jobs.

Yet, if you cannot hire him at the wage the government is demanding then, he gets no job. The sad thing is that the one time I told someone the reason that I could not hire them, I told them that for the job that I could hire them for, I could not pay them. They pleaded with me to pay them under the table for a lower wage.

So, it is obvious that there is people that will work for under minimum wage and have no problem with it. The government (which does not work anywhere close to minimum wage) thinks these people should be paid more, well that’s fine but when businesses cannot even hire someone to train them to be in a position to get more money how are the businesses supposed to eventually pay them that wage the government wants them to pay.

I sure if he took the job at five dollars an hour it was not OK with him , it was all he could get, If some one can not be in business and pay him a wage he can live on maybe they should not be employing people.

It is obvious to me that any body that would work for minimum wage or below would have many problems making so little money, but would be so desperate that they have no choice

This is stupid. Wages are directly proportional to the importance of the worker. If you can’t live off of what you make in 40 hours at McDonalds, perhaps you should work more hours or find something to do that involves a more unique skill set.[/quote]

Using your reasoning abilities , I would say this is stupid , if Mac Donaldâ??s can not pay itâ??s workers a wage they can live on then maybe they should not be allowed to employ people

Wages are proportioned to the lowest point a company can get away with paying.

Maybe we should just allow people to live better on the social net we have built for them, meaning Welfare.

[pittbulll]

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
Brother Chris wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
There should be no intervention in the wage by government…period.

This creates disemployment by raising costs on employers who now must lay-off of their most marginally productive employees. Suddenly, street sweepers are out of work because no one thinks they’re worth $7.75/hr.

They should jack the minimum wage up, if for no other reason to piss Lifty off On a more serious note we need a livable wage, after we have everybody that wants to work having job then we can have a minimum wage
.

Yes it will be the lowest paid person in the work force. If a person takes a job at $5/hr, then obviously that job is fine by him. Yes, he may need another job, but obviously that person is in a position that he may need two or three jobs.

Yet, if you cannot hire him at the wage the government is demanding then, he gets no job. The sad thing is that the one time I told someone the reason that I could not hire them, I told them that for the job that I could hire them for, I could not pay them. They pleaded with me to pay them under the table for a lower wage.

So, it is obvious that there is people that will work for under minimum wage and have no problem with it. The government (which does not work anywhere close to minimum wage) thinks these people should be paid more, well that’s fine but when businesses cannot even hire someone to train them to be in a position to get more money how are the businesses supposed to eventually pay them that wage the government wants them to pay.

I sure if he took the job at five dollars an hour it was not OK with him , it was all he could get, If some one can not be in business and pay him a wage he can live on maybe they should not be employing people.

It is obvious to me that any body that would work for minimum wage or below would have many problems making so little money, but would be so desperate that they have no choice

Well if I paid someone $4/hr to put up fliers, run errands, deliver papers, pick up papers, etc I could hire more people instead of just contracting the work out to courier businesses and having to put more stress on my higher paid employees to do these marginal utility tasks.

See with economics it is all about the dollar. I need X amount of workers with a Y skill and I pay them Z to do W amount of work, I could hire A amount of workers with B (no skill) skill and pay them C (below minimum wage) to do D amount of work. Instead I have to hire less than A with the equal B skill, pay higher than C, and do more than D which cuts down on the marginal utility, increases marginal cost, and decreases marginal units produced per worker. On top of that, it also cuts down on the marginal utility of skilled workers since more load has to go onto them and/or they cannot be paid as much.

So what this comes out to is that with minimum wage, I higher less workers, for more money, and get less marginal units per worker. Which as well raises my average total cost, making it more expensive for my clients.[/quote]

I am not sure if I get all you are trying to say , but may be if we were not paying the CEO eight hundreds times the amount we are paying our entry level employees we could pay our employees a livable wage and not even have to raise the price of our product

[Cockney_Blue]

[quote]pittbulll wrote:
Brother Chris wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
Brother Chris wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
There should be no intervention in the wage by government…period.

This creates disemployment by raising costs on employers who now must lay-off of their most marginally productive employees. Suddenly, street sweepers are out of work because no one thinks they’re worth $7.75/hr.

They should jack the minimum wage up, if for no other reason to piss Lifty off On a more serious note we need a livable wage, after we have everybody that wants to work having job then we can have a minimum wage
.

Yes it will be the lowest paid person in the work force. If a person takes a job at $5/hr, then obviously that job is fine by him. Yes, he may need another job, but obviously that person is in a position that he may need two or three jobs.

Yet, if you cannot hire him at the wage the government is demanding then, he gets no job. The sad thing is that the one time I told someone the reason that I could not hire them, I told them that for the job that I could hire them for, I could not pay them. They pleaded with me to pay them under the table for a lower wage.

So, it is obvious that there is people that will work for under minimum wage and have no problem with it. The government (which does not work anywhere close to minimum wage) thinks these people should be paid more, well that’s fine but when businesses cannot even hire someone to train them to be in a position to get more money how are the businesses supposed to eventually pay them that wage the government wants them to pay.

I sure if he took the job at five dollars an hour it was not OK with him , it was all he could get, If some one can not be in business and pay him a wage he can live on maybe they should not be employing people.

It is obvious to me that any body that would work for minimum wage or below would have many problems making so little money, but would be so desperate that they have no choice

Well if I paid someone $4/hr to put up fliers, run errands, deliver papers, pick up papers, etc I could hire more people instead of just contracting the work out to courier businesses and having to put more stress on my higher paid employees to do these marginal utility tasks.

See with economics it is all about the dollar. I need X amount of workers with a Y skill and I pay them Z to do W amount of work, I could hire A amount of workers with B (no skill) skill and pay them C (below minimum wage) to do D amount of work. Instead I have to hire less than A with the equal B skill, pay higher than C, and do more than D which cuts down on the marginal utility, increases marginal cost, and decreases marginal units produced per worker. On top of that, it also cuts down on the marginal utility of skilled workers since more load has to go onto them and/or they cannot be paid as much.

So what this comes out to is that with minimum wage, I higher less workers, for more money, and get less marginal units per worker. Which as well raises my average total cost, making it more expensive for my clients.

I am not sure if I get all you are trying to say , but may be if we were not paying the CEO eight hundreds times the amount we are paying our entry level employees we could pay our employees a livable wage and not even have to raise the price of our product[/quote]

Well then the CEO leaves to work somewhere else and a less skilled CEO is the only person the company can attract due to the lower wage. This leads to some bad decisions being made causing drops in profitability. The company now needs to urgently increase its shareprice to attract more investment so it lays off 10% of the workforce in order to balance the books. Now instead of getting minimum wage, a load of guys are drawing unemployment benefit from the government.