Can I assume you mean this argument to apply only to heads of households or those in similar positions? There is a lot of argument to be made for providing a living wage to a single mother; there is little to be made for providing it to a middle-class high-school junior working for disposable income.
The raise in the minimum wage from 3.35 an hour to 4.25 an hour meat that I could buy enough vegatables and dairy products that I stopped having a sore tongue and bleeding gums from a lack of vitamins.
My husband worked as a night auditor for several different hotels to support us while I went to school. He had a college degree, but those were the only jobs he could find. He worked full time at minimum wage and received no benefits. At that time I worked 10-35 hours a week minimum wage, usually about 15. My school was paid for through grants, scholarships, and a couple of loans. In that town, a midwestern college town with a perpetual labor glut, some even moderately skilled jobs paid minimum wage. I
It seems to me that a couple working that much should be able to afford to live. We had to go on food stamps for the last year. We both worked hard and yet without the extra money from grants and loans that went to housing we would not have been able keep an apartment. As it was, I am still paying for the clothes we bought on credit.
We need to decide, as a society, that those who work full time will be able to afford to live. We don’t let businesses out of building codes because following them is expensive. Why should we let them get away with this? The rise in the minimum wage to 4.25 was predicted to cause the economy to fall apart. It did not. Neither have the increases since. Raise in wages may cause some inflation, but not enough to eat the wage up entirely. If all businesses are forced to pay a living wage, maybe more businesses where the owner has some sense of ethics will thrive.
Make no mistake about it, someone ends up making the differnce. Because we did not earn enough to pay for health care and clothes, I am still paying off those debts at credit card rates and have not been able to buy a house. The government helped pay for our food near the end. Why should that have been? Government paid for my husband’s health care through the VA system. Also, we were nearly unable to get out of poverty and become tax payers.
Why should we let businesses reap the rewards of labor without really paying the full cost of that labor? The government paid for the food for my husband even though he was working full time. Surely part of the cost of having someone work for you is paying them enough to eat?
Why should a single mother be afforded a living wage just because she has children? Sounds like welfare to me. Let the government pay for it if they feel it’s justified. Don’t put the burden of child support on the business owners though.
Rug Burn, where do you think the government gets its money from?
Why, the magic cherry tree of course. :rolleyes:
Please share your arguement for why a single mother should be paid a living wage or any amount greater than his/her pimply-faced teenage counterpart.
I still maintain that if you are only making minimum wage, you should do society and your unborn child a favor and not get pregnant.
Irrelevent. Its the same whether you make $5 or $500 an hour. All employers think they are doing you a favor by allowing you to make money for them.
Your living wage certainly seems reasonable at current market conditions. Problem is that there is a complex relationship between wages, employment levels, the price and availability of goods, inflation, interest rates and taxes. A small increase in wages can be argued for at the level of an individual worker or company, but it can have profound effect if implemented across an entire economy.
I will agree that the COST of an education is one of the biggest scams. Other than that, this statement is completely off base. If you could have learned everything they taught you in a few months, then maybe you should have chosen a harder major.
The reason college grads get paid more is that they have quantifyable proof that they completed a particular course of study. If I work for an accounting firm (and I do), how would I know which applicants, out of thousands of applicants, are actually qualified to be accountants?
I wouldn’t shed a tear if the minimum wage was increased locally. Anyone who only pays their employees minimum wage is a dickhead who deserves to be driven out of business.
oops
I didn’t say I particularly agreed with the living wage, Rug Burn, I said a legitimate argument can be made, but that it should not apply to people who are not supporting themselves or supporting families.
In any case, the burden already is on business owners, and employees, too. It’s simply spread out among all business owners and employees, through unemployment insurance, payroll taxes, etc.
Again, why is the work of a parent or someone living on their own valued higher than someone living at home with mom and dad? I ran into a similar situation while in the military. While single, I got to live on base with at least one roomate and eat food on base for free. When I got married I got an apartment off base, a nice cost of living allowance, and money for food instead of free food on base.
This situation caused more than a little resentment from other single personnel. In fact, some couples got married just so they would receive more benifits. Some women got pregnant just so they could move off base. I never understood this; we’re all doing the same job. Why is a single person in the military worth less than a married person?
So, I guess businesses have already contributed their fair share and this proposal would only serve to dump more of the load on them.
Perspective:
How do we know that people earning minimum wage are worth only minimum wage? Because that’s what they’re being paid. 
Smart-ass-ism aside, that’s pretty much the truth. More accurately, though, that’s not how much they’re worth, it’s how much the service they provide is worth. Different jobs are worth different amounts to different people. When I walk into a store and I see a product selling for $5, why does it cost $5? Because that is what the market has deemed its worth to be. (More accurately, that’s how much the maker of the product has guessed the market would price it at.) Now maybe I think that product is only worth $4, thus I don’t buy it. Maybe I think it should be worth $6, and I’m getting a steal, and thus I do buy it. But on average, $5 is the price that’s going to sell the most of that product.
Labor costs work the same way. If I offer $10/hr for a job, I’m offering the amount that I think will maximize the profitiability that I derive from that employee. If I charged more, my profits would drop. If I charged less, I would get less-abled employees, and presumably my profits would still drop. I therefore decide that this particular job is worth $10/hr to me. How do I know the person I hire is worth $10/hr? Because I decided to hire him and pay him that much. If someone is making $X/hr, they are worth $X/hr in that position pretty much be definition.
Now chances are that in a minimum wage job, the person earning minimum wage isn’t worth that cost. They’re worth less. They only get paid what they do because the government mandates it. WV_Woman stated, essentially, that if a minimum wage employer could pay his employees less, he would, but it’s against the law. Yeah, that pretty much hits the nail on the head.
Lee:
I respect the hardship that you and your husband went through in order to put you through school, and I think it admirable that you chose to put in the degree of hard work necessary to get it done. But here’s where I enter Cold Hearted Dick Mode. Sad though it may be, it’s not the responsibility of the employer to make sure the lifestyle of his employees can be afforded by their wages. If my minimum-wage employee wants to put his wife through school, great, but why should I be obligated to pay for it? If he can afford to on what he makes, go for it. If he can’t, then he should wait until he’s making enough such that he can. Or the wife can go to night classes. Basically, though, it’s not my problem.
Honestly, I don’t see much of a problem with trying to support yourself on minimum wage in most areas. Here, I can get a studio apartment for about $400. Spend $50 to get a decent bike to get to and from work. $200/month for food, $100/month for utilities. That’s $700/month after taxes. That’s just about what $5/hr would pay for, and minimum wage here is $6.25. Now living somewhere like Silicon Valley is certainly more expensive, but I don’t know of any place down there that actually pays minimum wage. A job at McDonald’s starts at about $8/hr down there. This isn’t a cushy lifestyle, to be sure, but that certainly provides an incentive for advancement, doesn’t it? Or you can get married, have 3 kids, and go on welfare, I suppose.
Also, regarding the connection between union wages and minimum wage. Yes, union wages are well above minimum wage. Which is how the unions demand it to be. Labor unions love to see the minimum wage go up, because that gives them leverage to demand pay raises for their members. Why do you think labor unions lobby so hard for increases in minimum wage, when probably not a single union member actually earns minimum wage? The goodness of their hearts? Also, Perspective, by saying that “no one would want to pay their dues anymore”, you make it sound as if union members have a choice in the matter.
Jeff
The problem is pretty simple. Many businesses run on small profit margins with tight budgets. One of the budgeted expenses is payroll.
When you raise the minimum wage that does not automatically increase the budget for payroll.
People lose jobs or hours.
Rug Burn, if you’re going to insist on reading into my posts things I am not saying, I really don’t see any reason to have a dialogue. I didn’t say anything about married vs. single employees, I said something about employed heads of households vs. employed dependents.
The military is a whole different ball of wax, anyway, because it isn’t a free labor market. Once you’re enlisted, you can’t just leave if the pay isn’t to your liking.
I don’t think I read anything into your post. Sorry if you feel that I did. First you said there is an argument for a single mother to make more than a teenager living at home. Then you said that a legitimate argument for a living wage could be made, but that it wouldn’t apply to people not supporting themselves or other family members. I would still love to here what this legitimate argument is.
Although the military example I gave had a married vs. single spin on it, it also applies to simgle mothers, as I pointed out also. I think the parallels are very close to what you seem to be proposing. Basically, adjusting a persons pay or worth based on their family commitments.
/
And, in the long run, it’s even worse. Businesses will choose to expand or set up new operations where their costs are lower. A high minium wage can gradually reduce employment opportunites for every segment of tne community over a period of time.
A minimum wage is a wealth transfer, from the owners of business and the marginal worker to the less-than marginal worker. The owners transfer earnings, the marginal worker transfers his earnings to the other workers when they get fired.
So in this sense it is a tax, a subsidy, whatever adn it must be understood that then what you are doing is forcing business and marginal workers to pay for a social program. Now it is not unusual for the governement to do that, of course, the government certainly does tax the wealthy to pay for programs to benefit the poor.
So if you are going to argue for a social program which fundamentally must involve a transfer of wealth then you want to lay down the principles that quide them. So when the rich are taxed to create food and housing programs for the poor, the fundamental principle at work is that the poor really need it more than the rich and/or the rich are more more capable of providing the means to enact the program.
Now let’s look at the living wage argument. The problem to be solved is that people are working too hard and not making a living. The simple solution, pay them more, has a problem, because those whom will have to pay for it in no true way bear any responsibility or ability to cure the social problem indicated. In fact, when talking about those marginal workers, some of those who pay would be exactly those people the policy is trying to help.
And there is a another problem, at least as it stands, raising the minimum wage to living wage standards, does not even necessarily address the needs of the needy, but also of those who really are not in need of any kind of living wage assistance. And as mentioned would in fact damage some of those who are actually in need
So the policy fails on many dimensions, 1) it does not target those it seeks to help, and 2) the burden is borne by those who have no reason, whether economically or morally, to be responsible for funding this program.
I don’t think minimum wage jobs reflect an employee’s worth. There are a few jobs based on performance (usually sales) and people with these jobs generally make more than minimum.
Does a burger joint manager analyze the performance of each burger flipper to determine their efficiency and their worth? Not really. All they really notice is who called in sick and who showed up late since that directly affects their job. Generally even employees in minimum wage jobs earn a modest increase after 6 months or so. Is the employee all that more efficient? Probably not, it typically takes only a few days to learn most of these jobs.
I remember the first time I went to a manager for a raise. When I asked, he asked me,“Why should I give you a raise?” I was young and a little taken aback. Nowadays I’m prepared and would give him my speil. BUT my primary realization was that he had no clue how hard I worked or how efficient I was. It was simply too small of an expense for him to worry about. A tiny increase in electricity would have made a bigger difference to his bottom line than a minimum wage hike.
McD’s jobs are designed so that performance is irrelevant. That’s why McD’s hires Developmentally Disabled people. These people are obviously less intelligent and capable than the people they work with, yet they make the same wage, because McD’s has designed a job where only minimal performance is necessary and high turnover is assumed. McD’s could care less if you perform better, because theirs always some poor shmuck who can perform minimally well.
If your business model only calls for people to earn you 5.15 an hour then and their’s an increase in minimum wage, you either need to a) stop hiring retarded people or b) change your business model so that your employees are worth more to you.
This assumption that the market is an accurately predictor of worth just doesn’t hold with reality. Many products prices are not determined by the cost of production, but on the succesfulness of the ad campaign, fashionability and other factors. The same goes for employees.
African Americans and women make less not because their worth less, but because the discrimination is so prevalent that there isn’t enough market pressure for them to be paid more. There are all kinds of other forms of discrimination too that aren’t as well documented, weight, attractiveness, personality quirks. They have nothing to do with their worth to the company.
That’s because they know you’re easy to replace. That doesn’t make it right to treat their employees like crap though.
Marc
So you’re saying that there’s no correlation between the employee’s value to the company, and their salary? Then why would an employer bother giving them a raise, anyway? If their value hasn’t increased, then the employer is paying more money for the exact same good. This would be like deciding to buy a brand of meat that wasn’t any better, it just cost more.
If your McD’s supervisor decides to give you an extra 25 cents per hour after a month or two, it absolutely reflects your increased value to the company. You’ve lasted that long, so your employer has decided that you’re reasonably likely to hang around awhile. You’ve undergone training, so that’s a cost that no longer needs to be spent on you. You’ve shown that you’re not going to steal from the registers, and there have been no instances of you spitting in the burgers. Basically, quality as a customer has been more readily nailed down, so you are worth more. It’s like buying a grab-bag of baseball cards for 50 cents vs specifically buying one card that costs $5. The grab bag is uncertain - maybe it contains a really good card worth $10, or maybe it contains junk. But the valuable card sitting there in the case, you know it’s worth $5. You wouldn’t pay $5 for the grab bag, because it’s too likely you’ll get screwed.
If the person directly above you honestly had no idea what kind of employee you are, then he’s a crappy manager. All that proves is that you worked for a doofus. The people I’ve worked for have always been very atune to how good of an employee I was.
Performance in any job is relevant. If the cashiers at McD’s are abusive towards customers, is that irrelevant? How about a cook who consistently burns burgers, or a cashier who keeps miscounting the change? Just because the job requires very little skill doesn’t mean that performance doesn’t matter. Now it’s probably true that in a job like that, intelligence and aptitude are less important than work ethic and courtesy, but that still pertains to performance.
Uh huh… Don’t expect to get nominated for the Nobel Prize in Economics for that brilliant piece of business advice. If people could just change their business models to make employees more valuable, why wouldn’t they do that to begin with?
Bull. The market is a very accurate predictor of worth. It’s not perfect, but it does pretty well. If you put something on the market for a certain price, and no one is buying it, you lower the price. More people start to buy it, your profits increase. You lower the price again, yet more people buy it, but your profits go down. This is how market equlibrium is established. Usually this kind of trial and error isn’t necessary, because there are so many products out there, marketing types know how much a certain product should cost before-hand.
And the cost of production has nothing to do with the worth of the product. If I spend $10,000 to make a diamond-studded milk carton, that doesn’t mean people are going to pay $10,000 for it. The worth of a product is defined by how much people are willing to pay for it. That is the definition of worth. If a succesful ad comapign, or fashionability, or scarcity creates a high demand for a product, that makes its worth go up. If I trudge through the desert for 2 days, I’m going to ascribe a high worth to a glass of water, even if you can get water for free (and are thus unwilling to pay anything above 0 dollars for it). And if suddenly it starts raining diamonds, their worth is going to go down. Supply and demand, baby.
African Americans and women make less precisely because their worth is less, statistically speaking. Descrimination has nothing to do with it. Blacks tend to have lower education levels. This makes them, on average, less valuable to companies. Women tend to pursue lower-paying jobs to begin with - teachers, social workers, and so on. When you look at the relative worths of blacks and women in the same jobs, you find that they earn pretty much the same wages, which is to be expected.
Research has found that companies that descriminate against [insert group here] tend to perform worse than companies that don’t, which is to be expected. They select inferior employees based on irrational prejudices, which makes them less competitive. If you hire an accountant who looks hot in a skirt, but can’t add to save her life, over someone who looks dowdy but is an accounting whiz, what do you expect? The market selects against these companies.
Jeff
I’ve been picking around a couple sites for some demographic data and just wanted to throw a couple statistics in here for further debate.
According to this report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, people receiving food stamps made an average salary of $15,172 (if they had children under 18) and $9,177 (without children under 18) in 1998. At the same time, their total expenditures were $16,910 and $10,552 respectively. They’re actually losing money. So it seems to me increasing the minimum wage to a living wage actually might give them the chance to set some money aside each year.
Now here is a BLS report on the average hourly wage of workers in private nonfarm industry, broken down by industry. I think, for our purposes, that we should examine the “Retail Trade” column, since that’s where most of the minimum wage jobs are. The figures are in “current” dollars, by which I presume they mean thge dollar as valued in 2000, when the report was issued. It’s quite clear that retail has always been the poorest paying sector of the economy, coming in at roughly half of construction wages, which are the highest. Now, yes, retail jobs aren’t as skilled as mining or construction, that’s true. But anyone who’s worked a retail job knows quite well that we have to bust our asses just as hard and put up with just as much stress in our jobs as the people who work in skilled trades. Lack of skill may justify retail workers not making as much as the skilled trades, but the amount of work they do certainly doesn’t justify them only making half as much.
Now let’s turn to some economic statistics from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. (If that link doesn’t work, go here and look for Table 7.1). This is the Quantity and Price Index for the GDP of the United States from the 1920s through 2002. It’s taken me most of the afternoon to try to understand what they’re saying here, and I would ask and and all Dopers who are better versed in these things to please come and correct me if I’m wrong.
So, let’s run the table for 1996-Annual. It should be all 100s down the column. Our specific target of interest is the Personal Consumption Expenditures section of the table (Lines 5-8). As I understand it, what they’re saying here is that for a given amount of money spent on personal expenditures, you would receive a given amount of goods and services (which are broken down in Lines 9-20). The reason they’re all 100s is 'cos this is the baseline for comparison with all other years in the table.
So, now let’s do the 1947-Annual table. Line 5, the “Current Dollar” item, shows 3.10. As I understand it, that means that total expenditures on personal consumption was only 3% of the 1996 total, as measured in dollar amounts. Line 6, the Chain-Type Quantity Index, I presume shows that the amount of goods and services supplied in 1947 was roughly 19% of the 1996 total, as measured not in dollar amounts but some other unit which isn’t clear to me. What this shows me is that the purchasing power of the dollar was stronger 55 years ago than it was in 1996 - if the amount of goods and services had kept pace with the amount of spending, then they both should have been either at 3% or 19%.
Now let’s take a look at 2001-Annual, the last calendar year for which annual data is available. Spending is up to 134% of the 1996, total, but the amount of goods and services provided is only up to 123%. The puchasing power of a dollar has obviously decreased, since more is being spent but less is being purchased.
Now, obviously, this effect can be countered by a raise in wages, which according to the BLS sheet above has steadily occurred for all trades since 1947. But in all cases except retail, wages started at over $1 an hour and have increased to $14 an hour or more. Retail hasn’t even reached $10 yet. What this is telling me is that many people’s wages just aren’t keeping up with the times.
In short, the cost of living, especially in the US where there aren’t the kind of social subsidies like workers have in Europe, is increasing faster than wages. That to me is argument enough for supporting a living wage.
I hate to tell you people this but the market pays you what you are worth. It does not pay you want you THINK you SHOULD be worth.
If you are a salesperson bringing in $1M a year in revenue, you are worth a lot more to a company than a generic burger flipper who is simply a cost center.
Ah no. The jobs are designed so even a developmentally disabled person can do them well enough. Lets face it. It’s an irresistable market force. If there are pretty much an infinite number of people who can perform a job, the wages are not going to be very high.
Is it better for those employees to be paid nothing when I decide that my business model won’t support those raise increases?
No one said that the cost of production sets the market price. The two things are independent of each other. Cost of production just lets you know if you should stay in the market
There is a diference between productivity and worth. Two people may be equally productive however one could be “worth” less to a hiring manager for any number of superficial or bigoted reasons. Just like a blue car may be worth less to me than a black one. They both do the same job equally well, I just prefer the black one.
It’s like anything else. How much is a painting, a peice of land, a car or anything else “worth”? Answer - whatever I am willing to pay for it. If you can sell it for more to someone else, go right ahead.