Let’s see - $14 profit on a $15 slurpee X 5 slurpees an hour - yeah, that’s necessary to give a 7-11 worker a couple of buck an hour raise.
IOW, bullshit.
Can any of you MW haters give us any cites about how raising the MW drives up inflation to astronomical levels? California just raised the MW, and if prices have gone up, I sure haven’t noticed. Labor is just not a big component of most prices.
I’m all for making a living wage kick in at 21 or something, so teenagers and high school students who don’t need a living wage can work for less. But lots of 25 year olds are married with kids. Probably more than those of us who put it off for schooling.
Raising the MW will increase other wages also, as companies reward good workers with raises above that.
But I do hope the Republicans fight long and hard against raising the MW - so they can get their asses kicked in 2008.
WTF are you talking about? Did you READ the OP or just stomp in here brainlessly spewing this crap? The OP isn’t TALKING about a buck an hour raise…he’s talking about an across the board increase WORLD WIDE to a wage that basically puts everyone in current middle class America range. I’d say $14-15 for a slurpee is a fucking CONSERVATIVE estimate on what goods and services would cost if we paided ever checkout clerk around $30-40k a year (with all those nice benifits).
This ain’t a debate about MW…if you want to have one of THOSE, feel free to start one or just resurrect one of the myriad ones that are in GD about every month.
Not only a strawman, but wrong. By all accounts, slavery went out right about the time it stopped being a feasible way to make money and started being a drain on the economy.
Unfortunately, everyone looking out for their own best interests seems to be the best way to spread the wealth around. And I’m interested in cheap food made by people who hopefully didn’t feel like it was their right to have a family while earning $5.15 an hour.
There’s a difference between a modest raise in the MW and creating a “living wage”. Let’s let the OP define exactly what he means before getting quantitative.
Well, it doesn’t take effect until after the new year, so that’s not surprising.
Doesn’t matter. Do you expect business owners to just eat the extra cost? If the population as a whole is making more money, they can absorb a price increase, too.
Making different MW levels for different ages does make sense.
And you want a cite about how raising the MW causes inflation? You just said that it does!
Modest changes in the MW probably have an immeasurable effect on the economy, especially because so few people make the MW to begin with. But surely you don’t think that raising the national MW from $5.15 to $10 (just about the lowest level I’ve ever seen for a “living wage”) would have no effect on prices, do you?
I have a bachelor’s degree in the social sciences from a tier 2 university. You’d think this would at least help get a living wage. Well, in Michigan’s economy it just isn’t feasible. NO one is hiring.
After my savings ran out, I accepted a job (the only one I could find) that pays $8/hr 30hr/week. I estimate I’ll make roughly $12k this year.
Let me tell you, this just isn’t possible to live off of, even without dependents. $12,000/year = $1000/month
Rent in this area (yes, I got the cheapest apartment I could find) is $400/month
Food: $150
Car insurance/gas: $150
Health Insurance: $100
Utilities: $70
Paying back student loans: (like needing a winter coat, etc) $200
So my basic needs (or at least what I feel are) is about $1030 a month. I have cut my expenses to the bare minimum, and I’m going negative. Heaven forbid my car break down or something. The only way I can stay afloat is donating plasma, which brings in about $150 a month.
My point? The American Dream is dying, and it sure isn’t going to happen on minimum wage, or even slightly above.
A McDonald’s double cheeseburger costs a dollar. If that’s too expensive for you to afford, maybe you should get a job. I hear McDonald’s is hiring… oh wait.
I’d expect to see some price increases already to get ready.
It all depends on the market. Say a big store, call it W, has been paying minimum wage while its competitor, call it C, has been paying higher to get better workers. If W is competing on price, it may not be able to raise prices to cover the increase, and might have to either become more efficient, hold the line on executive compensation, reduce margins, or all three.
No, I said it increased salaries. And only those for low paid workers - neither you nor I are going to see any difference. Those against a raise in the MW often seem to offer scenarios of doom, like xt’s $15 slurpees. Perhaps the increase in the inflation rate will be under 1/2 of 1%? When we did have major wage inflation, during the bubble, the inflation rate stayed well under control, remember? The MW didn’t increase, but lots of employers had to pay more to get anyone - and it affected a lot more people. Maybe my memory is failing, but I don’t recall any increase in inflation tied to MW increases all the times in the past when it got increased.
This page gives some numbers for wages matching the poverty level. This depends on the number of children - for a family of 3, a worker working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks (with vacation unpaid) needs to make $7.63 an hour. The living wage for an area depends on cost of living - where we live I suspect $10 is reasonable.
Given that we’re in food stamp territory here, does it really make sense for you and I to subsidize, through our taxes, a company paying wages so low that workers need government assistance to survive? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the customers and stockholders and better paid managers pay what is necessary so no government subsidies are required? If a company can’t make their business work without this indirect handout from us, I say screw them. So you, as a libertarian, should support the living wage. I’m assuming of course that your answer is not to let the workers starve.
I’m not even so sure it would benefit your fellow man. First of all, requiring a living wage is going to cause prices to go up- how much is a minimum wage worker going to have to be paid to so that 2 of them can afford health insurance,housing, food, etc and also saving for both retirement and to educate a couple of children? It’s going to be different everywhere, but in NYC, it’s going to be over $10/hr - probably way over. I’m not sure that $20 an hour will provide that standard of living in NYC. Doubling or quadrupling the wages will cause prices to increase , and affect wages for higher paying jobs - no reason to learn any skills if McDonald’s is going to pay the same. It’s going to cause jobs to be lost- there are already minimum wage or slightly above jobs lost being lost because of technology- self-serve gas stations require fewer employees than full serve, and self-checkout allows one cashier to monitor six registers. I’ve seen fast -food restaurants in highway rest areas that work like cafeterias- you get a tray, go down the line, pick up your own food, and pay a single cashier. Double or quadruple the wages, and those sorts of changes will become more attractive, causing those jobs to be lost.
what would an iPod cost if the guys making it were getting paid enough to live as American low-middle class? GAP clothes, Coffee, Tomatoes in the supermarket.
I haven’t seen any studies but I think it would be interesting to know how many minimum wage adults are working that job on the books so as to help cover for money earned underground. I’ve met several people who work temp jobs every now and then to cover up for money earned running a sports book and other sources which aren’t reported to the IRS.
Oh good, there’s still time for your official prediction about how the economy in California will tank when it goes into effect. I might take some of that action if you want to wager.
I’m reading *Working Poor: Invisible in America * http://www.amazon.com/Working-Poor-Invisible-America/dp/0375708219/sr=8-1/qid=1166534182/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6430329-1164820?ie=UTF8&s=books and to me it is an impossibly complex problem. There are learned behaviors that cause some people to make bad decisions when it comes to living just above the poverty level, but there are also many instances of greed and (in my opinion) criminal behavior that make it difficult, if not impossible, to break the cycle. One setback, that could be overcome with little or no difficulty for many of us, can destroy any progress a person may have made through hard work and careful financial planning.
This book is a depressing eye-opener to a world of utter despair and hopelessness. The American Dream as we knew it in the '50s and '60s simply doesn’t exist for a huge portion of our population.
What people pushing for a “living wage” fail to comprehend is that some people’s labor is only worth $5.15 an hour (or less). If you have no skills and no education, your labor isn’t worth very much. However, people with no skills and no education can get a job at a low wage and learn some skills. Or, they can work that job while the get an education. Workers have to take the initiative to make their labor more valuable. You can’t simply mandate that labor is more valuable.
