House Dems propose raising minimum wage from $7.25/hr to $10

Great Debates
121

[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
Better than letting the people at the bottom work while homeless. Damn, I remember the days when a job generally meant a roof over your head.
[/QUOTE]

Then you should probably take that silver spoon out of your yap and those rose tinted glasses off your face. I’m fairly sure I’m a lot older than you are, and I remember when I had to work several jobs in order to make ends meet…or live without such amenities as TV, electrical appliances or a car. I don’t know what middle class lifestyle you came from, but the reality is that not everyone who worked in the past got a ‘living wage’ sufficient to allow ‘a roof over your head’ from working at a convenience store, or a gas station, or as a grocery bag boy (all jobs I worked when I was younger).

And I’m unsure why such jobs SHOULD pay a wage sufficient to put a roof over your head by themselves. Why should they? Because you think they should? Even if the labor is not worth the sum being extorted by fiat? My comment about such attitudes are that you aren’t doing folks any favors by subsidizing the lowest end of labor to the point where they can put a roof over their head by working at the local 7-11 because it disincentives them to ever do more with their life. Why train your skills up or try and expand your career if someone is going to pay you such a wage for basically having no skills at all? Of course, I can already see you shaking your head in negation (and heads exploding from other reading this), so how about this…automation is already happening all around us. By increasing the wage for zero skill low end labor you are simply pushing companies to ramp up their automation development. This has already been happening of course (because of well meaning efforts such as the creation of the minimum wage laws in the first place), and will continue to happen at accelerated rates as folks such as you push minimum wages higher and higher. I mean, why pay for zero skill low end labor to take your order at McDonald’s if it’s cheaper to use a remote order processing center…or to automate locally…or to provide better tools to a smaller staff to allow them to handle the work that was done before by a larger, lower paid staff? THAT is what’s going to happen…it’s what’s already happening, and it’s laws like this (and cheap overseas labor from folks who can do the same job as pampered and spoiled Americans for a fraction of the cost…and consider themselves blessed for GETTING those jobs at that wage) that are helping to drive it.

Personally, I’m all for it. Set the minimum wage to $10/hour. Fine by me. I LIKE automation, since I work in IT. It puts food on my table. Currently, my department is busy with several projects to automate everything from voting and elections to processing the public’s various requests for services. And most of it is because labor costs too much and the public wants their taxes lowered. The same sorts of pressures are happening in the commercial world as well, and pushing up the minimum wage is just going to accelerate it. I don’t think that with this jump (which is pretty modest) we’re going to see a labor implosion…but I do think that it’s going to have more companies looking at investing the capital into more automation (and probably looking to outsource whatever they can to cheaper labor markets overseas).

The irony, to me, is that Americans are constantly whining about the shortage of jobs, even while we do dippy shit like this that prices our labor out of the market either because we make automation even more attractive or because of cheap foreign labor. What I think will eventually happen is the price of labor is going to implode in the US (a ‘market adjustment’) because we will have this huge pool of labor that is untapped because we’ve legislated ourselves right out of the labor market because it’s simply too expensive to use most American labor and, sadly, we’ve encouraged our youth towards the low end of the skill set (or the no skills required) through making jobs whose labor is worth far less cost an inflated amount. It’s also not worth the price…we don’t have enough of a ‘value add’ to warrant the higher price for our labor. Eventually that has to correct as folks just want to work and figure out that there WOULD be jobs and companies WOULD use their labor if the prices were more competitive (and when our tax revenue implodes to the point where we can’t support everyone out of work in some hybrid European unemployment system, American screwed up style).

In the mean time, sure…bump it up. Hell, I think yo u guys should actually be shooting for $15/hour (seriously), as that’s going to actually meet your presumed goal of putting a roof over the heads of anyone with a job. It will also have to shift everyone else up as well (just like making it $10/hour will have to shift folks currently in the system…there is an HR term for this effect but it escapes me atm, and I don’t feel like looking it up on my iPad right now).

-XT

122

If we are going to have a minimum wage, I can’t see much objection to tying it to inflation or CPI or some similar metric. Whether we should have one or not, and where the starting point should be (i.e. start increasing from today’s rate or have an accelerated increase to something else before tying the rate to CPI) is another matter.

123

Agreed, but as has been mentioned, very few adults (who are not secondary earners in their household) make this wage.

Does anyone have any idea how we could find data on $7.50-$10/h earners? That’s important, but I don’t know where to look. I also don’t know how to account for the resulting increase in wages for others who make just above $10/h.

124

This “I suffered, so fuck you, you better suffer too” meme of Conservatives is most puzzling. I came from poor. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. It really makes me think you must be a petty selfish, judgmental, person to wish that on others.
Electrical appliances? You mean like a fridge to keep your food from spoiling, or a stove to cook it? Did without either at varying points growing up. Was a real hardship. TV, well we had TV, but OTA is free.

How about medical care? I’ve did without that, including a time I thought my gal bladder was a pocket of sulpheric acid and lava. A gash on my foot that needed stitches left to bleed and drain. Can’t afford the doctor. Still has nasty scar that didn’t heal right. When I was 12, before SCHIP kicked in, I pulled out an infected tooth. Slowly worked it loose, hurt like hell coming out, but I was tired of the pain from it being in there.

I remember missing out on things other kids took for granted. I remember gut wrenching stress from trying to make big numbers add up to a small sum. I remember rationing food. I remember doing without food.

You’ve said you suffered too, and I wish society had been such that you didn’t have to, but “I suffered”, is a petty argument for others suffering.

Of course people give up all aspirations upon making a living wage, its why no ever makes more than lower middle class. Being satisfied with having enough is a common vice of human nature.

This completely explains the massive unemployment that’s been with us since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Oh damn my sarcasm-o-mat broke. Fine, I’ll guess I speak sincerely.

You’re seriously crying like a baby because Americans want a better life than the third world? Being sufficient from a fair day’s work is entitled? What a warped perspective you have.

If companies don’t want to pay Americans living wages, well they’ll find they have more money initially, but customers need living wages. They think they can sell to third world sweat shoppers, who can’t even afford food, well bless their hearts. Hey the sarcasm-o-mat has a functioning southern faint praise mode!

Race to the bottom, and the whole world will be at the bottom.

125

Good, then maybe you can answer my question:

$7.25 is too little and $100 is too much. What is just right? Is it $10? Why?

126

[QUOTE=The Tao’s Revenge]
This “I suffered, so fuck you, you better suffer too” meme of Conservatives is most puzzling. I came from poor. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. It really makes me think you must be a petty selfish, judgmental, person to wish that on others.
[/QUOTE]

Tape recorder…right? You didn’t actually read what I wrote in the context of what I was replying to, and absorb the meaning. Right? That’s ok man, I feel your pain. I am a ‘conservative’ after all. :stuck_out_tongue:

Just to clue you in, I was responding to Evil Captor’s assertion that his memories are filled with jobs that always put a roof over his head. The whole anecdotal part of my little speech there was simply to say ‘not everyone is as lucky as you are, EC…some folks have worked in the past in jobs that didn’t put a roof over our head’. It wasn’t about judging you because you (and he obviously) weren’t born poor and didn’t have to struggle as much as some folks who weren’t as lucky…merely to point out that not everyone got those juicy roof over head jobs when they were younger.

I mean like ‘didn’t have ANY electricity in my house when I was a kid, and after I moved out I was lucky if I had a fridge’. That sort of thing. No TV here until I was a teen ager, and after I moved out none until I was out of the service for several years and married. C’est la vie…neither is ‘better’, just trying to, again, point out that not everyone had those juicy jobs when they were kids.

The first time I got medical care was when I joined the service. I didn’t even have shots when I was a kid. I got a boat load of them when I joined up though. :stuck_out_tongue:

The point wasn’t about the suffering…nothing noble in suffering…it was about contrasting EC’s anecdotal remembrances concerning jobs and rooves (well, roofs I guess :p).

Exactly. I disagree that no (one) EVER makes more than lower middle class, since again that’s not my anecdotal experience, but certainly a lot of people are going to be satisfied with the minimum that puts them in beer and skittles (or cell phones and roofs).

I’m unsure which part you are being sarcastic about, to be honest. That there have been periods of unemployment (that it’s ‘massive’?) since the IR? Are you claiming that there haven’t been…or that there has been, and the fault is, um, something? Or are you making a different point and I’m missing it?

I’m not the one crying like a baby…and that wasn’t my overall point in any case. Of COURSE Americans want a better life than the 3rd world…here is a news flash for you, we HAVE a better life than that in the 3rd world. And we’ve had it for over a century now and still going. The poorest Americans have a life that is undreamed of in most 3rd world countries. We are among the most wealthy and powerful nations that have ever existed on this planet.

No, my POINT was that Americans want that better life simply because we are Americans…as if by that magical accident of fate we should have it and deserve it. Why should our labor be worth more than the labor of other countries? Answer…because we are Americans, and we should have a high standard of living, and damn it that’s how God or the gods or the dice intended it! :stuck_out_tongue: Except it doesn’t work that way. Labor is just another resource, and if you are going to pay a premium for labor then there has to be some value add. What’s OUR value add, TTR? Why do YOU think our labor should be paid a premium? Certainly, the fact we speak English and are strategically located where the vast majority of the consumers are factors in. But to the point where you want a guy working at 7-11 to be paid as much or more than an engineer with degrees working as a profession in India or China?? Is our kid really worth that much more than those grown men in other countries? And this leaves aside the other aspect of my point, which is that if labor costs more than it’s worth to the buyer (i.e. those evil corporations), then they are going to look for alternatives, whether that be automation or other resource pools (such as those guys in India or China or whatever who are willing, even eager to work for a fraction of what we are mandating labor should cost by fiat legislation).

No…they don’t. If their customers can’t afford their products then companies either have to shift to sell to other markets (such as, ironically, the emerging economies in other countries who ARE using their labor at the market rates) or they will go out of business. Businesses don’t need to subsidize their customers to ensure they can buy their products…that’s ludicrous. Sorry that you can’t see that and you think your sarcasm has some point.

Price yourself out of the market and if you can’t maintain your fiat monopoly and keep everyone else down you are going to eventually race to the bottom. THAT is what we are doing. I really, truly don’t see how you think your concept would work in the real world. I mean, do you expect everyone to play along and let us maintain a high standard of living and high wages with no value add to our labor?? They will all just play along? Or do you expect them to fuck themselves and set their labor at the same rates as us so that we can be competitive…and thus maintain the monopoly in that way? I really want to know this…what makes you think that Americans deserve those higher wages so far above just about everyone else in the world? Turn your sarcasm-o-meter off for a sec and answer, because I really want to know. Why DO you think that some 16 year old kid not even out of high school and working at the local 7-11 deserves wages many times what the average worker in India or China gets? Hell, more than many professionals with degrees get in India or China?? Because we are Americans and thus we deserve it, while the rest of the world (sans Europe and a few other nations or groups) should be contented under our boot?

-XT

127

You had feet!

128

Are you speaking of slavery, or merely indentured servitude?

That, Sir, is sarcasm. :slight_smile:

129

[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
Are you speaking of slavery, or merely indentured servitude?
[/QUOTE]

Conversely, you could just answer the question. I mean, it’s a thought…

-XT

130

Well I needed them to walk up hill, both ways, in truth they were wore down to mere inches.

How many grains of salt should you put in your soup? Why 30 and not 60? 30 is better, wouldn’t 60 be delicious? Well what about 35 grains of salt? What about 300 grains of salt? What is just right? Is it 30 grains of salt? Why?

Your line of questioning is obtusifying nonsense.

131

And I believe you would be overpaid at a minimum wage of $3.50.

132

At what wage do you believe he would not be overpaid?

133

We know business can afford it, because they are making very large profits and sitting on historically high piles of cash they aren’t spending on anything. They’re all waiting for demand to increase, but where is the demand going to come from if the people who actually buy things are making 7.25 an hour?

134

Like the Corvair, I’d judge EC unsafe at any speed.

135

Would you accept his labor if he offered (or required) to work for free?

136

Why so I think our labor should be paid a premium?
Because Apple makes I pads in China. The money spent on I pads doesn’t go into the US economy. It goes into the Chinese economy and is used to screw with us.

137

Let’s dispel this myth right here and now. I can guarantee from personal experience that every single CVS Pharmacy right now in the state of Florida is hiring pharmacy support staff (everyone but the pharmacist) at minimum wage. And they are loathe to permit any wage increase for the first year of work, and after that you’re lucky to be bumped up to $8.25. These are not 16 year olds working for beer money, these are people who require state licenses to work in their job capacity. In many cases they have completed training programs through for-profit schools in order to be competitive for the position, and are now finding out they can’t make enough to support themselves let alone pay back their loans. This is employers taking advantage of an oversaturated employer’s job market, where your relative level of skill is almost irrelevant, because if you won’t take $7.25 an hour, somebody else probably will, and we’ll hire that person instead. The idea that employers are paying people “what they’re worth” at that level of work is laughable, they’re paying people what they can get away with based on the current unemployment levels.

138

Nope. My insurance wouldn’t cover him being on my property without being on payroll.(I’ve turned down people who wanted to “intern” for free)

Plus, I’m thinking that I would not care to have him around based on:

:stuck_out_tongue:

139

That’s not correct. The actual $ amount of Chinese labor input into an iPhone* is less than $10. When you go to the Apple store and buy one for whatever price, let’s say $150, do you imagine that $150 is sent to China? Apple makes huge profits selling its products. Those profits stay with Apple. Now, some of that money gets stashed overseas to minimize taxes, but that’s a whole different issue.

And keep in mind that if you buy an iPhone from somewhere other than Apple, you’re getting a huge subsidy from the carrier-- you pay probably less than half what they paid Apple. They make it up in what they charge you as monthly operation fees.

*I have not seen the cost breakdown for iPads, but it’s going to be similar.

140

All of the above is insulting and/or inappropriate for Great Debates because of its personal nature. This needs to stop now or this thread may be closed and warnings handed out.