It’s not a red herring. If someone is still working unskilled labor for a decade, that is the employee’s fault, not the employer’s.
Who cares? If the kid is willing to work for $5, I should pay him $10 because “most folk” would? Maybe I should also stop listening to Bach and listen to Bieber because “most folk” would. Good old argumentum ad populem.
I’d probably think my son was an idiot for selling his labor so far below the going rate. My neighbor wouldn’t enter into it. But you bring up an interesting point - the idea that wealthy people should pay more for services just because they can. Man, I better not win the lottery, or I’d be obligated to start paying $100 for my pizza under that system.
So, you paid way over market for a service because you felt like it? How is this an argument for a minimum wage? This is an argument for hanging around your house because I might get way overpaid for something because you apparently like throwing money away.
Their labor is just as valuable as anyone else of comparable skills, it’s that 16 year olds don’t have the skills that are worth squat, so they don’t magically deserve to get paid more than squat. When they have skills worth something, they can get paid for them. If you don’t have skills worth anything, why do you expect I’ll pay more than I have to for them?
Yes, you would say that the guy is a cheap bastard, but should the federal government step in and say such a contract was illegal? It’s probably good that my kid got some exercise instead of playing video games. I’d tell him to hold out for more money next time, but I don’t need Eric Holder coming in and punishing the neighbor.
Has Eric Holder punished you for not paying the Neighbor Kid minimum wage so far?
We’ve had the minimum wage for eleventy billion years. Yet as we speak, someone’s paying Neighbor Kid below minimum wage for doing an odd job. Without an argument from anyone.
That’s why bringing out the “odd job” kid is a red herring. No one’s being dragged to jail for not paying Junior $7.25 for taking out the garbage.
But Joe’s Hardware has to pay the kid a minimum wage, even if the job isn’t worth it or he will go out of business by paying it. That has happened for the last eleventy billion years. So tell me why Joe should have to pay the kid enough for internet and college tuition when the job doesn’t demand such a wage and the kid doesn’t need it anyways.
St Louis Bread Company…Panera in your area, has/had a policy of ONLY hiring new associates at LESS than 7.95 an hour (in st louis)…they were also scheduled LESS than the 25 hours a week…
As a GM it was hard to recruit and develop quality associates.
That and a self-centered district manager is why i walked away…Sad to say cause they started good…don’t let their PR hype get you…they are as bad as any Fast Food out there.
The place for 16 year olds who need beer (er, soda) money in a world where the minimum going rate is $15 an hour is…part time work! Hire 'em for only 5 hours, one day a week! Problem solved. While the people who are 29 and have their job as their main income can work all the way up to 40 hours, therefore earning enough to support themselves. I definitely know that when I worked at a cafe and in retail, the workers who were in high school were given considerably less hours than the adult workers who were there in order to live, simply because one of us needed the hours more. It’s not like employers have to hire every single person as full-time.
And I don’t really know how many times I can say that not everyone can be a manager, go on to be a scientist, become an engineer, etc. There are simply not enough spots in the world for everyone at a high level. SOMEBODY has to work the “low” jobs, and there are NOT enough high schoolers to fill that position alone. Someone will be working in these positions their whole lives because there is simply not enough room for everyone to move on up. 30 floor workers, 2 managers, 1 supervisor. And only so many skilled job positions above that. How about we stop looking down on people who continue to do these important if low-skill jobs.
PS. When you pay that kid for doing your lawn and they don’t report it to the IRS (pretty sure just about none do), that’s technically tax evasion so what they’re doing is illegal. I don’t really see the need to argue about further legalities on a transaction that’s already patently illegal and has been accepted as such since the day it began. Not saying it’s good or bad, but it’s not even worth bringing to the table.
Are you saying that the IRS should come down with an iron fist on neighborhood lawn mowing? Damn those 16 year olds who are cheating the 30 year old neighbor out of internet and community college tuition.
I guess you missed the part where I’m not arguing about whether it’s good or bad, but it’s illegal, hands down. So further arguing about minimum wage evasion on something that’s ALREADY tax evasion…well, gee, whatever. I guess you can both go to jail then if anyone cares that much about Junior, you, and the lawn. The point is nobody does. People only care about legitimate businesses paying cash under the table illegally. Because that’s the level wherein it actually affects economic and social factors. So there’s really no point arguing about Junior, you, and the lawn. We all look the other way already. Moot point.
As another pizza guy, what actually happens when minimum wage goes up is we use less labor. That’s the path of least resistance. Raising prices has its risks and lowering profits is unacceptable. Using fewer people, though, that’s always magic.
The problem is that a $15/hr wage prices most teenagers out of the labor market. Heck, a $7.25/hr minimum wage prices most teenagers out of the labor market.
Depends on how high we’re talking. There are many jobs available for mere high school level educated people where they can make a living, so long as they don’t get too ambitious about having a big family. A good fast food worker will almost always be able to become a shift manager or assistant manager, which pushes them into decent territory, if you don’t have two kids to feed. There are many trades which people of average or even below average intelligence can learn.
Lifelong fast food and retail workers are rare. I know the average age is 29, but that does not mean the average time spent as a fast food worker is 11 years or more. Many of those will be recent immigrants, some will be people temporarily lacking better work(especially in these times), others will actually be somewhat new to the workforce at 29(stay at home moms). Meeting a person who has actually worked fast food for 10 years and not gotten anywhere is a pretty rare event.
It’s kinda like saying that not everyone can be 80 and retired, so some people will just have to be 25 and work. We all have a life cycle and things change during that life cycle. A high minimum wage is a good recipe for further limiting the ability to break into the workforce.
It’s only illegal not to declare it if they are making more than about $6k per year, so I expect that nearly all the time it is legal and therefore you should be prepared to address the situation.
This misses the point of an hourly wage. Consider the following example.
You want to sell the exotic examplefruit. It costs you $5 to get the examplefruit to the store. If the feds come along and say “Eating healthy is important, you can’t sell any piece of fruit for more than a dollar”, then sure, the bananas and oranges might be ok but you’re going to quit selling examplefruit. It would be quite silly to say “well, I lose $4 on examplefruit I sell, so I’ll only sell 10 of them instead of 40!”
Labor is a service, and just like good, has a value to both seller and buyer. If that labor is not worth $15/hour to the buyer, it doesn’t matter how many or how few hours the seller is willing to work, the seller is not getting a job.
Now, similarly, someone with kids might not be willing to work for less than $15/hour because they need that to support their family, but that means they have to find a buyer for their labor that values it at $15/hour.
Personal taxes in Norway are actually not much higher than in the US. If you make $ 100 000 per year, Norway is about 1-2 % away from the total tax burden of a high-tax US state like New York.
Norwegians generally have about the same median income as Americans after adjusting for cost of living, Swedes a bit less. But both have a lot less expenses, with signinficant burdens like college or healthcare being free.
Norway get slightly less third-world immigrants per person than the US, Sweden considerably more.
Why is the net migration rate so low then? The only explanation, if Norway is letting in so many Third World immigrants, is that a lot of Norwegians are leaving.
I have no idea where you get that from. Norways net migration rate is pretty huge. 4,5 million in 2000, to 5 million in 2012 is ten percent in a decade!
Net migration rate is the difference between people coming and people leaving. If Norway has just as many immigrants as the US, but the US has a higher net migration rate, then that means Norway has a lot more people leaving.
Not true if being paid in cash or by check other than as an employee. There is a little thing called self-employment tax that is due without regard to personal exemptions or the standard deduction that I think you are referring to.