Perhaps it’s because the left has noticed the endless efforts on the right to undermine the ability of workers to obtain a “decent wage” for their labor and then blame the workers for not working hard enough. Or perhaps the massive inflation in CEO salaries and benefits in recent decades might be informing their views. It’s a quandary.
Yes, most businesses are small ones and most small business owners are not the CEOs enjoying the salary boom. But the same arguments you’re making are the same ones that crop up any time any suggestion that the situation of workers should be improved arises, either in terms of money earned or benefits or working conditions. Weekends, the end to child labor and company stores, factories that aren’t massive fire hazards - those are all things that “society” has chosen to implement that ultimately fall on the “backs” of business owners. Assuring that labor has a minimum value is another of these initiatives which is intended to have a greater societal benefit. Compromises will be hammered out, and businesses will adjust as they always have.
I’m an employer in a small business and I pay very well above minimum wage. What I am paying for is the ability to do the jobs that I want done. I have no problem paying very good wages to the right people in the right job to do things correctly and timely. The most important issue for me is that once trained to do the job I no longer have to worry about those tasks and not have to monitor them all the time.
Sometimes in this argument I think the word “minimum” is forgotten. It is minimum because the people who earn the wage are either not skilled enough to take on higher paying work, or lack the basic skills to do the work. Also in there, I assume, is basic issues like getting to work on time, being clean, being considerate to others etc.
I read in the news this morning of a police officer who went to the drive in at a fast food place made his order, paid for it, then drove to the pickup window. Whoever was at the window said to the guy “I ain’t serving no cops” shuts the window and walks away. Is that kid worth the pay of minimum wage to his employer ? I don’t think so.
Good for you. I mean that genuinely. Unfortunately not all employers are so fair-minded, and many are outright exploitative.
No one is claiming that businesses are required to provide jobs, nor that they are required to keep substandard employees. I recognize that there is a subgrouping of unskilled workers who struggle to meet expected standards and that these workers make up a large portion of the minimum wage population, but it is not the case that all minimum wage earners fall into that category (certainly a large chunk of waitstaff I meet are hard-working, friendly and competent people, for example).
In addition to the worker skill base, there are also issues of opportunity. In many smaller communities, minimum wage jobs are the only ones available (or the majority of the ones available), particularly for workers who are unable to work standard 9-5 hours such as those with childcare issues.
“That kid” is worth at best getting a verbal warning from his employer and at worst losing his job. His wage is irrelevant to the story.
The minimum wage system in this country is, like our health system, a dinosaur that ends up increasing the degree of difficulty for small to mid-sized businesses. In both cases, the government says to the small business owner that you are the problem and you are the one who is responsible for the welfare, livelihoods, and happiness of your employees.
The time has come (or will come) to rethink how policy can help both the impoverished and those who are budding entrepreneurs: universal income and universal healthcare funded by taxpayers collectively. We’re already doing it well beyond what would have been imagined decades ago, but we’re doing it inefficiently. We could stop putting the burden on businesses, regardless of size or financial health, to care for its employees and allow them to focus on being better businesses. It’s not ABC Company’s job to make his employee’s lives better; it’s the employees’ jobs and it’s our job collectively as a society.
He probably did get fired but the point is that many of these restaurants are competitive enterprises working on tight profit margins. In the case of a publicly-owned fast good giant like McD’s, they have shareholders to please and who want to see a certain ROI – just turning a profit isn’t really enough. You have to make enough profit after taxes, inflation, rising costs of operations, and regulatory compliance to attract more investment. Investors don’t want just profit; they want dividends that make investment more gratifying.
Raising the minimum wage might lead to a short-term economic stimulus but in the long-run it makes labor more expensive, and thus less attractive. There’s a reason why automation is the thing and why there will be more demand for it, and minimum wages are part of that demand. When you make bad labor expensive, economists seek means of production that can reduce labor costs while increasing productivity.
I think there’s a moral difference between ‘client’ and ‘master.’ While they are on the clock, an employer in effect acts as his employees’ master. He demands their time and their submission. There is a higher responsibility on his part than that of a client to a service provider.
It’s like that line in the movie* Factotum:* “All that a man has is his time, and you are paying him for his time.”
I pay that way as well. However, I won’t accept the praise that you received because while I get the selfish pleasure of providing a decent living for people, I also get the same benefit you get: an employee who is dependable and gets the job done. I think that gives me a leg up on the competition.
But, as you said, we are talking about the “minimum.” Those employees (and yes, they are people, but we are talking economically here) do not have any marketable skills to raise their wage to a level to make a decent living. I do not believe that simply by virtue of opening a business that I should be required by law to supplement their wages to that level.
Why is it my duty and not Bill the IT professional making $150k per year? Why shouldn’t he be responsible for providing help for those who cannot make a “living” wage?
A refrain I hear from one POV is that minimum wage jobs are meant for teenagers and others with no/low skills, still living with parents, just starting in the working world, with the expectation of higher than average turnover as people move-on to bigger and better things. The calculus being that a business got access to inexpensive, part-time labor and did not have to provide benefits, but had to replace staff frequently as people grew-up or became more skilled, and moved on. Minimum wage jobs were not meant as income for supporting a family, or even an individual living on their own.
However, the equation seems to have changed over the years as more unskilled adults became available, people with homes and families to support, who were willing to take the low wages and work more hours (perhaps at 2 such jobs), in order to make ends meet. Also playing into this the rising cost of living in urban areas.
Not saying this is my position, but I am just wondering if there is any credence to this way of thinking. Are more adults occupying low-wage jobs these days compared to times past? Jobs that in the past were mainly intended for teenagers living with their parents working part-time (typically fast-food, food service, retail, etc).
Indeed they are. Are you under the impression those things don’t happen regardless?
Because it’s your business and not Bill’s. Otherwise Bill, who pays tax on his $150K per year, is subsidizing your business. Why is it Bill’s duty to part-fund your standard operating costs? Should he kick in a few dollars for printer toner too? That’s pretty expensive.
You can argue that the government is artificially inflating the cost of labor but the intent of the minimum wage is to ensure that labor (of whatever quality) is paid at a rate that does not necessitate public subsidy for workers. If you’d prefer a UBI model there are certainly things to consider there (including higher income and business taxes to balance) but “I don’t wanna pay my employees more” is not a valid argument in itself.
Can you access it or are you just going by the abstract? I’m curious as to what chain of causation they have established, or whether this is simply a correlational observation.
I pulled some arbitrary years from BLS CPS. In 2002, 46.6% of MWers were 25 or older. In 2016 it was 54.6%. Obviously looking at just two points isn’t so rigorous. The nominal rate was increased during that time. This tells you nothing about people making MW+$.01. Etc.
This has already been debunked. A dollar sent to the worker is not a dollar sent to the employer.
A single person working full-time at MW already generally does not qualify for public subsidy. USDA does not set a hard cap for SNAP, so unless you are prepared to accept infinite wages for households that approach the clown car limit, you will never have a minimum wage that ensures that labor is paid at a rate that does not necessitate public subsidy for workers. And never mind people who cannot or will not work full-time.
If your desire is to help people who are living in poverty, wages are off target; see previous discussion about demographics of those living in poverty.
This is simply begging the question. Let’s take John Smith, low wage earner, who is only valued at $6/hr on the market. John needs, say $15/hr, to live. This is a problem for John, and arguably for society in general, to take care of the deficit between John’s earning capacity and his needs.
Ultravires, Inc. is not responsible for John’s lot in life. I did nothing to help or hinder him. I am not any more or less responsible for his earning capacity if Ultravires, Inc. is teetering on bankruptcy, or I, as CEO, am swimming in gold. John’s lot in life is caused by matters external to Ultravires, Inc. Indeed, I am free not to hire him at all and if he starves in the street, nobody comes looking for me.
This situation does not change if I hire John for $6/hr. If anything, I have removed the burden from society as it now only needs to contribute $9/hr instead of the full $15 for John’s welfare. The employment agreement between Ultravires, Inc. and John Smith does not (or at least should not) give rise to any special responsibility to provide his needs. It is simply an agreed upon exchange at a market rate: I am getting his labor valued at $6/hr and am paying him that.
Why, morally or otherwise, did Ultravires, Inc. agree to take on John as a ward by simply employing him and alleviating at least part of his poverty?
ETA: In short, the only way Bill is “subsidizing” my business is if I had a moral duty to provide for John in the first place.
Do you like roads? Police forces? Laws that penalize theft and etc? If so, it appears you like the benefits of society and are making use of them. If you want the benefits, you have a duty to provide for the costs.
Things like the minimum wage, OSHA requirements, etc are part of the costs associated with a well functioning society. As soon as you exist in a void without any benefit from society at all, you can make such arguments.
Russia has no obligation to buy a homeless American food. Americans do.
More question begging. Should the business owner have to provide the “well functioning society” in the context of paying a certain wage so that the employee has sufficient means to support himself?
I also like laws that penalize theft. Does society require a contribution from business owners, rich and bankrupt alike, to prevent theft?
OSHA requirements are a different argument and just because you (and others) put them in a comma delineated list does not make them the same.