It is generally accepted that in most parts of the U.S. that a single parent cannot support themselves and a child on the minimum wage.
What minimum hourly wage do you feel that an employer should pay people so that they would require no outside assistance (government ,church, family, ect…) to survive?
Do employers “owe” this to their workers? I’m talking about a standard 40 hour work week also, no overtime, tips or tuition reimbursements.(but insurance can be considered.
I tend to believe that 12/hour plus insurace would be a minimal living wage in most parts of the country. I really want to know both sides, employers and employees and go ahead and give heart felt reasons for your opinions.
I almost got into a nasty one with a guy from Wisconsion on this on
in the general discussion on low unemployment rate and inflation.
No minimum wage.
None at all. If someone is not getting paid enough to live, then they need to either work somewhere else or go start their own business.
What if someone needs a secretary, but $6/hr is all a secretary is worth to the owner? Do you think that the owner just doesn’t get a secretary until he can afford $12/hr? What about the person down the street who would love the job for $6/hr? What if it is impossible for him to grow the business without a secretary?
Of course, maybe the guy sells some trinket for $5 a trinket. It sells fairly briskly and he is growing. The guy is in business to make money, so if he could raise the price he would. Of course, nobody would buy the trinket if it cost $10. Then he would go out of business.
If you are going to regulate how much the owner has to pay the employees, are you willing to regulate how much money the public MUST spend on certain items or services to keep them in business?
(this sounds like a book I read 
)
If you are willing to add to his expenses, surely you are ready to add to his profits as well.
I was re-reading this and I don’t know how I missed that art.
If the owner is REQUIRED to pay a minimum wage to make sure that the person does not need assistance, then you have just given them assistance.
All you have done is shift the burden from the state providing for them, to the business owner providing for them. Of course, all the while ignoring that it ultimately should be the person providing for themselves.
A minimum wage is no different than any other subsidy. In practice, it is a tax that redistributes income.
Whenever the minimum wage goes up, so does unemployment. There are some kinds of jobs that are just not worth more than X dollars per hour to employers – not because the employers are stingy, but because the performance of the job won’t bring more than X dollars per hour of extra revenue into the company (i.e. they would lose money hiring someone for more than X dollars per hour).
It is worth noting than many illegal Mexican immigrants in the U.S. work for well below the minimum wage in sweat shops, and are willing to do so because they still make more than they would in Mexico.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
I don’t mean this to be about regulating wages or the minimum wage.
it begs the question. Sure some people can get by on less. The problem I am having is employers who are complainng about the quality of the workforce they are getting while only offering 7 or 8 bucks an hour.
I do appriciate your response, I got a feeling this is a touchy subject so I shouldn’t be too suprised.
Ah. Well, that’s a different question. Yes, if an employer is willing to pay more, (s)he will usually be able to get higher-quality workers. But that’s not what you asked in the OP.
An employer would love to get his labor for free.
An employee would love to get paid all th emoney in the world for no work.
Reality is somewhere in the middle.
Depending on what the employee can offer, they can demand a certain pay rate. If they really deserve it, and they can’t get it, then they are free to go start their own business. If they fail, they just may reconsider how much they can demand per hour.
OTOH, depending on how valuable the employer sees the position, they can always offer less per hour. If they are offering too low, they will find that there isprobably somebody else willing to pay that person what they are worth. Until they are willing to pay enough to keep that employee working instead of looking for another job, they will not really have an employee.
I guess what I am trying to get out of this thread is what that number would be in differnt parts of the country. In the midwest here they factory workers seem to stop bitching and looking for other jobs at the $12/hr mark (with insurance). How about in the Northeast, California, or the Southwest (to name a few).
I make what is considered an obscence
amount of money compared to friends I went to school with and they keep telling me I have no idea what it really takes to live in this country.
Well, I think that’s pretty much what jaydabee did ask. I didn’t see anything about mandate or regulation in the OP. How much would an employee need to earn to be able to live on his/her wages? Simple question, eh?
If an employer is not able to run a business in a way that they can pay a honest wage, do they belong in business?
Remember, we’re talking full-time work.
Peace,
mangeorge
I only know two things;
I know what I need to know
And
I know what I want to know
Mangeorge, 2000
Raising the minimum wage does one thing: It causes inflation! Employers pay out more, they charge customers more. Who does this hurt first & foremost? People who make minimum wage! Actually it does two things. It gets the politicians who raise it re-elected…
I for one welcome our new insect overlords… - K. Brockman
As far as a minimum living wage goes, that’s hard to say. If you make just enough for food & a rathole apartment, well, is that living? Who’s to say what the minimum lifestyle is?
I for one welcome our new insect overlords… - K. Brockman
In our current economy, I don’t think minimum wage would be too much of a problem, simply because businesses are so desperate for labor (and good labor, at that) that they’re raising wages.
And people mentioned that that would lead to inflation, but they forgot to mention the full cycle. Wages go up, so prices go up, people want more wages, and if wages go up again, prices will go up again, and people will want higher wages. That’s what happened in the seventies, I believe, maybe the early 80’s as well.
Hail Ants hit on the key issue of the minimum wage. On the one hand, MW can be seen as a labor issue, forcing fair practice on employers. On the other hand, it can be seen as an economic issue, raise minimum wage (in effect, raise all wages, get to that in a bit) and slow down a possibly overheated economy.
As to raising ALL wages by raising minimum wage, think about it. Say minimum wage is $5.50 (I don’t know what it is), and you’re making $6.00. Then they raise MW to $6.00, so the schmoe what’s been working there for three weeks just got a raise, and you’ve been there for a few months, but didn’t, wouldn’t you want more? That happens most of the way up the chain, so there you go, raising minimum wage raises employers’ costs by more than just the wage hike * employees on MW, and in raising costs, it changes the production scale, and slows down the economy.
I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.
There’s something else one needs to take in to account when it comes to minimum wage: where you happen to live.
I was working in Ann Arbor, and making about $8 an hour, 40 hours a week. I could not afford to live alone. It’s expensive to live there. I had roommates, and our combined incomes kept the roof over our heads & food in the fridge.
Now I live in Flint. I was able to afford a nice one-bedroom apartment in a decent part of town, and pay my bills, on minimum wage, which at the time was $4.25 an hour. It wasn’t easy, and I did have to borrow a little bit from time to time, but I managed.
I was single with no kids then, though. Now, I’ve got a husband and two children, and what I make now (got a new job) covers our expenses, with barely any left over (no, my husband does not have a day job–he’s a musician/stay-at-home-dad). We’re not starving, but we’re not going to Disneyland any time soon.
Where you live makes a lot of difference when trying to figure a living wage. I personally think it should be as high as the economy will allow. I’m no economist, so I don’t know what the economy could safely bear. But I do know there’s a lot of young people out there busting their asses, going to school, and getting themselves buried under a mountain of student loan debts that minimum wage just isn’t going to touch.
Changing my sig, because Wally said to, and I really like Wally, and I’ll do anything he says, anytime he says to.
Surgoshan touched on part of the problem in the fourth paragraph of his post above. Wage jealousy.
In the late 70’s, I worked at a microwave (radar, not oven) test facility in Arvin, CA. Because we were such a small workforce, we were covered under the bargaining unit’s contract in Los Angeles. Which meant that we got LA wages. Well, the engineering and executive staff were paid local prevailing wages, so us techs made a little more than the junior members of this group and as much as the middle members. It drove them freakin crazy! Even though they made more than their peers in the area, they hated that we made more money than they did.
Why do educated people get so upset merely because someone less educated makes more money than they do, even though they themselves make a very good wage?
Beats me.
Peace,
mangeorge
I work for at least three thrift shops, everyone volunteers. So, yes, you can make it on volunteering bottom line.
On the other hand, secretaries can & do make here $80,000/year.
For medical, they give each employee $610 cash plus 10% of their base pay per month. There has got to be a cheaper way of medical benefits than this.
It also puts people out of work.
If someone has a marginally profitable business that, say, employes 100 people at $10 per hour to pick up anvils that have been discarded on the highway and the minimum wage is raised to $12, he’s going to shut down his business rather than lose money - and those 100 people will be out of work. The good news, I suppose, is that they’ll be unemployed at $12 an hour rather than $10 an hour.
BTW, I’m not in favor of abolishing the minimum wage - I’d just like some of its adherents that don’t do so to admit what all of its effects are.
I think the “what counts as living?” question is critical. It seems to vary enourmously form person to person. The best example I can think of of this is the roomate question. In many ways, having a roommate (or at least apartment mate) is the easiest way to lower your monthly bills by a couple hundred dollars–a signigant amount when you live off of less than $600 dollars a month. Often that $200 dollars is the difference between being able to live on a thin wage and not being able to. My question then, is, is it fair to expect people to have roommates, or should wages be high enough to support people in there own residences? Does a roommate count as undue hardship?
“I think the “what counts as living?” question is critical.”
—Manda JO
So do I, which is why we should separate this discussion into two parts. One concerning a full-time worker supporting her/himself and maybe dependents, and another concerning teenagers and students et al working to supplement their lifestyle.
This, from the OP.
“What minimum hourly wage do you feel that an employer should pay people so that they would require no outside assistance (government ,church, family, ect…) to survive?”
Survive, I believe, is the key word.
Peae,
mangeorge
Go fly around the world. Check out Africa. Check out South America. Take a quick peek at India and China.
Throw in Vietnam and Cambodia. Possible consider Rawanda and Yugoslavia.
Then if you really want to, go ahead and ask if a roomate counts as undue hardship?
We live in a place with unparrelled opportunity. You have a chance to do ANYTHING here. If you don’t lke what you have, then get a better job and earn more money. If no one will pay you more money, then go start your own business.
Here a couple of numbers to think about:
Hunger in the US?