Minimum Wage
POSTED BY: Trixy
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 16, 2014 22:48
VIEWED: 10274
PAGE 3 of 8
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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Do you acknowledge that flipping burgers and spitting in them while drunk and stoned beyond belief and yakking constantly on your phone during only the hours that you choose and on the days you can pry yourself off the couch is not quite the same as work during odd hours, in inclement conditions, maintaining a high safety awareness, using highly logical and reasoning abilities, and actually solving a problem without immediate supervision and without wasting money, material, time, or customer/client resources, for up to 20 hours per day or 120 hours per week? People who work minimum wage and are better than their pay get promoted, while those who are not worth what they're paid often do not get promoted. People who work for tips usually earn what they are worth, on the tip side. I have seen many people get hired away because somebody saw them working beneath what they were worth, and if the current employer isn't paying somebody enough, the free market will alleviate that employer of their best worker.
Where I come from if you flip burgers while stoned or drunk or talking on your phone, you'd get the sack. People who are employed are expected to work to standards.
Minimum wages don't prevent people from getting promoted or getting better jobs. You dont earn the same waiting tables as you do working as a CEO of a company. This is just nonsense. You do, as an employer, have a responsibility not to exploit your workers.
Minimum wage applies to those on the lower economic strata. In times where lots of jobs are available, they can pick and choose based on wage, but in times of economic hardship where jobs are few, they are very open to exploitation, basically slave wages. Some basic minimum wages and conditions prevents this from happening.
I watched a program on the impact of the GFC in America and was frankly shocked at some of the working conditions and the impact on families. There were situtations where parents were employed full time but still living in cars/one room motels with their kids because the wages were so poor. Contrary to some of the beliefs held on these boards, these were not lazy, stupid or ill educated people, but people who had held down reasonable jobs and been hit hard by the economic down turn.
I was glad I lived somewhere with reasonable (in comparison to US at least) welfare, minimum wage and a government which resisted the impetus to use austerity as a solution to the economic down turn.
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My first job paid Illinois minimum wage of $5 an hour. I could buy five gallons of gas with that give or take 20 cents....
For the first time in my life since I was 17, I'm making minimum wage again....
Minimum wage in 2014 buys a whole lot less gas per hour, and everything else.
End of times are coming for subirbia.....
As much as the "rich" want to fight it, they better give to the poor if they don't want their windows knocked in every night.
One way or another they'll be paying.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by Trixy:
Listen. This basically boils down to this question: Do you believe that full-time workers, those who work the same amount of hours as anyone else in a job, should be paid enough to afford to survive?
No. And you can't ask a blanket statement like that if you're going to be talking about the real world. Not all jobs are the same. Not all companies are the same. And not all PEOPLE are the same. We come with different talents, ages, work experiences, goals, drives, motivations... We're not freaking ants in a giant colony, just trying to fit nicely into the hive mentality.
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If your answer is yes. Then you inevitably believe in a minimum wage raise. Regardless of your beliefs in the permanence of the work, you must acknowledge that work is work,
I really don't.
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and that it is fair that those who work be paid fairly for their work.
Who determines what is 'fair' ? You ? The employee ? The company ? Teachers, despite their importance, are in abundance. Other jobs, like brain surgeons and professional athlete , are far more unique in their requirements. Far fewer can reach that level of experience and expertise to merit what they get paid. The free market makes that determination, not the govt. Thankfully.
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Who determines what is 'fair' ? You ? The employee ? The company ? Teachers, despite their importance, are in abundance. Other jobs, like brain surgeons and professional athlete , are far more unique in their requirements. Far fewer can reach that level of experience and expertise to merit what they get paid. The free market makes that determination, not the govt. Thankfully.
Gosh, *wring hands* how could it happen? How could agreements be reached about industry standards? It can't be done, we can't have consenus on issues. We have to let the magic god of free market determine all. All Hail The Free Market. You Give Us Abundance (If We Deserve It), Oh Wondrous One.
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Rappy
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Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:Quote:
Originally posted by Trixy:
Listen. This basically boils down to this question: Do you believe that full-time workers, those who work the same amount of hours as anyone else in a job, should be paid enough to afford to survive?
No. And you can't ask a blanket statement like that if you're going to be talking about the real world. Not all jobs are the same. Not all companies are the same. And not all PEOPLE are the same. We come with different talents, ages, work experiences, goals, drives, motivations... We're not freaking ants in a giant colony, just trying to fit nicely into the hive mentality.
Your expose following your original answer to my question (that answer being "No") servers little to no purpose.
The question wasn't a blanket or all-encompassing question. I didn't ask you if you felt people had the right to survive. And, if I were to ask a blanket question along this debate's lines, it would have been "Do you feel people have the right to have the opportunity to survive".
My question takes into consideration the plethora of jobs, companies, and people that exist. It also takes into consideration that not everyone deserves a job- that is not the point of this topic. My question's lone interpretation was to ask if you felt those who worked full-time should be paid enough to survive. It is as simple as that.
I can't pretend that I understand why you believe what you believe. I have always believed that even among society's poorest that there should be ample opportunity to survive and advance. The idea of advancement is an American Ideal- the American Dream even- and having a living wage gives people a better opportunity to rise. The greater the gap between the rich and poor the harder it is for people to leap between the two classes. We need a larger middle class. A static society is an unhealthy one.
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and that it is fair that those who work be paid fairly for their work.
Who determines what is 'fair' ? You ? The employee ? The company ? Teachers, despite their importance, are in abundance. Other jobs, like brain surgeons and professional athlete , are far more unique in their requirements. Far fewer can reach that level of experience and expertise to merit what they get paid. The free market makes that determination, not the govt. Thankfully.
When I say fair I was referring to a living wage. However, you seem to be struggling to understand that the question isn't whether or not minimum wage workers earn their worth for their employers- that is already settled. There are tons (literally tons) of studies that have shown that even the average fast food worker will make less than a dime (or maybe it was a cent- I will have to look this up) for every dollar he makes his corporate managers.
This isn't even a debatable fact... If employees didn't earn more then their pay than the businesses would go bankrupt. And, don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that companies should pay an employee what he truly earns (that isn't economically feasible), what I am arguing is that at the bare minimum an employee should make enough to have the opportunity to survive should they work full-time.
Even the lowest of the low in the chain of work make more for their companies than a measly $10 an hour. For example, the average Walmart Cart-Pusher will help serve 3000 customers a day. If these customers pay even $0.10 (or if 10 cents is even attributed to his service) at that Walmart (the average Walmart bill is somewhere around $50-$60 a customer) then that employee will have made his employer over $300 in a single 8-9 hour shift. If you do the math the Cart Pusher was making his employer $33 an hour.... And that is if the cart-pusher is only responsible for 10 Cents of the average customers $50 bill.... Even the largest of Walmarts usually have at tops 400 employees in a single store, and if you divide $50 b
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A " living wage " is a meaningless term.
Are you talking about living in Manhattan ? Chicago? Or in Rapid City, South Dakota.
And factors might determine this mythical ' living wage ' ? Are you single ? Married? Kids ? How many kids ? 1. 3. 13 ? You think THAT may have some impact on the lifestyle which a person might have ?
We're not all the same.
We don't have the same lives. To try to straddle us w/ this one-size-fits-all " Living wage " crap makes zero sense.
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So you've never heard of COLA adjustments. And you claim to be knowledgeable.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
A " living wage " is a meaningless term.
Are you talking about living in Manhattan ? Chicago? Or in Rapid City, South Dakota.
And factors might determine this mythical ' living wage ' ? Are you single ? Married? Kids ? How many kids ? 1. 3. 13 ? You think THAT may have some impact on the lifestyle which a person might have ?
We're not all the same.
We don't have the same lives. To try to straddle us w/ this one-size-fits-all " Living wage " crap makes zero sense.
Living wage was the term used by President Obama when discussing his minimum wage raises (additionally it is an actual economic term). It is a wage that is adjusted for inflation. Of course, as a federal act it would be scaled with the inflation of goods felt by the nation. There have been two wages discussed. The first being a raise to $9.25 and the second being a raise to $10.10. Of the two the $10.10 is what the minimum wage should be based on national averages regarding inflation.
I apologize for assuming that you knew this. After all, it is a commonly referenced economic term when talking about minimum wage and is even in the dictionary.
This really isn't rocket science. This isn't the first time that the minimum wage will have been raised nationally to adjust for inflation, so I fail to understand why this is such a difficult issue for you to grasp.
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AURapture is right again. There is an article about wages in Denmark at McDonalds. $20 per hour minimum wage does reduce employment opportunities as a fry cook. www.vox.com/2014/10/28/7083475/denmark-fast-food-wages
Mandating high wages for fast food workers had the impact in Denmark you would expect — low levels of fast food employment. The relevant question for the United States then becomes what would we have people do if half the fast food restaurants shut down?
Denmark proves that this is not an unanswerable question. There is something that they are doing (something AURapture could not care less about knowing because government would be doing it) in terms of education, training, active labor market policy, and regulation that is allowing Denmark to maintain a low level of unemployment without reliance on low-wage fast food jobs as we see in the United States. But that's the secret sauce, not the high minimum wage for fast food workers.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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