Man, did you ever call it.
You must have me confused with a conservative.
(US) Do you support a $15 minimum wage?
- Thread starter Robert Maxwell
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Man, did you ever call it.
You must have me confused with a conservative.
I vote no.
$15 dollar minimum wage for entry level positions and unskilled labor is absurd. If you want to make more money then I believe you earn it by working for a better position, by getting a skill or education and putting in time. People expect too much to be given to them these days. Minimum wage was never (and has never) been intended to earn a living on.
$15 dollar minimum wage for entry level positions and unskilled labor is absurd. If you want to make more money then I believe you earn it by working for a better position, by getting a skill or education and putting in time. People expect too much to be given to them these days. Minimum wage was never (and has never) been intended to earn a living on.
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“By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.” - FDR (aka, the guy who signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the minimum wage.)
He also said: "No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country."
So, yeah, it was intended to be the wages you can make a living on.
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Also when people say "If you want to make more money, get a better job," they're essentially saying the only people who deserve to eat are people with good jobs.
So who's going to full those supermarket shelves you buy your food from, who is going to serve you at the till so you can pay for the etc...
As for getting a better education not e veryone is smart enough to get a degree or those less smart people not supposed to able to earn a living?
The people who are forced to live on welfare, of course.
Oh wait, the anti-minimum wage people typically also despise the idea of welfare too. So....uh....the starving and the homeless? I guess?
Also some people are just disadvantaged (racially, economically, etc) and can't go to a nice school. Doesn't matter how bright they are if they can't get out of the circumstances they're in.
What's wrong with placing value on unskilled labor? Someone has to do the jobs others don't want to do. Also if everyone aimed at some high level job like being a lawyer or a doctor then you would have 2 many lawyers and doctors and not enough jobs for them all but I doubt these people would easily translate from that to working at Burger King. Not to mention that over half of them would go broke because their would simply be to many people aiming for the same kind of jobs. So instead we would have a world filled with unemployed bankers,lawyers,doctors etc with no desire to get down and do crappy jobs.
Granted I would also say that most of these "unskilled" jobs do require skill. Manuel labor takes more of a physcial toll on people which means they are basically sacrificing their health for people who doesn't give a shit about them.
Jason
Name the years which minimum wage was enough to earn a living on; please! You have to take these things in context; that FDR statement was made during the great depression when there was a world-wide depression and a true crisis; hardly the situation we are in these days.
As a business owner and someone who worked very hard from the bottom up (and now pays far too much tax so people can be given free stuff); that is my opinion. You asked for opinions and you got mine. I would be interested in how many people posting here are the ones who are going to be paying for this crazy notion. I am sure there is a big difference in opinion between those paying the minimum wage and those receiving it. This country was built on the idea that the harder you work the more successful you become. Somehow that has been lost and now people think they are owed something; newsflash - you are not owed anything, you have to earn it!
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So how are business owners supose to make money if people don't have money to spend at those stores? Isn't the main reason mom and pop stores are dying is because nobody can afford to shop at those places anymore? I would think people would see taxes and wage increases as a investment by getting more money to consumers so they can go spend it? I mean now everything goes towards the bills and a place like Wal Mart or fast food.
Jason
FDR's comments about a living wage are based on values, not on circumstances. The circumstances of the Depression may have ushered in fair wages, but the idea of a fair, living wage for every American worker is a value judgment which is true in any time or place. His comments still hold true today and he didn't qualify his comments with "Given the shit we're in right now..."
I mean, Star Trek itself idealizes a future in which everyone is literally given everything they need regardless of whether they work or not -- there's no money whatsoever and people work solely for the benefit of society and improving themselves.
Hyopthetical situation for you, lets say for what ever reason you went out of buisness and the only job you culd get was flipping burgers. Would you not want a decent minimum wage?
Well, I'm sure the people who live in desperate circumstances in this country today will be glad to hear that you don't want them to be paid any more because you just don't think things are bad enough for that.
It is a fact that the minimum wage, despite increases, has failed to keep up with both inflation and increases in living costs. At the very least, it should be made to keep pace.
If you can't afford to pay the people who work for you a decent wage then you deserve to go out of business. I wonder if your employees know how much contempt you view them with.
People don't believe in "work hard and you'll be successful" anymore because it's been exposed as a lie. You can work 3 or 4 jobs and still barely keep your head above water. You can devote years or decades of your life to a company, always doing a good job, only to be kicked to the curb so the CEO can get a slightly bigger bonus. We know who's benefiting from the status quo--it's not working people. It's the investor class, it's business owners and executives. Working people get the shaft so people like you can take home a few more bucks.
And in case you didn't know, those taxes you pay are necessary for you to continue living in something resembling a functioning society.
I did mention upthread the possibility of having larger companies pay a surcharge that would be used to subsidize small businesses that are struggling to pay a hiked minimum wage. See, I'm not totally heartless. That is more than I can say for Scrooges who seem to resent having to pay employees at all.
I know my mom has worked 2 jobs most of her life and still had problems with making enough money to live on. Right now she has a broken leg and is still expected to work on it. Even if people felt it was possible to just go a find a job that pays better I wonder what are they supose to do in the meantime while waiting for one these magical high paying jobs to come along, in terms of paying bills and buying food?
Jason
Jason
I don't mind at all paying a fair wage based on skill and experience. It's obvious that I am in the minority here which is fine. I really have no desire to stick around and argue; neither of us are going to change the others mind. Besides, I have to get back to work! 
What if some companies don't feel like paying fair wages? That's the problem with trusting individuals. Some are going to take that freedom and screw over people. You got to have a system in place for jobs just like we have a system for dealing with crime or any other issues in society.I don't mind at all paying a fair wage based on skill and experience. It's obvious that I am in the minority here which is fine. I really have no desire to stick around and argue; neither of us are going to change the others mind. Besides, I have to get back to work!
Jason
Under that system you get an Ayn Rand-ian hellscape of rich assholes turning their nose at the leeching poors.
I don't mind at all paying a fair wage based on skill and experience. It's obvious that I am in the minority here which is fine. I really have no desire to stick around and argue; neither of us are going to change the others mind. Besides, I have to get back to work!
Call me old fashioned but people should be paid the same for doing the same job regardless of experience and skill. Besides when we all left education X years ago and entered the workforcemost of us had little experience. So lets say our first Job was filling shelves should we not be paid the same as someone who has been doing it for 5 years?
All jobs fufill a role just that some are lower skill based than others, so it's not like there can be much increasing wage due to experience or skill.
But the simple fact is that there are only so many of those higher paid jobs and certainly not enough for everyone who is qualifed for them. So many poeple are stuck in those lower paid positions, and because they are stuck in those lower paid positions, those in the even lower paid positions have no place to move up to and so on.
Then you support companies who are willing to exploit desperate workers with sweatshop wages having a major competitive edge over ethical employers who pay their workers fairly, thus putting those decent companies out of business. You support removing the buying power of tens of millions of lower income workers and thus putting even more companies out of business. You support destroying the economy and turning it into a sweatshop-filled dystopia. Great plan.
"It is a serious national evil that any class of His Majesty's subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions. It was formerly supposed that the working of the laws of supply and demand would naturally regulate or eliminate that evil [...and...] ultimately produce a fair price. Where... you have a powerful organisation on both sides... there you have a healthy bargaining.... But where you have what we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer is undercut by the worst... where those conditions prevail you have not a condition of progress, but a condition of progressive degeneration."
Winston Churchill MP, Trade Boards Bill, House of Commons (28 April 1909)
That's an asinine interpretation of his sarcastic reply, especially considering it is your totally serious plan which most closely resembles the callousness of slavery.
How does someone get a better education if they can't afford it because tuition is too high or if they don't have time to go to school because they're working two full time jobs just to make ends meet?
How does one develop greater skills if businesses are unwilling to train them? Do you suppose that the same unethical companies who are unwilling to offer a decent minimum wage care enough to offer retraining and apprenticeship programs to those same disposable workers? When and how are you supposed to get that skills training for the reasons I mentioned in the paragraph above?
The very first official government minimum wage, in the form of an amendment to the English Statute of Labourers in 1389, was intended to act as a living wage by tying wages to the price of food.
You've never gotten a state or federal college loan or grant or a small business loan? Went to a state university? You've never gotten any form of state or federal assistance growing up? You've never benefited from public education, public infrastructure, emergency services, public libraries? Use the post office?
You're part of a society where everyone, including those so-called moochers you loathe so much, have contributed to the betterment of the whole according to their ability. No one did anything completely on their own without the help of others. You grew up within a framework that allowed you to start a business, and as part of that framework, you have an obligation to give back to others so they too can have a chance. You can't just selfishly say "Fuck you, I got mine."
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