by Jack
My co-writer Tina has done a wonderful job, as have many commenters, explaining why boosting the minimum wage to a level that raises people out of poverty…is not a good idea for logical reasons! Yet, some people are so invested in their own understanding of how life ought to be in a perfect world, they fail to grasp what they are saying.
I’m going to give it my best shot now and see if anything sticks. I’m not optimistic, but I’ll try because this is one of those subjects that we can’t talk about enough, because there is such great ignorance out here in the general population.
Lets be clear, this is not a liberal v conservative ideology here. It’s not about growing the wealth of the 1% at the cost of downtrodden… This is a numbers game until somebody invents a better way, until then we have this capitalist economy and it has rules.
First thought, in a true capitalist economy government probably should not be setting the minimum wage, the market place should. A wage must be determined by the worker’s value to the employer. It doesn’t matter if this is a worker at the news-stand or at General Motors, there’s a connection between wages earned and value received that can’t be escaped.
When government interfers and alters the minimum wage by fiat there are four options open to the employer that must pay the new wage: Raise prices or increase production to offset the added overhead, reduce the labor force or pay the new wage until you go broke. Raising production is great, if it doesn’t upset the law of supply and demand. Raising prices triggers inflation and soon everyone is right back to where we started. Going broke won’t help create jobs and laying off workers costs more jobs than it improves. This involves a time tested economic principal and I know of no other way.
The lowest rung on the employement ladder is designed only as a gateway, an entry to the labor force, an opportunity to prove your worth and gain experience and then move upward. To step from never worked before into an unskilled labor job and expect a liveable wage is often times economically impossible for employers. It goes right back to wage v value and if that parity isn’t there government can’t force it. The collapse of communism was a prime example of what happens when you try to force sharing the wealth without regard to value. Somebody once said words to the effect when the world is dark and you cannot see the future, you only have the foot prints of history to guide you. Many of our modern day communists lose sight of those foot prints in history and seem determined to repeat their old mistakes.
A workers value…….so if Vietnam has workers who work for 28 cents a week then the American worker is worth 28 cents a week to the employer.
Ever since they allowed our companies to produce in communist countries they have been pushing American workers into competing with communist country wages.
So why not just say it?
The people of the tea party fail to realize these totalitarian positions. In the 1940s, C. Wright Mills pointed out that inevitably smaller government results in more “concentrated power.” Hence corporate dictatorship for the 1%.
The American worker is more important to be than those who are multimillionaires becoming billionaires at the expense of Democracy.
If ya want Americans to make 28 cents a week and have concentrated power in the hands of the rich, the founding fathers are turning in their grave
Treason at best
Kill Americans in a phony war called Vietnam and now make the American Worker a wage slave competing with Vietnamese workers who are enslaved. Any vet who is doing this is a sad sad sad…….hypocrite but there are none of those right?
Dewey, please consider this…”Relatively few Americans earn the federal minimum wage.[2] In 2011 and 2012, 3.7 million Americans reported earning $7.25 or less per hour—just 2.9 percent of all workers in the United States.[3] These numbers include workers who also earn tip income. Many of those earning less than the minimum wage work in restaurants and make more than the minimum wage after taking tips into account.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau show that most minimum-wage earners are young, part-time workers and that relatively few of them live below the poverty line. Their average family income is over $53,000 a year. A hike in the minimum wage primarily raises pay for suburban teenagers, not the working poor. If Congress and the President seriously want to help the working poor, they should look elsewhere.”
Jack great job!
It. should be noted that not only are low wage jobs entry level for those starting out for the first time. 70% of minimum wage earners are not breadwinners; their spouses are. These people are not living in poverty but the middle class. Raising the minimum wage will do little to affect their lives because they will pay taxes at their spouses level. For the reminder the loss of job opportunity due to automation or lack of expansion, etc. will do real harm. A job is better than no job.
Dewey: “…so if Vietnam has workers who work for 28 cents a week then the American worker is worth 28 cents a week to the employer.”
How much is a bowl of rice in Vietnam? How much does it cost for clothing and rent?
How much resentment would be generated locally among business owners/workers if an American company didn’t adhere to local standards?
American workers were fortunate to live in freedom and the most prosperous nation on earth.They got spoiled, and some greedy. Now, just like businesses they are realizing that the rest of the world wants prosperity too. It will take awhile for the imbalance to materialize. there’s a chance that it will. Until then the best thing for American workers is a vibrant economy at home and a government that supports business in being in America. You won’t get there by taxing and regulating them out of the country.
“…smaller government results in more “concentrated power.”
Dewey go crack a civics book. The Constitution clearly created three branches of government to restrict power from being concentrated. Look at Venezuela if you want to see power concentrated in the hands of the few.
Epic fail sir.
Jack if this administration was concerned about anything other than a radical agenda they would trash their Keynesian economic policy because it hasn’t worked, immediately cut taxes across the board, scrap and replace Obamacare, $h*tcan the extremist environmental regulations that cost money for imperceptible help to the environment and allow the job producers to haul a$$.
But they won’t because being right politically is much more important to them than making sure people can get good jobs again.
There’s just a couple little things:
Your economists said the minimum wage would sink the economy when it was it was instituted … and it didn’t.
Your economists have said that it would sink the economy every time it’s been raised … and it hasn’t.
So, what you have to know, at this point, is that nobody is listening.
On Saturday, June 25, 1938, to avoid pocket vetoes 9 days after Congress had adjourned, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed 121 bills. Among these bills was a landmark law in the Nation’s social and economic development — Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). Against a history of judicial opposition, the depression-born FLSA had survived, not unscathed, more than a year of Congressional altercation. In its final form, the act applied to industries whose combined employment represented only about one-fifth of the labor force. In these industries, it banned oppressive child labor and set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents, and the maximum workweek at 44 hours.1
Forty years later, a distinguished news commentator asked incredulously: “My God! 25 cents an hour! Why all the fuss?” President Roosevelt expressed a similar sentiment in a “fireside chat” the night before the signing. He warned: “Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, …tell you…that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.”2 In light of the social legislation of 1978, Americans today may be astonished that a law with such moderate standards could have been thought so revolutionary.”
I have a problem with a CEO that is making 100X the lowest wage in his industry. About 20X is more than enough for anyone, IMHO anything more is greed and it’s robbing the company of cash it could use to survive during lean years. Of course this is my opinion…there are plenty who will say I am wrong and pose a good argument why I am. I’m just looking at from “how would I behave if I was a CEO.”
Libby, I think we can agree that it’s governments job to keep people (incl children) from being exploited by robber barons and monopolies. When capitalism fails to be reasonable and humane then it’s time for government to balance the playing field. I totally agree with this, but I am very concerned whenever government goes into mission creep and you should be too! And big government has a real bad habit with mission creep!!!
Tina false! Might be wise to take a trip around the USA, Chico is a far cry from the rest of America. Epic Fail!
http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/06/news/economy/low-wage-breadwinner/index.html
I call it hypocrisy at best.
Using that analogy how much is bus fare to work for a week, groceries and rent for a family of 4 in the USA?
You prove the point exactly, Tea Party Politicians tell American workers the new business model is based on Americans competing with those foreign workers at those wages!
Eric Cantor has said several times min wage should be $2 or $3 an hour! Bottom line global companies want to destroy the middle class here for low wage slaves, these companies have all time record profits and believe the workers do not deserve a living wage after seeing the bigger profits using communist labor.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/elizabeth-warren-minimum-wage_n_2900984.html
Over 32 years of Reaganomics is showing that trickle down means trickle out of the country. Citizens United has turned our Politicians into bribed lobbyists for foreign corporations.
Oh and why do walmart workers qualify for food-stamps?
LOL Taxpayers feed their low wage families and the children who inherited their wealth rake in Profits!
Those walmart Children have wealth = to 40% of Americans combined, yea they need lower wage workers so they can get richer!
The rich are doing better than they have in years. To sit here and say the American workers should live in poverty is Anti American.
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/23/democrats_blast_wal_mart_welfare_kings/
How many Tea Party members are on social security, collecting veterans benefits, or retired on the now extinct pensions provided by a union? lol many many
Taxing the Rich? where’s the tax money?
They hide their money overseas! 1 in 4 corporations pay no taxes!
When is the last time Wells Fargo paid taxes?
Truth seems to evade these posts. Everybody in the country knows this stuff. Everybody knows the lies told on the bought out media.
Funny foreign money chipping away at Democracy seems to be OK with you!
How about a real debate in public, using real facts? Only real facts not Koch troll blogs?
3 branches
all bought out by unlimited money in politics, the real world knows this. We the people will take our gov back.
Where is all the outrage on corruption? LOL Scott Walker is about to be exposed next!
The Koch Tea Party is anything but democratic. Another great American philosopher said that the communist revolution would come from the patriotic conservative. So true!
Now you have the 1% in the media claiming they have taken over wake up! Perkins proposed voting be a dollar a vote so for a couple million you could be a dictator basically.
China fell because of Treason in high places, Citizens United and Treason in Politics?
The American workers did not cause the crash and have been forced into crappy in wage jobs because shipping our jobs overseas is supported by low info voters who will not talk truth and spread Propaganda and hate.
Trying to overthrow the Gov of the USA and have the 1% dictate is an act of Treason as those Corporations are Global Foreign entities against Democracy and a fair wage.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/19/1195244/-FDR-called-minimum-wage-critics-hopelessly-reactionary-He-was-right
When do Americans get repaid for Ted Cruz’s shutdown that was no more than a fund raiser?
Dewey…wake the he77 up!
The Tea Party has nothing to do with the absolute failure of QE-forever to stimulate the economy…THE OBAMA LOUSY RECOVERY IS WHY MORE PEOPLE ARE RELYING ON FOOD STAMPS AND OTHER PROGRAMS …AND LOW WAGE JOBS.
You are hopeless!
The worth of work should be what a man/woman will accept and an employer can pay. Not all work is worth the same wage. Artificially raising wages rises the cost of production, sales, delivery of services etc. Translation: People have to pay more for everything than they should have to pay.
The best way for anyone to improve is to stay in school, get higher education or training and work hard.
If you want corporations to invest in America make it attractive to do business here.
You’re idea is to sting like a bee when a bit of honey would do the trick…EPIC FAIL!
THE TEA PARTY IS FOR A SIMPLE TAXING SYSTEM…NO LOOPHOLES!
Epic fail!
Your bumper sticker education has done nothing for you.
When do Americans get repaid for the millions in personal loss that resulted from the Democrat inspired housing crash?
How do we get the freedom we once had back after the mountains of costly taxation and regulation that has been heaped on us, mostly by Democrats, whether individual or business, since the depression?
When do we begin to stop self-serving radicals in the Democrat Party who are enriching themselves and taking the country over a cliff at the expense of the American people?
I wonder how many more low wage jobs for entry level workers AND jobs that pay above the minimum wage would spring up if this government would just get the heck out of the way and lower tax rates, streamline regulations, and repeal and replace Obamacare?
Regulations are being written at the rate of thousands of pages per day. Businesses are spending too much time trying to figure out how what the new regulations are, what it will take to comply, and what it will cost to comply…that’s not a formula or vibrancy in the employment arena.