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$15 dollar hr minimum wage?

2nd, a “minimum wage” was never supposed to a “living wage”. You start out on the low rung and work your way up.

Unlike Jeff, I agree with you on this one.

Raising it by the littles to keep up with inflation might be okay but to double it all at once will be a total DISASTER!
They will phase it in i.e. up by a couple of bucks every year or two till it gets to 15.
 
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The higher paying jobs were available, everyone was hiring and the only way to poach employees was to pay more. The problem is most Americans are soft and dont want to work hard. I couldn't find enough employees starting out at $12 hr to work construction. I had guys making nearly $50 hr that were really good too, so plenty of upward mobility.
This is a fact I have heard many of my construction clients saying the same thing. We are having problems hiring experienced people as well in the professions.

That being said, I don't mind paying an extra 10 or 20 cents for a hamburger if that will get more people working. And I take exception to those that say that $15 an hour is a living wage. Maybe in small town Kentucky, but definitely not on the coasts or any larger city in America
 
Not sure if raising the minimum wage is the answer or not. I am suspicious when the pat answer is strictly blaming poor people for not being “go getters”. That assumes the system is fair and we know it is not.

Big businesses get help all the time and failing ceos aren’t told to work harder they often get large payouts in the middle of a failure.

just think regular people should have a shot at living without working 3 jobs. Not sure how to get there.
 
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The higher paying jobs were available, everyone was hiring and the only way to poach employees was to pay more. The problem is most Americans are soft and dont want to work hard. I couldn't find enough employees starting out at $12 hr to work construction. I had guys making nearly $50 hr that were really good too, so plenty of upward mobility.
I was thinking the same thing......When I was in business it was a devil to find decent help.......this was before cell phones got prevalent.......I would go crazy on a job with a bunch of people standing around looking at phones and expecting $15 an hour to do it........and don't expect them to work hard, show up on time or to care........
 
We will be replaced by bots. All of us. The first wave is bank tellers, fast food workers, cashiers... $15/hr? Ha, $.02 for an algorithm and an iPad. Beat it, useless bitching college dropout!

next up, security desks and postal workers.

then, lawyers and doctors.

only folks left with jobs are tradesmen.
 
The Dems are crazy........this started out on the west coast.....it has proven out there to hurt the minimum wage workers.....and the consumer........the value of ANY JOB is what ever you can get it done for........I put up straw/hay for 10-12 hrs a day as a 13yr old kid.......for 50 cents an hour........so that I guess was the minimum wage for me......I was willing to bust my butt for 50 cents an hour.......I could have held out for a dollar.........I wouldn't have made any money.........I was taught that if you didn't make enough at your job that maybe you needed to work a 2nd job........I've done that......I didn't cry that I wasn't making enough money........I just worked more hours.....Years ago I started working as a carpenter.....I had been around construction my whole life......I asked my first boss about a raise........he told me that when I learned a new skill I would get a raise......I didn't cry about he wasn't paying me enough.......I learned new skills......I ended up as general superintendant....but.......They didn't give it to me......I worked for it.....
Boy did you get screwed... I was getting $1.25 and hour ‘73’ for same job/hay/set tobacco.... Hell, I even got a bologna sandwich and a Pepsi for lunch.... Living large
 
That being said, I don't mind paying an extra 10 or 20 cents for a hamburger if that will get more people working. And I take exception to those that say that $15 an hour is a living wage. Maybe in small town Kentucky, but definitely not on the coasts or any larger city in America
If minimum wage doubles, you are going to pay more than a few extra cents to get that burger. Also, your point reinforces why regional/state mandates work better than a national mandate. What works best for NYC likely won't be the best thing for Pikeville.

I believe at the end of the day this has as much to do with forcing inflation as anything else.
 
If minimum wage doubles, you are going to pay more than a few extra cents to get that burger. Also, your point reinforces why regional/state mandates work better than a national mandate. What works best for NYC likely won't be the best thing for Pikeville.

I believe at the end of the day this has as much to do with forcing inflation as anything else.

Understand, but what I am really more concerned about are not the lazy asses that won't work, even if you paid them $20 hour. I really would like to see the working poor get a hand. Take the single mother working two jobs, both at $12 hour. Full time in one at 40 hours a week, plus 12 hours a week in another.

That is 52 hours per week, $624 gross pay, working two jobs, $31,200 a year. You can't expect anyone to work more than that, especially with kids. That is not a great living anywhere, especially with kids to raise.
 
This has already been dissected and a minimum wage is idiotic.

YEARS ago we knew this. It hurts people and the economy but because it initially sounds good and makes the idiot trotting the nonsense feel like a better person, it will always remain.

Total and complete idiocy.

It sounds good because idiot libs think businesses will just bend over, pay every employee $15/hr and not make any adjustments to their hiring. Those low wage jobs will get automated out, they already are, then they will be whining because they don’t have a job.
 
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$15 minimum wage is a neoliberal bandaid on a much larger problem. We should be aggressively taxing the wealthy to pay for universal basic income and universal single payer health care, then let the market determine how much jobs are worth.
 
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Understand, but what I am really more concerned about are not the lazy asses that won't work, even if you paid them $20 hour. I really would like to see the working poor get a hand. Take the single mother working two jobs, both at $12 hour. Full time in one at 40 hours a week, plus 12 hours a week in another.

That is 52 hours per week, $624 gross pay, working two jobs, $31,200 a year. You can't expect anyone to work more than that, especially with kids. That is not a great living anywhere, especially with kids to raise.
Raise those wages to $15 and she definitely wouldn’t have the opportunity at the 12hr a week job....and what we’ve seen in other parts of the country is the 40 hour job quite possibly drops the hours to 30 or below (sometimes to cut the mandatory benefits).

So that 3 dollar raise she received lost her 22 hours of work a week and dropped the $634 to $450.
 
The economic theory that raising the minimum wage will result in higher unemployment and less growth is an incomplete theory unless you define the level of the increase.

If you went into Tupelo Mississippi today and raised the minimum wage to $20 and hour, I'm sure a lot of business would shut down and unemployment would spike, but what about raising it to say $10 or $11 and hour from the current $7.50? Businesses may choose to absorb all or part of the increase in payroll costs or they may offset some or all by raising prices of goods and services but since the raises apply across the board no business gains any competitive advantage over another. The counter argument is it's a wash because the increase in prices offset the increase in wages, but that is invalid. The increases in prices necessary to offset say a $3.00 increase in the wages could be just a few percent depending on the size of the business on a 30% increase in wages.

There have been studies done on this and in some instances raising the minimum wage actually results in an uptick in employment. If wages are raised the more money is in the hands of the consumers, that money get's spent which raises productivity, which intern results in more business formation or expansion and more hiring. That result might take a while to occur say on average a year but it does occur.

Some time back it was revealed the Wal Mart employees were often collecting government housing assistance, Medicaid and food stamps. So the taxpayer was effectively subsiding their payroll. Wal Mart has since initiated reforms to the employee compensation system to help eliminate that. So IMO there is a basic and fundamental principal at work regarding what employers should pay at a minimum, regarding full time adult workers not living at home, so that companies are fulling responsible for their payroll and not depending on the government (taxpayers).
 
Minimum wage should be indexed to inflation yearly. There's been no increase nationally since 2007 and it's not like inflation disappeared over the last 13 years. It probably doesn't need to be $15 but it should probably be in the $10-12 ballpark to this point.
Disagree.

This isn't about the Walmarts of the world going to automation or not...of course they are. Cutting costs is a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.

The issue will be with small businesses that struggle to get by as it is. If you have 10 employees you have to give a 2 to 3% raise to each year, that further burdens your ability to survive. It definitely hurts ability for potential expansion that would create additional jobs.

Guess what else happens? Businesses increase prices which eliminats the additional pay they received. Their new dollars go no further than the year before.

What then? Another minimum wage increase? I'm sure that will fix things.

Imo, of course.
 
I meant this mostly as a restaurant thing...give you an example. My buddies and I went on a baseball trip two summers ago to Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit. In Cleveland we are breakfast at this little restaurant that had a $5 breakfast . 3 pancakes of, 2 eggs and meat. We all figured that if we all tipped 20% she would only get $4 for waiting on the 4 of us and she was really good. Totally not fair, right? So we tipped her $20 .
This is all a sticky situation, but I would like to see places like Amazon , Walmart, etc. pay their employees a decent wage...now don't get me wrong, I believe in capitalism, but you can't tell me that with Bezos pushing $200 billion in net worth and the Walton family is in excess of $200 billion. You can't tell me that these companies can't pay there employees a better wage without raising the price for their products or services. They both cleaned up during this China virus using the country that caused this mess in the first place.
 
The issue will be with small businesses that struggle to get by as it is. If you have 10 employees you have to give a 2 to 3% raise to each year, that further burdens your ability to survive.

It shouldn't. That 2 or 3% isn't a "raise" it's simply an adjustment to bring their current wage up to the real value as the previous year.
 
Boy did you get screwed... I was getting $1.25 and hour ‘73’ for same job/hay/set tobacco.... Hell, I even got a bologna sandwich and a Pepsi for lunch.... Living large
I was slinging the hay/straw in the early sixties......a fun day was delivering feed to the horse barns at Louisville Downs Trotter track........It gave me impetus to figure out something better........
 
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Honestly it’s a very simple and basic concept: if everyone is making more money, no one is. If everyone is special, no one is. I can waste energy typing out why, but it’s a very easy concept to understand and completely invalidates raising minimum wage, but for some reason people can’t get it and I can’t comprehend why.
 
Honestly it’s a very simple and basic concept: if everyone is making more money, no one is. If everyone is special, no one is. I can waste energy typing out why, but it’s a very easy concept to understand and completely invalidates raising minimum wage, but for some reason people can’t get it and I can’t comprehend why.
You’re correct. In capitalism, there will always be haves and have nots and about 85% of your success is based on the person looking in the mirror. The only alternative is socialism which has 1% haves, and about 99% have nots.
 
Disagree.

This isn't about the Walmarts of the world going to automation or not...of course they are. Cutting costs is a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.

The issue will be with small businesses that struggle to get by as it is. If you have 10 employees you have to give a 2 to 3% raise to each year, that further burdens your ability to survive. It definitely hurts ability for potential expansion that would create additional jobs.

Guess what else happens? Businesses increase prices which eliminats the additional pay they received. Their new dollars go no further than the year before.

What then? Another minimum wage increase? I'm sure that will fix things.

Imo, of course.

If you don't think the price of goods/services hasn't increased since the last minimum wage increase, I don't know what to tell you. The purchasing power of $7.25 isn't what it used to be. The idea that there doesn't need to be a raise in the minimum wage to accommodate that is insane.

With an indexed minimum wage, businesses would know when an increase was kicking in to keep pace with inflation. It's predictable, helps economic planning, and helps maintain the purchasing power of the dollar.
 
Honestly it’s a very simple and basic concept: if everyone is making more money, no one is. If everyone is special, no one is. I can waste energy typing out why, but it’s a very easy concept to understand and completely invalidates raising minimum wage, but for some reason people can’t get it and I can’t comprehend why.

min wage doesn't apply to everybody, it only applies about 2% of all workers.
 
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You’re correct. In capitalism, there will always be haves and have nots and about 85% of your success is based on the person looking in the mirror. The only alternative is socialism which has 1% haves, and about 99% have nots.

Magical Socialism.

The economy where every single person is rich as shit. Oh, and World peace.
 
It's like no democrat has ever taken an economics course. Companies will do one of two things. They will either raise their prices to offset costs, or they will improve technology/practices to lower the costs(cutting jobs). Like milton Friedman said, why raise it a small amount? Why not make everyone minimum 30 bucks an hour? It's dumb. Companies will offset their costs and it won't help a thing.
 
Honestly it’s a very simple and basic concept: if everyone is making more money, no one is. If everyone is special, no one is. I can waste energy typing out why, but it’s a very easy concept to understand and completely invalidates raising minimum wage, but for some reason people can’t get it and I can’t comprehend why.

But it makes idiots feel like they are generous, Ron! And Deeeefense can hypothetically talk about that one time he half-remembered some study that may or may not have existed!

Rank idiocy.
 
This has already been dissected and a minimum wage is idiotic.

YEARS ago we knew this. It hurts people and the economy but because it initially sounds good and makes the idiot trotting the nonsense feel like a better person, it will always remain.

Total and complete idiocy.

So I've heard for the last 60 years - every time the issue arises. "This will be a catastrophe, businesses will be shut down and these poor people will lose their jobs." And nothing ever happens after the increase.

$15 is a bit much though. Won't happen. Probably a negotiating figure. But there will be an increase. Maybe $10-12.
 
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