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Forums - Politics Discussion - Is raising minimum wage nationwide a horrible idea?

amak11 on 01 July 2014

I feel people really don't understand why minimum wage increases and what it should increase/decrease to in relation. Minimum wage increases because prices of basic needs have increased (these are the things we have a right to have, food and water). Minimum wage should have been adjusted with inflation but it clearly wasn't in the US. My country is doing the same now with the last minimum wage increase this past month being to 11 dollars an hour (then again it cost more to live in Canada than it does the US) but now it's being tied to inflation. .



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Ail on 01 July 2014
outlawauron said:
kupomogli said:
outlawauron said:

Well this is entirely wrong. It's not about making back the decreases but increasing profitability. Still being profitable isn't acceptable. So, in order to maintain that same level of profit, they're going to increase the price. Increases in taxation, minimum wage, and regulation lead to very fast increases in prices of the goods and services provided.

Yay for ridiculous price increases without minimum wage increases then, right?

People who have to look for a minimum wage job or have been working one for five years are getting the shaft because they're going further in debt when prices continually increase year after year with a minimal increase to their pay from corporate America.  $.10-.20 hourly per year doesn't cover the mark up literally every item on store shelves get. 

Sucks to be an mediorce employee who doesn't make an impact on the business. Every person I've known who has worked at big box retail/fast food has gotten much larger raises (10-20x) in a year.

Also, outside of oil, what has had ridiculous price increases that were the result of inflation and not regulation.


The price of food has increased dramatically over the last 20 years, just check the price history of farmer products like wheat, coffee, meat and so on...



PS3-Xbox360 gap : 1.5 millions and going up in PS3 favor !

PS3-Wii gap : 20 millions and going down !

Ljink96 on 01 July 2014

We'll see how that goes in Washington but I think it is only fair. I see both sides of the coin though. Yeah people go too school and get education for that kind of pay but then again you have people that are getting educated that don't even think about working at minimum wage businesses. You have people getting paid a dollar a day only to think of where their next meal comes from and you have the owners of those establishments thinking of how many atoms are in their 100 dollar bill. And I 'm not saying that this is everyone, that'd be stupid. But I am saying that it is a lot of people. If McDonalds and other fast food establishments decide to raise food items in proportion to wage increases then it may hurt them more. Will we be willing to pay 3 dollars for a burger that's smashed down? If those with the money release the money, money will circulate. Give people a fair chance and many problems have the potential to be solved. You got young kids out here that can't provide for their families let alone themselves. Then the other sides will say go to school and get an education like us without understanding that not everyone has the same thoughts as you. We are just so corrupt as a world and it's all over this green paper. Paper that holds so much power and organization.



Blouge on 01 July 2014

"Progressive economists, like their neoclassical critics, believed that binding minimum wages would cause job losses. However, the progressive economists also believed that the job loss induced by minimum wages was a social benefit, as it performed the eugenic service ridding the labor force of the “unemployable.” Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1897 [1920], p. 785) put it plainly: “With regard to certain sections of the population [the “unemployable”], this unemployment is not a mark of social disease, but actually of social health.” “[O]f all ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites,” Sidney Webb (1912, p. 992) opined in the Journal of Political Economy, “the most ruinous to the community is to allow them to unrestrainedly compete as wage earners.” A minimum wage was seen to operate eugenically through two channels: by deterring prospective immigrants (Henderson, 1900) and also by removing from employment the “unemployable,” who, thus identified, could be, for example, segregated in rural communities or sterilized." - https://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/retrospectives.pdf



BMaker11 on 01 July 2014



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Blouge on 01 July 2014
outlawauron said:

Also, outside of oil, what has had ridiculous price increases that were the result of inflation and not regulation.

Inflation (the expansion of the money supply) causes the price of everything to go up ridiculously. FYI, the oil / gold ratio hasn't changed much:

Oil price / gold price  = 6.283x10^-5 oz t / BOE  - http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=oil+price+%2F+gold+price

1950's oild price / 1950's gold price =  5.554x10^-5 oz t / BOE - http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1950+oil+price+%2F+1950+gold+price

About 99% of the value of the US dollar has been destroyed since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.



BMaker11 on 01 July 2014
PDF said:
So sad to see bitter people making the argument that is not fair for minimum wage to go up unless I get paid too. Raising the minimum wage won't hurt you, it will only help that single mother, who already works two jobs or that college kid struggling to pay his way through school. Let alone the fact that an increased minimum wage will likely increase wages across the board as it always has.

Only people who should be against the minimum wage is small business owners, and as someone who paid employees minimum wage when I ran my own business. I realize that it would have been harder to be profitable, but not impossible. Smart and resourceful businesses will survive, and the weaker ones will die. This already happens anyways.

Hold on, time the fuck out. Won't hurt me...will only help the less fortunate? I spent 4 years in school and am now $30K+ in debt to land the job I have. I obviously want to move up as the years go on, but in no way, shape, or form, should a job that a teenager who's getting his "first job" or some lazy person who doesn't care about the job he/she does or how he/she performs at it; just the pay check, should be paid anywhere close to what I make. It undermines my job and my career to know that after all that hard work, I'm only doing 1% better than a 16 year old (since people like to look at things from the lowest common denominator). That does hurt me. I'm bitter because I worked my ass off and expect a payday to reflect that, while conversely, people who did nothing to make themselves more appealing to better, higher paying employers want a payday that is in the same range as mine? Fine, you're damned right I'm bitter. Trying to "help the single mother" or "the college kid" is purely an emotional ploy. Why? Because you yourself even said "it's sad to see people say it's not fair for minimum wage to go up unless I get paid too". Why should they get compensated more for their lack of skill, while I stay exactly where I am even being a skilled laborer? It's because you feel bad for them, right? Well, it's sad to see people defending "people who worked hard to get better skills to be paid better should be paid roughly the same as people with no skills at all".

But then....you also said that "let alone the fact than an increased minimum wage will likely increase wages across the board"? So why, then, is it unfair to point out that I better get paid more if Johnny McBurgerFlip gets paid more? In all actuality, that would just have a 0 effect. Pumping more money into the economy just causes inflation. Everybody making $15/hr doesn't mean everybody will be able to afford more. It'll just make everything go up, since suppliers will see the demand increasing and try to make a profit. Simple economics.



Ail on 01 July 2014
BMaker11 said:
PDF said:
So sad to see bitter people making the argument that is not fair for minimum wage to go up unless I get paid too. Raising the minimum wage won't hurt you, it will only help that single mother, who already works two jobs or that college kid struggling to pay his way through school. Let alone the fact that an increased minimum wage will likely increase wages across the board as it always has.

Only people who should be against the minimum wage is small business owners, and as someone who paid employees minimum wage when I ran my own business. I realize that it would have been harder to be profitable, but not impossible. Smart and resourceful businesses will survive, and the weaker ones will die. This already happens anyways.

Hold on, time the fuck out. Won't hurt me...will only help the less fortunate? I spent 4 years in school and am now $30K+ in debt to land the job I have. I obviously want to move up as the years go on, but in no way, shape, or form, should a job that a teenager who's getting his "first job" or some lazy person who doesn't care about the job he/she does or how he/she performs at it; just the pay check, should be paid anywhere close to what I make. I'm bitter because I worked my ass off and expect a payday to reflect that, while conversely, people who did nothing to make themselves more appealing to better, higher paying employers want a payday that is in the same range as mine? Fine, you're damned right I'm bitter. Trying to "help the single mother" or "the college kid" is purely an emotional ploy. Why? Because you yourself even said "it's sad to see people say it's not fair for minimum wage to go up unless I get paid too". Why should they get compensated more for their lack of skill, while I stay exactly where I am even being a skilled laborer? It's sad to see people defending "people who worked hard to get better skills to be paid better should be paid roughly the same as people with no skills at all".

But then....you also said that "let alone the fact than an increased minimum wage will likely increase wages across the board"? So why, then, is it unfair to point out that I better get paid more if Johnny McBurgerFlip gets paid more? In all actuality, that would just have a 0 effect. Pumping more money into the economy just causes inflation. Everybody making $15/hr doesn't mean everybody will be able to afford more. It'll just make everything go up, since suppliers will see the demand increasing and try to make a profit. Simple economics.

I spent 8 years in school and I sure don't want lazy people like you to make as much as me...

Like you are trying to explain to us, the less you make, the better my higher alary makes me feel...

There, does it make you feel any better ?

 

I didn't think so...( and even if this is sarcasm, I have spent significant more years in school than you and I do make significantly more...)



PS3-Xbox360 gap : 1.5 millions and going up in PS3 favor !

PS3-Wii gap : 20 millions and going down !

BMaker11 on 01 July 2014
Ail said:

I spent 8 years in school and I sure don't want lazy people like you to make as much as me...

Like you are trying to explain to us, the less you make, the better my higher alary makes me feel...

There, does it make you feel any better ?

 

I didn't think so...( and even if this is sarcasm, I have spent significant more years in school than you and I do make significantly more...)

Well, I wouldn't call myself lazy, just because I didn't put in as much time as you. An engineer isn't "lazier" than a doctor just because a doctor went to med school for 5 years on top of undergrad. But there's a difference between different careers/occupations that take work to attain....and doing no work at all being needed to acquire your job.

And people making less than me doesn't make me "feel better" about my higher paying job. People with low skills working low skill jobs  making less than me lets me know that my hard work paid off. How would you feel if a fry cook made as much as you? 8 years of school? I'd assume you were a doctor, nurse, something medical maybe? How would you feel if people were demanding the same wage as you, without all the years of school, examinations, rotations, and debt? How would you feel if some high school drop out with 2 kids was demanding the same wage as you because "I need to take care of my family" but didn't put in nearly the amount of work you put in to allow yourself to take care of your family on your own? Your pay grade should reflect the work you put in to earn a job that pays that wage. Flipping burgers =/= engineering, IT, data analysis, medical, account management, etc. So why are you compassionate for people trying to make it that way? Why are you showing animosity to people saying "a job that takes no training and can be done by a high schooler shouldn't be paid the same as a job requiring high skills"? People wanna say that it'd help the single mothers out there, but at the end of the day, it still holds true that a job that takes no training and can be done by a high schooler shouldn't have the same pay as a job that requires higher skills. Whether it be by keeping minimum wage the same or increasing higher skilled jobs' pay (eventually resulting in the same disparity we see now), it makes no logical sense to say that putting canned goods on a shelf is as fulfilling and lucrative a job as a SQL Specialist.

And you don't get a hard on because people make less than you. I don't care at all that people make less than me, quite frankly. But don't sit here and tell me that hard work is basically useless. Because that's what you're essentially trying to get at. No sane person would choose to take years to acquire skills to get a well paying job...if they could get a similar paying job doing absolutely nothing to earn it other than putting your name on a piece of paper (that's how grocery store, fast food, etc job applications are. No resumes, no references, no work history, just your name, address, and phone number)



exdeath on 01 July 2014
amak11 said:
I feel people really don't understand why minimum wage increases and what it should increase/decrease to in relation. Minimum wage increases because prices of basic needs have increased (these are the things we have a right to have, food and water). Minimum wage should have been adjusted with inflation but it clearly wasn't in the US. My country is doing the same now with the last minimum wage increase this past month being to 11 dollars an hour (then again it cost more to live in Canada than it does the US) but now it's being tied to inflation. .


Ramen or a sack of beans and rice and water to survive and splitting a $400 a month apartment 2 or 3 ways until you're done with school does not require $15 an hour.  IPhones and BMW leases do.

 

This isn't about survival and getting by while you proactively better yourself for the future, this is about people who wish to continue living beyond their means to keep up with their friends and neighbors and people they see on TV in material wealth and status.

 

Stop buying iPhones and bluerays and playstations and spinning rims and eating out all the time and you WONT NEED $15/hr .

 

But if you WANT $15/hr quit buying shit you don't NEED for a little while so you can afford to survive until you can earn it like everyone else who is already there.

 

People who don't understand the concept of short term sacrifice for long term prosperity will NEVER have enough to "survive" regardless of the minimum wage.  It's like these payday loan places.Quit buying cigarettes for one goddamn month and you'd be caught up.