Thursday, February 20, 2014
On the Minimum Wage
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 3.8 million of the 144 million American workers currently make the minimum wage or lower (a lot of those who make under the minimum wage are waiters and waitresses whose tips would ultimately put them over the minimum wage) and, of that group, over 50% are between the ages of 16 and 24 and nearly 2/3 are part-time. This who assertion by Obama and other leftists that there are these vast swaths of bread-winners and heads of households trying to make ends meet on $7.25 an hour is an abject ruse (and of course the small percentage that do fall into this category are probably eligible for assistance) and so, yeah, they are either being stupid or dishonest or possibly both.
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25 comments:
Of course you are not including the person that makes 7.26 an hour or even 8.00 per hour. The recent CBO report says raising the minimum wage to 10.10 per hour would lift 900,000 families out of poverty and increase the incomes of 16.5 million low-wage workers in an average week.
The minimum wage laws force mostly small businesses to spend money giving welfare payments mostly to the non-needy.
It is insane to demand that they spend more than the fair amount of the work.
Again, EITC is the way to go.
RE: "..the small percentage that do fall into this category are probably eligible for assistance.." That small percentage runs about 30% in
many Idaho counties, and yes, the volunteer food pantries host mostly working folks. Idaho's
minimum is $7.25, but along the
border with Washington, the effect of their $9.32 drives
up Idaho pay...labor being a commodity.
Yes, Jerry, and the CBO also said that this increase would cause the economy to shed an additional 500,000 jobs.......And think for a minute what this terrible law does to the people in this country with the lowest skill levels. Black, male teen unemployment is currently close to 50% and how exactly does this increase help them, Jerry?......Low wages are a symptom and monkeying around with a symptom does little to help the underlying cause (low skills, crappy education, illegitimacy, etc.).
And how is it fair to give a 21 year-old burger-flipper a 39% raise while people like me and dmarks get absolutely bubkas? Where's my raise, Jerry?
"Where's my raise, Jerry?"
I guess that just about says it all. Way to go, Will.
Who are you and Obama to mete out justice (these people get a raise, these people don't), Jerry? I write out 2 ginornous checks to my town every year and I can't even get a decent enough plow job to make it to work, for Christ sakes, and now you want to help fit the bill so a bunch of part-timers and stay at home young people can have some additional spending money. Way to go, back at ya'.
What part of "families out of poverty" don't you get?
The problems you are having with your town is a whole different subject, and has nothing to do with increasing the minimum wage. Maybe you should run for city council.
All I know is the last company I worked for, one that paid wages in the range of $12 to $23 an hour depending on skill set decided to use temps for general labor and paid them $8 an hour with no benefits of course. They were full time 40 hour a week positions and and all temps were adults, most were over 20 years old and many were in their 30's or older.
So, Jerry has a point. $320 a week doesn't get you a lot. I suppose if those folks would just have workef 80 hours a week they'd be fine. Guess they were just lazy. Oh, did I forget to mention these folks were the last to get OT at time and a half. It almost never happened when they did.
More and more companies seem to be going this way.
The same part of "would cause the economy to shed an additional 500,000 jobs" that you don't seem to get, Jerry. There are always unintended consequences. You guys seem to think that you can somehow orchestrate the economy from some high up perch and there won't be any side-effects from it. Well, it doesn't work that way and it never has.......And why be so skinflint about it? How 'bout $25 an hour? That way we can really get folks out of poverty.
There are anecdotes all over the place, Les. Yes, some companies are doing that but others are paying better and 2/3 of all new jobs are being created by small businesses anyway.
Oh for Christ sake....pay what the job is worth....is flippin burgers and filling fry bags worth 10 bucks an hour?
Jerry is hung up on "poverty level," which means absolutely nothing.I believe Jerry lives in California...I wonder he knows the benefit rate in that state is close to 100%....if you pay an employee in California 15 dollars an hour,you pay another 15 for benefits the majority of which is workers comp cost.
And RN, I'd guess your former company couldn't make a 10% ROI paying high labor cost...hence the temps.IMO,if you can replace your work force with temps...the job doesn't require much skills to begin with and if it was a union shop,how would they allow temps?
So, am I in favor of an increase in the minimum wage? Nope!
Will said: "And how is it fair to give a 21 year-old burger-flipper a 39% raise while people like me and dmarks get absolutely bubkas? Where's my raise, Jerry? "
I don't think the "people like me" part of it is relevant, Will. Jerry seized on that, perhaps with good reason.
What needs to be pointed out is that it ridiculous to give a burger flipper a 39% raise if they never earned it in the first place.... and the value of this raise is set not by the situation in that work place, but by extremely arrogant and distant outsiders drunk with power, thousands of miles away, who are pulling these numbers out of their a**.
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Jerrys defense of this ignores the fact that only a minority of those in the minimum wage situation are in a situation of poverty. So this desired 39% wage is mostly going to the non-needy.
There are some knowledgeable people who disagree with the CBO's estimate of 500,000 lost jobs. (Don't ignore the comments)
Your comment about raising the min wage to $25 is, of course, ridiculous. No one is even seriously suggesting such a number.
anectdotally -wise, some
companies recognize that employees have been one of their
few commodities that have not increased like overhead, raw materials, transportation, profits, maintenance, cost of sales and executive bonuses.
Perhaps even MBAs are beginning to understand the value of a good workforce?
By the way, Rusty, I'm looking to invite you to my blog.
The latest post is here:
Idiot of the Day: Mr Sanders
Would also like to ask Dervish again to stop spamming me with blog invites in my email address. These go straight to spam.
As always, any emails which are not spam, and are courteous, without insult, intelligent, and lack "behind the zipper" guttertalk will be responded to kind. Anything below these standards will not be dealt with in kind, but will be summarily deleted.
Why is $25 ridiculous, Jerry? I mean, what's so frigging magical about $10.10 (LOL) an hour? And Rusty is 100% correct. Poverty is a totally relative term. Poor in this country is upper-middle class in many other countries and we have an extraordinarily generous social safety net (a fair amount of which I support - I would personally beef up the EITC and get rid of some of these other agencies but the essence, I'm saying). I mean, I know that you want to orchestrate the economy and help poor people but I want to help them AND the poor SOBs who end up paying the tab for it.
And that angry bear fellow is full of shit. Of all of these studies that supposedly support the minimum wage, the one that most liberal politicians/economists (the extraordinarily dishonest, Jared Bernstein, being one of them) seem to point to as the gold-standard is the one from the '90s by Alan Krueger and David Card that studies fast-food restaurants in New Jersey. Yeah, well, guess what, it's flawed, majorly flawed. It seems as if these two authors (as devastatingly pointed out by David Neumark, William Wascher, Mark Schweitzer, and may other economists) never actually drew their data from the payroll records of the restaurants that they claimed to have studied. Nope, what they did instead was to get their data strictly from interviewing the managers and even with this technique they ended up getting a third of their data points wrong. Needless to say, their conclusions were way off and the minimum wage (increase) actually did increase unemployment when compared to the control state (Pennsylvania).............And I ask you once again, how is this 39% increase in the minimum wage going to help all of those millions of unemployed black male teenagers who don't even have a marginal revenue product of $7.25?
And dmarks, I actually don't want Jerry to give me a raise. I was just figuring that since he was giving them out anyway....
Will asked: ".And I ask you once again, how is this 39% increase in the minimum wage going to help all of those millions of unemployed black male teenagers who don't even have a marginal revenue product of $7.25?"
The wages of the Obama recession are "no wages at all"... as of October 2013, the unemployment rate for African-American youth was 36%. A minimum wage hike will let none of them get the jobs they seek, and actually increase that percentage.
Will said: "And dmarks, I actually don't want Jerry to give me a raise. I was just figuring that since he was giving them out anyway."
Well, as long as Jerry is demanding that businesses shovel out massive amounts of money as an unearned gift to those who didn't earn it and don't need it, why not demand this money to be given to us as well? Makes as much sense as what he demands.
BTW, the company was making handsome profits.
It was a union shop. I am certain you must know how the company was able to use temps. If not here's a hint... negotiations. Max time 180 days. Hence the revolving door policy.
One can only hope. My experience has been there is a lot of lip sevice being given and a few bones being tossed out but little of substance.
There are exceptions of course. Exceptions aren't the norm.
Jerry said: "Your comment about raising the min wage to $25 is, of course, ridiculous. No one is even seriously suggesting such a number."
Any amount over the fair value of the work is ridiculous. $10 is insane already.
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