Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Unreasonably high minimum wage ..... ?

Fish head,

Do you have the right to work for less money than someone else, or do you need the government to protect you from yourself?

Here's another question for those in favor of no govt mandates and a pure market system with regards to wages.

Without minimum wage standards and with our current unemployment system would unemployment claims go up or down?

Think about it before you answer. It starts to get complicated.

Idealism is one thing but practical solutions are another.

A minimum wage does not benefit anyone. What a minimum wage does is outlaw economic activity that doesn't provide a revenue stream sufficient to support the minimum wage, i. e. if Joe Capitalist can only make a reasonable return by hiring workers at a wage below the minimum, then the hiring doesn't happen. Without a minimum wage someone hired will have some money, and everything they buy will be cheaper because there is no longer an artificial floor to the cost of everything they need.

On this one, who is being the Idealist?

If you went to the meat counter and they were charging the same for sirloin steaks, new york strip, and filet mignon which would you buy?

The minimum wage screws people at the bottom... if you're forced to pay more than a position is worth anyway, why not hire someone truly worth the money??

The question isn't how poor "working class people" ought to be, but what the market is willing to pay those who are willing to work.

Keep in mind that this is inextricably bound up with inflation; if we didn't keep raising the minimum wage, inflation would slow, and if we could stop inflation (through the ending of other monetary policies detrimental to the economic wellbeing of our poorest) the poorest wouldn't need constant artificial raises from the gov't.


ps- what is so wrong with businesses making money when not being forced to pay someone more than they're worth? You sure don't sound like a capitalist... in my business when we make money we expand and hire more people, and are able to give merit increases to those who deserve it. Businesses that profit by screwing their employees don't profit for long; it is in their economic best interest to make sure their people are well compensated.

Whether I get a wage increase this year or not, I WANT MY EMPLOYER TO MAKE MONEY HAND OVER FIST. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just as dumb as the business owner who profits by screwing his employee.

Know who the largest employer of minimum wage employees is? Colleges and universities.
So, who are the minimum wage employees?
The students, who are already priviledged and fortunate enough to be attending college.
Who then, pays the price for a rise in the minimum wage?
Whoever is paying the (already astronomical)tuition.
Net result: college gets more and more out of reach of anyone but the wealthy, further increasing the income gap.
Unintended consequences...

Correct. If it is too high for the position, you either find the one person who is efficient and works really hard, or you may consider eliminating the position entirely and doing without because it is not worth it, or pushing it off as an additional task to someone already making more. If you could get two for the same money as the mandated minimum wage, you may put two people to work for the true value of the service.

I also find it hard to believe that the government can decide that the most menial job that man can imagine, that may require no skill or danger, and that only requires a person with a pulse, is worth $7.25 an hour.

Tell me WTF position you think isn't worth 7.35 an hour ? I'd really like to know how many here would work for that and just what they'd be willing to do for it. Remembering of course that a meal at Mickey D's will cost you more than an hours labor and you'll have to sweat for an hour and a half for a pack of cigarettes. The statement above that most minimum wage earners {or barely over minimum} are students is absolute horseschitt and reflects a big misunderstanding of what is going on with the workforce, particularly in rural area's. Believe me there are tons of adults working those low wage jobs and trying to make a living from them {absolutely impossible} and more and more are doing it every year as the "service industry" replaces manufacturiing as the country's biggest employer. I'd almost like to see minimum wage done away with myself just to see what might happen. But I'd also want to see the taxpayer funded government safety net done away with at the same time. I'm sure there'd be no shortage of employers willing to pay ten dollars a day but without food stamps and such to "make up the difference" for the working poor I'm thinking there just might not be anybody left who'd be willing to work for less than a liveable wage.

Yep. That's why in the old days when you drove up to a gas station you had a team of young men attending to your car, one checking the oil, one pumping the gas, another wiping the windows, i.e., because without a minimum wage, it made economic sense to hire all those folks to compete for customers. With the minimum wage, it makes no economic sense to hire any of those folks, and you have to do it all yourself or not get it done.

Still waiting for you to answer this question: Why do you stop at recommending the current minimum wage? Why not reset the minimum wage to $50.00 per hour? This way, following your logic, everyone will rise instantly to the middle class simply by getting a job flipping burgers at Burger King, right?

Yeah, that's a great situation ! Just remember when those gas station attendants go home Joe taxpayer {you} will be providing his groceries, medical care, heating fuel etc. because he isn't paid enough by his employer to afford to buy his own. Maybe you want to help pay his wages so his employer can make more profit but I don't.

You miss the point entirely.

Everybody guages their own salary based upon where it is relative to minimum wage. When minimum wage goes up, so does everyone else's wage, which forces the supposed "need" for another increase in the minimum wage.

The question is whether a minimum wage truly benefits those you claim it benefits and a cursory understanding of economics tells you it doesn't. It can't.

As TRH points out, there are many people who don't work now because of the high minimum wage. I've had a job of one sort or another since I was 12, but both my children who are 12 and older have no where to go for jobs because of this.

Fact is, 7.35 isn't a living wage at all. So how is THAT an arguement FOR the minimum wage? Are you saying it should be higher?

My question for the bleeding hearts: why not $50/hr? Where is your compassion, anyway? Can I hear $75? Or at least $20? What is "fair"?

I guarantee you'd change your opinion if you owned a business and had to make actual business decisions to keep more than yourself employed. This minimum wage screws those at the bottom most, but everyone else along the way by driving up the cost of doing business which then gets passed along to the buying public.

If you cannot bargain for a salary higher than that, you should not impregnate a woman, and if a woman, you should not get pregnant. Just a harsh reality of life. The solution to this harsh reality isn't to eliminate the kinds of jobs that unskilled people can do, which is precisely all the minimum wage does. Sub minimum wage jobs are bottom rung jobs, not designed to support families. Designed to support someone living by him/herself (meaning no dependents, not meaning exclusive occupancy) in a rented room, or living at home with mom and dad. The main value of that type of job is the experience it affords, and the opportunity to establish a "reliable employee" track record that you can use to get yourself a higher paying job later on.

And my question for you is why not ten dollars a day ?

What do people not understand about demand (skilled) versus the alternative? We have a world of the "alternative" types out there and they are growing.

No skills and those that have degress most often have "soft ciriculum" degrees for which there is no demand. Add to that they are sitting on a butt load of student debt that there is no way they can repay with the degree that they have.

What is so hard to understand about this?

Folks like you, though meaning well, better get in gear and realize the world we live in.

Why not? If the employer is willing to pay and the employee willing to work, I have no problem with it whatsoever.

Your post implies that our choice is between a minimum wage and living on gov't assistance, yet I make plenty to support my family of 7, without any help from the gov't in the form of handouts or price controls.

If I decide my employer isn't paying me what I'm worth I'm free to go find someone who will. Everyone deserves that privilege, and the minimum wage denies it to countless people. It also denies labor to employers who need it, or forces them to pay more than it is worth which raises our living expenses.

Seems to me the answer isn't as you suggest, one gov't handout or price control vs. another, but it is that the gov't should get out of the business of business (which it ought not be in in the first place) and let the market decide what happens. Then tax burdens will be lower, allowing you and I to give to charities designed for helping the poor rather than building systems that encourage them to remain as they are.

You're so out of touch with reality you don't even realize that an "individual" CANNOT "rent a room" and support himself {food, clothing, utilities, medical care etc.} on minimum wage unless he works 80 hours a week. You think you can ? Tell me how you're going to pay 450-500 a month for rent, another 300.00 for utilities, then feed {200.00 a month bare minimum if you eat nothing but crap} and clothe yourself on 240.00 a week ? That's what you'll have to work with after deductions if you've got a full time minimum wage job. Forget keeping a vehicle on the road for now cuz it just ain't happenin' on minimum wage.

It's folks like YOU who don't see the reality of what's going on in America today douche bag !