Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire "We Need a Living Wage"

burning down every business in your neighborhood probably contributes to that just as much

This. What did they do to prepare themselves for a career in the modern world. Did someone tell them that flipping burgers and other minimum wage jobs would cut the mustard. I seriously doubt it. What was their plan. Heck I had to have a plan. What makes them special.

order kiosks at McDonalds, self check out at WalMart are just the first indications that there is a new paradigm coming in retail customer service

This X 100

I'd hate to think what horrors I've consumed on my travels...

🤮🤮🤮

IF the Free Market is allowed to operate, then as labor becomes more expensive and difficult to secure, then robotics will eventually replace them. Low skilled, repetitive tasks are ideal for automation.

No truckers to drive the trucks, more automated long haul 18 wheelers will fill the void.
No burger flippers, automation will fill the void.
No cashiers or stock boys, automation will fill the void.

At the end of the day, there will be an entire low skilled generation that will be replaced. So goes the snowflake generation.

I'm not arguing we are going there, but what I'm saying is the at the moment those arguments for the issues of raising minimum wage just aren't happening

we always hear that if they raise minimum wage there will be fewer jobs in the market place for workers. And I won't say that isn't going to happen in some fields but it also operates on the premise that small business operate with excess labor capacity. I can't imagine any business making the decision to have workers come in and work when they aren't needed. Raising minimum wage doesn't change the equation of that you need x amount of workers to run a business

and here we are in the midst of the biggest worker shortage I have seen in my lifetime, and its been ongoing during the pandemic for at least 12 months, yet I don't see any wholesale changes to automation. What I see is business changing their hours to the times they can have workers.2 -3 years down the road that automation may kick in but I think it would also decline as the worker shortage went away.

When people talk about what a guy making a burger should be paid, its not really based on the economic reality of supply and demand. Right now there aren't enough workers so a guy flipping burgers is worth much more than minimum wage to a business owner. Flipping a burger is no more effort than putting lug nuts on a car on an assembly line so why is the auto worker paid $23 an hour and the burger flipper is paid whatever? The stigma that a burger flipper has to be paid the lowest possible wage is just based on the idea that anyone can do it, but when there aren't enough anyone's, they have to be paid more to do it.

I agree about the free market, but IMO, wages have been kept artificially down for years with the glut of immigration and the idea that no one wants to pay $3 for a tomato or $12 for a hamburger.. In times of a bad economy, there should be a glut of workers and wages drop, but what we've seen during good economies is that wages don't increase at the lowest levels because that worker void was filled to some degree by legal and illegal immigration.

I do agree that there shouldn't be a minimum wage tied to a living wage. The marketplace should dictate the wages earned, but also with a government willing to control the supply of immigrant labor and minimizing job killing regulations.

What they want is called Communism

Subway is [bleep] regardless.

I want a sandwich not a game of twenty questions.

I once gave the cashier at a fast food place a fifty dollar bill. He rang it up as a twenty, which made my change $30 short. I pointed out the error, and sure enough my fifty was sitting on top of the twenties. So I asked for $30 more change back.

The guy couldn't figure out that the difference between a fifty and a twenty was $30. He had to call the manager, who rolled his eyes and promptly handed me $30.

A lot of people would be surprised to discover what jobs are actually not minimum wage jobs. Wal Mart, Target Home Depot, Sam's Club, Costco, McDonalds, Burger King, etc., etc. So many people think that people who work at these places and more are paid minimum wage. There may be exceptions; but, generally speaking, all of those places pay more than minimum wage.

Increasing minimum wages simply kills the small businesses in America. Why do you think that every time this topic comes upon the political scene that retail giants such as Wal Mart, Amazon, etc. support increasing the minimum wage? It's simple. They want the government through legislation to eliminate their competition. That's not conspiracy theory, it's economic reality.

Increasing minimum wages causes price increases across the board throughout the country (see above poster's reference to union contracts) mainly because employers don't have a secret bank account full of excess funds that are allocated to increased wages. Increasing minimum wages actually eliminates large numbers of entry level jobs. In order to pay more money, employers need to obtain more money. How do they do that? They increase prices and/or cut services or jobs and then everybody complains and everybody loses.

It is also interesting to note that the largest supporters of increasing the minimum wage and other absurd economic policies are those most insulated from the effects of their policies and those too ignorant to know that their support for those people is, in essence, shooting themselves in the foot. It's a giant red herring which allows politicians to say "see, I care" or "see, I did something for you".

Thomas Sowell books should be required reading before any student in the United States is every given a high school diploma.

Don't need a burger flipping robot. It's easier and faster to fry both sides at the same time and the machine to do it would be a lot less costly. There is a lot of work that people do that can be done by machines that don't look like androids. CNC replaced a lot of machine operators and none of it looks android-like.

A requirement for a living wage eliminates every job that doesn't contribute a commensurate level of value. The most likely response will be a shift of those tasks to the "gig" worker economy. Essentially, they simply won't be "employees" anymore. Progressives have tried to ban gig workers also, forcing their classification as employees, and others have simply tried to promote UBI. Either approach is inflationary so long as the government is willing to increase public debt to accommodate it and to monetize that debt. The US has had these kinds of redistributive policies since at least the revolution. Considering the allocation of the Federal budget, the main function of the US government is to redistribute wealth. The reason is simple: Politics is business. Politicans buy votes (their only asset) with redistributed money.

The real reason is to kill small business because it’s harder to get small business owners under their thumb.

There's a lot of truth to this. The democrats are trying to destroy small business and entrepreneurs as part of their build back better marxist agenda. Can't build it back if they don't destroy it first.

Bb

Big business benefits from a higher minimum wage and from being able to export manufacturing overseas to China. If all manufacturing was done within the US or other countries that paid a comparable wage and with comparable environmental standard the average wage paid within the US would skyrocket.

Wages are inflated by deficit spending and debt monetization. How can an honest business compete for workers when the government is spending trillions and trillions and trillions to move its agenda to the top? Government, and especially the businesses that are the direct benefactors of its massive deficit spending have all the money to warp the economy and distort both prices and wages.

Balance the federal budget and start paying down the public debt. Immediately, nobody will be talking about the need to raise wages. No doubt unemployment will skyrocket at first, but if we continue the way it is, all the extra demand for workers is fake demand based on deficit spending. It's a pyramid scheme where everyone is getting paid higher and higher wages, more and more money that is all expected to come from the future.

Good point