Minimum Wage hike, you for it?

THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL THREAD!!! PLEASE DO NOT TURN IT INTO ONE!!!

Do you think the Federal Minimum wage should be raised, yes or no and why?

Please do not get combative with other posters, I just want to know the Hives' opinion.

No! Let the market work.

Nah.

If you're unhappy at that level, there's plenty of room to grow without a whole lot of effort.

In reply to 1988RedT2:

+1

Yes (disclaimer: not an American)

Also I've seen what happens without a minimum wage. You guys would E36 M3 yourselves.

No. I think the market should set prices for everything, including my labor. If what I do doesn't produce $15 worth of benefit per hour that I do it, why should I be able to demand that arbitrarily? And if we do set a minimum wage, why not make it $12.50/hour? Or better yet, $15? $20/hour would be pretty fair, right? Or, hey, let's all become millionaires and make it $481/hour.

The last time minimum wage went up, there was an article in the local bird cage liner about it. A local restaurant chain -- who has a lot of minimum wage workers -- had to increase their labor cost. Not because the workers were doing any more work, but because of the law. So in order to accommodate that increased cost, they had to raise prices on their food for the first time in a long time. One of the minimum wage workers was interviewed and said it was great that he was getting more money, but it just wasn't fair that prices were going up too and he still couldn't afford to eat there.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

I don't think anyone suggested getting rid of the minimum wage.

Yes!

As long as everyone else gets raises in an equal proportionate amount! Everyone makes more! Money comes from out of nowhere, then everyone can afford everything!

That's how it works, right?

bravenrace wrote: In reply to GameboyRMH: I don't think anyone suggested getting rid of the minimum wage.

That was my interpretation of "let the market work"...you think the market would set one?

That was a side point anyway.

No, I disapprove of a minimum wage hike. These jobs are meant to be entry-level, unskilled positions that workers move out of as they gain experience. They are not meant to be careers.

If you raise the minimum wage, all it does is make everything more expensive, and in short order the situation reverts to the same level (relative dollars), except the background radiation level is now higher.

NZ and Australia have minimum wages twice as high as ours.. their local McDonald's charges an extra 20 cents for a Big Mac.

While I understand that money does not come out of no where, the more money people have, they more they spend.

Swank Force One wrote: Yes! As long as everyone else gets raises in an equal proportionate amount! Everyone makes more! Money comes from out of nowhere, then everyone can afford everything! That's how it works, right?

Hell yeah! In theory, I should fully support a $15/hr minimum wage, as I am not currently making that now on my hourly salary (not counting my monthly bonus). But I don't. There are too many opportunities to get out of a minimum wage job and better yourself if you so choose.

It depends, will the service be better? will they still receive food stamps? I don't think the market is working when there pay is basically subsidized by welfare and there employer encourages it. If they receive $15 then I may make a career change.

mad_machine wrote: NZ and Australia have minimum wages twice as high as ours.. their local McDonald's charges an extra 20 cents for a Big Mac.

No minimum wage here, chains that exist both here and in the US charge clean over a dollar more here. Sometimes up to 3 dollars.

Bobzilla wrote:

Swank Force One wrote: Yes! As long as everyone else gets raises in an equal proportionate amount! Everyone makes more! Money comes from out of nowhere, then everyone can afford everything! That's how it works, right?

Hell yeah! In theory, I should fully support a $15/hr minimum wage, as I am not currently making that now on my hourly salary (not counting my monthly bonus). But I don't. There are too many opportunities to get out of a minimum wage job and better yourself if you so choose.

The goal is $15/hr, so.... about a wage doubling.

I like it.

$160k/yr household here we come!

Do i still get to keep my health insurance subsidies?

If unskilled labor wants to earn more money than they can learn a skill that pays better.

People unable to learn a skill despite all the opportunities are probably already receiving other assistance and people unwilling to learn a skill that pays better don't deserve the nice things that come with better pay.

Semi in favor...

Been a lot of local contention about moving it up to $11.50 in DC (locally) basically because there is no way to support yourself on $8.25 full time or even over a few part time jobs. Some of the sources were basically saying that because of the low minimum wage it was then work + welfare as a requirement to survive for many of them. So it becomes a question of employer burden vs taxpayer burden. Which, is beside the point of what the profitability of some of these companies which only pay minimum looks like. (really came to a head over Wal-Mart getting into the DC market)

I don't want to devolve this into a scathing back and forth debate over capitalism, profit margins, and such. I think we can all agree to the point that there will always be someone out there trying to take advantage of anything.

The better way to boil it down is to put it in the light of how to we take care of the bottom of the bell curve? We are a first world country, we cannot simply not look after the bottom end. When you accept that.. Which way do you do it? Through taxes and government assistance OR through ensuring that labor pays enough to care for the bottom end with costs being passed along through goods and services rather than taxes on your income?

So there we arrive at what I hope doesn't initiate a flounder... Taxing your income and having it given to those who earn less VS taxing your expenditures to ensure that those who earn less can earn enough to meet their needs?

Socialism is a word that gets thrown around a lot. The problem with it lies in people's corruption and lack of motivation. I think a minimum wage is a device that can be used to ensure that capitalism functions well enough to make sure its still possible to get done what needs to get done.

I don't feel like looking it up right now, but compare the consumer price index with the minimum wage over the years. Minimum wage shoudl pretty much be a function of what the CPI represents, unless I am mistaken about what the CPI indicates.

Yes.

A full time job should pay a living wage. That's not going to be a life of luxury, but you ought to able to eat, sleep indoors, and get patched up when you're sick or injured.

Describing these jobs as entry level is accurate, but it's not as though people don't need food and shelter until they become journeymen... Just to pick one scenario, how about entry level supports an individual, and as they move up they become able to consider supporting a family or buying a house?

Three answers here:

1: Yes, absolutely, providing that we place tariffs and taxes on imports from countries that don't have similar labor laws as us to create a somewhat even playing ground.

2: Yes, at $15 an hour, I will be the laziest guy you have ever seen. No real reason to work hard when you get paid well for not doing it.

3: No, are you nuts? Think how much a roll of TP will cost if we are paying the dudes who are on the factory line that much, the guys in the loading docks that much, the Wal*Mart employees that much, the gas station attendents that much, etc.

Yes. Too many people being purposely underpaid to what the market should be forcing government subsidies.

Hand in hand with the min wage should be legislation to prevent companies hiring massive #'s of 'part time' employees to avoid paying benefits. Yes, companies genuinely need part time people, but it's a dodge, there needs to be a limit of x% of total workforce or something like that.

I realize that this isn't always the case, but there are many educated people that are still working for minimum wage, or not much above minimum wage. An education doesn't grant you employment the way it used to.

I graduated from college with a number of people that are still kicking around at the bottom of the barrel. There are a number of people who are underemployed. There simply aren't enough skilled labor jobs to go around for a lot of industries. When your fighting for the same position with someone who has 20 years experience and is willing to take a pay decrease just to stay in the business, things become a bit more difficult for new grads.

Keep this in mind, there are now certain McDonalds locations that get so many applications, they have started exclusively hiring people with college educations.

The vast spread between our poor and our wealthy, combined with the near disappearance of the middle class creates an unhealthy environment.

It has been several years since I've had to work for minimum wage, but even still I remember how much it sucked.

No.

If minimum wage goes up, retailers know the market has more dollars available, so they will in turn raise prices to get more of those newly-available dollars. Its called free-market, supply and demand, what-have-you.Raising the minimum wage devalues the dollar, and therefore it takes more dollars to buy the same stuff = no effect in the long run.

Example. A new car costs $20,000.00. You make $10/hour at a minimum wage. You cannot afford the new car. Now, if you suddenly make $20/hour because of a MW increase, and market conditions dictate an increase in cost (in reality, the retailer increases the retail price to adjust for the change in wages) to $40,000.00, the ratio of cost:income remains the same, and you still cannot afford the new car.

Basically, the more dollars in circulation, the less valuable each one is. Printing money does the same thing.

NOTE: I understand there will be a lag in timing between the increase in the fed minimum wage, and the market demanding more based on currency in circulation, so theoretically, there will be a period where the increase proves beneficial to the employee. But in the long run, no one wins when this occurs. Remember when gas cost less than a buck a gallon? Minimum wages back then were in the $4/hr range. Now as MW approaches double digits an hour, gas is over $3/gallon...same thing

No I don't support it. Raising the minimum wage raises the cost of most goods. In return the people making minimum wage can't afford anything more than they had before. Those that don't see a wage increase now can afford less. All it does is increase the size of the lower class(not meant to be derogatory).

The workers that are asking for the wage increase are short sighted and don't see the problem it will create and that they will stay in the same position in life.

Whatever happened to bettering yourself and moving up the career ladder....everything is owed, nothing is earned anymore...

Fast-food workers say that today's minimum wage is not adjusted to inflation, as Congress has done since the first minimum wage was set in 1938. They say they are forced to rely on federal aid to support themselves and their families. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau and public benefit programs show 52 percent of fast-food cooks, cashiers and other staff relied on at least one form of public assistance, such as Medicaid, food stamps or the Earned Income Tax Credit program, between 2007 and 2011, according to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Illinois.

from http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/05/us-usa-employment-fastfood-idUSBRE9B40WW20131205

Basically, it depends on the veracity of their statement there..

I agree, $15 an hour is shooting too high though.

An hourly rate of $15.00 equates to a weekly pay of $600, monthly pay of $2,600, and an annual salary of $31,200.

An hourly rate of $8.25 equates to a weekly pay of $330, monthly pay of $1,430, and an annual salary of $17,160.

Maybe:

Can you believe a libertarian just said that?

No, in theory. Of course. But this country has grown up around the fact that a min wage exists and rises. Lots of things hinge on that.

Analogously, do you think employers would offer health insurance if national healthcare on a single payer scale were present 100 years ago?

Do you think anyone would offer a 401K if a government pension plan applied to all citizens?

I don't like the idea of a min wage, and I would be in favor of not having one, but it isn't as simple as just repealing that law, it's a tangled web that we have woven. Now that there is one, it probably should rise with inflation until the right steps can be taken to remove it altogether.

I am not saying 'living wage', that's out of line.