Do you look down on minimum wage workers?
I'm referring to those in their 30's still working in low skill jobs, such as retail, cleaners, etc. In my opinion, minimum wage jobs are for 16 year old's new to the job market or immigrants who just arrived to the country. A lot of minimum wage workers tend to be uneducated (everyone can afford to go university nowadays) and have little to no ambition to improve their life. But to each their own.
Why are grown adults working minimum-wage jobs?
Very few minimum wage jobs allow a person to develop skills to progress to higher paying jobs.Thinking they do is thinking we still have a labor intensive manufacturing economy.Thinking these are jobs are meant for kids is an indication you don't know what these jobs are. Many of these low wage jobs are working in nursing homes and hospitals helping move patients and cleaning up after them. Many are cleaning offices and bathrooms after the close of business. Many are performing hard labor while kids are in school. Many of these jobs involve pulling the guts out of chickens for processing. Many of those low wage retail and food jobs are at 24 hour places conflicting with school or are the graveyard shift.As for how much they should or should not make, that is a philosophical question. It really depends on whether you believe a business that cannot offer a living wage should be saved by the government subsidizing the employee’s survival.Of course many companies providing wages below the poverty rate are not just profitable, they are highly profitable. McDonalds with no price increases would remain profitable at $15 an hour though it would take about half their profits. In the lower margin world of retail it would take 80% of Walmart’s profits if there were no price increases.Both companies are holding substantial cash to pay in dividends but also to artificially prop up stock prices by buying their stock back.So it really is a question of who pays these people enough to have food, utilities, and housing? The government or their employers?Now the national debate ignores that costs differ.If you make the Arkansas minimum wage $8.50 that the equivalent of making $15 an hour in San Francisco. I know a lot of people in Arkansas who were proud to vote for the state wage increase who think those people in San Francisco are crazy for supporting $15 an hour even though it provides a similar standard of living.
If minimum wage goes up to $15 an hour will the wages of educated and skilled workers (who were already earning between $15 and $18) be also adjusted, or will they end up earning the same as if they were 16 y.o. kids flipping burgers?
Yes, but the pay increases for those above minimum wage will increase at a diminishing rate.So, lets say, in order to make the math easy, minimum wage is $8 an hour, and gets raised to $16. That's a doubling of thier pay. Will people making $16 already goto $32? Will they even go to $24?The answer is, probably not. The value they bring to the company isn't likely that much more than $16 an hour. They must see an increase, or the value of the job they work isn't so valuable anymore. They will look for an easier or more flexible position to settle in with the new pay scale. But, the raise won't likely be on the same level as what people below minimum get. I'd hazard to guess that the raise would be maybe to around $20.When Walmart did it's recent bumps to their current minimum wage (not the pending one of $11, but the current $10) people earning in the gap between $7.25 and $10 got a.raise to $10. People at $10 to about $15 saw a bump of about a. $1 at most, and it trickled off from there. People making $20 (salaried emplouees) stayed the same.Similar impacts have happened in cities and states that have raised minimum wage. Seattle, although seeing growth, finally bumped into its wage equilibrium, and started to see some negative impacts. Small businesses were taking a hit. Prices were also starting to push up. Many hourly workers, who saw an increase in pay,.saw a dip in hours, that actually lowered their weekly pay. The minimum wage increase outpaced economic growth.The long and short of it is, minimum wage doesn't work in a vacuum. Imagine if we bumped up minimum wage to $10 an hour right before the recession hit in 2008. What impact would that have had? On the flip side, how about the boom in 1996? Wages were naturally increasing then?And no matter what the minimum wage is, if you are only earning minimum, odds are, you'll still be broke.
Minimum Wage goes up to 6.55 an hour? Who could possibly survive on that ?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080724/ap_on_bi_ge/minimum_wage I know I'll get the usual "That's the starting point, you have to work your way up from there" Rhetoric ...save it! in a 40 hour work week that would equal 262.00 now even if you stuffed a 60 hour week into that wage you would earn 393.00 gross after Tax's of 27% you'd have 282.60 x 4.3333(weeks) = $1224.59 Rent right now in Syracuse NY for an efficiency in the "ghetto" is 480.00, that leaves 744.00 for Groceries,Health Insurance, heat, electricity (average national grid bill during the winter for an apartment that size is no less than 250.00) Transportation, that's no phone, no internet, no cable etc... and there still isn't enough.. also I based all of this on a 60 hour week, not everyone can find that job,, Minimum Wage sat flat for 10 years @ 5.15 until last year.. while the average CEO's earnings went up several hundred percent in the same time frame.. do you honestly believe there is no class war ?
Why is the concept of a minimum wage bad?
Unfortunately for those that believe they "deserve" a higher wage for "working their fingers to the bone" that is not the way market economies like the US and Canada work. I might suggest you try a command economy like North Korea or Cuba. A fundamental principle of economics - whether or not you choose to believe it - is that demand curves slope downwards. In plain english, when the price of a product rises people will buy less of it. Higher movie ticket prices, fewer people go to the theatres. Labour services are a commodity, bought and sold in markets. Be clear here ... labourers are no longer bought and sold (except in professional sports, but I digress) ... labour services are bought and sold. The law of demand also follows here. The higher the price of labour, the fewer buyers there will be. If you increase the minimum wage, there will be fewer jobs available. The minimum wage affects the youngest and least skilled members of society and it is these people that are most adversely affected by the minimum wage. Those in favour of higher minimum wages ask yourself the following question. If McDonalds increased the wage they pay their employees to $20 per hour, would society be better off? Be sure to consider the fact that they would have to raise the price of a Big Mac to $10. Are you willing to pay $10 for a Big Mac so that McDonald's employees can make $20 per hour? Clearly, the answer to the above question is "No, you are not". The evidence can be found in the massive US trade deficit with China. Individuals are more concerned with their own standard of living - buying goods at the cheapest possible price - than they are with the standard of living of people they do not know.