Any thoughts about increasing Minimum Wage? (page 2)

5go

10-12 too high

8-9 is about right to keep you up with cost of living. Though it's increase needs to be set to inflation.

5go

BTW I notice a lot here are using the Rush fallacy of minimum wages. Wages will just keep going up! Yes! inflation just keeps going up too.

Here is the problem a worker must have a job to live most employers know this. Employers can use this to lower wages in a market unfairly. Even in a with tight job market a worker may ask for a raise to a fair wage only be denied or worse fired making it harder to find a job much less a fair wage. Which is where a minimum wage comes in and forces the market to play fair.

JeffT

Though it's increase needs to be set to inflation.

An engineer would call this a positive feedback loop. It's the kind of problem that eventually causes a piece of machinery to beat itself to death.

5go

An engineer would call this a positive feedback loop. It's the kind of problem that eventually causes a piece of machinery to beat itself to death.

Well complain to the Federal Reserve Bank they set inflation it's their the problem not the workers they are trying to cheat out of a living.

It sound like you don't know why inflation exist in the first place to lower wages ( and the value of any debt ) covertly through a secret tax payed trough price increase.

wha happened?

I had a thought but I decided to keep it to a minimum

Highlander

Eliminate the minimum wage laws.

People need incentives to better themselves. When you guarantee a minimum wage worker an increase in pay, you only guarantee that they will stay in that same unskilled position for the rest of their life.

BTW.. We are all getting paid exactly what we deserve and not a penny less. Don't like what you're being paid? Then use it as incentive to better yourself. Whatever you are currently earning, it is you that agreed to that wage.

I think the labor unions are a great example of what minimum wage laws have done on a lower scale. In a union position, the vast majority of union workers know that they have a guaranteed job at a guaranteed wage and in effect become the most lazy sob's on this planet. Minimum wage workers also know they are being paid a minimum rate, not because they deserve it, but because it is the law.

Brother Apostate

Here's what needs to be done:
(1) Abolish the minimum wage totally.
(2) Abolish the laws that make it difficult to impossible for upstart businesses to form.
If both are put in place, you will have the big, lazy, dishonest, and greedy companies trying to exploit the workers by paying them next to nothing. At which point, the good workers would quit without giving any notice and start their own businesses. New hires at a penny an hour would not want to take that kind of money if they were really worth it, because they would either start their own businesses or would bid up the wages to free market levels on their own. At the same time, those that really want to create value would be able to do their thing, driving prices down.
Soon, everyone would get what they were worth. Employers that dragged their feet in giving deserved raises would soon (and I mean in days, not months) find themselves looking for a replacement for those workers, who would likely do crap work. People would seek to improve their workmanship, since they would be swiftly rewarded for doing so (or they would simply go elsewhere). And, once again people would be able to earn a living wage on one job, while the crap workers would be the ones that would be poor.

I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly!

The only thing I can add is this- publicly traded (as opposed to privately held) companies need to immediately have regulations put into place to control total compensation of executives on a ratio commensurate with lowest (or perhaps average) pay of employees. Until that is done, the US, both from an economic and political standpoint, will continue its runaway landslide into mediocrity. Unless and until such legislation is drafted and passed, the US will become increasingly more polarized into a nation of haves and have nots, with virtually no middle class eventually.

What would the above solve?

1)- CEOs and other C-level executives of publicly traded entities would no longer be able to profit from selling out their stockholders, customers, and employees. No more multi-million dollar bonuses or golden parachutes for mismanagement, unneccesary outsourcing and short-sightedness. Countrywide Mortgage anyone? The CEO just got a $100 million dollar bonus that we taxpayers ultimately end up paying, while the housing bubble he and his ilk fomented and caused the failure of we will also pay.

2)- Politics of, for, and by the highest bidder would be severely limited. The politics of this country would begin to return to the citizenry at large rather than corporately controlled special interest lobbies. Campaign finance could still be controlled by privately held corporations and wealthy financiers, but large, publicly held interests could no longer have their way with stockholder's investments being used to enact legislation that punishes stockholders, customers, and employees.

BA- Think about it.

worldtraveller

I always find it interesting that those who want to eliminate the minimum wage are not too concerned because they are no where near that minimum and are living comfortably, and those who are, can't afford to live with whatever it is set to.

Let the market set the pace is a good idea as long as there is no one working for slave wages under the table. And companies get fined heavily for doing so.

5go

People need incentives to better themselves. When you guarantee a minimum wage worker an increase in pay, you only guarantee that they will stay in that same unskilled position for the rest of their life.

That is BS no one is unskilled it takes some skill to flip burgers and make food to order. It is just you are bigoted. You look down on lower class and skilled jobs and the people that fill them. Which is why the right is losing the US to the left. If the right would learn to spread the wealth out they would be the ones rising into power right now.

wanderlustguy

Mnimum wage is $9.50 per hour here. Woprks fine, won't make a damn bit of differenece. Even if we do to $100.00 per hour, doesn't mean anything at all, nothing.

The only short term consequence is the adjustment to everyone else, the minimum wage ends up buying the same or less than it did before the change.

Incredible it is that people don't realize this. It's not the money that is the problem, the skill that minimum wage pays for does not increase in value, the only adjustment that should be due is for inflation.

WLG

Any thoughts about increasing Minimum Wage?

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